The news that MHCLG ministers couldn’t even wait to get their wretched Planning & Infrastructure Bill through Parliament before announcing another tranche of attacks on England’s planning system will surprise no-one who read about the frequent visits of developer lobbyists to the ministry to drink its coffee and to demand more. The latest thousand bomber raid was even graced with […]
Unnatural England
Gloomily contemplating a tweet by the Natural England quango this morning, I immediately wondered if it was time to put the poor, mutilated and hobbled beast out of its misery. The tweet is a one-minute video claiming that “together, we can unlock growth, scale up nature recovery and strengthen national security”. It’s just the latest bit of propaganda from a […]
Planning’s “real moment” – a dangerous one
“Planning,” said RTPI chief executive Victoria Hills at the Labour conference, “is having a real moment.”That moment included an Institute roundtable with planning minister Matthew Pennycook which discussed things like the need for more planners and planning skills. But it also heard that “planning is an economic enabler”.Planning, of course, should be a key component in co-ordinating our sustainable economic, […]
All political careers really do end in failure
There comes a moment for most prime ministers when a big public blunder takes their momentum away and from which they never really recover. But often it’s the little things that historians note as fatally eroding that sense of solidarity their governments depend on. With Margaret Thatcher, the big one was the poll tax and subsequent riots, with John Major […]
The ghost of Ramsay MacDonald
I’ve no idea whether it’s true or not that deputy prime minister Angela Rayner actually threatened to quit when she twigged the Government’s 1.5 million house building target by July 2029 is completely impossible and had to be talked out of it by Tony Blair. But it’s plausible. The story appeared in an updated biography of Keir Starmer penned by […]
Come hell or high water
Future generations – or current generations in fact – really aren’t going to look kindly on the current government’s “dash for growth”, not least because thousands of them will be left looking from the upper floors of homes built under the current push for fast construction of one-and-a-half-million homes. They’ll be confined there because all-too-predictable flood waters surround their houses […]
Making space for Government greenwash
Most sensible people see the horrific wildfires in Los Angeles as a clear symptom of climate change – a clear result of six months’ lack of rainfall in California and fires driven by stronger winds than usual. President-Elect Donald Trump, however, knows better. On his own social media platform, Truth Social, he blamed California governor Gavin Newsom for the challenges […]
Milestones or millstones?
Who said history never repeats itself? In Whitehall, Gordon Brown was known as “the Great Clunking Fist”. Now, in his “Plan for Change” speech last Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer promised that his plan would “land on desks across Whitehall with the heavy thud of a gauntlet being thrown down”. He promised his “mission-led government” would be dynamic, more decisive, more […]
Environment secretary downgrades environment shock, horror
It was, I suppose, sadly predictable that environment secretary Steve Reed should give his “first significant interview since Labour took power” to the home builders’ house magazine, the Sunday Times. He certainly managed to sound house builder friendly. Campaigners to protect green spaces should not expect the right to a veto over planning, he warned them. As if. Who are […]
Three cheers? Maybe not
I think it was Voltaire who said that the odd thing about the “Holy Roman Empire” was that it was none of those three things. Much the same could have been said about New Labour’s 2003 “Sustainable Communities Plan” which began an ill-planned demolition of its own work on the urban renaissance and attempts to create sustainable communities. Much the […]