First interview about class and race- Counterculture brief

 Interview with Jermain

I had the privilege of interviewing Jermain, a property developer from Nottingham. He spoke candidly about the challenging journey he and his business partner, Nigel—also from Nottingham—undertook to secure planning permission for building flats on a piece of land they own in the city. During our conversation, I asked Jermain the following questions:

• How have you found your journey so far with getting the planning permission from the council? 
• What do you classify yourself as?
• Do you believe your class and race have held you back in society with opportunities that may arise?

This is the Link to view the interview I had with Jermain.

The Transcript is below

 

Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

Difficult to be honest, I think initially when we set out to build and apply for planning permission, you may be naively think that it's gonna be a simple process.

00:00:16 Speaker 1

You own a property.

00:00:19 Speaker 1

You don't own the land, but you own the property, but because you own the property, I think you assume that it shouldn't be that hard to get.

00:00:31 Speaker 1

Planning permission for the land that your house is on.

00:00:36 Speaker 1

Which we quickly found out that it was gonna be way more difficult than we anticipated. And it's just a lot of back and forth and and and proving proving the reasons why and.

00:00:49 Speaker 1

Just a lot of.

00:00:51 Speaker 1

We've found and hidden costs in in this over the line. Obviously the major costs are.

00:01:00 Speaker 1

Paying for the architect to do drawings. I know these things cost money but.

00:01:08 Speaker 1

The amount of money it costs just for one drawing. Never, never mind. We've had to do maybe 5 or 6 different parks because the Council of said that they're not happy with.

00:01:22 Speaker 1

The perimeter, there's low been loads of so many different things that the Council combined with.

00:01:28 Speaker 1

And I don't want to say it's nitpicking, but you may look at a property or a building that's been built in the same area that's got no in that's got nowhere near what they're asking for.

00:01:43 Speaker 1

As guys with our build, so I feel like.

00:01:47 Speaker 1

There's a bit of.

00:01:50 Speaker 1

It's not what you know, it's who you know.

00:01:54 Speaker 1

I don't know. So yeah, it's been. It's been a long journey, but we've we've come a long way but.

00:02:01 Speaker 1

Still a long way to go.

00:02:03 Speaker 2

Ask yourself as working class 1st.

00:02:07 Speaker 1

As working class, yes.

00:02:08 Speaker 2

Do you feel that your class and your race has held you back?

00:02:14 Speaker 1

Yeah, unfortunately.

00:02:17 Speaker 1

Unfortunately, yeah, because.

00:02:20 Speaker 1

First of all, I think.

00:02:25 Speaker 1

Be what you can't see if you can't see it, you can't be it in a sense like in the industry, there's no body we've come across.

00:02:36 Speaker 1

Who are from our background.

00:02:39 Speaker 1

Who look like don't have to look like us, or even just come from my background or look like us as well. So there's nobody first of all in the field that we've come across.

00:02:51 Speaker 1

And why is that? That's the question. Why is that? And then it becomes very.

00:02:58 Speaker 1

Very apparent why.

00:03:02 Speaker 1

When come across the hurdles, when we've been made to jump through these hoops, yeah. As we've gone into the process, there's only a few.

00:03:12 Speaker 1

Different. What would you call it? Family or organisations that get given?

00:03:19 Speaker 1

The opportunity to purchase land in this is in Nottingham so.

00:03:24 Speaker 1

That alone is an inside job in the sense that nobody from a normal just working class background.

00:03:33 Speaker 1

Can have the opportunity even if you have the means, because the means have been there.

00:03:40 Speaker 1

And we've got the property. We just want to build and improve the area on the land. But even though we want to do that, we've still found resistance when it comes to.

00:03:55 Speaker 1

Being accepted.

00:03:58 Speaker 1

We crossed all the boxes, ticked all the boxes, changed, changed lights, changed car OTS, changed roofing. We've we've done, we've done everything.

00:04:10 Speaker 1

Above board and still.

00:04:13 Speaker 1

They seemed to be some resistance like.

00:04:17 Speaker 1

It's not. It's still not good enough and.

00:04:23 Speaker 1

Only fools share persistence.

00:04:27 Speaker 1

We've come this far because in reality, the amount of times we've been told to.

00:04:33 Speaker 1

And give up, in a sense, just stop throwing money at it and give up like even.

00:04:41 Speaker 1

People who are meant to be on our side in terms of like.

00:04:47 Speaker 1

Architects and stuff. They're all from the same background that none of them look, look, or come from our background. So even them guys at some stages have been like, we feel like they've been against us in a sense.

00:05:02 Speaker 1

Just telling us to give up.

00:05:05 Speaker 1

Because I feel like and I don't even feel like, that's too much of A fault of this. It's just that they have never seen this before, so of course they're going to be the set like.

00:05:17 Speaker 1

You got. It's not gonna happen. You guys are gonna.

00:05:19 Speaker 2

You are. You are the kind of culture.

00:05:21 Speaker 1

Yeah, it's, it's it's been a minority. Well, not even a minority. I just, we don't know anybody that from our our culture or yeah background to be given any sort of planning especially as a soul because we're just sole traders in a sense that we're not a company.

00:05:42 Speaker 1

When people apply for planning majority of the time, it is through a company which I think was a bit of a shock to the car.

00:05:51 Speaker 1

So I don't know if they've had experienced that before, but I've just assumed that a lot of you don't really get single people just come in and say they want to build what 25 flats 36? I think we started out, we've got knocked down to the 22 or 2022 I think is.

00:06:10 Speaker 1

So I think that was a that was a part of the resistance into.

00:06:14 Speaker 1

How and why?

00:06:18 Speaker 1

The single we should just let a single black man have this planning permission.

00:06:26 Speaker 1

It's just not. It's out of the ordinary. So I do guess there's learning on all sides in a sense, because yeah, there's there's always a chance that something can happen. You just have to be open to it. Obviously, they have in the end, I feel like they have in the end because once you have crossed and ticked.

00:06:43 Speaker 1

All the boxes.

00:06:45 Speaker 1

I think then they have to look in the mirror and say, do you know what, what what is going on? It's it's the, it's institutional racism like it's unconscious bias.

00:06:56 Speaker 1

It's all of them words. So they've had to come full circle and say, do you know what, what can we say that?

00:07:05 Speaker 1

They've ticked all the boxes.

00:07:06 Speaker 2

Thank you for allowing me to interview you today on your thoughts and feelings and and your experience and how it's been with your journey on this.

00:07:14 Speaker 1

Project. Yeah. Thank you. Likewise for the opportunity to.

00:07:20 Speaker 1

To tell the story, really.

00:07:22 Speaker 1

There's more sides to the story.

00:07:25 Speaker 1

As I'm I would say I'm second hand in this process because my friend is.

00:07:34 Speaker 1

That I call him my brother.

00:07:36 Speaker 1

He is the main.

00:07:39 Speaker 1

Person who's had the first time dialogue and I've been like secondary helping on the other side. So yeah, it'll be good to get his perspective as well.

00:07:51 Speaker 2

OK. Thank you, Jermain.