[Swansea Hackspace] What next

[Neil Jones]

On 24/03/2013 11:17, Etched Pixels wrote:
>> Hang on! You can't just rent premises used for one thing at the moment
>> and turn it into a hackspace.
> Unless people are planning on doing drastic things it will be B1 usage.
> Pretty much any office space would be B1 usage. The only thing which
> would be likely to be a problem would be retail as it's currently Swansea
> council policy to try and preserve retail rows.

Yes. of course. but people have,  I thought, been talking about shop 
premises which is out.
>
>> why we should have a closed list that is not internet searchable.
> Rubbish. Firstly any planning is intentionally as public as possible. The
> planning system itself then deals with the removal of bogus objections.

I am afraid I have to disagree with you Alan, I have a lot of experience 
dealing with planning issues across South Wales.
Firstly whilst it may seem to be an open process, in practice it isn't. 
One one occasion a group I belong to actually had to get the Information 
Commissioner to send a staff
member to a council to force them to release documents that they were 
legally required to disclose. Even threatening them with contempt of 
court had limited effect.
It is only the most extreme case of many. I was in court only last week 
over another Freedom of Information case.

And as for the planning system working well to remove bogus objections. 
You have got to be joking! You are dealing with individual planners and 
they don't have to be too clever you know. One example, comes to mind of 
a Tree Preservation Officer ( It is part of planning,) who would use 
Latin names of trees to impress me. Unfortunately for him I know the 
Latin names of all the trees so I knew he was making some up!


>
> Secondly anywhere you set up involves having neighbours. We will need to
> get on with them and being open and constructive is both the best way of
> doing that and also the best way of finding out a potential site has
> neighbours who would be a problem (whether for good or bad reason) so we
> can simply go somewhere else.
>
>> The moment anyone posts a message about a particular place we are open
>> to misguided planning objections which could jeopardise the project.
> Oh yes all those people who spend all day trawling the internet for
> planning to object to. Ok there are a couple but they have "wind farm" in
> the search box 8)

You would be surprised at what gets people going. I am one of the people 
who tends to be contacted by such people. It isn't just the wind nuts.


> Even if you needed permission (which is very very unlikely) I can't think
> of a better way to get objections than to ensure the first thing that the
> people next door get is a council letter out of the blue.
I would agree . It is unlikely and we should try to avoid it, but it 
isn't the only thing that being over open can cause problems with.

Look at applying for grants and then the grant maker sees the fiasco 
over organising the meeting that didn't happen.

Of course you approach the neighbours first. I wasn't suggesting you 
didn't but if they already picked up information months before you're 
ready then it makes it more difficult

Neil
> Alan
> .
>