Further and yet further

We are growing accustomed to our lives being dominated by Brussels, and for important decisions about education and health to be taken by quangos and Whitehall, but at least we have had men and women locally who can be relied upon to stop developments which nobody locally wants.

Not any more! In the Queen's Speech was proposed the Planning Reform Bill. Having failed to impose local planning control by the ill-proposed Regional assemblies, and undaunted, the Government now proposes to take away local power over planning and dictate it from London.

There is a sop, if you want to extend your kitchen or build a garage the application process should be speeded up. On large issue, like the siting of major housing developments, wind farms, new airport runways, road schemes, nuclear power stations and the like, local examination and discussion will be at best advisory and often no more than filling in questionnaires. Worse, an Independent Planning Commission ( - yet another quango) will effectively make the decision.

Of course, ministers in the past have exercised judgment finally when applications have gone to appeal, but this is effectively being by-passed, with only a brief consideration locally. The Government also claims that findings of the the new commission (unaccountable to local communities) will be scrutinised by Parliament. It will be no good shouting "N.I.M.B.Y" unless, presumably, you have a Labour MP or are in a marginal constituency? The official Conservative view is that these new arrangements will effectively permit the Government to "dump developments on local communities".

This is to speed up the process, but the effect is to reduce time for debate locally and to make the decisions opaquely in an accountable, centrally controlled commission.

And the Government wonders why so many people do not bother to vote? In a recent by-election here the turn-out was under 30%, and of the 20% of votes sent out in response to postal voting only about half of these were actually returned.)

From "Alert"