THE plethora of planning applications submitted by Crest Nicholson for the East Street redevelopment has let to an on-line petition to the Prime Minister, calling for a change in planning regulations. The developers have submitted a total of nine applications for East Street in three sets of three, of which two sets are duplicates and the third carries certain amendments. This complicated state of affairs has been further confused by the fact that the thousands of public objections made against the three applications submitted last September cannot be taken into account against those submitted later. The fact that objectors must write again and again is seen by East Street campaigner Celia Sandars as a bid to weaken public resolve. So she has made use of the e-petition service, which allows citizens, charities and campaign groups to set up petitions that are hosted on the Downing Street website, enabling anyone to address and deliver a petition directly to the Prime Minister. Mrs Sandars' petition calls on the Prime Minister "to change regulations to allow local planning authorities to carry forward public objections to initial applications to major development schemes, where developers attempt to weaken public resolve with duplicate applications, or applications with only minimal revisions, in order to force the public to continually resubmit their objections". In her on-line appeal, Mrs Sandars also points to the enormous expense and extra work Waverley Council faces, under current rules, as it must put out every duplicate or similar application for the same scheme under a new reference number, for fresh comment. "This is very unfair on both the planning staff and the public in terms of the additional costs of resources and staffing borne by council tax payers. These extra costs should only be justified if a planning application presents with substantial/ material changes to the original proposals," she added. Anyone wishing to sign the on-line petition can do so by logging onto http://www.petitions.pm.gov.uk/">www.petitions.pm.gov.uk/ DeveloperDodges.