Dr James Robinson, RSPB Chief Operating Officer, said:
“Dropping 67 amendments to the Planning Bill at the eleventh hour isn’t just poor process, it’s legislative chaos. There’s no time for proper scrutiny, no clarity on the cumulative impact, and no confidence this is about good planning rather than political optics.
It looks like a cynical attempt to game a better forecast from the OBR, rather than a serious effort to fix the planning system. But this kind of scattergun policymaking doesn’t give businesses or investors the certainty they need to drive growth, and it puts the UK’s irreplaceable natural environment at risk.
While the Housing Secretary chants ‘Build, Baby, Build’ and claims this will be a win-win for development and nature, the rest of us are left looking aghast at a planning shambles.”
I can’t really get my head round all this – it seems to be entirely, 100% ‘political’ in the worst sense and I don’t see any practical outcome at the end of it except some enormous, headline grabbing rows when some developer takes the whole thing at face value. Everyone – especially the politicians and conservation NGOs – tried to pretend the forest sales fiasco of 2010/11 never actually happened. It couldn’t have done, after all, popular opinion overriding a newly elected Government, but now whilst politicians are all obsessed with the right wing lunatic fringe the firmly have their back to the middle England that unexpectedly rose and stopped the then Government in its tracks.