Better Transport

There is a lot that you can do to prepare before the planning application is published. You will be grateful for this time when you are in the thick of the objection period!

In advance, you could:

• Get publicity ready, with a space to fill in the details once you have had a quick read through the application and gathered the main arguments. If you prepare a leaflet beforehand, you only need to insert a few key facts in it when the application is published
• If the proposed scheme passes through habitats which you believe may contain highly protected species (for example, land protected under the Habitats Directive) it is worth finding out more details in advance, perhaps in consultation with the local Wildlife Trust. It is not unknown for campaigners to commission ecological surveys themselves, but this can be costly
• Prepare a mailing list to send leaflets/standard letters to
• Ask the council for a longer objection period
• Establish a good relationship with the planning part of the council – you will need them to help you!
• Ask the planning department of the council to allow objections to be filed online, which will make it much easier to circulate e-actions and enable people to object in just a couple of minutes
• Ask the highways department of the council to publish the whole application, including the environmental statement, online
• Prepare a press statement or press stunt for the day of the publication, so that you steal the council’s thunder
• Get in touch with loads of other groups and encourage them to object to the application - parish councils, local amenity societies and groups such as RSPB, Woodland Trust and the Wildlife Trusts, if appropriate
• It is especially worthwhile to encourage statutory environmental bodies and other statutory objectors like affected landowners to submit objections. You can find the list of landowners in the application. Send them a letter outlining your concerns with the road
• Talk with national groups to see how they can support you
• Consider meeting with the regional representatives of the statutory environmental bodies if you have serious concerns

Mobilise objections
Once you have skim-read through the planning application and environmental statement and have formed a clear idea of what your key arguments are, then you can start to mobilise objections.

It’s up to you how much effort you want to put into this. It is exhausting and very time consuming, but also immensely satisfying when the council receives hundreds or thousands of objections. Such a response will also be crucial in demonstrating to the Government how controversial the proposal is, if later you will be asking the Government to 'call in' the application for an independent public inquiry.

You will need to make it as easy as possible for people to object to get the maximum number. If people can object online, so much the better. Of course it is better if people write individualised letters, but most people don’t have time for that. The numbers game is very important.

You should try to get the council to have a way for people to lodge their objections online. Most councils do this. You can then direct people to the website, or you can set up your website, so that people can object there and then you pass them on to the council – this way you keep hold of people’s personal details in case you need to contact them again. Be sure to clearly ask people if they mind your campaign having their contact details and perhaps emailing them in the future. Give people the opportunity to say no to this request.

Here are some ideas of what other groups have done to maximise the numbers of objections:

• Distributed a leaflet through the local newspaper. The Hastings Alliance inserted leaflets in their local newspaper, at just £300 to insert about 6,000 leaflets
• Distributed a letter to key areas near the new road. Weymouth Relief Road campaigners had teams of people delivering letters to a housing estate where the road would go through, with nearly half the objections coming from this estate alone
• Produced several leaflets, each focusing on one negative aspect of the application to appeal to different audiences
• Sent letters or leaflets to supporters on mailing lists. The Weymouth campaign did not produce a leaflet, but wrote a letter to all their supporters, enclosing three copies of a standard letter, with a stamped addressed envelope enclosed (three so that people could pass a copy on to friends). Making it this easy resulted in more than 5,800 objections!
• Wrote letters to the local newspaper asking people to object to the application
• Set your website up to send objections straight to the council
• Put notices on other group’s websites asking people to object
• Set up stalls in town to get people to sign objections

Work with the Statutory Environmental Bodies
The response of the Statutory Environmental Bodies will be very important. Their response will be taken a lot more seriously than any opposition group's response. Statutory Environmental Bodies have very limited resources, but it is important that they feel that there are important issues at stake here, and they aren't bought off with dodgy mitigation packages for protected species for instance. 

Example: The objection Natural England wrote about the proposed Hastings bypass