Planning Madness hits homes and language

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Planning madness hits homes and language, says AM

10/4/2006

Glyn Davies, Welsh Conservative AM for Mid and West Wales has described
the planning system as a blueprint for forcing up the price of housing in
rural Wales, undermining the Welsh Language and destabilising local
communities. He was speaking at a Mid Wales Regional Committee meeting in
Dolgellau when affordable housing in Rural Wales was the main issue on the
agenda.  He also believes the situation is worsening as Local Planning
Authorities become even more restrictive and inflexible.

Commenting after the meeting Glyn Davies, who is a former Chair of a Local
Planning Authority, an enthusiastic Welsh speaker and Chair of the
National Assembly's Environment, Planning and Countryside Committee, said:
"The Planning System, as presently set up, gives the state far too much
power to control and restrict the lives of individuals, families and
homeowners, and has created the present chaos in the housing market as
well as undermining the Welsh Language and the stability of local
communities. Local Planning Authorities are directed by central government
to suspend common sense and human decency in pursuit of centrally approved
Development Plans which works only in the confined space of the planner's
mind.

"Last Friday in Dolgellau, hands were being wrung about the plight of
young people needing homes in rural Wales, while 30 miles away in
Welshpool a Planning Authority was refusing to lift a condition on a young
couple's planning permission, the effect of which killed off their dream
of building a home on the site of the nursery business where they both
worked. "The position has been greatly worsened by new flood risk rules
which have effectively removed great swathes of land from development
zones throughout rural Wales, driving up shortages and prices to even
higher levels.

"What we have in Wales is a serious shortage of affordable housing which
has been created by the planning system and is being made worse by the
planning system. Local Planning Authorities are trapped in a state
sponsored straightjacket of planning madness which forces house prices out
of the reach of young people, which undermines the stability of local
communities and consequently damages the Welsh Language. We need a
complete rethink of planning policy."

http://www.newswales.co.uk/?section=Politics&F=1&id=8770