Gary's views

PLANNING BILL

There was a big vote in the Commons this week on something that seems obscure: how big planning decisions are made. Hardly the stuff to get the revolutionary juices flowing, you may think, but think again, for this is the kind of thing that can make a huge impact on a community.

In the planning bill going through Parliament the government is proposing a new quango to make big planning decisions for us, the excitedly named Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC). There has been a lot of controversy about this on all sides of the chamber.

We know all about these kinds of decisions because we have been through the mill on this with the new town at Sherford, a project which would clearly come within the new regime. It is true that for most of us the existing planning regime delivered the wrong result – we didn’t want it, but we had to have it. But at least the process was of a sufficient length and involved several opportunities to have our say. The fact that South Hams has been the planning authority has meant that they have listened to strong local views and tried to accommodate them in the scheme.

The power station at Langage on the other hand, was not decided by local people because it involved a licence granted by the DTI a top down decision that we could not oppose.

My worry is the new system for major planning decisions would be more like that, more like the French system: new rail link – no problem just crack on with it, irrespective of protests.

The new IPC would bypass the orbit of the planning authority, where at least local councillors have a proper feel for the heartbeat of a community. The IPC would be completely disconnected. Many of us feel that the local community should have a greater say in planning decisions even than now, because local decisions are too often overturned on appeal by remote inspectors from Bristol.

We are the ones who live here; we should decide what our community looks like and how it grows. As is it is we now have a gas fired power station on our doorstep that will not be delivering cut price electricity that we were promised and will not be attracting firms to relocate here as we were promised and there is still no sign of the 4000 job energy park that we were promised.