Alliance attacks demolition of regional planning system

The groups, including environmentalists, planners, construction firms and engineers, have written to Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles amid fears of serious problems if all planning issues are dealt with too locally.

Ministers have made great play of scrapping regional planning blueprints – under which Whitehall imposed controversial targets for housebuilding in Yorkshire – and proposing the abolition of regional development agencies while giving more power to local councils.

It has sparked concern from 29 organisations more often at odds over planning issues, such as construction organisations and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, who have united to urge measures to ensure strategic planning issues can be dealt with across authority boundaries.

While housebuilders fear the shake-up will mean less development at a time when the industry is still struggling to recover from a crippling recession, some environmental groups are concerned that plans protecting areas of countryside and green belt have now been torn up.

The president of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) which has put together the letter, Ann Skippers, said: "Ministers need to be very careful not to miss the bigger picture as the localism agenda gathers pace.

"Communities need some level of strategic thinking beyond the local level to deliver many of the things they want, such as hospitals, transport links, waste management and flood protection.

"The most pressing issues facing the nation, for example, such as the housing crisis, economic recovery, climate change and biodiversity loss, cannot be dealt with solely at a local level.

"We have come together to offer to work with the coalition Government and local authorities to help to develop thinking, policies and systems for planning to encourage and support joint planning across local authority boundaries so that the localism agenda may be used to enable democratic strategic planning to take place".

A Communities and Local Government spokesman said of the letter yesterday: "The current top-down bureaucratic planning model has been very good at generating impressive-sounding numbers but built nothing but resentment.

"By allowing communities to shape their neighbourhoods and share in the benefits, we are beginning to restore the idea that development can be a force for good, rather than something to be resisted at all costs."