Author: Cyril Richert
Yes, as many of you spotted, yesterday’s publication was of course specific to April fool’s day (the clue was in the date!)
However, independently of Wandsworth Council, we have analysed dozen of planning reports on major schemes and found many similarities used to dismiss objections. Words such as “on balance“, “landmark“, “benefits outweigh harm” seem to have been used, without moderation, to justify any possible scheme.
Using an automatic planning report generator is therefore not far from the truth (and would probably save a lot of time to planners if they feel that the aim of the Council is to approve as many schemes as possible…!)
You can find the tool that we have built here:
https://www.cjag.org/cjag-tools/tool.php
This exercise aims at understanding how Wandsworth Council has promoted planning reports with the purpose to circumvent local and national policy breach and support all major proposals in the past year.
Using this automatic tool, you quickly realise how absurd are those reports that can outcome all objections through meaningless words and expressions that have been used too often by officers.
Unless there is a real retrospection of planning practice, we could soon imagine that some algorithm will control all that…