Against Xeroxing English Planning Statutes

A letter by the Northern Ireland Tories - shared over 200 times in last Friday’s Bel Tel - is one of many recent examples of how ideology can sometimes blind us to the good things in our own back yards.

This letter (Lessons in planning policy - Letters, Opinion - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk) - shared a mere 18 times, since you ask (not that I'm counting or anything) - in this week’s Bel Tel, necessarily briefly, deals with the main issues at stake.

Our own dear PPS1 Article 10 planning framework states: “The key [principles are] ... sustainable development, mixed use, quality development and design”.

The now superceded English draft planning framework states apparently quite reasonably (just before it goes on to give developers carte blanche to ruin the unsurpassed beauty of the English countryside): “There is no necessary contradiction between increased levels of development and protecting and enhancing the environment, as long as development is planned and undertaken responsibly”.

It was this draft framework published last July which the National Trust and basically anyone who hasn't dined with Cam recently reckoned was a limitless Maestro card for greedy aesthetically challenged developers.

After pushing back very hard against the draft framework our nature loving heroes scored an inspiring victory in the changes their lobbying wrought to the build anything, anywhere, anytime components of the draft framework.

The English framework that actually came into force last week holds that: “Pursuing sustainable development involves seeking positive improvements in the quality of the built, natural and historic environment, as well as in people’s quality of life”.

I maintain our framework is better than even the improved English framework for many reasons, once one is considering the frameworks independent of the instruments of their implementation - that's another day's work!

This is because ours is more flexible than what the Tory led government came up with even now the original draft was improved upon.

The NI framework conceives of valuable factors of proper development outside of the concept of sustainable development.

And it succeeds in doing this without subjugating our planning framework and indeed our lovely countryside to the interests of rapacious and aesthetically challenged capital obsessed developers (not that we have any of them (ED: left?) here anyway).

Happily for me personally, the Northern Ireland tories won't have their wicked way quite yet with our countryside.

But perhaps we all have a role to play in remaining ever vigilant against an unreflective 'everything elsewhere is necessarily better than what we have here' kind of provincialism.

We already have clone towns the length and breadth of these islands, let's not have xeroxed planning statutes too.