Jeopardising local beauty and conservation for the sake of housebuilding is a real problem for councillors. We have to defend our communities.
The good news is that it means great potential to increase the housing supply. Bold planning changes are needed.
We should move from a planning permission-led system to a building permit-led system. Design rules should be strict, clear, but limited.
Buildings with different functions need to be intertwined. In beautiful cities, people tend to live and work side by side.
Over ten years we are providing 1,900 new homes for Oxfordshire. They will be a wide range of properties. That is because we believe in choice.
Here is one firm’s account of how unnecessary costs and delay in the planning system holds them back. Timescales promised by councils are not honoured.
Roger Scruton is advising the Government on ensuring new buildings are beautiful. But defeating the architectural establishment will not be easy.
His recommendations look likely to be accepted. Greater diversity of type and design is to be encouraged – rather than the imposition of uniformity.
For councils – unlike others in the public sector – austerity has been real. It is ending. But planning powers are being diminished.
In the second of three articles, the Weston-super-Mare MP sets out plans on tax, housing deficits and debt to help achieve inter-generational justice.
Brexit won’t be the most important factor shaping our growth over the next decade or so, whether we leave with an agreement or without one.
The rise of social housing provided “biggest collective leap in living standards in British history”. Today, housing associations are the keepers of that legacy.
New research out today calculates that granting a piece of land planning permission for new houses makes it dramatically more valuable.
We have a habit of looking back at policy platforms pursued by previous Conservative Governments, and attempting to bring back popular policies like a poor Hollywood remake.