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Dog walkers in Queen’s Park, Glasgow. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Dog walkers in Queen’s Park, Glasgow. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Letters
Tue 19 Jan 2021 11.18 EST
Last modified on Tue 19 Jan 2021 12.19 EST
Ben Olins says that he does not understand people “who walk the same route over and over” (The joy of steps: 20 ways to give purpose to your daily walk, 18 January). One aspect of repeated walks in my local park for 10 months is that I swap a cheery “good morning” with about a dozen other regulars who I don’t know. It’s a small ritual but it’s uplifting in lockdown times.
We, the undersigned, express our deep concern about the latest proposals for the expansion of Permitted Development Rights in England.
These proposals will lower housing standards and accessible natural green infrastructure provision, extinguish local democracy, and end public participation. Communities and their local councils have simply lost control of many of the forms of development that matter most to them.
Permissions for over one million new homes are already in place but not built out according to the Local Government Association. There is little case to be made that the current system does not deliver consent for development.
Existing permitted development rights have resulted in what the Government’s own report has called poor quality homes. Much less funding is going to local authorities as a result of these changes. Councillors and MPs across the spectrum have voiced their deep concern at the size, quality, amenity, design, location and climate change implicatio
Credit: peter byrne/pa
SIR – Here in Freshwater on the Isle of Wight the vaccine rollout was going really well, but it had to stop because it had got ahead of other parts of the country and the Government would not supply more vaccine.
To use the kind of wartime analogy favoured by the Prime Minister, this is like travelling in a convoy: you move at the speed of the slowest ship.
I thought that avoiding this sort of situation would be one of the advantages of leaving the EU.
Jamie Sheldon
SIR – My 88-year-old father with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has not yet had the vaccine, since his local surgery did not receive any until this week.
PLANNING applications for a cafe and holiday accommodation at one of Presteigne’s most recognisable buildings have been withdrawn. To make alterations to The Judge’s Lodging Museum, full and listed building planning applications were submitted to Powys County Council in September, 2020. The Judge’s Lodging Trust who run the museum said that income from the proposals could help secure the long-term future of the Grade II-listed neo-classical building on Broad Street, which shows how judges, their staff and prisoners would have lived in the 19th Century. But documents lodged as part of the application show that there were concerns that the proposals would change the building’s aesthetic too much, and warned that the plans lacked detail.
PLANNING applications for a cafe and holiday accommodation at one of Presteigne’s most recognisable buildings have been withdrawn. To make alterations to The Judge’s Lodging Museum, full and listed building planning applications were submitted to Powys County Council in September, 2020. The Judge’s Lodging Trust who run the museum said that income from the proposals could help secure the long-term future of the Grade II-listed neo-classical building on Broad Street, which shows how judges, their staff and prisoners would have lived in the 19th Century. But documents lodged as part of the application show that there were concerns that the proposals would change the building’s aesthetic too much, and warned that the plans lacked detail.