this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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London apartment block that deviates from plans must be torn down, says council (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What a waste. Although considering the amount of corner cutting on the building’s appearance and features, I’m not sure I’d trust the structural integrity either.

The apartments are occupied too so demolishing them is could leave people homeless.

I would hope lessons will be learned from this, plenty more rogue developments could slip through if we are ever going to ramp up house building to the needed levels without proper oversight.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Luckily it's a buy to rent building so the residents are only on tenancies and can leave easily, they aren't stuck with long term leases on worthless flats like those who brought ones in cladded buildings.

If I was one of them though, I'd be trying to get the developers to pay for my moving costs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

While it is a waste, it is necessary not to let things like that slip. They built something they did not have a permission for, as simple as that. Just like when you decide to expand your home with an annex without a permit.

They got permission to build a house based on plans A, and actually built a house based on plans B. And by the looks of it, we are not talking about the building being 5cm to wide in one direction (which had led to a tear down order here in one case), but quite a number of massive violations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

A fun game of spot the difference, but apparently there's more going on that you can't see -- eg the planned underground carpark just not being built at all, and them building a carpark over the garden instead.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I mean, the missing car part should have been obvious from the day the foundations went in...

In general agreement though, it looks like they cut a lot of corners from the original application. Should have been flagged sooner though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My northern town can't even afford to rebuild the broken down ill-repair buildings it already has and London are building them to tear them down, even if they went off plan they could be fined instead of spending more by pulling it all down. What a waste.

[–] NickwithaC 0 points 10 months ago

"London" didn't build these, a developer did. That developer cut a lot of corners and so now there is the very valid question of how many more were cut that we just can't see. Structural integrity is in doubt and so these buildings cannot be deemed safe.

Fines are just seen as a cost of business by some people so this tear-down-and-rebuild-properly consequence is the only thing that will make them finally start to play by the rules.

Maybe be thankful that your northern town doesn't have shysters with money signs in their eyes looking to fleece the locals eh.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Send in Dibnah!

[–] NickwithaC 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Did you like that?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I did, actually 😅

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't know anything about planning / building, but does the planning office not inspect sites periodically to make sure the plans are being followed?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Well

only one in 10 council planning departments are fully staffed, with 13% operating with fewer than three-quarters of posts filled

with

80% [of local authorities] reporting they did not have enough officers to carry out their workload

because

long-term cuts to funding have had a visible impact on planning departments’ ability to retain staff... there has been a 43% fall in resources to the planning system from local authorities since 2009-10.

https://www.lgcplus.com/services/regeneration-and-planning/planning-people-go-from-council-to-council-chasing-the-money-17-05-2023/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Honest to god. Every time the curtain is peeled back on any aspect of our country, the damage that has been done since 2010 makes me reel.