Collecting Nigel from Hail Weston House and driving him to Norfolk and the Broads Authority Planning Committee meeting in Norwich
Collecting Nigel from Hail Weston House and driving him to Norfolk and the Broads Authority Planning Committee meeting in Norwich

Collecting Nigel from Hail Weston House and driving him to Norfolk and the Broads Authority Planning Committee meeting in Norwich where they eventually agreed to approve the Heronshaw Planning Permission subject to a Section 106 Agreement.

After lunch, off to Horning to see the site and collect some things and then home to Paxton. Later in the evening I invited Steven Bloom to come over to talk about Heronshaw and try out my Yeoman electronic chart plotter, which he liked. The fog had cleared for it to become quite bright at times this afternoon

Up early and, after a quick breakfast, dressed and ready to get going. I called by John and Chris's house in Hail Weston to drop off some things and then called a bit early for Nigel at Hail Weston House. It was a frosty and foggy morning and he was slow to return from taking Kate to school in Bedford but I took the time chatting to Lynn and taking Ashley to the bus stop. He was well loaded taking a set of drums with him as visual aids for a talk he was to give as part of his GCSE assessment!

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It was after 8.45am before Nigel returned and was ready to go and this only left us 75mins to get to the Broads Authority Planning Committee in Norwich! However, I was not too concerned as I did not expect my application to come up until half way through the meeting. I need not have worried at all as we arrived to find the committee in private session for an hour, discussing some design matter which ended up as being a discourtesy and delay to us waiting outside. I passed the time chatting to a journalist who had come to hear about the plans for a "Wind Farm" at Sherringham. They were planning a cluster of ten wind turbines on the coast which caused a merry flutter amongst the committee. The fear was the visual intrusion on the landscape and the "beating" of the reflected light on the large unsynchronised blades.

The meeting dragged on with the chairman struggling to control things a usual but at least the decisions were going in accordance with the officers' recommendations which boded well. I became increasingly worried as the more sensible and experienced planning councillors started leaving and there was only about half of them left when my application came up. The North Norfolk planner presented the scheme and highlighted the five objections and then described how these could be overcome. The Broads Authority's own planner then emphasised that the recommendation was one of approval subject to a Section 106 Agreement and the debate began.

There were two speakers for and two against and then questions about the effectiveness of such an agreement before the vote was taken with me becoming quite desperate by this time. There were five voting in favour and then the chairman remembered to vote to make it six. Four voted against and it was therefore a close run thing. Nigel and I retired to discuss the outcome over a late lunch at the Bridge Restaurant in Wroxham (the meeting had taken so long). We agreed that I had taken that committee just about as far as it was prepared to go and that I was quite lucky to get approval for a scheme that would undoubtedly evolve in time into a separate property. A nice meal of sea food and roast beef to follow, finishing with home-made meringue filled with blackcurrant sorbet, one of my favourite dishes.

Then to Heronshaw where we looked around the property and Nigel gave his impressions and opinions. He was not very keen on the water-borne nature of the old building and favoured total demolition and filling in the boat dock to create a two-story building! He is unused to the idea of water under a building and could not understand that this was the whole idea! He nevertheless suggested that he introduce me to the chief designer of Potton Timber who could prefabricate such a design and get it put up with minimum site work. We clambered aboard the Paxton Princess and checked that it was all right and collected my chart table and took some measurements of the fridge that I needed to plan some modifications.

Then the journey home, driving as quickly as I could as Nigel had to get back to pay his gardener, it being Friday. He had learned a lot about the workings of local government and planning and was not very impressed. The fog had cleared for it to become quite bright at times this afternoon, but it was damp and chill in the end with the northerly breeze coming in off the sea. This evening, I telephoned Steven Bloom and got him to come over to talk about Heronshaw and try out my electronic chart plotter. We had a couple of beers and put the world to rights before estimating what the Heronshaw land and development values were. He agreed that we should approach Potton and I might employ him to supervise the job. He liked the plotter and we worked out how to connect it up to the navigator back on the boat which will be interesting.