Planning consent for Charles could open the floodgates

30 August 2010

He may talk to flowers but you have to hand it to our royal heir - he does try. Prince Charles has his own green agenda and we should all be impressed that he has received planning permission to place solar panels on the roof of Clarence House.

For those of you unfortunate enough not to be invited to Charles and Camilla’s regular garden parties, I can inform you that Clarence House is the Prince’s 180 year old London pad serenely situated among the gentlemen’s clubs of St James and Pall Mall.

Every building here is listed and he still received the go-ahead to place 32 photovoltaic - whatever that means - panels on his south-east roof.
One of the justifications given is that the height of the parapets means that none of the panels can be seen from the ground.

This, my friends, is poppycock because the fact that you can’t see an alteration or addition to a building has never been a reason to grant planning permission.

The fact that you can’t see an alteration or addition has never been a reason to grant planning permission

This opens the floodgates for everybody in the country who owns a secluded listed building to have all those nasty draughty Georgian sash windows whipped out and replaced with double glazing.

And when they are taken to court all they have to say now is that no-one can see them from the road - Prince Charles got away with it.

I am possibly being a little unfair on him and who am I to criticise the heir to the throne, but if a long lost aunt left you or I a tasty little listednumber in London SW1 the chances of us getting the green light to do something like this would be nil.

I am afraid one is left with the distinct impression that Prince Charles is able to do this because of who he is. Although this is from the man who last year used the royal train 13 times at a cost of £26,000 a pop rather than joining the scrum at Waterloo like the rest of us.

It could be argued that he should be given at least some credit for applying for permission in the first place because Britain’s other royal family - Posh and Becks - have been caught out a few times doing things to Beckingham Palace which they shouldn’t.

The UK’s favourite mime artist Cheryl Cole and roving ex-partner Ashley applied last year for permission to build an underground swimming pool and gym beneath their substantial Surrey mansion.

One of their justifications was that they didn’t want their intimate moments to be seen by photographers from the air but the local planning authority turned them down.

Shame Ashley wasn’t found out earlier because it would have saved them the application fee.