Planning ahead

WHEN a politician makes a personal attack on their opponents, it is normally an indication that they are losing the argument. This appears to be the case with Bob Neill, the local government minister, and his absurd claim that opposition to proposed planning reforms is being driven by “Left-wingers” within pressure groups who are looking to “pick a fight with the Government”.

It was an extraordinary assertion, given that the two bodies questioning the validity of Mr Neill’s streamlined planning process are the National Trust and the Campaign for the Rural England.

These are respected organisations which have the best interests of Britains’s rural areas at their heart. In case it has escaped Mr Neill’s attention, it is their role to champion to the countryside and they are doing just that with their call for safeguards to be put in place to protect the character of National Parks, green belts and rural areas. Curiously, they accept the need for the planning process to be accelerated – particularly where the scheme in question is likely to generate much-needed new jobs. It cannot be in the country’s interests that planning guidance for such developments currently extends to 1,000 pages, but it is also imperative that Ministers, like Mr Neill, recognise that the evolution of the countryside has a set of unique policy challenges that need to be acknowledged by the Government.

Perhaps the fact that the apparently impatient Mr Neill represents Bromley and Chislehurst, a predominantly urban constituency on London’s outskirts, explains why the National Trust and the CPRE are so concerned about his reforms – and the prospect of urban conurbations encroaching even further into environmentally sensitive areas.