Thank you for writing this. It's important to shove the details in people's faces. I look on it as more than inefficient, it is deeply immoral to keep housing this expensive when so many Londoners do not have enough housing to live decent, secure lives. Low turnout means that the council was elected on a tiny proportion of the vote - it's legitimacy rests on delivery not on it democratic mandate.
A comedy of contradictions. If I don’t laugh, I would cry.. As an aspiring self builder, my shock is still that developers actually take these costs on with all the uncertainty of outcome. No wonder SME developers are almost not existent now. The ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ needs A LOT more teeth to override all but a few principal policies. Great read
Excellent article. Thoroughly researched, excellently evidenced and summarises impact constantly. I come at this as someone who is a big supporter of how we change our cities for the wellbeing of all our people. This scheme appears to deliver on much of what matters to people and this scale of bureaucracy simply undermines our ability to move forward confidently, and at the same time deliver on things like economic growth, healthy cities and much more. Thank you!
It's amazing that modern government regulations are far more insane than the Catch 22 era even imagined. Many of these same issues plague development here in the USA as well, and I suspect the trend is widespread among any societies with expanding governmental regulation.
Sounds like the new NPPF rules would substantially mitigate/remove most of these blockers. Not a panacea but if it can make it through consultation lots of these opportunities to nitpick and use various policies as cover to block.
Sounds like it would be quite the bonfire of local rules, which I would approve.
Having been through the planning documents and the policies, do you have a read on how many of them would be overrode by parts of the NPPF?
The design stuff in the NPPF seems like it would block the council relying on that to stop it, same with "very little weight" being applied to the contradictory local policies. Not saying this is a done deal, but it feels like this is maybe a last hurrah of the old planning system.
it's just appalling
we are stuck in a dystopian comedy of errors
🎯 And the same dynamics are at play over and over again with every planning application across the country.
This was an excellent read.
Thank you for writing this. It's important to shove the details in people's faces. I look on it as more than inefficient, it is deeply immoral to keep housing this expensive when so many Londoners do not have enough housing to live decent, secure lives. Low turnout means that the council was elected on a tiny proportion of the vote - it's legitimacy rests on delivery not on it democratic mandate.
A comedy of contradictions. If I don’t laugh, I would cry.. As an aspiring self builder, my shock is still that developers actually take these costs on with all the uncertainty of outcome. No wonder SME developers are almost not existent now. The ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ needs A LOT more teeth to override all but a few principal policies. Great read
UK planning system is so broken and no politicians have got hold of it and fixed it. Ruining the growth and economy of our fine country
I feel like so much of my politics could simply be described as the opposite of this article 😅
Great work!
That is such a disgrace.
Excellent article. Thoroughly researched, excellently evidenced and summarises impact constantly. I come at this as someone who is a big supporter of how we change our cities for the wellbeing of all our people. This scheme appears to deliver on much of what matters to people and this scale of bureaucracy simply undermines our ability to move forward confidently, and at the same time deliver on things like economic growth, healthy cities and much more. Thank you!
The rejection letter reads like a civilisational suicide note. How did we get here? Our Victorian ancestors would be ashamed of us.
The planning department is just doing its job: stopping anything from being built.
Thoroughly enlightening and maddening.
It's amazing that modern government regulations are far more insane than the Catch 22 era even imagined. Many of these same issues plague development here in the USA as well, and I suspect the trend is widespread among any societies with expanding governmental regulation.
Sounds like the new NPPF rules would substantially mitigate/remove most of these blockers. Not a panacea but if it can make it through consultation lots of these opportunities to nitpick and use various policies as cover to block.
Sounds like it would be quite the bonfire of local rules, which I would approve.
Sam has written a great piece on that here: https://open.substack.com/pub/samdumitriu/p/labour-are-finally-taking-the-housing?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Having been through the planning documents and the policies, do you have a read on how many of them would be overrode by parts of the NPPF?
The design stuff in the NPPF seems like it would block the council relying on that to stop it, same with "very little weight" being applied to the contradictory local policies. Not saying this is a done deal, but it feels like this is maybe a last hurrah of the old planning system.
I’m going to take a look at this hopefully in a future post!
🤦♂️
Excellent piece.