This government has developed rather a reputation for u-turning. But I would be extremely
surprised if it did one over its planning reforms. When you talk to ministers and advisers one is struck by how up for this fight they are. They’re convinced that it is only by taking on
these vested interests that they’ll get their message across to the public. And unlike on forests or the NHS, Number 10 and the Treasury are fully on board.
There are those who claim that these reforms are profoundly un-conservative. But, in fact, the opposite is the case as Charles Moore argues with his typical eloquence in today’s Telegraph. As Charles says, planning isn’t a conservative concept it is a socialist one. It is not planning that produces—or preserves—beauty.
If, as the National Trust seems to want, we treat the countryside as a museum we will kill off rural life.
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