When the Government’s flagship Planning and Infrastructure Bill was first proposed, it offered a glimmer of hope that Britain might, finally, streamline its broken planning system and get our country growing again. For once, a government looked like it might do something on an issue that has dragged generations of Britons into decline.
Then the green lobby kicked off and Labour panicked. Multiple NGOs, under the umbrella of the Wildlife and Countryside Link, advocated for changes to the Bill. They did so with mailing lists purporting to hold millions of names of Britons ready to rebel. After years of Keir Starmer stating he was going to battle the bureaucrats, the regulators and the blockers, he has caved in – amending the bill to include requirements for specific timelines on when measures to protect nature will be brought forward.
This is all – unfortunately – as chaotic as we have come to expect from the British state.
Following much the same path of the previous Conservative administrations, it is unclear what Labour gain from this – even within their own, interventionist worldview. They know that they need to rescue the economy, they clearly think planning reform is a route to doing so, but also have given in when pushed by the most cynical of lobbyists. Another result of a lack of plan and conviction. Even more confusingly, at the same time they gave in to these demands, they removed the whip from the lead MP pushing for these changes.
Putting the politics and ‘strategy’ (such as it is) aside for a moment, the details of the changes are concerning. What began in the bill as a shift away from site-by-site micromanagement to strategic, science-led restoration has been gutted by the Government’s capitulation. These new amendments make it harder to deliver on the originally offered form of environmental protection. To pass environmental protection regulations, under the new amendments, projects will require more paperwork, more consultation and, in some cases, construction not actually beginning until a plan has already been acted upon to protect nature.
The new changes ‘strengthen’ the environmental requirements in the bill. Our environmental requirements are already so burdensome that hundreds of millions can be spent attempting to fulfil them. They make construction so uncertain that few developers actually start projects (restricting supply in energy, in housing, in transportation choices… ), while ensuring that every stage is ever more unclear, and every barrier more insurmountable. The reality of our current system is that a road change required to save lives is paused to protect local snail populations, even if that means more people will continue to die. Instead of continuing to streamline and reduce this system – the Government has given into lobbyists and decided to concede. More delays, more disruption.
Practically, in real world terms, we should expect more bat tunnels and more fish discos than we otherwise may have seen. The bill was never a radical reform, but it was at least a welcome shift that could have made our lives better – now it is a shell of even that meagre promise.
This is, of course, not the first time this Government has folded at any sign of pressure. It is becoming something of a pattern – and indeed, a pattern we saw all too well under previous Tory governments. Planning remains an area that Britain has become stuck within. It is a system beloved by a few, and jealously guarded by Whitehall. There are consultants, lawyers, civil servants and entire industries of blockers kept employed under our current constricting, failing system. In Westminster, it is treated as an interesting bit of trivia that a wind turbine can be physically built within two days – something that seems unbelievable when it takes years and costs millions in modern Britain.
There are signs that this fight might not be over. Voters may not vote on planning, but they will on the cost of living and on energy prices. If Labour do not reduce those, they will be punished.
Across the Labour Party more broadly, people understand this. A new generation of Labour Yimbys are calling time on a planning system that locks people out of homes and holds the economy back. What they demand is that the Government hold its nerve – and that means U-turning on these agreed amendments. If it doesn’t, Britain is condemned to the same sluggish system it has had for decades.
The politics of this matter, and that means voices matter. Young Labour members recording videos of themselves demanding change should not be ignored – they’re feeling it, and the MPs must respond with their voices too. If they don’t, the same lobbies that held back the Tories from changing the country for the better will turn on them too – and the same fate of electoral oblivion stares back at them.
This week, Nimby Watch is on its way to Edgware – but it’s taking the long route… Ummm…where are we? Because I’m going to be honest, this doesn’t look too familiar… Well, for now, we’re in the West Bank, the larger of the two territories that make up Palestine – the other, of course, being […]
Between all the usual August silly-season news stories about how the Prime Minister makes tea (milk first, apparently) or his go-to Greggs pie (it’s the sausage, bean and cheese melt, since you asked) was something altogether more serious: where the Government plans to build 70,000 of its promised 300,000 new affordable and social homes. It […]
In 1920 a Scottish Unionist MP Noel Skelton coined the term ‘property-owning democracy’, arguing that widening the base of property ownership among the working class would stabilise democracy and counter socialism. The term came to the forefront of political discourse when Prime Minister Anthony Eden used it at the Conservative Party conference in 1946. However, […]
