In its report today on the Government’s proposed planning reforms, the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee states: “Planning is a balancing act, which requires consideration of the preservation, use and development of land for this and future generations, within the context of agreed social, environmental and economic needs.” The issue, then, that arises from the draft National Planning Policy Framework, published in July, is whether it gets that balance right. In the opinion of this newspaper, and of many organisations concerned for the future of the countryside, it doesn’t. That also happens to be the view of the cross-party committee, which makes a number of recommendations for improving the draft, both to achieve that balance and to avoid the litigation that its vague wording will inevitably generate.
The MPs urge the Government to produce another draft that is more precise and better defined. In particular, the controversial “presumption in favour of sustainable development” is regarded as too nebulous. Moreover, the default answer of “yes” to any development risks producing the opposite of what the Government intends, since it could also be used to implement unsustainable schemes. The committee also urges the reinstatement of a priority in favour of brownfield or town centre development, a recommendation also made by Mary Portas in her report on the death of the high street last week. One merit of the new document is that it reduced more than 1,000 pages of planning law to around 50. But while cutting red tape is to be welcomed, the committee cautions the Government against losing precision by making a fetish of brevity.
Ministers have latterly conceded some of these criticisms and have promised to consider carefully the views of the committee – but only after being pushed. Had it not been for the National Trust, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the debate conducted through the columns of this newspaper, what is clearly a flawed policy would have been nodded through by now. Indeed, a wilful attempt to close down the discussion has been an unfortunate feature of this exercise from the outset. The select committee has produced a coherent critique of a policy that needs serious revision. Instead of seeing this as “a battle we are determined to win”, the Government should recognise that it has an obligation to future generations to get the policy right.
