CPRE’s Policy As Slow and Inefficient a Planning System as Possible as it means Fewer Houses Built

Just what are CPRE objecting to?

A dramatic loosening of planning laws to create a housebuilding boom will damage local democracy and destroy swathes of countryside by granting property developers a freer hand to build over green fields, planning experts have warned.

The new laws, part of the government’s “Project Speed” to accelerate infrastructure projects, are intended to increase the number of homes being planned by more than a third, and were announced in the Queen’s speech. But critics described them as “an utter disaster” which would return the country to “a deregulated dark age of development”.

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The CPRE ..warned the bill, which will largely apply only in England, ran counter to the proposed environmental bill and would “take us back to a deregulated dark age of development”. It fears most of the new homes are unlikely to be low-cost or affordable.

The planning bill is not about policy – the NPPF or the Housing Needs Formula which from the CPRE’s perspective they have legitimate rights to object to. Indeed I worked with them on the NPPF. No it is about improving regulatory efficiency and improving design.

You can object to it on grounds that you don’t like the new system but not that if the new system is successful more housing might be built. Of course increasing housing will mean more housing will be built n greenfield sites because 100% of new housing will never be built on brownfield sites, that is a mathematical fact. Which is why the main tactic of those opposing greenfield development has been to reduce housing numbers, produce local plans as slowly as possible and try to keep a planning system which crawls along and delays decisions.

What if the CPRE had to choose between

a. A Planning system that minimised greenfield development but produced all the housing we need well designed and zero carbon; or

b. A Planning system that saw housing built slowly, sprawling, in the wrong place

The CPRE seem to be in favour of the latter not the former because they are not concerned about the future, the future of the countryside or the future of young people but the present selfish NIMBY needs of its elderly members.