New Policy Direction in England

Ministers over the border have revealed details of planning reforms, ahead of Thursday’s publication of the Localism Bill, which will see councils required to adopt neighbourhood plans supported by residents.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles and planning minister Greg Clark have outlined plans to decentralise and streamline the planning system, which they claim will hand powers down from Whitehall to neighbourhoods.
The ministers called for communities to get involved and have paved for the way for neighbourhood groups to shape where they live.

Residents will be able to decide what their local area should look like, where new shops, offices and homes are built and what green spaces should be protected. Communities will be given the power to draw up neighbourhood plans, which if backed in local referendums, councils would be forced to adopt.

The new powers will also give residents the power to grant planning permission for chosen sites on local lands to enable urgent development can go ahead quickly once a neighbourhood plan has been adopted.

The Department for Communities and Local Government said it wanted a dozen localities to come forward to act as ‘vanguards’ to trial neighbourhood plans in their area.

Mr Pickles said: ‘For far too long local people have had too little say over a planning system that has imposed bureaucratic decisions by distant officials in Whitehall and the town hall. We need to change things so there is more people planning and less politician planning, so there is more direct democracy and less bureaucracy in the system. These reforms will become the building blocks of the Big Society.’

Mr Clark added: ‘Most people love where they live, yet the planning system has given them almost no say on how their neighbourhood develops. The coalition Government will revolutionise the planning process by taking power away from officials and putting it into the hands of those who know most about their neighbourhood – local people themselves.

‘This will be a huge opportunity for communities to exercise genuine influence over what their home town should look like in the future. It will create the freedom and the incentives for those places that want to grow, to do so, and to reap the benefits. It’s a reason to say yes.’

No sign yet of what's to come in Wales, but one thing's for sure, changes over the border will have an impact in Wales too as localism picks up and communities wanting a certain planning direction having their own way. The growth of nimby's is obviously a threat to good planning and this paves the way for opportunism and potentially corruption. Here in Powys and Ceredigion, the planning system has occasionally been abused by a few prominent local people who have driven unwanted development in their communities. Others have lobbied to prevent good development from occurring also. The rise in prominence of the Parish councillor will occur over the border - but hasn't this always been the case in areas such as Montgomeryshire and Radnorshire where individual Community councillors have managed to get the odd bungalow in the countryside for their friends?