Scrapping regulations in England will unleash a wave of urban sprawl, worsen inequality – and leave locals powerless to stop it
The most extraordinary upheaval in modern British government is to be introduced this week by Boris Johnson. He is, in effect, to end planning permission. Local councils and those they represent are to be stripped of control over new buildings, to be replaced by central government “zoning” commissions. At the weekend, the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, promised a “change in a generation”. It is more than that. It ends half a century of regulation of England’s landscape and urban development.
The proposed reform will release building rights anywhere outside existing national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Though it promises “protection” to other countryside, there is no conceivable way a new commission can review and “register” every acre for protection. This will unleash the sprawl seen across many countries in the rest of Europe, with owners able to build over their land at will – erecting houses, sheds, advertisements, car parks. It will unleash frantic land speculation in the south-east, and further accelerate the “race to the south”. We can forget Johnson’s “levelling up” pledge.
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