Get in there early
When a development is announced, there are often only a few weeks for objections to be made. Often all we can do is to fight a rear-guard action of delaying and cost raising that is ineffective in the long term. My best activities come from involvement in a campaign right at the start - this enables us to challenge and even defeat a development before it has even begun. Xanadu is one such development, where I was asked early on by local residents to help in the campaign.

Do your research
Go to the library and find your Local Plan. Each region will have a ten-year development plan, and these guidelines carry real weight with the planners. Environmental law has improved greatly over recent years, and the policy planning guidelines, whilst not having the force of law, are taken seriously by the planners and by government. In most cases, developers will not have complied with the local plan. They will have bent rules, misread rules or simply ignored planning guidelines. Unless they are challenged, they will normally get away with it.

Public Enquiries
If you challenge a development at its earliest stages, there is every chance that you will be able to force a Public Enquiry. Nearly two thirds of developments which go to an enquiry are stopped. An enquiry also gives the opportunity to bargain with developers and impose conditions on what they can and cannot do. Even if a development cannot be stopped, it can still be restrained, or its damaging effects lessened.
     
Where developers have ignored local planning constraints, or where you can find evidence of other social or environmental problems with the project, you may be able to persuade the Secretary of State to call a Public Enquiry.
     
After much research and lobbying, we trekked through the snow to visit John Prescott in his Constituency Surgery on Boxing Day. Unfortunately, he was suffering from a hangover and not available. However, when we finally tackled him at a May Day celebration we found that he knew all about the development, our earlier months of effort having paid off. Within a few weeks of this meeting the Enquiry was called.
    
Once the enquiry process is running there are many other things you can do. Often there will be a case for an Environmental Impact Assessment, which will add to the delays and the costs of the development.

Lobbying
Lobbying is just talking or writing letters, but it is amazing how powerful a tactic it can be. Talk to everyone. Be persistent. Talk to your local MP, councillors, planners, your local newspapers and radio stations, and organise as many people as you can to do the same. In the Xanadu campaign, we lobbied everyone we thought might be involved in funding the project, and as a result cost the developers £26 million, effectively cutting the size of the project by a third.

Campaign for Planning Sanity
My main activity over the last six months has been setting up the Campaign for Planning Sanity. Adverse planning decisions are being made on a daily basis for political and economic reasons, ignoring the needs of people and the environment. Although many of these developments are challenged, the reality is that ten times as many are not. The biggest single factor is normally lack of resources and knowledge locally. We hope to reverse that by networking resources, providing an advice service to local campaigns and lobbying for changes to existing planning legislation.

The Campaign for Planning Sanity can be contacted on: 01942 513792
Planning Aid is another group offering free advice to those who otherwise could not afford professional help with planning applications, hearings and tribunals. Contact: 0121 693 1201.


CHAPTER 7
Chapter 7 campaigns for "access to land for all households…through environmentally sound planning" (agenda 21 Chapter 7C). They have a growing library of planning documents, reports, applications and appeal decisions relating to low impact and sustainable development. They can research and supply photocopied excerpts.
     
Chapter 7 is part of The Land Is Ours which campaigns peacefully for access to land, its resources and the decision-making processes affecting them, for everyone, irrespective of race, age or gender. TLIO’s address is 16bCherwell Street, Oxford OX4 1BG; tel 01865 722016. To subscribe to the Chapter 7 newsletter send £5 (£3 low-waged) made out to Chapter 7 to: Chapter 7, 20 St Michaels Road, Yeovil, Somerset BA21; tel 01935 472396 / 881975. Chapter 7 also offers advice on planning matters over the telephone.