: ": Would anybody who is fighting now/recently ('97,'98)to save their local pub in the U.K. please contact us... the local campains page ends in 1996...and we know they are still wrecking our comunities.. we could do with info and help. ": We're fighting to save our local pub, but not from McD's--the owner wants to flatten the building and flog the land off for the real estate value-- the village shop's gone, the petrol station's gone, the cafe, two of the pubs, all gone, almost no bus service to speak of. We're just a commuter dormitory for the big city. Any good?
Nicholas Ridley M.P. changed the planning regulations , supposedly to help with regeneration, allowing A3 class establishments to sell takeaway food without "change of useage", McDonalds has exploited this loophole to the full.... what most people don't realise is that N.R esq. added a clause that roughly says that if the dept. of Environ gets an appeal from the "developers" the D.of E will pass the plan unless there are Exeptional circumstances (what constitutes Exeptional seems to depend on a whim and not local democracy- see other news at this site) and ***** this is the real sting**** if the D.Of E finds that the local planning dept. has refused permision for "no reasonable cause" (what is reasonable to them seems to defy logic) then the D.Of E. says that they (the local planning authority) are liable for the developers costs.......so ....the developers (McD included) have put in massively obsene bills and all the council planning depts are being blackmailed instead of risking refusing the plans.......local democracy is therefore garroted by big business...it stinks,dosen't it
We need the law changing and that means going to your local M.P. we are trying, but every letter counts. I hope you can get your village back... vilages give our country its comunity sence and its peoples their characteur, dormatory towns just produce sad loneley people and increase crime because of no community spirit...
None.
