Janet Bibby: Simpler planning rules throw baby out with bathwater

But the trust exists to promote the preservation of special places for the benefit of the nation. This doesn’t just mean the places we own – it means any special places that are under threat, be they designated or otherwise.

Our founders were clear that our job is to protect the landscapes that make this country what it is.

Which is why, when we read the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) we felt the need to act and to bring the issue to the attention of our 3.8 million members and supporters.

Through the NPPF, the Government is attempting to produce a “new, simpler framework for the planning system that safeguards the environment while meeting the need for sustainable growth”.

All agreeable stuff, you might say – and we’d probably agree. But despite the warm noises, the Government’s focus throughout the document is on economic growth above all else. It sends the dangerous message that schemes that promise profit alone will be enough to get planning permission.

The trust believes in growth – it is vital that we get our economy moving. But it can’t be growth at any cost. Development must pass a “triple bottom line” test – by showing that it meets the needs of people and the environment as well as the economy.

The document makes it clear that development is to be encouraged at any price, even urging local authorities to promote more development than is in the plan and to over-allocate land for housing.

The NPPF contains a core presumption that the default answer to any proposed development will be “yes”.

This finally sounds the death-knell to the principle established in the 1940s that the planning system should be used to protect what is most special in the landscape. Instead, it is using the planning system purely as a tool to promote economic growth.

The removal of much detailed guidance to local authorities leaves too much power in the hands of developers who will only need to show that their proposals will deliver growth for other important considerations, such as the impact on communities, nature and landscape, to be pushed aside.

In recent days Government ministers have been quite vocal in their attacks against organisations who have come out against the proposals by standing up for people and the environment, framing the debate around the safeguards of green belts, which they insist will remain in place.

They seem to think that the designated areas of countryside are all that anyone cares about. They are not, as the Government should have realised from the forestry debacle earlier this year.

Our primary concern is what the Government’s reforms threaten to do to the everyday places in and around cities.

Local people will have to rely on a development plan to protect what they treasure and shape where development should go.

Yet only 47 per cent of local authorities have development plans (core strategies) in place and many local authorities and neighbourhood groups do not have the resources to create such plans that integrate social, environmental and economic considerations.

If there is no up-to-date development plan, planning applications risk automatically getting consent.

We believe that the town and country planning system, while not perfect, has served the country well. It has enabled growth by guiding development to the places that need it, while protecting open countryside, preventing sprawl and safeguarding designated areas and historic buildings.

Those planning principles remain as necessary today as when they were first established and weakening protection now risks a return to the threat of sprawl and uncontrolled development that so dominated public debate in the 1930s.

The Government’s proposals allow financial considerations to dominate, and with this comes huge risk to our countryside, historic environment and the precious local places that people value.

The National Trust shares the Government’s commitment to localism but it has got the changes to planning wrong. We urge a rethink of the NPPF before we throw the baby out with the bathwater.