A GOOD DAY TO BURY BAD NEWS
As MPs go on holiday, they slip out a raft of controversial plans — starting with a new blow to your right to stop housing developers
COUNCILS will be stripped of their right to restrict housing developments if they fail to meet Whitehall targets, it emerged last night.
New planning rules published yesterday will allow builders to ignore council plans if they fail to build three quarters of the homes required by ministers.
Critics said the changes amounted to a ‘developers’ charter’ and would mean ‘valued countryside’ is destroyed.
It was part of a slew of announcements slipped out on the day before MPs start their summer break – which will inevitably spark claims that bad news is being buried.
The housing changes were contained in the National Planning Policy Framework, a 73-page document published on the last day of the parliamentary session yesterday by Housing Secretary James Brokenshire. He argued that the planning system would ‘deliver’ on the number of homes needed and make sure they were of high quality. He said the new framework is the result of consulting ‘tens of thousands of people’.
Ministers have pledged to build 300,000 homes a year to help address the chronic shortage.
But council leaders and campaigners against damaging development said it would allow developers to sidestep essential planning rules if targets are not being met.
Ordinarily, builders must abide by local plans which set out where development can and cannot take place.
The new Housing Delivery Test will allow them to ignore the plan if fewer than 75 per cent of the homes required by Whitehall targets are built.
The rules come into force in November this year. In November 2020 councils will be tested against their performance over the previous three years.
Matt Thomson, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said it would mean almost all local plans are out of date within two years, thus encouraging ‘ speculative development’.
He warned developers would be encouraged to build in locations not covered by the plan in the expectation the properties would be allowed to stand.
He said: ‘It is a speculative developers’ charter and will lead to the death of the plan-led system, which puts local people in charge of the shaping of their areas. Without a local plan, councils and communities have little control over the location and type of developments that take place. This results in the wrong developments in the wrong places and local communities’ needs are ignored and valued countryside destroyed for no good reason.’
Lord Porter, chairman of the Local Government Association, said the move was ‘hugely disappointing’. He said the test ‘punishes communities for homes not built by private developers’.
‘Councils work hard with communities to get support for goodquality housing development locally, and there is a risk these reforms will lead to locally- agreed plans being bypassed by national targets. ‘Planning is not a barrier to housebuilding, and councils are approving nine out of ten applications.’
The British Property Federation said it welcomed the test. Spokesman Ian Fletcher said: ‘This will provide a consistent measure against which different local authorities’ performances can be compared.
‘This is the way that the Government will deliver on its housing promises.’
‘It’s hugely disappointing’
HOW our politicians love to boast of their commitment to open, transparent and honest government. And how depressingly often their actions fail to live up to their fine words.
The final day of Parliament before summer recess is traditionally seen by ministers as a very good day to bury bad news. This year has been no exception.
No fewer than 21 separate ministerial statements were pushed out yesterday, along with a slew of official statistics.
Shocking new figures exposing the chronic decline of our rail services … the closure of a string of criminal courts … plans to sell the Red Arrows’ air base for development … controversial new planning laws … the effective ditching of the public sector pay cap.
All these important announcements were made on the same day, in the certain knowledge that – with the whole nation in holiday mood – they would not receive the scrutiny and debate they deserve. This is hardly open democracy. For all the lip service to transparency, the workings of government are as secretive and opaque as ever, with politicians and civil servants still working to their own self-serving agendas. And if MPs are accused of bad or disreputable behaviour, thanks to a Commons vote last week they now have a right to anonymity, eroding still further the public’s right to know.
Is it any wonder the British people hold politics and politicians in such pitifully low esteem?