Mark Pawsey MP: To benefit from planning changes, the powers of external bodies need to be curtailed

Mark Pawsey is Member of Parliament for Rugby. Follow him on Twitter.

As MPs return to Westminster after a busy summer of constituency work, many can be forgiven for thinking we are arriving back in September 2011. This time last year, the Government had  just launched its major re-haul of the planning system, the National Planning Policy Framework. A radical reduction of planning law, its aim was to stimulate development and, in the process, stimulate the economy. After a period of consultation, the presumption in favour of development has returned, ridding us of the previous presumption in favour of delay, something that had curtailed development for too long. Yet skip forward a year and planning is back on the front pages.

And why? Sadly, announcements made over the weekend setting out substantial infrastructure and development proposals have been overshadowed by unsubstantiated claims about threats to the countryside. The fundamental need for growth is well understood but it won’t be achieved if we get bogged down now with more controversy about the Green Belt. What the Chancellor detailed on Sunday was simply common sense. If development is required on an area of the Green Belt, then simply, another equivalent area of land in the local area must be added to the Green Belt. Former Green Belt being swapped for new Green Belt. The net result? No reduction in the total Green Belt. In an article entitled ‘The great myth of urban Britain’ even the BBC drew attention to the fact that 98% of the UK was natural and not built-on and so this government cannot be accused of bulldozing our countryside.

However, what has happened over the last few weeks is that there has been a much-needed recognition in Government that planning goes further than planning law. We need to focus in addition on planning guidance and the delays that consultees to planning can put into the process of development. For instance, the Government’s own consultation paper in July this year detailed the number of ‘Statutory Consultees’ that are to be consulted on relevant planning applications. This list numbered 27 and includes organisations such as the “Forestry Commission”, the “Garden History Society” and the catchy “National Air Control Transport Services Operators of Officially Safeguarded Civil Aerodromes”. As their own paper says, “authorities are reluctant to determine applications without input from these key bodies”. This is where delays start. Planning is being strangled and even halted because local authorities have to wait for opinion of these bodies.

Mark Pawsey MP: It’s not just a sporting legacy that Britain has to build

Mark Pawsey is Member of Parliament for Rugby. Follow him on Twitter.

For millions of people up and down the country it’s back to work after 17 days of unforgettable entertainment with many left wondering: what happens now? Quite rightly the buzz word to these games has been “legacy”. Indeed, London 2012 is widely praised as the first Olympics to have such a strong focus on what happens after the games have gone, not just when Jessica Ennis is lighting up the stadium. And this insistence on a sporting legacy is very welcome. Our young children have been given new role models over the last two weeks, and the prospect of increased participation in sport and exercise is a happy one.

But Britain must build another legacy: a business legacy. London 2012 has given us the perfect opportunity to showcase British industry. The Government has already made positive strides in this direction. In establishing the British Business Embassy, this Government has laid down a marker for the future to say this country is open for business. Here’s hoping the relationships forged at events in Lancaster House over the last few weeks will bring about new and rewarding business contracts in the future.

Mark Pawsey MP: The government must not lose its nerve on planning reforms, and reject nimbyism

Mark Pawsey is the MP for Rugby, and a member of the Communities and Local Government Select Committee

For the first time in decades the government has made a commitment to giving local communities much more say in the development proposals that affect them. And as a former member of a local authority planning committee, I strongly welcome this change. Communities will soon be centre-stage in the planning system, because local people and representatives know their areas better than anyone. Development should rightly reflect the aspirations of local communities and not just the interests of a few.

When addressing a planning conference recently I learnt a new anagram - CAVEs. Citizens Against Virtually Everything. Or another word for nimbyism. Because that’s what the government’s planning reforms have unleashed. Instead of welcoming the streamlining of planning guidance, many organised interests are opposed to its change. And none as vocal as the countryside lobby.

Writing earlier this month, Professor Sir Peter Hall, whose lectures I sat through whilst at university in the 70s, praised the Prime Minister for “defying the extraordinary narrow lobby represented by the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the National Trust, whose paying members have been mobilised as unwitting agents of nimbyism”.