I have serious reservations about the coalition governments plans for reforming the planning system. I doubt many MP’s have ever sat as a councillor on a council Planning Committee or for that matter been a developer promoting a scheme. I’ve done both and the current system is biased towards big developers.

The system isn’t perfect but it does balance many competing wishes in a relatively fair way. If anything the present system, due to concerns by councils about potential to lose appeals and have costs awarded against them, already have a tacit presumption in favour of developers. If anything objectors should be able to appeal against a planning application granted permission – they can’t currently.

So I’m hopeful that the fuss caused by the National Trust, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Friends of the Earth and others is successful in getting any changes to be balanced. Even better would be abandon these anti resident and community changes.

After all leading tory politicians were only to happy with the current system when major developments were proposed in there backyards and they used the system to block applications they didn’t want.