Our city planners need to wise up

DEAR Editor, The Birmingham Post (July 5) rightly pointed out “our planning system is highly permissive and designed to encourage development “and the “deed of variation allowing developers to waive their affordable housing commitment” raised some interesting points about our local ability to deal with issues.

Birmingham City Council (£3 billion turnover) has a business relationship with many developers.

When building companies manipulate or fail to deliver the terms of their contract or use what has been described as the “smoking gun” approach of the threat of appeals to the Government (whose policies provide the ammunition) then common sense would suggest that is not a good business relationship.

Commonsense dictates that no one uses a problematic builder but our officers at Birmingham City Council continue to do so and the losers in all this are once again residents who fund such nonsense, regularly lose protests and trust in the planning system.

There are some glimmers of hope in recent Planning Committee decisions and the integrity and commonsense of council call centre chief Paula Buckley (Post, June 1) was a welcome breath of fresh air.

It is to be hoped that the Birmingham Independent Improvement Panel can see this.

Come on Birmingham City Council – more commonsense please. B Husband, Quinton