The future of planning15 March 2012
What do the new planning rules mean for us and our environment?
The budget announcement confirms that over 90 percent of guidance detail around planning will be removed.
Removal of safeguards
Central to this document will be a default position to say yes to development.
This means it'll be much harder to get developers to build the right things in the right places. Local plans will be overridden.
It will also remove safeguards that:
- Protect our town centres, farmland and wildlife sites from bad development.
- Help deliver warm and affordable homes.
Short-term solution
The Government believes that removing planning safeguards will help grow our economy.
This short-term thinking ignores the need to tackle environmental issues like drought, flooding, the loss of wildlife and climate change.
Failing to act on these issues will prove costly for people and businesses.
Recipe for disaster
Friends of the Earth is concerned that the new guidance will give the green light to uncontrolled and bad development.
Osborne says the new planning rules will protect our most precious environments but unless they address the environmental challenges we all face, Ministers will promote a development free-for-all that will cost us all a fortune.
Naomi Luhde-Thompson, Friends of the Earth
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