Hope new portal will help us find planning notices with ease
I missed Helen Hubbard’s letter about planning permission for the Royal Marines’ Museum, but Pat Huxtable hit the nail firmly on the head saying that ‘only immediate neighbours are informed’ about planning applications (New hotel, March 6).
This may be acceptable for local authorities but it’s not always acceptable for the communities who have to live with the consequences of this way of going on.
Here in Gosport residents are disputing with East Solent Coastal Partnership and Gosport Borough Council, who feel it’s fine to put a flood defence system at the far end of Stoke Lake, a tidal lake at Little Anglesey in Alverstoke, rather than at the point where the tide enters the lake.
The planning application apparently appeared in a free paper held by some supermarkets and some libraries – the reason being, according to a GBC official, that it cost the taxpayer less to do it this way.
Doing it this way meant that hardly anyone saw the paper because the libraries weren’t stocking papers last autumn and because if Morrison’s was anything to go by, the paper was piled up between the entrance and exit doors where nobody would expect it to be and where nobody would expect to find a planning application that would affect hundreds and hundreds of people! Consequently only a few local residents are aware of the planning application which, if it goes ahead, will affect the lives of many more than just this few. I for one welcome the imminent JPI Media portal that (hopefully) will stop this sort of devious behaviour by our local council officials.
JA Percival
Park Road, Gosport