The government’s proposals for planning reforms were set out in the planning white paper nearly a year ago amid a fanfare of publicity, with the prime minister referring to “radical reform unlike anything we have seen since the Second World War”. However, with a colossal 44,000 responses to the consultations, the government still appears to be mulling things over as we have heard very little since.

Could this be due to the high level of controversy that the proposals provoked, which may not have been entirely anticipated by the distinguished panel behind the white paper? Given the aim of the proposals was to speed up the planning process and housing delivery, this mute delay does not augur well, and there will be a lot of catching-up to do in order to achieve the white paper’s projection of “one million homes by the end of parliament”.

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