From the Front Line

Although a Conservative government in May looks less likely than it has done for some time, their publication of a green paper outlining their proposals for the planning system - out today - make interesting if slightly scary reading.

The proposals, in a green paper entitled 'Open Source Planning' - more on that later - could best be summed up by saying, 'We're giving more power to local people to be able to say no to development they object to, and getting rid of national targets, but we'll make sure that houses still get built."

As you might imagine, larger developers are feeling rather nervous. The proposals will give much more power to "immediate" neighbours to object to a development and will include parish councils in these negotiations. As anyone with any insight into the planning system will tell you, giving more power to parish councils - most of them hopelessly lacking in any architectural discernment - is a potential nightmare.

However, it will enforce a presumption that 'sustainable' developments will be automatically passed as long as they meet certain local design criteria. What it doesn't say is what they actually mean by sustainable - I haven't met many self-builders who don't build sustainable homes.

Even more confusingly, they will replace the dreaded Community Infrastructure Levy with a new system of locally-set tariffs - all of which sounds like another form of CIL. Section 106 agreements will remain in place. The big change seems to be that those immediately affected by a development will get a portion of the financial arrangement in cold hard cash as a recompense for saying yes to it.

Self-builders get a mention. Unfortunately, the Conservatives seem to think we all want to build homes as part of a Community Self-build Group and would be happy to only be able to sell our finished projects at a third of the market value.

So what's Open Source Planning? The concept, nicked from the software industry, is that processes, systems and policies are left open for individuals to add to and amend to meet their own needs. All very well, but transfer that to a planning system and all you have as I see it is an empowering of NIMBYs and fewer new plots than ever.

If you want to see the document in full and make up your own mind, click here