The Government has revised plans for its controversial “mutant” planning algorithm, which will now prioritise building in urban areas most in need of development.
The original proposals were heavily criticised by dozens of Conservative backbenchers, including the former prime minister Theresa May, amid fears that it would lead to a surge of house building in their greenbelt constituencies.
An updated formula will be weighted to focus on developing family homes in 20 of England’s largest cities and making the most of vacant buildings and underused land.
The point wasn’t to concentrate attention on certain areas of land. Not at all. It was to entirely free planning on near all land.
They’ve screwed it.
That is now obvious as Blojob and his gangs MO. Screw up all they touch.
Is that the recent consultation? Having gone through it, and the supporting documents and stuff, it did look like SARS-CoV2 had shot the whole thing in the face anyway.
Almost impossible to de-list a vacant listed building, expensive to build residential on former factory sites due to contamination and other reasons. And all the under-used land is out where the sheep are being grazed.
I think all councils should appoint a de-listing officer : two years fixed term, to remove from protected status all the stuff which is not rare and no longer of scientific or historical interest.
It’s almost as if the Conservative party wants to conserve things. Who’d have thunk it?
The party has always been an uneasy alliance of comfortable lower middle-classes in the shires, and go-getting urban entrepreneurs. The compromise is that each side leaves the other alone: shire Tories keep their green & pleasant land, urban Tories get to run wild.
We are now going to build lots of houses in the North, where they are “needed”, despite constant, massive house price inflation in the South and London, which apparently doesn’t indicate need.
go-getting urban entrepreneurs
They are mostly woke these days. The fashion of the elites is to espouse even more absurd wokeism. Conservatism is the philosophy of dead-end low-status whites these days.
” It was to entirely free planning on near all land.”
No it fucking wasn’t. Did you actually read what was proposed? The proposals were to get local authorities (or possibly some other body) to categorize all land as being in one of three categories – Yes you can build, No you can’t build and Maybe you can build. Thats it. No undertaking to categorise certain percentages in those three categories, just to categorise it all in one of them.
And chances are exactly the same amount of land would have been put in the Yes camp as is now, via the Local Plan system, which identifies areas within a Local Authority area that are in effect Yes zones – its areas the council have identified as suitable for the future development of the area. They also identify areas as ones where development will not be permitted, and all the remainder is in a sort of limbo – you might get development if you can show certain planning criteria apply, and you might not.
I fail to see how anything that was proposed is materially different from what we have now.
They didn’t screw the pooch: there was never one to start with. As Jim said, these proposals were basically nothing anyway.
At this point, the only workable planning changes would be to remove demolition as a consequence for lacking permission. Then centralise the process into an independent body – insulates it from the nimby’s and there’s only one group to…’placate’.
If you must keep it local, then give each council a price/earnings ratio to target. With ludicrous fines for those who fail to meet it.
And if you want useful infrastructure, an adequate power supply or trains that aren’t packed, then I suggest emigration. Britain probably wouldn’t approve those even if the whole country burned down.
“If you must keep it local, then give each council a price/earnings ratio to target. With ludicrous fines for those who fail to meet it”
exactly
Personally I like the idea that complaining about a project should have a cost. You would pay £100 to stop this project, you would pay £200 to stop that project. We allow the first project to be built, charge the 200, pay the 100, and the council keeps the difference. Choose a method to set construction goals (p/e volume targets, etc) then use bidding/compensation to extract revealed preferences.
‘The Government has revised plans for its controversial “mutant” planning algorithm, which will now prioritise building in urban areas most in need of development.’
Sounds like esoteric discussion of how other people will spend their money.
Plenty of cheap places around the country to live that have good internet and where Amazon delivers. What’s the point in spending £300K on a place in Maidenhead now?
BoM4,
£300k for a house in Maidenhead? I think you’ll find prices have risen quite a bit since you last looked.
It’s just as well we’re not trusting these people to handle Brexit, taking back control, cutting red tape, and reducing tariffs, isn’t it?