The controversial 100 Avenue Road tower block scheme in Swiss Cottage

• BLINK and you might have missed a mention of it in the media, but in the recent Queen’s Speech the government confirmed their intention to move ahead with the controversial planning white paper – a decision that will be disastrous for local community involvement in the planning system.

This is a massive win for developers and for many Tory donors.

When originally suggested over a year ago these changes were met with near-unanimous criticism – from housing campaign groups like Shelter, nature conservation groups, local councils, and community groups.

Why? Because they all know that these reforms will do nothing to produce the affordable homes we need, do little to protect green spaces and biodiversity, or support communities to direct planning in a meaningful way.

There is often much frustration about the existing planning system, and having sat on Camden’s planning committee for seven years, I share these frustrations.

It often feels that the system stacks the deck in favour of developers and short-termism; that “viability” is a legal loophole used far too often to reduce affordable housing obligations; and the council’s decisions are often overridden by the secretary of state or faceless planning inspectorate.

We’ve seen this with the council and community opposing 100 Avenue Road, only to be overridden by the Conservative secretary of state with a stroke of a pen.

So, do these changes do anything to improve this situation? No, quite the opposite.

The government wants to remove requirements for affordable housing and infrastructure and replace it with one national levy on developers for all of these valuable social goods. And, this would be paid not before, but after development is complete.

If this levy is set nationally, or even regionally, it risks Camden losing significant community investment from development. Getting vital affordable homes built on site will also be even more challenging.

The government also plans to introduce planning zones, with “growth zones”, meaning developers don’t even need planning permission at all.

As if this was not already bad enough, at the same time as pushing forward with this bill, the government has already taken a sledgehammer to the rules that govern what activities can happen in which buildings, with no thought as to how this could affect neighbours and local communities.

“Permitted Development Rights” mean pretty much any commercial buildings can be turned into homes without planning permission, meaning the loss of shops and other much loved high street spaces at just the time when we need to have space on the high street for businesses to return.

“Developer knows best” seems to be the Tory mantra. Instead we should be putting people and communities before short-term profit. Sustainable, mixed communities need careful planning and the involvement of councils.

So far Camden’s Conservatives councillors have been silent on these disastrous changes. But we can tell they agree with them because they refused to join Labour councillors and other parties in a cross-party motion condemning these planning reforms.

While we will do our bit to respond to these changes and campaign against them, I would strongly encourage CNJ readers to speak to the Conservative councillors and ask them to join us in putting Camden first and opposing these disastrous proposals before it’s too late.

CLLR DANNY BEALES
Cabinet Member for Investing in Communities, Culture & an Inclusive Economy