Cameron & Osborne step into the planning breach.

Just days after our last update on the planning situation Prime Minister Cameron steps forward to introduce clarity where once there was dithering..…..

With Mr Osborne, who is the Conservative Party’s chief election strategist, further reforms to planning rules are proposed to promote growth in the economy.  The new legislation is expected to provide for less time for appeals by limiting local residents’ abilities to appeal and, most controversially, to allow council to authorise building on the green belt, by redesignating other areas, thereby providing more land in the previously sacrosanct green belt for new build projects.  With sparkling insight, Mr Osborne has indicated that he would like a planning system similar to that in China, where industrial pollution, degradation of the countryside and an appalling health and safety record are the watchword.

These reforms form part of the Government’s financial package of £40 billion to aid and promote growth.

House builders in the UK currently hold in excess of 200,000 plots for development with planning permission.  Why are these not being built on?  Could it be anything to do with the lack of availability of mortgages and funding?  I wonder.  Rather than meddle with planning reforms that have barely had a chance to bed in and start to take effect, perhaps Mr Osborne could sit down at Gregg’s with some of his banking friends and ask if they would be kind enough to let the UK taxpayer have some of the money the Government provided for bonuses to allow house building to get moving.

Just a thought.