Former environment secretary calls for a more balanced approach
Edward Simpkins
John Gummer, the former environment secretary, has rapped the Tory environment spokesman John Redwood’s greenbelt proposals as being too extreme.
Writing in this week’s Estates Gazette (p77), Conservative MP Gummer says: “It is always better to take a measured view on planning.”
He writes: “It should be a positive desire to regenerate the town that makes us build on brownfield land, not a negative diktat to ban and abhor building anywhere else.” He adds that each proposal should be taken on its merits and to do otherwise is undemocratic.
Redwood denied his ideas were anti-development: “I’m all in favour of your developer friends doing well. We are all in favour of taking proposals on their merits as long as they are in the plan. We are saying that we wish to make some improvements to some, not all, green belts. We are offering people the choice and we think it is a very measured and sensible proposal.”
But he did concede the policy was designed as a vote winner. “That’s one of the ideas. We are in the business of listening to people and giving them what they want, within reason.”
Gummer, who is widely credited with ending the out-of-town development boom under the Tories and with largely setting the course being steered by the Labour government, also writes: “Swing too far in either direction and the system ceases to be a way of resolving conflicts and becomes instead a method of imposing dogmas.”
Redwood interview
