Campaigners fighting the Royal Mail’s planning application to build a new depot in Patcham have asked for the application to be “called in” by the Secretary of State.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s Planning Committee voted to be “minded to grant” the application subject to agreements after three hours of deliberations on Wednesday (4 September).
Patcham resident Paul Mannix submitted the request to Angela Rayner, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
In asking for the application to be called in, Mr Mannix had to put together a “statement of case”
As a result, the Planning Inspectorate is expected to review the application and all accompanying documents and plans before publishing a report.
Mr Mannix, who has dressed up as “Mr Poop” for a protest outside Hove Town Hall on Wednesday, has been campaigning to end the raw sewage floods that already pollute Patcham’s streets.
He is concerned that the problem risks becoming worse now that the Royal Mail has been granted planning permission to build a depot at Patcham Court Farm, in Vale Road.
He said: “I was shocked and appalled at the Planning Committee at Hove Town Hall.
“The chair gave much more time to the Royal Mail speakers when asked questions by local councillors and then refused to give locals more than 30 seconds to answer councillors’ questions.
“The chair ran roughshod over all the evidence that locals provided and overall discrepancies in the Royal Mail’s surveys.
“It is clear from the council’s behaviour that they are willing to risk the safety of Brighton’s tap water because they want Royal Mail’s money for the council-owned Patcham Court Farm.
“The council are selling off the family silver cheaply and the current two depots do not threaten the tap water safety city-wide.
“The Patcham Royal Mail depot, if built, threatens the tap water with contamination for 139,000 properties across the city both at the time of construction and in operation.”
There are four grounds to the request for a call in.
- Changes to the National Planning Policy Framework will require more housing in Brighton and Hove and the council should build social housing on the land rather than lease it to a private company.
- The application may have a significant long-term impact on economic growth and meeting housing needs across a wider area than a single local authority because Brighton and Hove has housed homeless people in Eastbourne and Newhaven.
- The application has national security implications, with the new Labour government having just called in the sale of the Royal Mail to Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky for possible links to Russia, and the application site is very sensitive because it sits on the Patcham aquifer that provides most of Brighton and Hove’s tap water.
- The application raises significant architectural and urban design issues because the Patcham Court Farm site is in an area of outstanding natural beauty and is designated by Brighton and Hove City Council as a green buffer zone for the Patcham Village residential heritage conservation area which contains a significant number of listed buildings and monuments.
Good. I watched the webcast of the meeting and residents simply weren’t properly allowed to speak during it (3 minutes to summarise the objections of more than 1,000 people – it was a joke). It was quite shocking the way it was all handled.
Also saw a tweet online that the councillor Jacob Taylor (who isn’t even on the planning committee and is Labour’s Finance lead) was lurking at the back out of the view of the webcast, but in view of all the Labour councillors at the committee. Planning is not supposed to be whipped, but it does seem odd if the tweet is correct that he was there – especially when there’s so much money wrapped up in the sale of the Patcham Court Farm lease and the current Royal Mail sites.
I can confirm that I was in the gallery and saw Jacob Taylor there. Journalists in attendance would be able to verify.
He was there.
Councillors have the same rights as members of the public to attend committee meetings even if they aren’t on the committee.
There would be lots of people who attended the meeting who weren’t visible on the webcast as they weren’t active participants.
I think he will have been the only councillor there who wasn’t on the planning committee tho. All others were on the committee itself, other than the Patcham ward councillors who were supporting residents. It’s weird.
Residents watching the meeting were in the public gallery, so not on webcast obviously. Others not on the webcast were journalists and possibly people who had gone along to speak / support speakers.
All officers I assume were there in an official capacity – I don’t think people tend to attend 4 hour planning committee meetings for fun. It’s odd – that’s all. And it’s not normal as you suggest – yes it is for members of the public and officers to be in attendance and not on the webcast, but not councillors like that. I’d have assumed that a senior councillor, ie Labour’s Deputy Leader and finance lead, might be too busy to attend a meeting that went on for hours and hours, which they could have watched on a webcast. If they’d have watched it elsewhere they could have been doing other work in between. Perhaps they wanted to be there as a physical presence for some unknown reason.
Perhaps he had a chat with Councillor Allen when he called for a loo break before the vote – who knows.
Thanks Albion Blue for confirming he was there.
Hmm…the groundwater concern is a valid one, from what I’ve been reading up if there were not suitable mitigation and control factors in place. However, it seems like those concerns have been listened to and updated within the development plan, so is the problem that the revised plans don’t go far enough, or are they unconvinced by the updated design?
The existing problems seem to be a problem of an ageing sewer system in need of upgrading, and that’s nothing new nationally. Does that make this construction itself wrong, or simply there is a need for SW to be upgrading their system, in which case, that’s a question of timing more than anything?
It will be interesting to see Mr Mannix produce a strong Statement of Case.
Even with the ‘revised plan’ (really just an opportunity for Royal Mail to say they’ve made changes rather than doing anything of substance) their own surveys, delivered by Mott MacDonald, show that the development will double the flood risk in the area. Also worth noting that there are 46 conditions attached to the bid, some of the councillors on the planning committee seemed to think that’s a good thing rather than realising that a very high number of conditions highlight the great risks attached to it all. It was also absolutely breathtaking taking to watch the chair of the committee read from a pre-written script as she clearly had already made her decision before the meeting began, she also heaped praise on Royal Mail which was inappropriate to say the least. There was no sense of fairness or balance, a shocking case study of our so called democracy.
The number of conditions is meaningless.
What matters is what they are for and many of them are standard and you’ll see many similar conditions on the Lidl store permission for example (40 conditions) though of course there will be site specific ones as well.
Even an application to build a new house will have several conditions attached to it.
Think you’re ignoring a key concern, which is whether Royal Mail can be trusted to adhere to conditions. Before it even came to the meeting on Wednesday, Royal Mail had tried to amend conditions, and Southern Water had to remind them of risks (AGAIN!) in clear terms, as they clearly had not understood the risks from the details SW first communicated to them when applying the condition. SW had to remind RM that:
“Southern Water would like to highlight that Brighton A is a Strategic Water Source. Should this
source be forced offline, we would not be able to source water from elsewhere to ensure a
continuous water supply to our customers. Brighton A supplies approximately 139,000 properties
in the area. Given the sensitivity of our groundwater abstraction, Southern Water is unable to
remove our previous conditions for this planning application.”
On the day of the planning meeting itself, SW went on to say that:
“At this stage another conversation needs to be had between Southern Water and the developers to adequately address the risks we have raised in our response following their mitigation plan not being adequate to remove the conditions we have requested.”
Although SW have not removed their condition, RM trying to amend the condition is evidence they either did not understand the water risks the first time SW told them and added their conditions, or they were pushing back against them and trying to amend them pre-planning for some other reasons (presumably profit and wanting a quick build).
The conditions imposed carry much more risk than a normal application, and the fact this application was even on the agenda when SW need to have more conversations with RM about mitigating risks is worrying – why were BHCC so keen to push this through before these risks have been properly eradicated.
Why did Labour councillors also actively stop residents from raising concerns at the meeting? Councillor Jacob Allen raised a point of order when Councillor Bridget Fishleigh asked residents a question. He did not need to do this. Why did the planning chair refuse multiple requests for residents to have an additional 3 minutes speaking time to outline objections – which when they were covering the 1,000 objections on a complex application should have been allowed.
You’re often pro Labour, and pro this administration in your replies Chris. I don’t know if you’re a Labour member or not, but I hope that even you can see that refusing residents’ speaking time is not OK. Councillors should be doing what they can to make sure residents’ voices can be heard in decision making – irrespective of the outcome of this application – residents were prevented from speaking. That’s just dreadful.
I’m not ignoring any concerns.
I’m explaining how planning and planning conditions work and the number of conditions isn’t automatically saying the development is risky. Conditions are also a way of ameliorating risks. Have you actually read the conditions?
I’m not pro Labour. I rarely actually comment on politics but more on process.
I’m not a member of the Labour Party (or any other party for that matter). You may be confusing me with other posters also called Chris.
I have to say, ChrisC tends to be very balanced in his arguments and articulates very sound logic on a variety of issues.
Sorry if I’m mixing you up with another Chris.
On the conditions, yes I have read them. Of course an application isn’t automatically risky just because conditions have been added. But multiple conditions have been added to this application because IT IS risky. Conditions SW added are precisely because of risks.
Like I said, Royal Mail have already tried to amend an important one that Southern Water added for clear safety reasons. This does not bode well – why are Royal Mail not simply accepting the conditions when they are clearly there to protect water supply. If they don’t understand the conditions and why they are there, that’s alarming. If they do understand the conditions, and are trying to amend them anyway irrespective of safety risks, that even more alarming.
Great work Patcham! Keep fighting on, something is very suspect with this deal.
Just get on with it.
No wonder nothing ever gets done in this country
I see my name thief has returned 🙂
As the saying goes – “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”
Nimby nonsense again .. just build the thing and stop wasting everyone’s time and money
I don’t think that’s particularly fair, Andreas. If I believed something was going to cause sewage flooding in my area, it is more than reasonable to raise concerns about that, and I don’t think there are many who would say otherwise, right?
‘Nimby Boomer’ protestors thinking up false groundwater risks, to justify self serving ‘boomer’ objectives. Dragging in fake environment risks to support a cause is really a moral low point. Technical experts will roast them if the push the drinking water issue further. Natural groundwater flooding already surcharges sewers along old london road, now that might be a concern to drinking water. There are petrol stations with below ground tanks sitting in groundwater? Theres a rail line, major roads without pollution control on their drainage, farming to the north and the local area is already built on… But Life goes on…etc … This new development is not an increased risk to groundwater considering the exiting area.
I agree, I live in Patcham (so not a nimby)and it’s a complete mess up there. It is in fact a collection of dilapidated farm buildings, so calling it an area of outstanding natural beauty is a bit far fetched, and it’s south of the A27.
All the conditions have been met, and it will be a vast improvement of the environment. I look forward to this case being chucked out by the inspectorate.
Unfortunately the protestors will often see disagreement on any point it as a conspiracy, as they are wedded to a biased self serving perspective.
I can 100% vouch for this. Just this morning I went down a rabbit hole with a protestor on a local social media group and politely said I didn’t agree, with absolutely no attempt to sway their view in any way (it’s not my place!), simply stated I had a difference of opinion and let’s respectfully agree to disagree.
They descended the conversation into claims that I must be party to shady information that has purposefully been withheld from the public (they would put in for a freedom of information request to find out what I ‘know’), I must be a contact of the council or the unsuccessful labour candidate with a bit of carefully worded ‘free legal advice’ thrown in for good measure. It was absolutely bonkers, so they were swiftly blocked. I imagined they probably thought the action of me blocking them proved their point and they were ‘on’ to me – so bizarre!
We’re really sorry you had this experience on Facebook. As there are two campaign groups it can be confusing but we’d just like to say that this was not us at Patcham Against Royal Mail.
Thank you, that’s really kind of you. And please be reassured that I didn’t in any way connect it to Patcham Against Royal Mail, I’m fully aware of the individuals who’d publicly stepped away from your group are the ones who’ve hijacked the narrative and are doing more harm then good for your cause.
Whilst as I stated I have no strong feelings either way on the matter, I too am keen to find out more to challenge my views and have always found PARM informative, respectful and willing to enter into constructive conversations, something that sadly can’t be said about the breakaway group. I’m sorry that their actions have tarnished your group’s hard work.
That’s a shame because articulate logical amicable discourse can be insightful for both sides of an argument. Personally, I always welcome a challenge to my thoughts, concepts, and standpoints, because that’s how they get better, right?
When it descends into fallacious mockery or conspiracy, it doesn’t further anyone’s understanding.
This isn’t true – the planning decision has only just been made, so work on site has not started and ZERO CONDITIONs have been met yet – conditions have simply been applied and Royal Mail are now supposed to follow them before they can start work on site, and follow and address them at other points during the build.
In reality, Royal Mail has already shown they aren’t keen to stick to the conditions. They tried before a decision was made to change conditions Southern Water put in place for safety reasons and Southern Water had to remind them in the risk to water supply there would be if they ignored the condition they wanted to change.
On the day of the planning meeting, Southern Water said in an email that:
“At this stage another conversation needs to be had between Southern Water and the developers to adequately address the risks we have raised in our response following their mitigation plan not being adequate to remove the conditions we have requested.”
This email was shared with councillors before the meeting, but I don’t think it was read out, yet Royal Mail were allowed to get away with saying that Southern Water were “content” with their plans.
From everything you’ve said it’s clear you’ve not really looked at the planning documents, or if you have you’ve not fully understood them.
Is Mr Fletch all set for his call-in?
It’s weird how the close family connection of a central protestor (pictured but not referenced in the article) and the developer of the new properties bordering the proposed site is never mentioned in articles about the Royal Mail protests.
A simple search of publicly available information on Browns Farm Cottages is quite enlightening