Hands Off Our Land: Property firms that fund Tories to build thousands of green belt homes

Property firms that have donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Conservatives and lobbied the Government to relax planning laws are poised to push through developments on green belt land.

Source - Daily Telegraph

 

The developers are embroiled in bitter disputes with local residents over plans to build thousands of new houses on open fields, conservation areas and ancient woodland.

 

Documents seen by The Daily Telegraph show that they have used “extensive references to emerging and draft planning policy” to justify their projects despite fierce local opposition.

 

The disclosure is likely to cast doubt on the Coalition’s promise that planning reform will not erode green belt. Official records show that ministers in charge of planning laws have met senior property industry figures 28 times since the general election, while holding only 11 meetings with environmentalists.

 

The Daily Telegraph has uncovered plans for major green belt developments by three property firms whose bosses lobbied ministers.

 

Taylor Wimpey, whose planning director helped draft the regulations, is preparing five projects in the countryside, including two in green belt.

 

Managers met Bob Neill, the local government minister, in January to discuss “the burden of regulation in planning”. They were accompanied by Finsbury, a city PR firm which recently donated £8,000 to the Conservatives.

 

Taylor Wimpey has been accused of bullying over plans to build on land in Mangotsfield, near Bristol, after erecting a 6ft fence around the plot. The firm is also pushing for permission to build 100 houses on former green belt woodland in Annesley, Notts, which is thought once to have been part of Sherwood Forest.

 

Helical Bar, whose chief executive is a Conservative activist and has donated more than £300,000 to the party, has won permission for hundreds of houses on two green belt sites, one of which, in Great Alne, Warks, contains a conservation area with mature woodland. Mike Slade, the firm’s chief executive, is chairman of the Conservative Property Forum, a donors’ club that arranges meetings between property bosses and senior Tories. He said: “Any changes to the planning system that make it more transparent will inevitably be welcomed by property developers.”

 

Planning documents show that the firm used “extensive references” to “emerging” planning policy to justify the Great Alne development. A spokesman for Stratford district council insisted the references were to local policies.

 

The Barratt Group, whose bosses have met ministers twice, plans to develop three green belt sites.

 

The firm is fighting 3,000 campaigners over plans to build 300 “executive homes” on farmland in green belt near Middlesbrough. It is also facing a struggle with residents and parish councillors in Menston, West Yorks, who are amassing a £30,000 fund to fight plans for 174 homes.

 

Mark Clare, the chief executive of Barratt Developments, said there was an “urgent need” to build more houses.

 

Taylor Wimpey said the firm had adapted its business strategy in response to the “likely direction” of reforms.

 

The Department for Communities and Local Government has been accused of “loading the dice” in favour of developers. The draft National Planning Policy Framework contains a “presumption in favour of sustainable development”, and critics fear firms are preparing to “swoop in” and seize the chance to win permission for green belt projects.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Absolute STINKING hypocrisy... Just the other week there we have the site of Gypsy travellers being forced off their own property on Dale Farm (after Tory controlled Basildon Council spent £18 million of council tax payers' money on a court case) because it was supposedly "Green Belt" land (which is debateable as most of it at one point was a scrap-yard..), and now we have the Tories in Westminster planning on "relaxing" planning regulations on Green Belt land to benefit their Developer chums who contributed hundreds of thousands to Tory election coffers.... Well, errr, if this isn't another naked example of corruption then I dont know what is....

 

Seems to me the mistake the Gypsies made was in not "greasing the palms" of the Basildon Tories..... Silly Gypsies.... -_-

This really is the most stinking government in my living memory - and I was 12 when Thatcher left Downing Street.

This really is the most stinking government in my living memory - and I was 12 when Thatcher left Downing Street.

 

Spot on... Cameron and Co are actually making me feel a wee bit nostalgic for old Maggie..... :mellow:

Their planning policies are just completely incoherent. On the one hand they keep banging on about "localism" and allowing local people to have more say in local development. Then, on the other hand, they have this presumption in favour of development. We're used to having governments where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. We now have a government where the right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

Their planning policies are just completely incoherent. On the one hand they keep banging on about "localism" and allowing local people to have more say in local development. Then, on the other hand, they have this presumption in favour of development. We're used to having governments where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. We now have a government where the right hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.

 

Or rather, the right hand will do what it wants so long as it's greased properly....

...and it gets worse....

 

Our planning system is authorised blackmail – and it's about to get worse

The interests of people come second to those of profit in a system where developers work hand in glove with government

George Monbiot

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...P=FBCNETTXT9038

 

Every government needs an Eric Pickles: a human wrecking ball who will swing wherever he's told. Every government needs a man or woman of crashing insensitivity, devoid of empathy or imagination, unaware of the value of what he or she has been instructed to demolish. Every government requires someone – in the words of Alan Clark, a more stylish exponent of this psychopathic school of government – who is prepared to be "economical with the actualité".

pudles Illustration by Daniel Pudles

 

Pickles's mandate is to break the planning system. He appears to possess no idea of why people might object to his proposals, or of what it is about England's towns and countryside that might be worth defending. He is also prepared to take a pickaxe to the truth. Earlier this month, his department published a webpage that, with an evident snigger, it called a "myth-buster". Of the many falsehoods this document contains, the most brazen is its claim that the proposed new planning framework "puts local people in the driving seat of decision making in the planning system. Communities will have the power to decide the areas they wish to see developed and those to be protected".

 

It is true that local people, through neighbourhood development orders and community right-to-build orders, will be able to grant planning permission for development that is not envisaged in the council's local plan. But they've been given no powers to prevent development that is contained in the plan – or even development that isn't. The framework's new presumption in favour of sustainable development – by which the government means all development except coal-mining – will make it almost impossible to resist a developer's proposal. It takes a system that is already unfair, unbalanced and undemocratic and makes it even worse.

 

As my home town is now discovering, the rules in both England and Wales are already stacked against local people. Last year Tesco applied to build a superstore – massive beside the scale of the town – on the edge of Machynlleth in mid-Wales. Local people poured everything they had into contesting its application. Just before the county council was to make its decision, Tesco withdrew. Now it has resubmitted the scheme, and once more we will have to find the time and resources to resist it.

 

We know that the council, like all councils, is terrified of turning Tesco down. As the chair of the planning committee in Bristol, considering Tesco's application in Stokes Croft, warned: "At the back of my mind always is the fact that if we were to lose an appeal against a refusal then it's the council taxpayers of Bristol who end up … paying."

 

If a council refuses planning permission, the developer can appeal to the government. Whoever loses the appeal has to pay costs amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Tesco makes that money in the blink of an eye. But if the council loses, it will have to cut yet another public service. Even as it stands, the planning system amounts to authorised blackmail.

 

And if the developer loses? That's just a temporary setback. It can wait two years then submit an identical plan, or substantially change the plan and submit it immediately. This war of attrition will go on until it grinds down the resistance of local people or scares the council into submission. Sheringham, a small town in Norfolk, held out for 14 years. The people made it clear repeatedly that they did not want Tesco to move in, but in October last year the council broke. There is no choice: eventually the supermarket will land on you whether you want it or not. This is a totalitarian form of capitalism.

 

While developers have the right of appeal, communities do not. The only power objectors possess is to apply to the high court for judicial review. This is what the people of Bristol have done, in seeking to contest the Tesco plan in Stokes Croft. Of 500 local people surveyed, 96% were against it. The council received over 2,500 cards objecting to the development, and two notes in favour. Yet it granted permission. You cannot seek judicial review on planning grounds; only on the grounds that the council did not follow correct procedure.

 

As the Stokes Croft objectors have found, getting to court is a massive, stressful and shattering business. At first the judge refused their application. The objectors had a few days in which to appeal this refusal. They had to find a barrister to take the case and prepare for a long and exhausting hearing, whose only purpose was to obtain permission to proceed. They persuaded the judge that their claim (that the city council was misled by its officers) was worth considering, and the case begins in November. But the court refused their application for a protective costs order, which means that the right to be heard might cost them hundreds of thousands. They will spend months fighting this case. If they win, Tesco can simply reapply, and the fight starts all over again.

 

In other words, the planning system is in urgent need of reform – in the opposite direction to the one the government is proposing. In opposition both the Conservatives (in their document Open Source Planning) and the Liberal Democrats (in their manifesto) promised to give communities a right of appeal against planning decisions. The Conservatives also promised (in Blueprint for a Green Economy) to limit developers' rights of appeal. All dust.

 

There's no mystery about why the reform is going in this direction. As the planning expert Andrew Lainton reveals, the government's presumption in favour of development was first proposed by Policy Exchange, one of the "thinktanks" that refuse to reveal their sources of funding and which look to me like corporate lobby groups. The foreword to the Policy Exchange report was written by Lord Wolfson, a Conservative peer who also happens to be chief executive of Next, which builds out-of-town shopping sheds.

 

The Telegraph, which has lately become a surprising champion of power to the people, has revealed a series of stark conflicts of interest. It has uncovered a new cash for access scandal, in which property developers pay £2,500 to the Conservative party to make their views known to members of the government. It reminds us that the co-author of the new planning framework happens to direct a consultancy that works for Asda and other big developers. It has published a leaked email from the British Property Federation, which shows that the planning minister, Greg Clark, has secretly urged the BPF to send letters to the press and to lobby David Cameron. The government's objectives, the email says, "definitely align with ours".

 

The Wullies – build Whatever You Like, Wherever You Like – have their hand in the glove of government. They have portrayed this as a fight between green and brown, town and country, growth and stagnation. It's simpler than that. It's a fight between corporate power and democracy.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

"Localism" my hairy arse...... -_-

I was about to post the Monbiot article myself but I've been beaten to it.