But what do you do when the voting members of the committee decide that they will leave the decision making to the professionals, as happened here? You can't lobby the planners about individual cases - but the developer gets to 'consult' the planning officer. This is a good idea if it's a domestic application to do something to your house which no-one will object to as long as you do it right, but what happens with the big developers is that by the time their application comes up for approval, the planners have spent so long on it, they feel as if it's their own scheme: I think of it as a form of Stockholm syndrome.

And I'm afraid it is too late on this case (in fact, I think it was too late once they'd given consent in 2009, because they hate to change their minds): all we can hope is that the bottom will fall out of the market, preferably *before* they build...