What to do

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You have a few main tools when fighting big corrupt developers. They work in conjunction with each other with the ultimate goal of finding the corruption or undue influence or non adherence to process and then maximising the visibility and coverage of what you have found to influential people, accountable people and the public.

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• Expert analysis – Where inconsistencies are present they will normally show them selves in the documents that the developers and their associates submit. Former planners, highways engineers, environmental consultants etc. will know what to look for and can speed up the process.
• Freedom of information requests – This is the most powerful tool you have available to you when it comes to getting to the truth of how decisions are made.This will give you, every email sent concerning the application, every document created about the application, everything that wasn’t documented (why wasn’t it documented?), who was (and who wasn’t) involved in the decision.
• Official processes – Government departments have clearly defined processes, approval processes, review processes, oversight from management, documentation processes and templates, record keeping processes so on and so forth. Corruption and undue influence will be found where processes weren’t followed and decisions weren’t documented.
• Private investigation – Developers that are able to unfairly influence the decision making processes of government departments do so through a network of complex relationships with officials and local business people. Their relationships with influential people will be well known and they will also have a well documented history of planning applications that unexpectedly went their way despite breaking local and national planning policies.
• Publicity and marketing – All the evidence in the world is meaningless if no one hears about it. Publicity starts with your local community through flyers, signs, and the parish council. All the information you gather both in your initial investigations and expert reviews and as the case progresses should be published on a simple, easy to navigate website. Collect email addresses so you can update people when you need action.
• The media – You will be surprised by the level of interest you will get if/when you find evidence of suspicious activity. There are specialist FOI journalists even in the smallest of local newspapers and they will want to hear about unusual decisions and lack of process. Structure your information gathering as though you are going to present your findings to a journalist because that may very well be the case.
• Complaints – All government departments and councils have formal complaints procedures for when irregularities are found. Where processes haven’t been followed and decisions have been made that obviously go against planning policies. These complaints procedures have several stages to them and often include mediation and in person meetings. The longer a process continues the greater the awareness will be of the development and its issues.
• Official channels – It is paramount that all official channels are used and are pursued diligently in the objection process. However, the reason that this option is at bottom of this list is that without the other tools in this list these channels are all but worthless. Developers spend a lot of time and money understanding how the system works and who makes the decisions and government departments are not on the side of the local community, those most in need, the environment or the country as whole.

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Analyse

This is the most complex and challenging part of the process. The areas you will need to analyse are:

• Application documents
• Consultee comments (Councillors, highways, planning, environment, flooding etc.)
• Public comments (support and objections)
• Planning policies (local plans, legal requirements, precedents etc.)
• Freedom of information requests (processes followed, documents created, reviews completed and people involved)
• Expert reviews

Planning documents are deliberately confusing, processes are deliberately hidden and pivotal relationships and discussions are deliberately kept secret. You have several tools that you can use to help expose these.  

• AI analysis of all official application documents submitted to the government portal.  These can be downloaded and, along with planning policies, freedom of information requests and expert reviews, can be run through AI analysis tools to quickly find gaps, inconsistencies and signs of law breaking and/or corruption.

• Freedom of information requests serve two main purposes
  1. Provide details of who was involved in the decision making process and what meetings and documents were used to support the decisions
  2. Provide evidence of official processes being followed (or not). Official processes are documented and can be used as evidence of incompetence, negligence or corruption where they haven’t been followed.

• Expert reviews can give you clarity on the where the application is infringing planning policy and the law.  These come at a cost but are valuable as they provide extra authority to support the objections and make it easier to identify key policies and laws.

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Scrutinise

This is where you will find the legitimate reasons for potentially stopping or curtailing a proposed development.  

In an ideal world planning, highways, the environment agency and all the other bodies that are setup to stop illegitimate applications going through would be given the time and resources to effectively review all the applications that come before them.  

The reality however is that government employees in these departments are setup to fail. They have their core job which is to uphold the law and enforce planning policy.  Invariably they believe they are there to protect, people, homes, livelihoods and the environment and would like nothing more than to hold developers accountable for their misdoings.  However.

1. They are massively underfunded, under paid and unappreciated.  Incompetence and stupidity at the highest levels of government has put enormous pressure into these departments to sign off applications quickly with the minimum of scrutiny.  Which means that there is very little incentive to make a fuss and so corners get cut and shortcuts are taken.
2. They are susceptible to the influence of developers and their agents.  High workloads and low wages mean no one is looking to stay in their job any longer than necessary so keeping developers and their agents happy may end to lucrative future work.   Relationships with people who understand the pressure they are under and appear to help by making empty promises that give them plausible deniability are very attractive.

Invariably the pressure and lack of funding combined with the promise of an easy life and future employment means that negligence, undue influence and even corruption become common place.  This means that there are often:

• Gaps between application and consultee comments
• Gaps between application and planning policies
• Gaps between application and expert reviews
• Processes not followed
• Documentation not completed
• Inadequate oversight

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Publicise

The most important part of any campaign is visibility amongst the local community and its leaders.  You must be continually galvanising your local community, ensuring influential people are aware of issues and holding all decision makers accountable by publicising their responsibilities.

Your marketing and PR efforts need to perform two cor functions:

1. Constantly remind your community and its leaders of issues and drive them to take action both as a group and individually to stop the development.
2. Make all decision makers and their decisions public and available for scrutiny by their community, the media and the council.

Evidence of corruption, undue influence, negligence or incompetence are only valuable if they are subsequently exposed.

Again you have several tools available to you.  Freedom of information requests can reveal a lot about who the developer or his representatives are in touch with and these can be combined with expert analysis and private investigation.

It is in the assembly of the facts that the real power of publicity can be found.  For example, the name of the developer will be on the application documents but what everyone should be aware of is:

• Who they have personal relationships with that could influence the outcome of the planning decision
• What other applications have they been involved in that show signs of non compliance to planning policy or law
• What businesses are they involved in that show signs of non compliance to planning policy or law

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Maximise

The final part of this is to hammer the message home about everything you have found to everyone that matters.

Councillors, journalists, department heads special interest groups, the community.

Building an online dossier and “string” map of all concerned helps with discussing the case with journalists, acts as a permanent record of misdemeanours or unresolved abuse of power and can also be automatically sent to anyone in the future who is dealing with the developer or any of the government employees.

Building a dossier of this type means it can be search engine optimised so their responsible and ethical behaviour can be easily found by anyone looking for more information about them.