Gatwick Aviation Museum Planning Application

Well said Peter. Just to add to the comment above about “pi55ing off” councilors over the years. As Peter Mills has correctly pointed out. This land was NOT Green belt when it was purchased in 1989, specifically to house a museum collection. You don’t need planning permission to park an airframe in your back yard when it is not Green Belt land. It was re classified as Green Belt some time later, and incredibly, back dated!! An illegal act by today’s rules. The council therefore created this situation in the first place, by unfairly shifting goal posts.

Those same councilors that we have been “pi55ing off” over the years have 1) Got us to jump through hoops over the last 20 years, which we have fully complied with 2) Allowed us to exist and open to the public as a museum for the past 15 years 3) Approached and invited GAM to submit a new application 18 months ago ,due to “favorable conditions” 4)Specified in black and white that “the aircraft are significant and important”

And all the while have maintained an enforcement notice against us for the last 20 years.. So as you can see, we feel this is duplicitous. We are simply fighting for what is right.

Good luck guys.

I can’t believe the Inspector dismissed the appeal – from the tone of his report it seemed like it was going to be a positive decision. To see the word dismissed at the top was surprising.

Good luck with the onging situation and fingers crossed for a positive outcome! 🙂

Interesting to see the comments made here, perhaps you will allow me to put a few facts forward.

Firstly, when purchased this land was NOT included in the green belt.
The increase is not 45% but actually 31% and a large area of hardstanding (where the aircraft are currently parked) will revert to grass and landscaping, plus a new woodland will be created. The so called “strategic gap” will actually be greater, sadly the inspector was wrong in his conclusion. I produced a modified google maps diagram with the new building overlaid, it clearly shows the gap is greater. This diagram never got entered into the evidence despite being given to all of the planning committee members. Over the past 20+ years more than 20 applications to house this collection in other areas have been made, all rejected. Oddly, the “harm” perceived in the green belt is that the aircraft are parked in the open. So when the answer is to put them inside and therefore remove the harm, this is rejected!

The inspector in the 1994 appeal accepted that the current building were legitimate (the council do not accept this legally binding judgement) and that there should be no reason that redevelopment should be denied. This application was a redevelopment as most of the existing building would have been demolished and landscaping applied.

As I see someone has commented the building was incredibly modern in it’s form and function, effectively carbon neutral and self sustaining.

I could go on but I’m sure it would become very boring.
The original planning application was rejected on five counts, four of which the inspector correctly dismissed as either irrelevant or provision has been made to address the issue. That simply left the one issue “inappropriate development in the green belt”. His report contained many factual errors and certainly ignored some of the “special circumstances” that we feel should have weighed more in his deliberations.

This may not be the end of this process, the applicant has 42 days to contest the decision in the High Court and then of course there is the European route.

One last point concerning the money to be raised to build the new structure. A Trust has been set up to run/administer the redevelopment with a very experienced CEO appointed in fund raising, plus monies have already been offered if the plans get the go ahead. Money, even in these financially tight days is not the problem!

I seem to remember that the museum had gone to some effort to make the area as ‘green’ as they could.
I can’t help but think the council have their own plans for that land, and it doesn’t involve old aeroplanes.

It’s all in the design statement. South facing renewable Solar roof, naturally wooded landscape, landscaping running up to and over the building roof, surface water harvesting, etc. The elevations & section above explains a lot and shows that it’s not just a big shed. It’s certainly a significant improvement over what’s there already.

Maintaining the green belt has appears to have been the main reason for the refusal.

I kind of know what you’re saying, but green belt, right next to the Country’s second biggest airport?!
Without checking again, I seem to remember that the museum had gone to some effort to make the area as ‘green’ as they could.
I can’t help but think the council have their own plans for that land, and it doesn’t involve old aeroplanes.

I think a major issue is that the collection was never given the green light to be housed where it is in any fashion in the first place. I would love to see planning granted but just because we are sympathetic to the issue shouldn’t allow our judgement to become clouded. I couldn’t buy the field behind my house and fill it full of aircraft or cars etc. Nor can gypsies buy green belt land and set up camp (yes I know they do but they do eventually get evicted at great expense!) legally.
I think Mr Vallance has spent far too long pi**ing far too many local planners off to ever get planning for a development like that. It would also be interesting to know how they plan to raise £6-8M. One would guess if he had that kind of cash in his back pocket a few very special handshakes would have had his museum approved years ago.

Yes, I was thinking that. Maybe a way forward would be to shorten the building and apply to extend at a later date.

Having read the planning appeal decision the grounds for rejection are principally based on the new building being some 45% larger than the buildings it will replace.

The inspector was not unsympathetic to the idea of an aircraft musuem but has to work within the requirements for planning within a green belt area.

Maintaining the green belt has appears to have been the main reason for the refusal.

I’ve just been looking at the plans and it seems insane decision given that it’s spitting distance from the airport and the low impact development measures that have been put forward. https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=Gatwick+Aviation+Museum,+Charlwood,+Surrey+RH6,+United+Kingdom&hl=en&ll=51.150736,-0.208204&spn=0.008426,0.022724&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&geocode=FRqGDAMdeLP8_w&hnear=Gatwick+Aviation+Museum,+Charlwood,+Surrey,+United+Kingdom&t=h&z=16

Good luck but I’m sorry to say that I can’t help feeling that you’ll be banging your head against a wall until this is submitted in 2019. http://www.gacc.org.uk/resources/2002%20map.JPG

If anyone wants to see the plans they can be viewed here using the Planning Application Ref: MO/2011/0190
http://www.molevalley.gov.uk/swiftlg/apas/run/wphappcriteria.display

but perhaps it is simply not a suitable site for an aircraft collection.

I guess that right next door to Gatwick airport isn’t in keeping with the local surroundings.

Thanks for pointing it out. Looking through official documentation, there seems to have been long running planning disputes between the premises and the local authority, even preceding the museum as far as I can understand. I am all for aircraft collections, but perhaps it is simply not a suitable site for an aircraft collection. I wonder where else they could go.

not seen this posted elsewhere:

http://www.gatwick-aviation-museum.co.uk/planning/planning.html

At the risk of appearing obtuse, it seems odd to ask people to support a planning application, the plans for which “it is not [yet] appropriate to put into the public domain” and the details of which are not yet available, and when, apparently, it has not yet been submitted to the planning authority. What is the planning authority expected to do with letters of support for a planning application that it has not yet received and of which the authors have, presumably, no detailed knowledge? It does seem that the request on this forum is premature. Perhaps it would be better to invite supporters to submit letters of support contemporaneous with or shortly after the submission of the planning application. It might tax goodwill prematurely to ask for letters of support to be written and then, when the details of the application are known and it has been submitted, to request their authors to write again. Furthermore markb’s points do appear valid and, I would suggest, worthy of consideration. If “the architect of the plans is very experienced especially with this type of application and in particular within the green belt”, might it be prudent for him to consider and, if appropriate, revise the draft letter of support?

I hope this one get the thumbs up, would be nice to have another museum close to us that completes the story of our aviation heritage (we are exclusively WW2). Running a museum in this day and age is not easy in what is now a very commercialised world, even worse for us “Southerners” where land and buildings are at a premium.

We recently obtained full planning permission for the Wings Museum despite several appeals against it (mainly from the local snobbery that have a very short memory when it comes to history), but then again, we took along a group of bomber command vets wearing their medals to the planning meeting, in fact Bunny Mason quite rightly told the opposition that if it wasn’t for him and his fellow comrades the opposition would not have the freedom they enjoy today to appeal against what is an honorable and just use of a building. 😀

I have to say, the council were very supportive and it had a unanimous decision in the end. Let’s hope when the time comes the same can happen for the chaps at the Gatwick Aviation Museum. Surely the fact that all this is already there and has been for quite sometime must account for something? the problem otherwise isn’t just going to go away. I am sure it would be less “unsightly” if the airframes were put under cover.

Might be worth having a once-over on the spelling and grammar of the application. Planning jobsworths can be sticklers for this sort of thing. The phrase “countries heritage” for example (should be country’s heritage). Also all those inverted commas round every term are distracting, and imply sarcasm.

Couldn’t agree more Peter.

Double standards doesn’t help.

Sorry Phantex can’t let that one go without comment.

When a local zoo’s (in the green belt) planning application was turned down it went out of business. Strangely when a developer was granted permission for housing on the site the council approved it, still green belt but obviously not green belt, I guess just depends on your priorities and where the most council tax is coming from!

If you allow development on Green Belt land just because there is already development there, of whatever size and for whatever reason, then very soon you will end up with no green belt at all.

Green belt, it is sited right next to the second largest and busiest airport in the Country!
It makes me laugh these ‘belt’ designations, you can have a discarded old airfield in the middle of beautiful countryside where people can set up horrendous looking industrial estates and yet you can be on Gatwicks fence line and be considered green belt.
I will add my voice to the deserved campaign.