n PLANNING MATTERS WITH CHRIS GOSLING Consultation overkill

THE next general election is 18 months away, and don’t we know it?

Just a casual glance in the direction of Westminster reveals feverish activity in terms of pledges, commitments, targets and attempts at delivery.

Some of this may be making up for lost time and undoing damage caused by previous leaders. Frantic activity with a deadline looming will be a feeling common in many working lives. It is not necessarily the best way to work, if an alternative is available.

So what does this mean for planning? In a word, consultationon new policies.

If the polls are any indication, it is highly likely that we will see the Conservatives’ new policies followed by the Labour way, in pretty short order. This would be the equivalent of putting the profession through more turbulence than your average spin cycle. And that is no way to treat a political football.

In the week that I have written this column, the longheralded renters' reform has been introduced.

This has put planning on the map through analysis of house building rates, and whether targets should be enforced to reduce the overall housing shortage.

In the broadest economic terms of supply and demand, scarcity causes inflation, in rent as with other products. Mortgage rates also have a knock-on effect on rents, particularly through buy-tolet mortgages.

That is one outside effect impacting on planning, but with the amount of new ideas floating around at the moment, adopting one new policy is likely to also have an impact on another.

Can every consultation response really include a series of conditions, in case other factors are brought about by other new policies?

Taken in isolation, being asked your opinion on changing various aspects of national planning policy, such as how to align cross-boundary infrastructure, is admirable and sensible.

However, just that one example has implications for the eight other consultations (as of late April) which will potentially affect the Localism Act and other legislation.

I am not some kind of fossil, railing against any change - this is more about the method of achieving it.

Change is needed, but in a form that can be coped with. Over the last few years, planning has had many changes imposed on it, and now more are likely to follow, at an accelerated rate.

It is no wonder that many authorities are delaying publication of their local plans to guide future decisions - the kind of changes in the pipeline could make them meaningless, or commit a council to a policy not replicated by their neighbours.

The government really needs to concentrate on creating a level playing field, then leave it alone so planners can be the groundskeepers.

Everyone, development industry and public, is crying out for certainty.

It has been said many times before but is still true: give us the tools and we will do the job.

Chrisgoslingplanning@gmail.com