TV review: Planning Outlaws (Channel 4)

GUARDIAN OPEN PLATFORM : Shown Friday night, March 18, on Channel 4 : Planning Outlaws : Mr. Gulzar, whose six foot stone lions are causing no end of bother on Pevensey Levels :

This article titled “TV review: Planning Outlaws (Channel 4)” was written by Lucy Mangan, for The Guardian on Friday 21st January 2011 23.59 UTC

Ah, planning law enforcers. I see them as a thin municipal line of defence against humanity’s innate greed, selfishness and persistently misguided sense of its own good taste and righteousness. Others see them as pettifogging bureaucrats in love with the letter of the law and careless of its spirit. Let us, as Playschool almost used to say, go through the recently installed and development-certificated round window and take a look.

Jim was allowed to build a house of 96 straw bales on agricultural land on condition that it was used as an educational centre (teaching children about sustainable living). Jim moved in. He has been living there for four years, allowing him eventually to pop through a loophole that lets him live there permanently. “Some would argue that you have cheated the planning system,” says a local journalist interviewing him. “Well,” says Jim, “they can fuck off then.”

Then there’s the (possibly self-styled) sheik Gulzar, who has erected 6ft white stone lions on the ancient Pevensey Levels without planning permission. His pride in his pride is understandably not shared by the locals, although the xenophobic undercurrent to their dealings with him (“We fought the Romans, the Normans and the Saxons here, and we’ll fight you for ruining our country!”) undoubtedly buys him some sympathy from the viewer.

Nightclub owner Michel Harper builds a house for his mother that is four metres too long, has his application for retrospective permission denied and the excess is demolished – for which he is billed nearly £70,000.

The film, a polished and compact little pleasure by Melody Howse, rang with stock phrases beloved of a certain type of law-abiding little Englander who has been caught not abiding by the law – “Little grey men … common sense … common decency … British democracy … Nimbyism … Nazi Germany did this! … Not since William the Conqueror!” – but the last word went to a quiet man from a quiet council planning department.”There is an easy way of avoiding all of this unpleasantness,” he says. “Just come into the council before you want to do anything and just ask.” Well, you know – quite.