According to an article in today’s Telegraph a cross party group of MP’s has been pretty critical of the National Planning Policy Framework, commenting amongst other things that it is “unhelpfully vague” and a “lawyer’s charter”.

The Local Government Committee go on to make the following recommendations:

* Scrapping a clause where developers are given a default “yes” to building in areas where councils have failed to draw up local plans to protect the environment.
* Reinstating a commitment to develop brownfield sites before greenfield ones to help encourage urban regeneration.
* Dropping a clause which allows development to go ahead if it is too expensive to make it sustainable.
* Replacing every sports field built on by developers.

These are all important points – how a default “yes” to building anything anywhere can ever be correct on a small and history packed island like ours escapes me and the “councils have failed to draw up local plans” part is just to open to abuse.

Nice to see this appeal to common-sense – I just hope the Government respond in an equally enlightened, level-headed manner.