OF COURSE, you need planning regulations, people can't just build anything they fancy.

Good planning over many years has done much to make our towns and countryside the pleasant environments they are today, albeit with the odd exception that makes you scratch your head and wonder 'what were the planners thinking?'

But does the planning authority really have a role to play in children's climbing frames?

The first Jonathan Roberts, of Ledbury, knew that there might be a problem with the climbing frame he built for this three children in the back garden of their New Mills home, is when a letter arrived from Herefordshire Council saying he needed to apply for retrospective planning permission.

Quite apart from the £135 cost, the climbing frame has been in situ for 12 months and Mr Roberts even took the trouble to phone the council before he started work.

One of the things which most frustrates people about the planning process is its seemingly arbitrary nature.

There must be homes all over Herefordshire with climbing frames and a whole variety of other structures in the garden where the council has never asked for planning permission, why this one?

Mr Roberts says if he doesn't get permission, he might even go to the European Court to claim an infringement of normal family life, and he has a point.

It's just a climbing frame, they are expensive enough as its is, without expecting people to pay for planning permission. Like childhood, they won't last forever.