GUMMER'S PLAN TO END APPEALS

CALL that planning?

"It's time to scrap the planning appeals system," John Gummer, the
Conservative MP and former Environment Secretary, writes in Planning (Aug 25).

He argues that almost every appeal fails, the costly process can take
years and how decisions are finally reached is far from clear.
Overall, he says: "Successive governments have undermined the primacy
of the local planning authority and allowed for second-guessing as a
means of meeting political objection."

Gummer believes that decisions should be made locally and appeals
inspectors should no longer be allowed to review new evidence.
"Appeals would then cease to be a rehearing of the proposals and
become a means of ensuring that the original decision was properly taken."

At present, battles over local planning permission can get ugly,
agrees Community Care (Aug 31). The not-in-my-back-yard aka Nimby
brigade have developed sophisticated arguments and now couch their
opposition in politically correct terms.

"These days (the arguments) are very rarely about 'we don't want mad
people in our road'; they tend to be more about 'opening this service
will create more traffic' or 'this is quite close to a number of
different schools'," says Paul Corry, the head of public affairs at
Rethink, the mental health charity. "It's more discrimination by
innuendo than direct discrimination."

But charities such as Addaction, the drug and alcohol treatment
agency, are fighting back. Hugh Jobber, a project services manager at
Addaction, put stories in local papers to break down opposition to a
needle exchange in Walsall. Anonymous parents spoke out about their
heroin-addicted children's need for the service.

"We were trying to humanise the issue and it worked pretty well," Jobber says.