Conservative leader Oliver Cooper

• CAMDEN’S Conservative opposition leader Oliver Cooper has welcomed the current government’s planning rules and claims they will benefit Camden, (Overhaul of planning system is a ‘developer’s charter’, August 13).

They are technically complex and prompt overarching questions.

From a Camden perspective, will they cause a reduction of genuinely affordable new housing in a borough already facing a severe housing shortage?

Will the abolition of section 106 payments by developers, critical to underpinning community infrastructure and housing provision, hurt our communities?

Is there risk of creating new slums of the future as regulations to protect basic standards are relaxed? Will the local voice in important planning decisions be quietened?

Judging by the response of the professional bodies the answer to all these questions is yes.

Furthermore, who will the transfer of financial risk from the private sector to the council most benefit? Is there a whiff of party donor sleaze here? Is this levelling up or levelling down?

For years Conservatives representatives in our borough have sought to persuade us that they are not like the nasty old, hypocritical, Conservatives of provincial England. They are caring, pragmatic, community-minded, moderate, liberal, etc.

But this time the mask has slipped.

We clearly see preference for a discredited right-wing ideological hobby-horse over evidence-based policy. It should be called out as such.

GABRIEL IRWIN
Estelle Road, NW3