Planning changes will worsen things

THE Government’s planning proposals, which may be confirmed as a Parliamentary bill in the autumn, are causing huge concerns to residents in areas of major construction like Great Park, and in villages like Hazlerigg fearing encroachment.

What is being discussed will reduce the voice of local people in the face of development conglomerates who will have a greater presumption that their plans will be implemented.

They are currently turning in vast profits – almost a billion pounds a year in one case.

It’s proposed that the 20 biggest cities in the country, including Newcastle, will have to boost their housebuilding permissions by over a third.

And yet there are vast swathes in the north of the city under construction – but without much supporting infrastructure.

There are an estimated one million homes nationally that have already been agreed but which remain unbuilt.

It is not the councils or the communities that are at fault, it is the developers and landowners who have been allowed to inflate their prices to create undeliverable schemes or sit on land for an increased resale value.

They can game the system by submitting planning applications they know will fail, as a way of establishing, through the appeal system, what’s the most they can get out of the process.

They then blame the “system” for the inevitable delays.

The Liberal Democrats would support moves to reduce the ability for the hoarding of land by introducing some form of land value capture, which would benefit the local community whilst still allowing a profit for landowners.

Coun Robin Ashby, Newcastle Liberal Democrats development spokesperson