Feeling slightly annoyed....... what would you do..........

[AE01]

I've recently had a large planning application for a dairy development prepared by a local land agency firm.

As part of this I prepared a detailed business plan to accompany the application, and the agent used much of the detail contained within my business plan to prepare their planning statement/design and access statement. In fact much of the detail was copied directly from what I wrote.

I have just seen that the same land agency firm has just submitted another application for a dairy building for another local-ish farmer. When I have looked at the online planning documents, it is clear that agent has copied word for word what I wrote for my planning application, and changed the odd word to suit the circumstances. In addition to this, to support the detail contained within the application for my business, I enlisted (at significant cost) the services of a third party consultant to describe the requirements of the building from an animal health, welfare and performance point of view. The detail contained within this report has also been copied word for word with no referencing.

Having paid the agent many thousands to prepare my planning application, I am quite annoyed by the above, especially as I personally know the other farmer in question, who will have also no doubt been charged a hefty fee from the land agent. As well as being downright plagiarism, I find it very unprofessional that someone should think that it is acceptable to simply copy and paste other people's work when charging £120/hr for their professional services, and to think that we would not notice.

What are other people's thoughts? I'm not one for falling out with people but I don't like to be treated like a fool.

 

[Suffolk Serf]

The unprofessionalism shown is not a surprise to me.
Send the offending agent a hefty invoice for your work.

 

[Nearly]

The unprofessionalism shown is not a surprise to me.
Send the offending agent a hefty invoice for your work.

Tell the farmer that will have been invoiced for the cut and paste.
He won't be the last.

 

[Jerry]

I would also inform him that you are inclined to refer the matter to his professional body.....,,

 

[nick...]

Name and shame.they won’t like the publicity.pretty appalling and so unprofessional
nick...

 

[serf]

Was going to say but you already said it yourself plagiarism!
Stealing someone else's work , they owe you .

 

[7610 super q]

You have to laugh, or else you'd cry.

 

[farmerste]

thats what a lot of consultants/agents do, had it happen to me with a well known consultancy group.

 

[Sid]

thats what a lot of consultants/agents do, had it happen to me with a well known consultancy group.

Does anyone really think a consultant comes up with his own tried and tested ideas?
Plagiarism is a consultants source of income.

 

[Red Fred]

On a lesser scale, I applied for HLS years ago and it required a written archaeological assessment of historic water meadows. When the pack arrived from NE, the historic assessment was an article I wrote myself for our Archaeological Society newsletter, and it had simply been lifted from our online archive with my name typexed out

 

[Goweresque]

Run the two documents through one of the online plagiarism detectors and contact the offending agent with the results. Demand they either withdraw the documents that rely on your work, or pay you a fee for copyright.

Plagiarism Comparison: check text similarity in two documents

Plagiarism comparison tool to compare two documents for duplicate content. It compares two files / urls and highlight similarities between them.

www.prepostseo.com

 

[betweenthelines]

Sorry, but I don't understand why you submitted a business plan.

AFAIK planning applications are decided on planning grounds alone-you don't see Tesco divulging business sensitive information every time the want another store, or Barrett's telling the local Authority how much dosh they'll make out of the houses they want to build.

 

[Werzle]

I've recently had a large planning application for a dairy development prepared by a local land agency firm.

As part of this I prepared a detailed business plan to accompany the application, and the agent used much of the detail contained within my business plan to prepare their planning statement/design and access statement. In fact much of the detail was copied directly from what I wrote.

I have just seen that the same land agency firm has just submitted another application for a dairy building for another local-ish farmer. When I have looked at the online planning documents, it is clear that agent has copied word for word what I wrote for my planning application, and changed the odd word to suit the circumstances. In addition to this, to support the detail contained within the application for my business, I enlisted (at significant cost) the services of a third party consultant to describe the requirements of the building from an animal health, welfare and performance point of view. The detail contained within this report has also been copied word for word with no referencing.

Having paid the agent many thousands to prepare my planning application, I am quite annoyed by the above, especially as I personally know the other farmer in question, who will have also no doubt been charged a hefty fee from the land agent. As well as being downright plagiarism, I find it very unprofessional that someone should think that it is acceptable to simply copy and paste other people's work when charging £120/hr for their professional services, and to think that we would not notice.

What are other people's thoughts? I'm not one for falling out with people but I don't like to be treated like a fool.

If you were lucky enough to gain pp then i wouldnt do anything other than perhaps let the third party consultant know about it too. Alot of agents just put their name to our hard work because they have the qualifications after their name to make it stand up. Live and let live .

 

[Fat Lamb]

There are some good and decent land agents out there. But there are a lot that are nothing more than parasites.

 

[Drillman]

Happened to me once

put a tender in to rent some land and got an agent to put it together as felt my ramblings on paper needed polish and lots of it.

wen I read the finished article most of it was just copy and paste of what I sent them

in the end we didn’t get the land, just a socking big bill for my work in a fancy cover!

 

[Sid]

Happened to me once

put a tender in to rent some land and got an agent to put it together as felt my ramblings on paper needed polish and lots of it.

wen I read the finished article most of it was just copy and paste of what I sent them

in the end we didn’t get the land, just a socking big bill for my work in a fancy cover!

Two tenders I have done with "professional" assistance I haven't got.

 

[David.]

Hmm, almost as if nothing you could have said would have changed minds that were already made up.
History is littered with well intentioned tenders, who are nothing but used to set the rent.

 

[betweenthelines]

But people will take more notice of something neatly typed and well laid out and signed by someone with letters after their name.

I'm sure most of us would be the same, with something like a job application.

 

[teslacoils]

Tbh, you pay for the letters after the name, not the content.

 

[Frodo]

I submitted a planning application, which the local paper took a bit of interest in and published an article based on my application including my photo. I was curious about the copy write implications, but as I got permission just let it go.