As the government planning inspector overturns the council’s refusal to grant planning consent to an upholstery store in Wellstones - allowing a workshop unit to be converted into nine flats, some without windows - one wonders if there are any standards at all when it comes to decision-making or has the entire planning book of rules been thrown out the window?

READ MORE: Tiny flats with no windows get green light

Will we now see developers buying rows of garages, submitting plans to turn them into flats? Is the way clear for the public to turn their garden sheds into dwellings, knowing full well they will get the nod?

Never mind no car parking space: If windowless dungeons are no barriers to approval, presumably then lack of running water, drainage of sewage or waste will be neither.

The abdication of regulation will lead the country down a slippery slope to slums and a resurgence of the dark ages and the kind of medieval squalor that many hoped had been consigned to the history books.

Or is a case that if the price is right, central government will bow to any edifice no matter what?

Dave Degen

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