According to a worrying piece yesterday by Michael Donnelly, Planning Resource 17 March 2025 the government is running away from opponents of local spatial change. It is proposing that more council planning decisions are taken by planning officers, not by elected councillors. Which is a simple cop-out. Tinkering with decision making process along these lines will lead to non-stop tinkering with local governance roles and will achieve nothing to resolve the core problem: lots more homes, to make homes once again affordable and release economic growth with local support. What a shame. All the planning hullabaloo of the last eight months is just that: noise to the gallery.
At scale new housing projects will be dragged back into the electoral circus to be decided by ideologically driven short term opportunists and not by grown up leaders who put long term civic duty first.
If looks as if this crusading government has turned tail and run now the penny has dropped. At last they have understood that myopia is rampant. Local opponents of local change are tough nuts to win over. This tweak to the existing process is a pivotal defeat of the government big ambitions. It is an ominous set-back.
Once again reality has to be spelt out. Building at scale means local change. It cannot happen without local support. Local support cannot be achieved by cloak and mirrors. It needs a vision for the area’s long term direction of change which locally has cross party support. It is a big ask, needing persuasive leadership. It will not happen this side of 2029 that is now plain.
Ian Campbell
18 March 2025
