Here is a story about a place I once knew. I found it via this post by “TantumErgo” in the UK Politics subreddit. “Owners of former Walthamstow pub ordered to stop using it as Buddhist temple”, the Waltham Forest Echo reports:
An unlicensed Buddhist temple operating out of a former pub in Walthamstow has been ordered to close by Waltham Forest Council.
The Confucius and Tao Association (CTA) bought the Lord Brooke, in Shernhall Street, in 2014 but was refused planning permission to convert the building into a place of worship the following year.
Contemporary reports described its purpose as promoting the teachings of Buddhism, Confucius and the Great Tao through public seminars, while working to tackle poverty and racial tension.
The council’s planning committee refused the charity’s application in early 2015, saying the use of the building as a pub was a “valued part of the social infrastructure of the area”.
No doubt many residents of Walthamstow did value the Lord Brooke being a pub, but it’s not as if they would have continued to have it as their local if only the Buddhists had not taken it over. In 2014 the pub was branded a “drug haven” by the Metropolitan Police and was “shuttered after evidence of drug use was found all over the venue.” No one has been found willing to reopen it as a pub, not surprisingly given the pub trade has been declining for years, mostly due to government actions like the smoking ban, “sin taxes” and increases in the minimum wage.
Faced with the choice between the abandoned building falling into dereliction and having it used by a group known for their harmlessness, one would think the council would jump at the chance to allow the change of use, but no, they preferred to wait for their “prince” in the form of a new landlord to come some day.
So those naughty Buddhists snuck in anyway, and started worshipping in the building so quietly that no one in authority noticed for years. They also opened a vegetarian cafe, the bastards. The Waltham Forest Echo continues:
Despite the town hall’s decision, the TCA [this is a typo for “CTA”, which stands for “Confucius and Tao Association”] appears to have gone ahead with the conversion.
It is unclear when the venue began being used as a place of worship. There is no formal signage for the temple, only for the associated Lotus Bloom Café, and historic remnants of the Lord Brooke are still in place more than a decade on.
Waltham Forest lodged a planning enforcement notice in late April, demanding the charity stops the “unauthorised use of the land and buildings as a place of worship, associated community centre, and ancillary café” and ceases “all gatherings, events and educational classes”.
So the state compulsorily closed down a pub due to it being a drug haven. The state said that the building could only be reopened as a pub. The state made reopening it as a pub a losing proposition. Then the state said that the people who had quietly reopened the building as a place of worship for Buddhists and a cafe open to all had to close it down and restore it to its previous state.
The Confucius and Tao Association ought to scatter the ground with needles and syringes for authenticity, but they are probably too nice.
Why do you need planning permission to open a temple? Or why would you need different permission for a temple vs a pub or a cafe?
I get that compared to, say, housing a temple is going to be louder and have more visitors, traffic etc. but then the same applies to both pubs and cafes.
I am reminded of the Liz Truss comment (which was featured on this very blog some years ago) that the Town and Country Planning act of 1947 was one of the biggest problems with the UK as a whole.
I note that in Japan, where I live, there are no such rules. Indeed a restaurant/shop not too far from where I live has turned half of itself into a Mosque with no issues at all. The other half remains Ahmed’s Curry house
FrancisT – the Planning Laws are a bit of a mess, and they do NOT stop large housing estates or massive warehouses (and so on), they seem to be about stopping small scale developments – such as turning a building from one use to another use.
To answer the question of the post – I would prefer a Buddhist temple to a abandoned (and decaying) pub, used by drug addicts.
FrancisT: Why do you need planning permission to do anything?
In principle, I have no problem with the idea of planning permission and regulation, as long as its purpose is public safety and associated goals. The peaceful and religious nature of the venture does not excuse it from such regulation – religious goals are no bar to stupidity, cf the fire at the Hindu-based “Ghost Ship” collective in Oakland, CA, in 2018, an almost-perfectly on-point example of what things like this can lead to.
However, in this case, it’s hard not to conclude that the authorities pursued the case bexause the people involved were peaceful and unthreatening members of a not-particularly-favoured group. One wonders whether their actions would have been the same in the face of a militant Muslim community, for example.
llater,
llamas
“Change of use”. I know it well. Here in Cheshire, near me, there are many fine buildings (many were pubs) that are rotting because the owners aren’t allowed to re-purpose them. It is a scandal. And what makes this even worse is that this is often due to them being listed buildings in a designated “Conservation Area”. Meanwhile terribly crappy housing estates are going up which (round here) are all badly stone-clad to give them an aura of “authenticity”*. Well, that might work for Mr Magoo. They are dreadful. They are all detached (fine – in principle) for the sake of being detached (more £££) but they should be terraces rather than things that you scrape your wheelie-bin between.
My gaff is, over 300 years old. Now, that’s “sustainable”. Except it is and it isn’t. It ought to be double-glazed (them’s the “guidelines”) but it can’t be (them’s the other rules).
I have a firm belief that things ought to be built to last. And for that to happen and for those buildings to be kept i use we need to be able to modify and update to keep a place useful.
I was threatened with jail if I replaced the guttering incorrectly* and we have had an “illegal” Sky dish. The horror, the horror…
*Fortunately it turns out the lead in the gutters (which is illegal but “period” so otherwise replacing it with something else would also be illegal) was not an original feature but added later so we got new gutters at a reasonable price and not something NASA would choke at.
I take the point that the Buddhists are preferable to some other planning scofflaw groups, but if we react with fury when travellers rock up and stick two fingers up at planning regulations, we can’t exempt this group.
Technically you are absolutely correct. The problem with holding to such high ideals is that people who oppose us have absolutely no qualms about selectively enforcing rules depending on whether the transgressors are part of their approved in group or not. I think that we can only afford to be so noble when impartiality is almost always upheld and people letting their personal prejudices intrude on their decisions are a rare exception. Now that Enlightenment values that we once took for granted are regularly being ignored I think that the gloves need to come off.
I would add that I rather doubt that these Buddhists are helping themselves to absolutely anything that isn’t nailed down or planning to move on after trashing the entire area.
JuliaM, if it were difficult to tell that Travellers/Gypsies had been living in a place for years, I think the general reaction to their presence would be very different!
This is one of those “you’re so close to getting it” statements.
These Buddhists seem subversive and dangerous lot.
Seriously, how is satire possible with stories like this?
NickM – it is grim indeed.
llamas – Planning Laws never do what local people want them to do, stop big corporations turning fields and woods into warehouses and other such, what they do is hit ordinary people – who can not afford to appeal to the Planning Inspectorate down in Bristol. And the corporations depend on the government building roads and other such – so it is not really free market development (as it used to be – when builders had to build their own roads and MAINTAIN them for the long term – as, for example, the Dukes of Westminster did).
In the United State is called “Zoning” – where living over your store (as independent business families used to do) is often not allowed, but putting a multi lane road through a city (rather than round it) is just fine. For example, the people of Philadelphia were cut off from the river – and many houses were stolen and destroyed.
Look at pictures of American cities a century ago – and look at these places now.
“Planning” has been a horrible disaster. The same is true in Britain – with the “slums in the sky” apartment blocks and all the rest of it.
At least since World War II the normal practice has been to destroy buildings and replace them with buildings that are not as good as the buildings that were destroyed.
Words fail.
Prince Charles once said something like, “ At least when the Luftwaffe knocked down a building, they didn’t replace it with anything more offensive than a pile of rubble .”
It seems to me that there are two issues here:
1. Are the planning regulations stupid?
2. Assuming they are stupid do they have moral right to ignore them?
As a general rule I think most planning regulations are stupid. However, I don’t agree with whoever suggested that we not have planning regulations. I doubt they want someone to build a prison or an airport next to their back yard. When I think of these things I think of that most extreme example of the HOA (or the “historical district”). An HOA might tell you what color you can paint your door, or how long your grass can be, or what flowers you are allowed to plant in your yard. A “historic district” might tell you what gutters you can use, or what windows you can install or what wallpaper you can use in your bathroom. But here is the thing — if you are in an HOA or a historical district then you chose to subject yourself to these regulations. I suppose one reason people do so is because they care about what color their neighbor paints their door, or something a bit less ridiculous like wanting to live in a beautiful historical district, and preserve its character. I see absolutely nothing wrong with rules like that, rules you subjected yourself to.
And I suppose similar as you move the focus out to cities. You live in a city because of the conveniences it brings and so again it is your choice of the trade offs. However, in cities I think it is more burdensome, and so the rules should be less.
I think a bit about Clarkson’s Farm here where he lives out in the country and they have these ridiculously burdensome rules about stuff that has effectively no impact on anyone else — which is to say when you give these people power they tend to abuse it.
This, to me, is the essence of federalism. Power fractured up into smaller parts so that, if you don’t like it you can always move. And at a local level you can move with reasonably small burden, since generally moving one city over is not too hard compared to moving to a different state or a different part of the country or even to a different country.
As to the second point — should they obey the rules even if they are stupid? I’m afraid I really think they should. I mean if a law is tyrannical there is justification in disobeying. If the law says you have to kill all Jews on sight you should definitely disobey that law. If the law says the government is going to tax you at 110% of your income you should first of all avoid that law as much as you can, and possibly, if you feel the risk is worth it, disobey it.
But where it is annoying, but you have a reasonable choice, I really don’t see how you can justify disobeying. Presumably they can open their café somewhere that it is not illegal.
Should they kick up a stink? Definitely. It has never been easier to do that. Should they try to get the laws changed or even better get the law makers changed? Certainly. And really, if you think it particularly egregious, should you disobey? Maybe, but don’t complain when you suffer the consequences. It just seems a bit easier to move your little church and café to a place rather more welcoming, and let the Lord Brooke rot away and be a constant source of embarrassment to the idiots who make the rules.
What can I say, this is britain, where there is neither equality under the law nor common sense. Now if someone wanted to put in an alligator pit for throwing White toddlers into; it would be immediately approved and probably subsidized by the government.
Subotai Bahadur
Fraser Orr – you are asking for Planning Laws as long as they are sensible, that is like asking for a cat as long as it barks.
As for violation by noise pollution and so on – that is (or rather was) a Common Law tort, so Planning Law is not needed for this purpose so your airport example does-not-work.
British towns and cities were much better before the Planning Laws.
And so were American cities.
After all these decades of failure, indeed terrible harm, it is astonishing that anyone is still defending this system – I repeat saying you want these laws as long as they are sensible does-not-work that is not the nature of the beast, such laws (called “Zoning” in the United States) will never be sensible.
As for drugs – in a libertarian world, drug addicts would not be subsidized by the state (and if they committed crimes to fund their habit they would be punished), and they would be cleared away from the streets by the private owners of those streets. The drug addicts would not last long – they would either seek treatment for their addiction or (sadly) nature would take its course.
But this is NOT a libertarian world – Portland Oregon shows what drug legalization looks like in this non-libertarian world, a nightmare.
To answer Sam Duncan’s question
The answer is that your property abuts on the property of others and thus things that you do on yours may impact them. Also if you are operating a business then it is in the interest of the state that your business be safe for your employees and customers.
That’s about it really.
And that is more or less how Japanese planning regulations work. You can build anything you want on your land within some fairly broad limits, but what you build has to be fire and earthquake ready and it should not disturb the neighbors more than they expect. The broad limits relate to things like total height – you can’t usually just plant a skyscraper in an area of 2-3 floor houses – and for businesses what kind of pollution (noise, smoke etc.) you can emit. But with the exception of a class of very heavy industry – things like oil refineries – you can build anything you want up to the limit. So in an area that allows for factories you can build housing, offices, restaurants or shops. In an area that allows bars and restaurants you can build houses and small offices. And so on. There are very few (arguably too few) areas which have “historic district” sorts of rules and even in those, the use you put your building to is generally unregulated as long as its exterior doesn’t clash. So you can have a nail shop or a medical clinic or a bakery in the front room of your historic building and that’s fine though putting up a neon sign advertising the existence of the business may not be.
The great thing about Japans rules is that they are national. The same standards in Tokyo or a remote village in Hokkaido and the only thing the local authorities can do is decide what zone something is.
Government:
Can’t live with it,
Can’t live with it.
As P.J. O’Rourke noted:
“Giving money and power to government is like giving liquor and car-keys to teenage boys”.
Bruce Gentner – one can have government without having Planning Laws, for example the United Kingdom did not have Planning Laws till the late 1940s.
The last American President who could really remember America before the Income Tax and the Federal Reserve system, was Eisenhower.
Eisenhower could also remember American cities and towns before “zoning” (Planning Laws) – when people could walk to work (or get a trolly car) because where they lived and where they worked were not miles apart – and he could remember when store owners lived over their stores (which used to be common in Britain as well).
“Paul no Zoning means Houston – and Houston is a nightmare” – the people moving there would dispute whether it is a “nightmare”, but its famous sprawl is NOT caused by lack of Zoning laws – the sprawl is caused by GOVERNMENT ROADS.
It is GOVERNMENT ROADS (these multi lane horror shows) that cause the sprawl – not lack of Zoning laws.
The “free” roads, and price controls on transit companies, bankrupted the trolly cars and so on in the 1930s – it was not really a conspiracy by General Motors, it was the provision of “free” roads (paid for by taxpayers) and imposing price controls on the tickets of the mass transit private companies – yes General Motors then bought them up and closed them down, but only because they were ALREADY going bankrupt – due to the “free” roads and due to the price controls on their tickets.
The famous anti libertarian line “who would build the roads?” is correctly answered by pointing out that sometimes the roads (the massive roads that tear American towns and cities apart) should not have been built.
It is a grim thought to remember that it was easier to get about in American cities, or cross the country (without having to fly) a century ago, that it is now.
You could get to the towns and cities of America by rail, just as you could in Britain (at that time), and the train service was good. And in the cities and suburbs (for suburbs did exist – even then) you could get mass transit (of various forms) to where you wanted to go.
There was also cars – most certainly there were, but they did not control everything.
Looking at the buildings and the population and so on, I would much rather visit American towns and cities a century ago than now – of course the same is true in relation to Britain.