Budget cuts at Bristol City Council’s planning department have “given a green light” to cowboy builders and dodgy construction companies.
Staff numbers in the enforcement team have been cut in half over the last five years, leading to a direct drop in closed enforcement cases. Campaigners and councillors warned the lack of planning enforcement now taking place has meant an increase in builders breaking rules.
The council also issues far fewer enforcement notices than other similar sized cities, showing the problem is particularly affecting Bristol, with residents forced to live next to nightmare building sites and large protected trees chopped down without punishment. Planning bosses have said the problem is caused by too few staff and legal powers.
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Retiree Peter Wall, 76, lives next to a nightmare construction site in Bedminster. Despite complaining for months to the council, he said little action has been taken. He told the growth and regeneration scrutiny commission on Thursday, September 29, about the impact of a lack of enforcement action.
He said: “All we want is a nice peaceful life where we live. I worked until I was 75 so I wouldn’t have to rely on anybody for the next years of my life, but what we have had for the past two years has been absolute hell. As far as I’m concerned, the council is an absolute disgrace because nobody wants to do anything about it. This failure is a green light to terrible construction companies across Bristol, because they know they can just ignore the council and do what they like.”
The enforcement team is responsible for investigating any planning breaches. This includes building without planning permission or failing to follow a condition of planning permission. Currently the team has only three people working full time and one part time, with a secondment from another department. When they find a breach, the team has the power to issue formal legal notices — but only a few of these are issued any more.
Councillor Richard Eddy, chair of development control committee A, warned that some major planning applications are only given permission when councillors are told that strict conditions will be followed — but these seem to often be disregarded. He said: “If we can’t actually achieve that, in my view the entire integrity of the development control system comes into disrepute. Up to the mid-noughties, we were seeing regular enforcement notices, which we’re not seeing now.”
Trees also face less protection due to a lack of enforcement action. Many large mature trees are legally protected, with landowners needing permission from the council to chop them down. But volunteers from the Bristol Tree Forum warned that trees are often cut down illegally across the city.
Mark Ashdown, chair of the Bristol Tree Forum, said: “Planning enforcement, as far as the protection of trees is concerned, is not fit for purpose. Many, many trees have been illegally removed and nothing has been done about it.”
Cllr Mark Weston, leader of the Conservative group, added: “If Bristol has a reputation where enforcement isn’t as robust, then people chance it. I’m finding this in my ward when it comes to tree protection orders, where people cut down a tree because there’s no punishment for it. They could cut down a large, mature beech, but they might be asked to plant a small tree [to replace it]. That might take 50 years to get anywhere like the beautiful specimen that has been cut down. I’m worried we’re gun-shy and creating an impression that it’s OK to do it.”
But enforcement officers are currently restricted in taking action due to not enough staff or resources, weak legal powers, and a threat of having to pay costly compensation fees if developers successfully appeal, according to Gary Collins, the council’s head of development control. Councillors said they would lobby the government to strengthen the law.
He said: “What action we can take has to be within our legislative powers. Construction management plans are very much a grey area of planning control. In terms of how the site gets developed, as a local planning authority we don’t have the legal powers to take action against contractors behaving in that way. But I understand that it’s a real frustration.
“As a local planning authority, we do have a duty to investigate complaints, but there isn’t a duty to take action. We have to be very careful that something alleged is a breach, [because] we can be penalised if we get that wrong. For example, if we served a stop notice on something that wasn’t then a breach, we’re left wide open to pay compensation to the developer if work ceased on the site and it wasn’t a breach of planning control.
“The tools we’re given by legislation are rather weak, and that’s reflected in the experiences that citizens have of the enforcement system. The team is funded by planning application fees, so if the income is good then it’s easier to run the service and if the income goes down then it becomes much more challenging.”
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