The thing that frustrates me about this the most is, there's definitely a legitimate purpose for planning permission and enforcement of such things, but these cretins are making it all look like arbitrary bullshit.
Example: There's a church near me that has been up for sale for a long time. There is a prospective buyer who wants to turn the church into a cramped block of "apartments", with a dozen or more houses crammed onto the land around it as well. This plan would put nearly twenty new dwellings into an area that is already overcrowded, with a single small entry onto a very busy street, and no care for the impact on existing infrastructure. The church is grade 2 listed, which means that it has to be preserved in a reasonably intact state internally and externally, but apparently that just doesn't matter to the construction firm. Their "consultation" survey to the locals has been along the lines of "do you want us to build big houses, or small houses? And do you think we're amazing for not damaging the exterior walls in our plan, or only somewhat special?" Not even asking if people want to save the church as is. A complete farce, which the council is likely to sign off without even a murmur of dissent, depriving the local community of a traditional centre of community focus and imposing yet more traffic, noise, and pollution on an already crowded area. Yet try and get a small, tiny little extension built on the side of your house and you can find yourself raked over the coals by a bunch of officious cunts, who proclaim that your tiny, single-storey kitchen extension will ruin the character of the area.
Fucking cunts. I don't even care if the show was edited to favour Clarkson; it wasn't remotely deceptive about how these faggots act and think.