From yesterday's City AM:
GEORGE Osborne is pushing for sweeping changes to Britain’s planning regime as part of a package of low-cost measures designed to kick-start growth, City A.M. has learned.
He wants to make it much easier for companies to obtain planning consent for new projects – even if they go against the wishes of local residents – allowing them to expand their businesses while also providing a timely boost for the construction sector. The changes would also enable ministers to fast-track large scale infrastructure like nuclear power stations.
Yup, it's as simple as that. Deregulate a bit and allow (or encourage) people to put land to its optimum use and the economy takes care of itself; no government expenditure required (and if you play your cards right, the government ends up collecting more money). There's always a 'but' though, and a big fat morbidly obese one at that...
But the Treasury’s decision to try to overhaul the planning system has put it on a collision course with Eric Pickles, the communities secretary. It sits uneasily with his localism agenda, which aims to devolve control over planning decisions to local communities which are often resistant to building projects.
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Henry George Osborne
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15 comments:
"Deregulate a bit and allow..." Y'see that's what really annoys me. It isn't "allow" at all, it's "stop stopping me". That's the problem. The bloody authoritarians are always trying to 'allow' me to do things. Listen matey, I'll do exactly what I like thank you very much. And because unlike you I am responsible I'll do exactly what I like in a way that does not upset you (unless 'of course' you are a home-owner-ist).
"even if they go against the wishes of local residents".. so what happened to the Big Society?
"Putting communities in charge of planning"
Seems like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.
I'm starting to think Buckingham Palace has to go. It means no one can build anything high on some of the most valuable land in the UK.
Send the Windsors back to Windsor and have a planning auction. The people that will pay most for a square metre are those that will build the highest.
There seems to be unlimited international demand for central London flats, so we'll earn some fx too.
If it is really done not just talked about it will work.
There are other things which would also work - firing the elfin safety mafia, increasing our supply of low cost nuclear power, cutting government's spending of 50% of all the money, investing in technology prizes, even simply quitting the EU and getting rid of its regulations which destroy 5% of the economy.
Each of them individually would get us into growth. Combined they would get us growing significantly faster than China.
SL, AFAIK, the lack of tall buildings round Buck House has far more to do with the neighbouring landowner's dislike of tall buildings than anything the Queen has said or done. You can see where the estate of said landowner (the Duke of Westminster) ends as that where the tall buildings begin.
"There's always a 'but' though, and a big fat morbidly obese one at that..."
Only if you assume the Pickles reforms will be a roadblock to development and redevelopment. That isn't guaranteed but the City AM article seems certain it will be.
More localism in planning could see sharp elbowed nimbys out-numbered by those who want new things and rebuilding and the economic activity they bring, those that aren't so precious about old buildings or having an element of control over other people doing things on their own land, those who aren't so concerned about freezing high streets in some period or other.
*If* the plan is to get the State out of the way a bit more the possibilities are endless rather than predetermined to be nimbyism.
L, good point, the key is for the government (acting on behalf of special interest groups, i.e. themselves, quangocrats, corporatists and NIMBYs) to "stop stopping people", but they now that they get no credit for that.
S, it is the fundamental schism in the Conservative Party - they sort of want to be economically liberal but they also want to keep the vested interests, in particular the Home-Owner-Ists, happy.
SL, I don't know if the Queen gets involved in such grubby matters, but her errant eldest son is at the forefront of this nonsense.
NC, yup, agreed to all that.
B, do you mean that buildings are lower on the D of W's patch? Why would he do that? Or do you mean that they are higher on his patch but he prevents other people from building upwards (which would make sense)?
G, I am quite convinced that most people (in England at least - Bayard reckons it not so bad in Wales) have been totally brainwashed into NIMBYism, even though it ultimately makes them worse off.
Mark, they are indeed lower on the D of W's patch. It must be a personal thing. Perhaps he just doesn't like tall buildings and reckons he has enough money already.
B, thanks for clarification. I'll bear that in mind.
Er No!
While private property in land exists, this will make a teeny weeny bit of difference, granted, if it works out perfectly.
Production and exchange will go on a bit more easily.
That will increase the value of land.
Rent will go up.
Wealth divide will expand.
Poverty will increase.
Industrial recessions will happen more quickly and deeply.
Wages slavery will be even the norm for even the upper middle class of home-owner-ists.
More wars for land and resources will occur.
And so on. The Law of Rent. You should know this by now.
GREAT IDEA! GO FOR IT
I recognise fully that almost everyone will think this is preposterous. Take a look around... carefully ... for infinite evidence.
PS Boy George has arrived here by accident. Any good decisions he makes will also be an accident. He has yet to get lucky. This is another case in point.
Oops
@Lola - agreed. If I am free and harming no one, by what right do they have the power to allow me to do this or that?
Also regulation of a privatised natural monopoly ALWAYS tends to corruption of government, far more so than adopting the function within government. (which still has the tendency but far less so)
Less-restrictive planning and local concerns surely must find common ground to avoid the present obstructions and Nimbys which limit enterprise.
Local bureaucracies rightly should be nervous - their cosy, padded existence may finally be challenged.
RS, agreed with all of your first comment apart from this: "More wars for land and resources will occur.". It is a tendency for rulers of failing states to wish to overthrow more successful countries. As Georgist countries would be more successful, there is every reason to assume that non-Georgist external or internal enemies will seek to overthrow them.
Ed P, in England, NIMBYs and local bureaucracies are two sides of the same coin - both have the aim of stifling any new development or innovation.
Gareth,
The problem is that since we started to get reliable cars (around the mid-80s), people have been able to choose growth in places other than the town where they live.
That's why Dyson didn't get his new factory in Malmesbury. The people in Malmesbury didn't want their faux bucolic rural idyll spoilt to give work to people who were coming to Malmesbury (from places like Bristol, Swindon or the midlands). But knowing what Malmesbury was like in the 70s, they would have bitten their hands off.
JT, that's a good answer. I knew that G was missing something I just couldn't quite work out what.
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