Daily View: Fears over proposed planning overhaul
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Commentators continue to weigh in on the debate around proposed planning reforms.
The environment editor of the Irish Times of Dublin's rural sprawl and unfinished "ghost" estates:
"Ireland offers a sad and salutary lesson in what not to do; its liberal planning legislation has led to a despoiling of the countryside with consequences that will take years to unravel... The knock-on effects of liberal planning policies over several decades, codified by the Sustainable Rural Housing Guidelines (2005), have been ruinous not just for the countryside, but also for towns and villages; as residential development spreads outwards, many are losing population rather than being reinforced. The British Coalition's 'presumption in favour of sustainable development' could be similarly devastating."
that the combined membership of the Campaign to Protest Rural England and the National Trust dwarfs any political party membership. This, he thinks could be cataclysmic for the Tories:
"The key to understanding this anger is that, although Greg Clark likes to rhapsodise about localism and putting an end to 'top-down' centralism in planning, the fine print of the 52-page NPPF [National Planning Policy Framework] draft and the 446-page Localism Bill tells a different story. Both are thinly disguised charters for planning centralism and, in practice, have little to do with the sort of local democracy and community self-empowerment that Clark and Cameron have promised as part of the 'big society'.
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"What is needed is not the obfuscation of the draft planning laws and the Localism Bill, but clarity - particularly over what will be protected as a 'heritage asset'."
Chairman of the National Trust and , saying the planning reforms are a "recipe for civil war". He says George Osborne and Eric Pickles' thesis is that land-use planning strangles the economy and stops house-building, which he disputes:
"There is simply no evidence, beyond the howls of lobbyists, that land-use planning impedes growth. Most planning applications are handled within the three-month target, and fewer than 1% take more than a year; 80% of applications are approved, and 90% of big commercial ones: evidence is the vast distribution sheds that now coat the East Midlands countryside and the hypermarkets that encircle almost every English city and town, 'doughnutting' their centres with blight."
But the chief executive of UK Regeneration that, in opposing changes, the National Trust has got its priorities wrong:
"The UK badly needs a strong, simple, accessible, transparent, equitable planning system. That we do not have one at present is self-evident: the thousands of pages of British planning policy and guidance would make anyone with any common sense shudder. It is manifestly dysfunctional.
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"Worse still, those of us in the know are perfectly well aware that it is developers who 'work the system' who have the most desire to over-densify development and build out over green fields. What we have now simply does not do the job that the National Trust lobby so desperately wants it to do. It is making a category mistake by supporting the status quo."
While the National Trust's objections have been widely publicised, Natural England hasn't spoken up. he knows why the effect on wildlife hasn't been heard in the debate about planning reform:
"The body that is supposed to stick up for English wildlife is the aptly named Natural England (NE). Unfortunately this Government has ruled that NE is no longer allowed to hold independent views or policies. Besides, its budget has been cut to the bone. So Natural England is most unlikely to say anything that might annoy its paymasters. With next to no public debate, our wildlife watchdog has morphed into a pathetic delivery boy, charged with attending to 'customer focus'. This leaves England without a wildlife watchdog worthy of the name for the first time since 1949."
