St George, The Dragon, Portsmouth Planning and HMOs
Two events in April surprisingly had much in common – the St Georges Day celebration of a Roman soldier from Turkey who died in Palestine and who apparently killed a dragon and the Portsmouth Planning Committee reprimand for their behaviours toward HMOs.
St George – Not who he seems
Born in Cappadocia (modern day Turkey) in the 3rd century, George was not a knight at all – just an officer in the Roman army. Thought to have died in Lydda (modern day Israel) in the Roman province of Palestine in AD 303 with his tomb believed to be in Lod. He became a saint in the 4th century after he was executed for refusing to make a sacrifice in honour of pagan gods.
He never came near the UK and the tale of the dragon was added in the 9th century – the story goes that George rode to Silene (modern day Libya) to free the city from a dragon which had a taste for humans.
Patronage of St George has been adopted far and wide – England shares him with Venice, Genoa, Portugal, Ethiopia and Catalonia among others.
Having debunked St George's 'Englishness' there is an important role for him in national culture – from William Shakespeare's Henry V where the monarch calls on the saint during his battle cry at the Battle of Harfleur in the famed, "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, God for Harry! England and St George!". Five hundred years later – during the 1st World War – a ghostly apparition of St George is said to have aided British troops during their retreat from Mons, and the naval commander of the Zeebrugge Raid cited the saint as inspiration. Indeed, The Order of the Garter (founded by Edward III in 1348) is the highest order of chivalry in the country. To this day St George's cross still appears on the Garter badge and his image is the pendant of the Garter chain. In 1940 King George VI created a new award for acts of the greatest heroism or courage in circumstance of extreme danger. The George Cross, named after the king, bears the image of St George vanquishing the dragon. The image of St George also adorns many of the memorials built to honour those killed during World War One.
Portsmouth Planning Committee – not what it seems
In similar fashion, one would imagine that a city will have a vision, a strategy and a plan which all tie together to improve the city as a whole and improves the lot of the individuals who live and work in that city and collectively, who comprise the city. So, imagine – you have a clear idea of the city today, a view on what needs to be kept and protected, and what needs to change or improve. You add to this your (achievable) aspirations for where you would like the city to be in 10-30 years, the census data showing trends in housing, employment, travel, etc, your current plans and those of the major employers in the city. You tie these into your regulatory commitments, housing targets, etc and you have a 'Local Plan' which becomes the basic rule book for how the city will develop.
Once you have the 'Local Plan' you can flesh out details in areas that need it in focussed documents called 'Supplementary Planning Documents' which set local standards and targets for everything from air quality and green space to HMO density and sustainable design.
Having established the 'rules' in the form of the Local Plan, various SPD's and national regulations, such as the National Planning Policy Framework, you then recruit skilled professional planning staff to ensure these rules are applied to all new developments and, lo and behold (with a bit of luck in terms of having the right investors at the right time), the city will develop as planned and everyone will be better off.
Obviously, every development needs to be considered on its merits and sometimes, there are those who argue a development meets the rules and others who say it does not. In these cases, a 'Planning Committee' comprising elected councillors will meet, will review each case against those rules that they have created and decide on whether to approve or reject the development in front of them.
Sadly, the Portsmouth Planning Committee does this just as often as St George renews his English passport or kills dragons.
April Planning – A case in point…
The April Planning Committee met to review a list of 9 HMOs – they were not being reviewed because the proposal was contentious or unclear, they were there because councillors had asked for ALL HMO developments to be brought before them so they could endeavour to find ways to reject them. All but one had been reviewed by the professional Planning staff and had been confirmed as meeting all the necessary rules, so their recommendation was 'Unconditional Permission'(that is approve without conditions).
What made things worse was the fact that after the Planning Horror Show in February when a reputable PDPLA landlord was referred to as a 'Shit Landlord' and his high standard developments were derided for everything from having 'macerator toilets' to 'not having a downstairs toilet' (not a requirement in any rule yet written by PCC), the senior planning officer started the meeting by reading the riot act to the councillors on the Planning Committee.
Let's repeat that – an employee of the council had to stand in a public meeting that was being broadcast and recorded, and tell his employers that they had to stop breaking the rules. He made it clear that each development had to be judged on its own merits and not rejected on vague concerns simply because it was an HMO, that evidence needed to be provided to support any decisions made (ie the decisions had to be based on the rules or very clear reasons given as to why not in this instance), as part of that, it meant the 'standard text' that was being used to reject HMOs had to be jettisoned and any future rejections had to be specific to the property in question.
The sad thing is, no one listened. The Leader, Gerald Vernon Jackson wanted to spend as long as possible turning all the 'you cannot reject because…' statements into questions of 'if we cannot reject on that basis, what do we need to do in order to be able to do so…'
This was made worse when, with the very 1st property being discussed, Gerald was told by the City Solicitor that he could not use his standard form of words to reject the application but that he had to come up with a justification based on that specific property. Gerald's response was to ask the City Solicitor to provide him with a form of words that he could use in these situations. She repeated her earlier assertion that he needed to produce property specific reasons and made it very clear that her role was not to aid councillors in breaking the rules.
We had around 20 members in the gallery, many wearing 'I Love HMO' T-shirts to witness this debacle.It did not get any better – one of the particular low points (or maybe it was a high) was when one of the properties that had adequate communal space if all of its rooms where 10sq m or more but not quite enough if any were smaller, after some debate it was stated that one of the rooms was only 9.98sq m, which the councillors agreed were grounds to reject the application. It was at this point that one of our members (we will not name him but he is famous for his work on disaggregation) shouted from the gallery that it seemed 2cm was quite a big deal to some people, which generated much amusement upstairs and a gentle slap for our member who should not be named from one of our lady members….
Do we really have a problem?
There are several here – perhaps Don Quixote would have been a better analogy, much easier to imagine councillors fencing with windmills. But on Planning, we have a dysfunctional set of councillors who have zero vision for the city and when it comes to HMOs, no interest in applying the rules they have created because all they want is to stop HMOs.
In spite of the fact that we have the highest and most stringent HMO standards in the country and possibly the least needed Additional HMO Licensing scheme about to be launched, people are still creating HMOs that meet ALL of the rules because demand is through the roof (we have perhaps 2,600 HMOs in a city with 30,000 single residents, a growing University population, significant growth in health and care workers coming into the area and more people in poverty than ever before).
Councillors – Where is the vision? Where is the 'lets step back and see what we need do to help these people'? Where is the common sense that says, yes, this one meets the rules, we will encourage it and hope it helps.
Well – if I had to answer all these questions, I would suggest the answer is 'Not here, but probably in Southampton'.