Wednesday 21 October 2009

CLEARLY REDUNDANT








"Clearly redundant".


A strange turn of phrase. What does it mean?




“Development which adversely affects the continued use and development of County-wide and sub-regional indoor or outdoor leisure facilities and sports stadia is not permitted. Enhancement of such facilities is supported provided there is no significant adverse effect on local residential amenity by virtue of noise, floodlighting, car parking, traffic generation or other disturbance."



“The Council’s policy emphasises that their use should be maximised and that change of use or redevelopment of such facilities will be resisted unless they are clearly redundant or their continued use and development would create environmental damage. On the other hand, the enhancement of such facilities is supported provided there are no significant adverse effects on local residential amenity by virtue of noise, floodlighting, car parking, traffic generation, or other disturbance.”

So if the club's owners, whoever that may be, were to move the club out of the stadium prior to applying for planning permission for, let us say, a giant B&Q, then the world famous Racecourse Ground would be redundant, no? Or, perhaps, if the club was to cease to exist altogether...

Yes, a very strange turn of phrase indeed.

If anybody out there is familiar with planning legalese, then please do let us know your thoughts.

You can email us at
ProtectTheRacecourse@googlemail.com or you can post in the comments section below.

Before we're all left feeling completely redundant.







.

4 comments:

  1. obviously if the wrexham had moved grounds then the racecourse would be redundant, although the chances of them having the money to move grounds before even thinking about what to do with the old one is nil.

    i think clearly redudnant would not really apply in this case, it would be more applicible in the case of the bowling green at the miners in town for example

    but then again the WCBC planning department aren't very competent so they could use that description as they saw fit. Probably

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  2. It is certainly open to interpretation isn't it!

    A legitimate concern is that potentially a future owner of the stadium - which is already owned by a holding company - could a) evict the club, b) force the club out by levying an excessive rent, or even c) encourage the club to move out 'temporarily' whilst development is undertaken, and by the letter of the law, or rather the LDP, the 'facility' would be defined as 'clearly redundant'.

    I would like to see much more than this - I would like to see an explicit legal statement from the Local Authority that they would resist any development, under any circumstances, that affects the use of the Racecourse as a football ground, and that the Local Authority would only allow development of the land in the future after public consultation and the agreement of all stakeholders - which means supporters groups and individual fans as well as shareholders,

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  3. Also some interesting blog posts from Tommy Tainant on his blog:

    http://blogs.myspace.com/tommytainant

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  4. Aye, sterling work Tommy T !

    The Wolverhampton Local Plan makes for interesting reading. We might not be legal land planning experts, but we can sure sniff out a good LDP when we see one !

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