The new community college has been granted planning permission.

The most interesting bit of the decision notice is this:

“Prior to the occupation of the new school building a Community Use Statement [CUS] shall be submitted to and approved in writing by the Local Planning Authority and thereafter implemented. This shall provide a template which will list the facilities within the school that may be used by the community, the hours of potential use and the means of publicising, accessing and booking such facilities. The CUS shall thereafter be reviewed by the school on an annual basis and publicised in accordance with the terms of the CUS.

Reason: To ensure that the school’s facilities can be made avaialble to the community to improve the sustainability of facilities within the town.”

It sounds good but is really largely meaningless. The Local Planning Authority (i.e. North Devon Council) are not very likely to delay occupation of the school if a suitable CUS isn’t completed. Even if the first one is completed in a satisfactory fashion the school can water things down in subsequent years with absolutely no comeback.

In other words all the facilities in the school, which have been provided by public money, may actually not be available to members of the public, community groups etc.

I totally despair of the planning system and our planning officials.

It would appear that North Devon Homes wish to demolish the old Cottage Homes and replace them with a hideous new build.

Here’s what the homes looked like last summer:

They looked very much nicer before the chimneys were removed.

Although the Cottage Homes are owned by the charity South Molton Cottage Homes, North Devon Homes have apparently been managing them for a number of years.

North Devon Homes don’t like chimneys and I suspect that they were responsible for ruining the buildings by removing the chimneys.

The screen at the top of the urinal was showing adverts.

Not something I would have expected to see in a German toilet!

If the advertising revenue helps defray the running costs of the (free) public toilet then I suppose it can only be a ‘good thing’.

I’m very conscious that I haven’t posted anything for several weeks.

This is largely because I’ve been on holiday for a couple of weeks without access to decent internet connectivity.

I have to say I was very surprised at the extremely patchy 3G connectivity in Germany – or at least in rural Germany! Wi-Fi in hotels is always a  bit hit-and-miss unfortunately.

The United States has less than 5% of the world’s population and yet holds roughly 25% of its prisoners!