English planning system

Government proposals to reform England’s planning system are ‘the wrong answers to the wrong questions’, driven by free-market ideology and vested property interests, according to leading academics.

A new National Audit Office (NAO) report has found that the government’s planning system is ‘underperforming’ and unable to demonstrate how it can deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has warned that “consistent deregulation and demoralisation” of the planning system is putting England’s towns, cities and countryside at risk.