The Guardian: "Call this planning reform? It's a recipe for civil war"

Link to The Guardian

"The government's great planning reform has veered way off course, and needs steering back to sanity. It responds to no national calamity, and there is no public gain to the reform itself. An updating of the system in the local government department was hijacked by a group of 'practitioners', mostly builders and developers, and slid into print.

"The problem now is that the chancellor, George Osborne, and his planning secretary, Eric Pickles, have pinned their colours to this dreadful document in the Financial Times, of all places, as a 'battle for young people's future prosperity and quality of life'."

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Plus: "We need more homes, not baffling desperation"

"England not only needs to build more it has to build better. The danger is that the government will unleash a free-for-all, says Peter Hetherington.

In desperation, Eric Pickles's beleaguered department for communities and local government has produced a dismal attempt at rebuttal seemingly at odds with its own  national planning policy framework (NPPF). Unbelievably, it claimed that the framework 'puts local people in the driving seat of decision-making ... communities will have the power to decide the areas they wish to see developed'."