If anything is likely to raise the hackles of a local community, it is a “controversial” development in its back yard. While developers are often seen as pitting themselves against the communities in whose world they wish to build, communities can themselves be divided, with advocates for schemes being shouted down by those opposing them. With so many stakeholders and so many views, such divisions are unsurprising. However, in the eyes of Nick Raynsford they are getting worse.

In his recently published interim review of England’s planning system, the former Labour housing minister describes the ferocity of division in today’s planning debates as “unprecedented”. Throw in widespread public disenchantment with the planning process and its outcomes, he argues, and you get a system that has become unfit for purpose.

At the outset of his 72-page report for the Town and Country Planning Association, Raynsford says that planning, at its best, can have a transformational role in shaping where we live and our quality of life. But he believes its achievements are increasingly being challenged by powerful voices questioning planning’s very purpose “and arguing for the relaxation or repeal of the structures and powers that support the planning process in England”. In their view, says Raynsford, “planning is at best slow, cumbersome and bureaucratic, an obstacle to getting things done, or at worst ‘the enemy of enterprise’ which needs to be dismantled”.

“People often only interact with the planning system if something has gone wrong or there are objections”

Nicola White, Arup

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