An expensive decision?

There's been a reoccurring theme in conversations I've been having with people in property recently. You'll hear it yourself if you use the words 'planning' and 'charges' in conversation with a surveyor.
I did last week and was on the receiving end of a five-minute, from-the-heart tirade. If you feel that strongly go public, I said (I would, wouldn't I?).
The response was almost depressing: "We can't, we do business with them. It would be too much of a risk."
We all know the way the world works. Suppliers don't diss clients. Particularly powerful, influential ones.
But that's not the relationship that's at the heart of this problem. Developers and their agents are feeling sore because of fees Nottingham City Council's development control department wants to charge for a service IT gives THEM.
That service, in simple terms, is the advice it gives to developers and their agents about proposals for new buildings before they put in planning applications. If you want to meet a planning officer and talk through the issues your proposal for an office block raises and get a written response it will now cost you more than £1,200. And further conversations mean further fees.
So why is an industry which routinely deals in millions bothered about a bit of small change? First there's the principle: we already pay for the planning department through council tax. The fees mean people are being charged twice (never mind the fees for the actual planning application itself).
Second, there is no guarantee this advice will smooth the application's journey through development control. Indeed, the worries here are best summed up by the nickname which some property people have given the decision-making body – the 'Out of Control Committee'. So it could be a thousand quid or more for nothing.
Third – and this is the contentious part – some in property think the quality of advice they get from the city's planning department is average at best.
It's an open secret in property circles that the department has gone through a difficult time recently. It is being restructured, experienced, senior figures have left and the council has struggled to find replacements. There is unhappiness, too, about the hand the city played during the good times, nodding through some pretty mediocre developments while regeneration zones went nowhere.
It also has a tense relationship with Broadmarsh owner Westfield, the feeling being that the council spent 10 years bending over backwards to accommodate its whims only to see them redevelop Derby instead.
As if to rub salt into these wounds, Tesco wants to build its biggest Nottingham store yet on Eastside – a site which the council had hoped to see turned into a £900m new office quarter.
So planners are under pressure to assert themselves at a time when the council is strapped for cash (which is what the introduction of these new fees is really about).
I wonder whether the name 'development control' is really appropriate. It suggests the authority is there to rein developers in rather than find ways of enabling regeneration and growth. If it wants to be seen as a body which offers authoritative input into development proposals in a major, regional city then its committee won't deliver unpleasant, expensive surprises which begin with the word 'no'.
And if the city is bringing in fees for professional advice (as opposed to a simple, technical service), it must understand that it changes the dynamic of a relationship. The expectation will be that the advice is delivered in a timely, professional manner, hits a certain quality standard – and gets results.
If that happens the complaints will disappear.
There are some dedicated, experienced people in city planning, and they have to deal with an industry which takes an approach which is often robust, occasionally aggressive. That's the nature of the beast when large sums of money are at stake.
The reality (as the council calculated) is that these fees will simply disappear in the cost of a major development. Smaller developers will probably also swallow them. Property and planning agents who act for developers may be less happy, because they'll could be asked by some of their more uncompromising clients to pay the fee on the understanding that "we'll reimburse you when the plans are approved" (i.e., it's your problem if they say no).
There is an opportunity here for the council to change the way it is seen in some quarters of the business community. If that is the approach it is taking then may be the grumbles will die down.