Mepa has released a document for public consultation called ‘Height limitation adjustment policy for retirement homes’.
Its hallmark is virtually total discretion enjoyed by Mepa in the evaluation whether proposals fit in with the mostly elastic parameters set out in the document.
The original proposal contained a mandatory exclusion of a height increase in urban conservation areas, but evidently the powers-that-be thought that this was an inconvenient restriction on Mepa, and the current proposal has revised this so that a height increase even within an urban conservation area will be considered on a case by case basis.
The question is, are we comfortable with entrusting such near-total discretion to an entity whose credibility has repeatedly been called into question?
I, for one, am not.