He writes:

Wow! We just won one! That's so unusual I thought I'd tell you about it:

When you are lucky enough to live in a good place, you would like to keep it that way. Developers, however, make their money by building new things - not by protecting the old. And they make a lot of money doing it, so they tend to be much more persistent than your average resident/protester. In this part of the world, if the building project doesn't 'fit in' (and most don't) The Town Council gets first vote - and in this case they refuse it. So it moves up the planning ladder to The District Council - who also refuse it. The Developer (who wasn't expecting anything else) now takes the last and most expensive step - he appeals to The Department of The Environment. Now that's a wonderful title ('Environment and all..') but what it really means is - John Prescott! - who, in his office of Deputy Prime Minister is in total control of all local government (stop and think about that for a moment). Now, continuing the amazing magic trick of our Labour Government being more Conservative than ever the old Conservatives would have dared, John Prescott has decided that if it is a building application, it should not only be approved, it should be encouraged. So, appeals, though costly to the applicant, mostly lead him to the approval he was seeking. I have very few arms to fight this. But in this case, I was able to get the hearing moved to our local Town Hall rather than the Inspectors Offices miles away. Some judiciously planted local Press stories generated a large public turnout (40+ ain't much to you, but for a planning meeting here, that's a crowd!) The Building plans (large block of flats on coast) had been discussed to death but by forcing them to look at the plot and not just the building I was able to show that they intended to tarmac the garden completely and provide parking for twelve cars - which would change completely the street scene from the small town treescape it is into an urban parking lot. I thought we had lost it. But just this week I got the notification - the appeal (against our refusal to allow building) was dismissed! Jubilation in Budleigh Salterton!! But to paraphrase The Governor of California: 'The builder will be back'. Yes he will, but his next bid will be more in keeping with this funny town.

Cheers! Jed