Room without a view

When I learned that the Coastguard site opposite us had plans submitted earlier last month, I wasn’t exactly surprised, but nevertheless had a sense of foreboding. The site had been marked for development since the 2008 Local Plan, but being tight and coupled to the Assembly Rooms – a building at risk – seemed pretty unlikely to go forward any time soon. I fantasised the ground being planted up as an orchard or pocket park with trees, or perhaps a proportionate private owner occupier development. Yet the likelihood of this being yet more affordable housing was high, and although I would support any sensitive “improvement” of this site, I won’t be supporting this proposal.

My objections to the new housing proposal going through planning on the Coastguard site in Dunbar are coloured. I don’t really know who is proposing them (a small time architect and developer who doesn’t seem to have a website / instigated by planners?), who the homes are designed for (they are truly small, dare I say pokey, so I guess they will be very affordable homes for luckless out of work teenagers) and I lack other details that might influence or change my view. There is no supporting narrative explanation, indeed the opacity of the whole application demands questions.

Grounds for objection:

1. That locals don’t like it.

That would be enough in many places (the good burghers of North Berwick famously rebuff proposals like this at regular intervals because their vote counts), but alas, it is not going to be enough round here, unless the objection is universal.

I think few will like it. So far no one I have spoken to is happy, but hang on none are local as they’ve only lived here for 20 years.

2. That it’s going to ruin my view.

It certainly is, and I am not alone. Progressively our views have deteriorated from wide open (120 degrees) to almost completely closed, reduced to glimpses and bits of the horizon. The sky will be removed soon. Not a material consideration it seems.

But maybe it should be, as the consequential financial impact has interesting implications. Developer makes a few bob by effectively stealing a few bob’s worth of other people’s views and ruining their amenity. One way of levelling the housing playingfield, I suppose.

Daily Mail readers celebrated in 2009 when it discovered Labour plans to review Council Tax in England depending on inter alia access to amenities and views. But frankly I’d happily pay more for these if paying protected them. As it happens these factors are already implied in the price of a property. So even if the policy were implemented and taxes went up, property prices would be attenuated up or down.

In our case I guess that knocks off several thousands, as the sea views from our kitchen and dining room and garden will be forever lost, and severely diminished from the first floor. Time to move?

3. That it will mean a loss of privacy.

Curtains will be permanently closed from now on. You are being watched already 24/7 by facebook and Google, and soon if the Government gets its way, by your ISP and we’re worried about privacy? Well there maybe some grounds for many residents who are going to be directly ‘overlooked’.

Even if you don’t lose privacy, the perception of losing your privacy is an important one. Will you have to wear a dressing gown or put net curtains up? Will you revise your planting scheme and create a garden fortress of Leylandii hedges? How neighbourly would that be?

4. That there will be car parking for 20.

Crikey. There is no prospect that it will ever fully be utilised – just look at private car parks anywhere in the immediate locality and you’ll get my point, they are under-utilised. Town sites should have as little parking as possible to encourage people to take public transport or join the thriving local car club. But our lazy decision makers don’t do imaginative or, more likely, they’re worried that dopey residents like me will then demand a resident parking scheme. God forbid.

The Assembly Rooms, a building at risk, already has vast gardens, but by dint of not being owned by the developer are not considered relevant, so the local plan ingeniously but daftly applies the parking formula. Even if it is not going to be developed any time soon.

If there is a priority, surely it is the Assembly Rooms? If ever there was a case for a compulsory purchase order you’d think that was an open and shut case.

5. That there will be NO GARDENS!

If the parking proposal is daft and preposterous, the lack of garden provision is absolutely  (expletive deleted) outrageous and enough to make anyone cry. I am not talking about some token soft landscaping (they manage to squeeze a tree in I believe) or green car parking aka SUDs.

Neither poor people, nor the old or the young for that matter want or need gardens, do they? Despite mountains of evidence that greenspace is good for you (mental and health-wise generally) and that there’s an evidenced shortage in the supply locally, there is also almost nowhere for the burgeoning poodle population to SHIT in.

“Let ’em shit on your beach or your High Street”, I hear our decision makers say.

6. That the new buildings are going to be ugly.

Sure they are, that’s why they are so cheap and the developer stands to make a quick buck. Developer also knows that after the 10 year guarantee runs out, they’ll be a steady flow of expensive repairs, which they may benefit from too. To be fair, not all the new buildings at this end of the town are as ugly as they could be, but I ask myself why would you want to annoy the neighbours by building further low quality into the area? They might gang up on you? Politician’s should take note.

I find the attempt to make the style acceptable at best insipid. I’ll bet if they go ahead they’ll cut every corner in the book. Heavy scotch slate – I simply don’t believe that would be enforced, but is a well-documented ruse to appease potential objectors, but gets dropped as its impossible to do anything about it. You’ll be lucky if the Council bothers to demand a planning variation.

7. That they are going to take down a wall that the Council just spent tens of thousands repairing.

NO, that is what the Council does all the time. It paints pointless white and yellow lines around the locality, and then rubs them out all the time. Or visit the “temporary car park” at Abbeylands to see how they gold plated the spec in order to throw £50k of tax payer’s money to merely displace car parking, which previously occurred less than 5 minutes walk away. Anywhere else a bit of hardcore and a ticket machine would have sorted it, and this site already had handy Auschwitz-style inward facing razor wire fencing in place to protect the cars and add edginess to the street scene.

8. That the wall will fall down.

So, are the buttresses being removed and the wall held up by the new structure? It is not clear. That the wall may need structural support is probably not a planning consideration, rather an engineering problem, and won’t stop them creating another expensive temporary car park. More’s the point, what is the history of that wall and does it actually have any historic importance? The new wall was rebuilt using modern techniques and pointing, which to my mind was a missed opportunity to demonstrate what could be done with old red sandstone walls, which are being allowed to decline. But there you go.

9. That its gonna flood.

Yes, that’s why they’ve not got a ground floor. Only the cars will die in the event and surely the carbon saving green ideologues will celebrate?

Seriously, there is an issue around the ability of this site to support 9 flats, even if they are 6 single bedroomed flats and only 3 doubles. So if poor drainage and other services are apparently a problem, who will pick up the bill? You and me probably.

10. That the whole thing is fishy.

It beggars belief that such a sketchy application got through the registration process at all, given ELC’s usual attitude towards private applications which rebound with striking regularity.

I worry also whether a small time developer and architect re-known for porches and sheds be being encouraged to put forward proposals in a sensitive Conservation Area? Is it ultra vires for councillors or planners to stimulate proposals without discussing them first with those that would be affected or community representatives / key stakeholders?

I am sure that ELC could cook up a better proposal using their in-house architects.

11. There has been no pre-planning consultation.

It feels like this is part of a continuing undeclared war of attrition between the Council that doesn’t really have a clear idea what is good for local people – it has been progressively de-professionalised, demoralised and paralysed by declining financial resources and endemic risk averseness. And local people on the other side who don’t really know what is good for them – they know what they don’t want more than they know what they want – which I think is fair enough, given the dreadful lack of public engagement in debates around what it means to live in the Conservation Area, too often painted as a hindrance.

There can be a 2 way process whereby experts signal first intentions to develop and then, following on from research and engagement, develop proposals. You would expect them in this day and age get their inspiration from a brief (I doubt there is one), the context (a small and potentially sensitive location) and from local people (there’s a host of people that are going to be affected and others who might make sensible suggestions).

That is not to say that everyone’s post-it view will count. Far from it, but it IS about creating a sort of a dialogue, looking at the impacts and mitigation options. The job of the Council is to also look at the cumulative economic, social and environmental impacts, not just saying that the public good is served better by whatever they want to do and that everything else doesn’t count.

When someone wants to stick a small wind turbine up, ELC somehow ensures it doesn’t happen,in the name of landscape protection. No one’s views will be obstructed – only changed, no one’s privacy will be infringed, nor their light removed, etc. When it comes to Conservation Area development/protection, our towns get whatever the developer plonks on the table, usually without any mitigation whatsoever.

The Council has a poor track record of engaging constituents, except through the dubious unrepresentative coven of Community Councils. The last thing they will do is to actually ask local people what they think 1.

Putting aside the satire, we desperately need reasons for people to invest and visit the town, which continues to struggle. We don’t necessarily need a transfer of assets to the community as if this sector somehow has the time and resources to do things better, plainly it has not. What we need is a development environment and planning and political signals, whereby private investors have the confidence that their decisions to buy-into the old town living / lifestyle are not going to be negated by the next daft proposal, which is going to favour some business as if that is a public benefit.

We should also be trying to attract individual private owner occupied developers – not businesses, who can generally generate more imaginative responses to the special needs of a historic town, working with qualified architects. You never know, some sort of stimulus and regeneration of the old town could also create a vibrant niche in traditional building trades. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of square metres of red sandstone walls that could be repointed, repaired and rebuilt, using artisanal techniques that are more sustainable.

Regrettably the current development tendency is towards further ghettoisation, mainly where the authorities think they’ll get away with it or know they can. And although I think we should learn to live cheek by jowl with different people of different ethnicities and cultures and economic status, I still think this development is a poor choice for the locality for the range of reasons I have outlined.

  1. A rare exception was the recent MIR meeting, which I missed, run by DCC, which brought the Not in my back yarders out in droves. Jolly good.

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templar

passionate about the new and the old, but only if it is any good