Theresa May leads opposition to Boris Johnson’s planning reforms

Former PM says policy will not deliver more homes

Theresa May speaking in the planning debate (UK parliament)

Theresa May is the latest senior Conservative to speak out against Boris Johnson’s new planning reforms, as a Tory rebellion on the issue begins to take shape.

The ex-prime minister warned that the plans would amount to “removing local democracy, cutting the number of affordable homes that will be built, and building over rural areas”.

Speaking in a debate in the Commons on Thursday, Ms May said the government was “absolutely right” to want to build more homes and to “level up across the country”.

But she added: “The problem with these proposals, the problem with this algorithm on housing numbers is that it doesn’t guarantee a single extra home being built and far from levelling up it forces more investment into London and the south. This is a mechanistic approach and it is ill-conceived.

“We do need to build more homes, but we won’t do that by forcing local authorities to grant more planning permissions to developers so they can build more homes to bring the price down – because developers simply won’t do it.

“What this algorithm does is build up planning permissions, it doesn’t build houses. A Cox Green parish council in my constituency have said: the real block to delivery is the developers’ appetite to build at a level that will affect house prices and their profit margins, and they say of the government’s approach: all this strategy will accomplish is to further undermine public confidence in the planning system.”

Ms May, now a backbencher representing her Maidenhead seat, is among Tory MPs worried about the impact of the planning reforms on their local areas.

Boris Johnson’s official spokesperson would not be drawn on Ms May’s remarks and said he had not heard them.

But the spokesperson added: “Unnecessary delays to the planning system are stopping us from building a better Britain.

“Communities are missing out on new schools and hospitals and better roads and the next generation will be deprived of the chance to buy their own homes if we cannot build many more well-designed, high-quality houses and flats.

“That’s why we must reform the planning system to cut red tape and make the system faster while ensuring councils and local people can decide where developments should and shouldn’t go.”

Some Conservatives believe that the planning system is to blame for the low rate of housebuilding Britain has suffered since the 1980s, and that reforming it will improve the situation.

Under the government’s plans, areas of the country would be designated either as protected, where development is restricted; renewal, where new building is subject to some controls; or a “growth area” where planning approval would automatically be granted for buildings that meet certain conditions.

The government’s white paper argues that this pre-classification of areas “could halve the time it takes to secure planning”, with the aim of speeding up the planning process.

But in practice many Tory MPs have reservations about the plan to grant more planning permissions and build in their local areas. Other critics also say other factors, such as limits on local authority housebuilding or profiting developers, are a bigger factor than the planning system.