There are few more divisive issues in the UK than planning and development. Reverence for the countryside remains way out of proportion to either its economic importance or the number of people who actively live there. Proposals to allow even a smidgen of concrete to intrude on the so-called "green belts" around major cities provoke uncontained fury among local residents.
So it's no surprise at all that the Government's latest changes to planning regulations, announced on Tuesday, have polarised opinion. The existing national planning rules had apparently swollen to more than a thousand pages, but this has been slashed back to a mere fifty. There is now to be a "presumption in favour of sustainable development". This of course delights the developers, who regularly complain of being strangled by red tape, but terrifies conservation groups and rural interests, who warn darkly that England's green and pleasant land is about to be bulldozed and paved.
In looking at these issues, it's always worth remembering the old joke about the difference between a developer and a conservationist. Remember how that goes? A developer wants to build a cottage in the country; a conservationist has already got one. Many of the people now trying to protect their pristine rural environment would have screamed blue murder if someone had tried to bar the door to them when they first tried to move there.
Even so, it's not clear that we need any sort of "presumption" in favour of development, sustainable or otherwise. Sure, there are high-profile examples, such as the planned HS2 rail line, where well-heeled local residents may stand a good chance of sabotaging the plans, but at a more local level, where most people actually live, developers already seem to get away with pretty much whatever they want. For instance, take a look at this project, King Harry Park, in my own esteemed home town of St Albans. Sounds great, no? "Green, rural environment"...."boulevards and walkways". No mention there that it was a lot more green, rural and walkable before the developers pitched up, since it was a large playing field. What's more, the developers initially proposed that a section of the development would be sold only buyers over the age of 55, but now they are now lobbying for that restriction to be lifted, and no doubt they will be successful.
It's a story that's repeated regularly all across England. Developers rarely take "no" for an answer, whereas local residents eventually tire or run out of money, and give up the fight. Close to home again, our local council has been fighting for years, at enormous expense to taxpayers, to fight off developers wanting to build a freight depot in the area. The application has been turned down over and over at all levels of the system, but still seems likely to get the go-ahead in the end. The potential damage to the local area is incalculable and the site is green belt, but there's to be a railway spur, so no doubt that will make it "sustainable" in the eyes of the Government.
The Government's spin on the planning changes is that they will promote economic growth, or rather "recovery" as it's now called. Nobody in their right mind could oppose that -- could they?? -- even if it does look like yet another in the surprisingly long list of ideologically-inspired policies (the top rate tax cut, NHS reform, welfare cuts) that this Government is starting to spring on us.
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