Controversial planning reforms could see thousands of residential gardens bulldozed for development, the Conservatives claimed on Tuesday.
Ministers unveiled sweeping changes to the planning system in a ‘desperate’ bid to rescue Labour’s target to build 1.5 million new homes.
Rachel Reeves said the changes were designed to end a system that ‘slows growth, frustrates business and prices the next generation out of a secure home’.
But critics warned the proposals could create a ‘free for all’ for developers, leading to the loss of huge chunks of the green belt and the destruction of thousands of urban gardens.
Ministers will also curb the right of local councillors to block smaller developments. And so-called Nimby protesters will be barred from lodging repeated objections to frustrate development.
The proposals tear up rules introduced in 2010 to prevent so-called ‘garden grabbing’ by developers. At the time, campaigners warned 30,000 gardens a year were being concreted over for housebuilding.
In a major reversal of policy, the government will now encourage ‘the redevelopment of low-density residential plots, introducing higher buildings at street corners and infill development within residential (boundaries)’.
The new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) will ‘support the effective and efficient use of land’.
The change will make it easier for developers to buy up properties with large gardens and replace them with new homes with no gardens, transforming the character of the local area.
Tory planning spokesman Gareth Bacon said ministers were ‘now returning to something that the previous Labour Government did, namely garden grabbing’.
He added: ‘It is clear that, because of Labour’s failure to build homes on brownfield land, it now has residential gardens in its sights.’
Planning minister Matthew Pennycook insisted that the government was taking a ‘brownfield first’ approach.
But he added: ‘There is no way of building the volume of homes our country needs with brownfield land alone.
‘There is not enough… brownfield land that is in the right place and viable to meet that need. We do need to release more land, including green-belt land, but we are doing it in a fair way’.
The new planning framework is designed to speed up applications and make it easier for developers to get approvals.
It is set to lead to a major shake-up in the system governing development near busy railway stations, where councils will be told to give a ‘default yes’ to all applications within a 15-minute walk, provided they will deliver at least 20 homes per acre.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden said the ‘free for all’ would lead to the destruction of huge swathes of ‘pristine countryside’ in his Hertfordshire constituency.
Mr Pennycook said the move would apply only in the 60 busiest travel to work areas. But this is expected to cover most of the London commuter belt, along with large areas of the midlands, the north west and Yorkshire and parts of East Anglia and the north east.
Council planning committees will lose the right to decide on small developments, with decisions handed over to ‘expert trained planners’.
The Local Government Association described the changes as ‘the most significant we’ve seen’, adding: ‘Planning committees are the democratic backbone of the planning system, with councils being accountable to their communities about what should be built where. This is a central tenet that must remain under a reformed planning system.’
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The new plans also water down protections for wildlife, with sites of less than half an acre exempted from existing biodiversity rules. This could be extended in some cases to sites of up to six acres.
New homes will be required to install hollow ‘swift bricks’ to provide homes for the migratory birds, which often nest in the cracks of old buildings.
But the RSPB said the decision to exempt small sites from biodiversity rules was ‘a blow for nature’.
Housing secretary Steve Reed said the proposals would help Labour meet its target of building 1.5 million new homes, which has got off to a painfully slow start. The number of new homes started fell from 207,000 to 139,000 in Labour’s first year – the lowest level since the pandemic.
Mr Reed said: ‘Right now we see a planning system that still isn’t working well enough. A system saying ‘no’ more often than it says ‘yes’ and that favours obstructing instead of building.
‘It has real-world consequences for those aspiring to own a home of their own and those hoping to escape so-called temporary accommodation – we owe it to the people of this country to do everything within our power to build the homes they deserve.’
Shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said: ‘Labour talk a big game on housebuilding but have completely failed to deliver. In their first year in office they built fewer homes than the Conservative Government delivered during a global pandemic.
‘We all want to see a faster, better planning system but this Labour Government is still refusing to touch brownfield land, and is instead imposing development on rural areas. This risks bulldozing through communities, overriding local democracy and concreting over the countryside.
‘In desperation at their own failure to build, Labour are now abandoning any pretence of caring about communities.’
