There are few people who have no interest in planning – though for most of us, it’s only when something is proposed near us. Perhaps we want to extend our house, or we don’t like what the neighbours are planning, or we don’t want a new Tesco moving into the town. Planning has always been about getting the right balance between competing interests.

The Coalition Government has always planned big changes to the UK’s planning system, as part of the Localism Bill.

However, there seem to me to be two competing objectives and it’s not clear how they are going to be married up.

On the one hand, part of Government (e.g. the DCLG) wants to empower local communities to have more say about development in their area.

On the other hand, other parts of Government (e.g. BIS) are keen to promote development to drive the economy.

Since, in my experience, local communities frequently want to stop a development rather than welcome it with open arms, this would seem to be a big clash and which side wins out could affect how our area – how every area – changes for years and decades to come.

Part of the move by Government is an attempt to greatly simplify and reduce the planning rules being handed down on high from central Government. Note that, in itself, such a simplification says nothing about whether or not communities end up with more control over planning. It would, after all, be very simply indeed to allow nearly all planning applications to be granted, and also very simple to refuse them all.

There’s also a question about sustainability.  The Government is keen to promote “sustainable” development, but different people seem to have very different views as to what the word actually means in this case.

However, a change from a thousand pages of guidance and rules down to 50 can’t help but have a big effect.

So have your say, before 17th October.

You can find the documents on the Government website.

• Draft National Policy Framework
• Consultation document
• Online response form

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