HAS PICKLES LOST THE PLOT?

Having warned planning QC’s earlier in the year to expect their P45’s, Eric Pickles MP has now had another go at ‘Maserati driving planning lawyers’ as the fountainhead of all that is failing in the town planning system. Is it me, or has Eric finally and irrevocably lost it?

As I sit here at 35,000ft in the chambers Lear Jet, en-route chez Butter in the hills just overlooking Cannes, I muse once again on the irrationality of the arguments being put forward to justify the wholesale change in the planning system that are currently before us.

Planning is too complex and too time consuming and its all the fault of those pesky planning lawyers and consultants who are hell bent on obfuscating perfectly reasonable desecration of the countryside and (to misquote Harry Enfields’ character) ‘loads of housing’. This seems to be the tone – [yes, another Merlot would be lovely, thanks] – and is evidently a rather limp tactic to draw fire away from the real culprits, the Whitehall Mandarins and his fellow parliamentarians. God forbid he upset the ‘Yes Minister’ possé. They’d string him up in a gimp suit somewhere in a National Park with a sign round his neck saying do not feed the MP (anymore). So, someone else is to blame. Those miserable planning lawyers with their flash suits, their flash cars, and unfeasibly large expense accounts – that’s who.

But who does Pickles thinks writes the legislation in the first place? The Government of course. All the paraphernalia of law surrounding it has grown up simply because successive Governments have added and tweaked and played with the system to an extent that you need a PHD in logistics just to wade through the contents page of the principle Act.

When I first started work the Town & Country Planning Act 1971 was the size of a medium sized novelette and could be read cover to cover over a long lunch at The Ivy. Now it takes on the appearance of a gluttonous British Library with a cream cake habit. And I guarantee the only planning lawyers who have caused that to happen are those employed by the Government to make it so.

Put (very) simply, there are two sorts of planning lawyer; those who support the developer and those who support the local authority. They are generally hermaphrodite in their fee earning stance. The former seek to achieve planning permission and the latter defend the position of the Council (representing the public at large) who for whatever reason have declined to approve permission. That’s called democracy as far as I know, but hey, who’s arguing. [This pate de foie gras is most toothsome. Yes, a top up would be lovely]

Town Planning law has always been the province of interpretation. If the legislation simply said, “all the brown bits on the local plan will get planning permission come what may” then life would be potentially simpler. Except you’d have to have had some sort of debate about defining the brown bits in the first place. Hey Ho.

So, will the new sunny uplands of the Localism Act and National Planning Policy Framework be any different. Well, no actually. The Government has failed to provide any meaningful interpretation of even the most basic issues. And if there were ever a phrase designed to whet the appetite of the most lackluster of planning advocates it is ‘what constitutes sustainable development’.

So don’t go round blaming the planning law fraternity for failings in the system you invented Mr Government. If you want to create a Janet and John Book 1 planning system go right ahead. Quite frankly I’m not bothered either way. Whatever the final outcome, there are obvious certainties in life; death and taxes are but two. A third is almost certainly the need to arbitrate and advocate between opposing poles in the planning world.

Now, must sign off, as the seatbelt light has just come on and I need to make a quick dash from the Executive Terminal in the Maserati to collect the family before the beach barbeque in Nice. Or should I use the Lexus, maybe the Lambo’, perhaps the Ferrari this time …. It’s a tough life.