Labour confusion on Planning
I served as a member of two different planning authorities at opposite ends of the country for a period of twenty years.
During my sixteen years on St Albans City & District Council I was a planning committee member and then chairman, then the council's first planning portfolio holder: I was later chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny committee which oversaw those aspects of planning not dealt with by planning committees, and served on the Local Development Framework working group.
When on Copeland Borough Council I also served on the Local Development Framework group.
I have vivid memories of the impact of half a dozen secretaries of state, both Conservative and Labour, from Nick Ridley to Eric Pickles.
Nick Ridley is always remembered for his policy of permitting developments in towns, particularly on brownfield sites, but the other half of his policy is not so well remembered: he was equally firm in supporting councils who wished to fight development in the Green Belt.
Chris Patten was the strongest defender of local choice and conservation to hold the office from either party, closely followed by John Gummer.
In terms of their attitude to planning and the amount of development they tried to force through in the country as a whole and the South East in particular, the 1997-2010 Labour government was far and away the most dictatorial, micromanaging, and pro-development of any government in history, and in particular John Prescott made Nick Ridley look like a wishy washy NIMBY sympathising liberal.
Here in the North West, where many people would have liked the development, we got the dictatorial micromanagement but not the development - David Davis famously and accurately accused Labour of the policy of "bulldozing the North and concreting over the South."
Because they have faced the same conflicting pressures, both the last Labour government and the present coalition have made similar and to some degree conflicting noises about planning. Both have talked the language of localism and claimed to be simplifying the planning system while trying to strongly encourage development.
There, however, the similarity ends. Labour's claims to support localism and simplification alike were complete nonsense, their mad dash to develop the South East of England drove them to ride roughshod over councils of every type and political colour, and their rewriting of the planning system, particularly by Lord Falconer, made it massively more complicated.
The present coalition has also sought to remove barriers to development, but where they have aimed to make the planning system simpler they have really done it - reducing the number of pages of central government guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) from more than 1,400 to 52, for example.
Mostly this reduction in central red tape has helped developers, but sometimes the present government has also given more freedom of action to local planning authorities. For example, the government has reduced the extent to which local councils are required to conform to nationally set targets on how many homes they have to give planning permission for. Councils are still required to say in their local plans where new development is acceptable but these plans are far less likely to be over-ridden by the government.
Given Labour's record on planning I am left scratching my head at the statements from shadow planning minister Hilary Benn's statement this week that the leopard has changed its spots and Labour will if elected give more say to local councils.
“Local communities should decide where they want new homes and developments to go and then give their consent in the form of planning permission,” he said.
However, he also agreed with Nick Boles, planning minister in the present government, that
“we can’t carry on moaning about the difficulty our children are facing in finding somewhere to live while opposing all planning applications for new housing”. He added: “To deal with this, we have to make localism really work.”
Which, Hilary, is exactly what you failed to do when you were last in government. And I find it particularly difficult to believe it would be any different if Labour were elected in 2015 given that they have also promised that
"Labour wants to embark on a huge house-building programme if it wins the 2015 general election."
Quotes are from a Daily Telegraph article here which references Hilary Benn's comments in full here.
Incidentally not all the things in Hilary Benn's article should be taken as gospel - for example, it reads as if the coalition has given developers new rights of appeal, when in fact it has been the situation for sixty years that a developer who has had a planning application refused, or not determined within a set statutory period, has had the right to appeal to central government, and that right existed throughout the entire life of the last three Labour governments.
Labour have command and control written into their DNA. All politicians of any party should be scrutinised closely when they claim to be supporting localism, to see whether the claims add up.
During my sixteen years on St Albans City & District Council I was a planning committee member and then chairman, then the council's first planning portfolio holder: I was later chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny committee which oversaw those aspects of planning not dealt with by planning committees, and served on the Local Development Framework working group.
When on Copeland Borough Council I also served on the Local Development Framework group.
I have vivid memories of the impact of half a dozen secretaries of state, both Conservative and Labour, from Nick Ridley to Eric Pickles.
Nick Ridley is always remembered for his policy of permitting developments in towns, particularly on brownfield sites, but the other half of his policy is not so well remembered: he was equally firm in supporting councils who wished to fight development in the Green Belt.
Chris Patten was the strongest defender of local choice and conservation to hold the office from either party, closely followed by John Gummer.
In terms of their attitude to planning and the amount of development they tried to force through in the country as a whole and the South East in particular, the 1997-2010 Labour government was far and away the most dictatorial, micromanaging, and pro-development of any government in history, and in particular John Prescott made Nick Ridley look like a wishy washy NIMBY sympathising liberal.
Here in the North West, where many people would have liked the development, we got the dictatorial micromanagement but not the development - David Davis famously and accurately accused Labour of the policy of "bulldozing the North and concreting over the South."
Because they have faced the same conflicting pressures, both the last Labour government and the present coalition have made similar and to some degree conflicting noises about planning. Both have talked the language of localism and claimed to be simplifying the planning system while trying to strongly encourage development.
There, however, the similarity ends. Labour's claims to support localism and simplification alike were complete nonsense, their mad dash to develop the South East of England drove them to ride roughshod over councils of every type and political colour, and their rewriting of the planning system, particularly by Lord Falconer, made it massively more complicated.
The present coalition has also sought to remove barriers to development, but where they have aimed to make the planning system simpler they have really done it - reducing the number of pages of central government guidance in the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) from more than 1,400 to 52, for example.
Mostly this reduction in central red tape has helped developers, but sometimes the present government has also given more freedom of action to local planning authorities. For example, the government has reduced the extent to which local councils are required to conform to nationally set targets on how many homes they have to give planning permission for. Councils are still required to say in their local plans where new development is acceptable but these plans are far less likely to be over-ridden by the government.
Given Labour's record on planning I am left scratching my head at the statements from shadow planning minister Hilary Benn's statement this week that the leopard has changed its spots and Labour will if elected give more say to local councils.
“Local communities should decide where they want new homes and developments to go and then give their consent in the form of planning permission,” he said.
However, he also agreed with Nick Boles, planning minister in the present government, that
“we can’t carry on moaning about the difficulty our children are facing in finding somewhere to live while opposing all planning applications for new housing”. He added: “To deal with this, we have to make localism really work.”
Which, Hilary, is exactly what you failed to do when you were last in government. And I find it particularly difficult to believe it would be any different if Labour were elected in 2015 given that they have also promised that
"Labour wants to embark on a huge house-building programme if it wins the 2015 general election."
Quotes are from a Daily Telegraph article here which references Hilary Benn's comments in full here.
Incidentally not all the things in Hilary Benn's article should be taken as gospel - for example, it reads as if the coalition has given developers new rights of appeal, when in fact it has been the situation for sixty years that a developer who has had a planning application refused, or not determined within a set statutory period, has had the right to appeal to central government, and that right existed throughout the entire life of the last three Labour governments.
Labour have command and control written into their DNA. All politicians of any party should be scrutinised closely when they claim to be supporting localism, to see whether the claims add up.
Comments