How refreshing to see informed comment on planners and the British planning system (“Planners could build a better Britain – given the chance”, Comment). Town and country planning in this country has, as Rowan Moore says, since 2010 been the subject of constant “reforms” that are not reforms at all. Reforms are changes that seek improvement. What we have seen are changes that stem from a doctrinaire hostility to democratic public control.
There are many instances where we have seen this hostility and it has been coupled with an avoidance of the evidence. We started with Eric Pickles, then secretary of state at the DCLG, dismissing the regional strategies as “Soviet style” policies, this from a politician who was to go on to promote the “bedroom tax”, an instrument of policy worthy of Stalin himself.
But the most revealing comment came anonymously from within the DCLG, again in the early days of the coalition, when, on the need to improve the supply of new housing, we were told: “The only thing the planning system has built is resentment.” This when the department’s own statistics so vividly demonstrate how the postwar record for house completions came in the 1960s with every scheme for the delivery of the homes coming through our planning system.
There is, indeed, every immediate need to ensure a higher level of new house building, but the problem is a lack of political will to do so and, moreover, to do it well through, among other measures, good planning practice.
John Dean
Leicester
I totally agree that “planners could build a better Britain” and that the common perception of them is as “faceless bureaucrats”, “grey”, “putting the brakes on prosperity, growth and freedom of choice”.
But Rowan Moore’s ire is largely misdirected. I am a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute and point to three major culprits holding back planners’ creative tendencies. First is the government and its national planning policy framework (NPPF); although it purports to promote “sustainable development”, it’s a charter for developers to gain maximum return and to hell with delivering desperately needed affordable homes. Second are local councillors – they make many of the planning decisions,not the planning officers who advise them. Third is government’s localism agenda, encouraging people to prepare their own neighbourhood plans, only to have them gutted by planning policies, and their guardians, higher up the chain of decision-making. As Moore concludes: “Good planning gives you places where people actually want to live.” Let planners plan!
James Derounian
Cheltenham
In my experience, planners deserve big hugs due to the hard time they have controlling aggressive developers. Many pieces of land selected by developers for housing lie on the outskirts of existing villages or towns. A typical developer submits an outline application that raises many objections and reveals areas of concern. The planning authority and elected councillors are then quite likely to refuse permission.
The developer then returns with amended plans and a full application. The authority may well refuse permission again and for good reasons.
The developer then appeals and brings along his legal team, headed by a barrister to present his case to a government inspector at a public hearing. The council and residents probably have limited funds, so are in some difficulty, and the developer has a good chance of getting his way. This is how developers are really in charge of what’s being built and not the planners. I suggest we give planners greater powers to encourage design and development of entirely new villages with proper infrastructure rather than ruin existing ones by adding more and more, bit by bit.
Mike Haywood
Cheltenham
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