Garden Grabbing Halted!!

This piece of news had passed me by until this week when an unfortunate client came unstuck as we discovered its implications.
 
The new coalition has changed the classification of garden land from ‘brownfield’ to ‘greenfield’. In doing so, they have given Councils much more power to refuse planning permission on the grounds of changing the character of a neighbourhood. The legislation was introduced about a month ago to take immediate effect and as with all such scenarios, there are winners and losers.
 
Many people feel very strongly that this is how it should be, particularly if they back onto a green and pleasant aspect that they feel could be (or already has been) spoilt by a new home or homes being built on it.
 
On the flip side, those people who live on land with this potential investment avenue deem it perfectly reasonable that they should look to take advantage and suspect those that complain would do exactly the same thing if the boot were on the other foot.
 
Smaller developers, whose livelihoods are based on this size of venture, are bound to be pretty miffed about their future prospects too. Many are in limbo with land deals that have already been agreed, but without full planning they may well now not pass the final stages.
 
The coalition are trying to give communities the control over what does or doesn’t get built in their areas and this is the first of a number of wholesale changes to planning being brought in.
 
The principal seems fine, but in my experience there is always some amount of local dissent about most developments. That would mean next to nothing would get built at a time we have a national shortage of housing. This is one of the reasons that prices keep rising and first time buyers struggle to get on the ladder. It’s a difficult balancing act for those in power when you can see both sides of the argument are quite reasonable, but for now the winners are most definitely those who prefer the status quo.