The Hobbs Parker Blogs

The Conservative/Liberal Democrat Government announced yesterday their “building the big society” agenda, key implications for planning policy and practice are firstly, an intention to give communities more powers – stating “we will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live”.

The big issue for the development world is the extent to which the greater public involvement takes on a positive stance, or reinforces “NIMBY” positions.

Secondly, the proposal to abolish regional spatial strategies is confirmed; the earlier proposal was that the accompanying housing targets for local authorities would be abandoned, there must, in our view, remain a significant risk that this will lead to reductions in a number of new houses built, despite a severe national housing shortage.

Watch this space for more updates!

Posted by David Jarman