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Government proposals to rewrite England's planning laws are a builders' charter says CIWEM executive director Nick Reeves

Has someone been sniffing Colombian marching powder? It's the only explanation. I've been reading parliamentary bills for years. The localism bill now before parliament (as I write) is the most flagrant concession to a single lobby I know. It's a heap of cliché. Worse still, it's downright dangerous. This government is in danger of being skewered on its own hubris. It must listen to the planning, conservation and environment professions who - with the National Trust and the CPRE - have come out against it.

Drafted by the communities' secretary, Eric Pickles, and business secretary, Vince Cable, it gifts business and economic policy over the environment at every turn. It is the fruit of intense and shameless lobbying by the construction industry and by the British Property Federation, which represents developers. Pickles and Cable have become purveyors of building plots to the capitalist classes. The words business and development occur 340 times in the document, the word countryside just four. The bill and its draft 'National Planning Policy Framework' ride a coach and horses through sustainable development. Sustainable and development are now a contradiction in terms. If Pickles and Cable get their way there will only be development.  

Last July the government published concrete proposals - in the unfortunate phrase of one minister - to rewrite England's planning laws. It replaces all previous regulation and encourages building wherever the market takes it, crucially in the two-thirds of rural England outside national parks, green belts, and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Forests, farms, parks, playing fields, hills, valleys, flood plains, estuaries and coasts will be at the mercy of a 'presumption in favour of sustainable development'. The default response to a planning application will be 'yes'. The response to this latest piece of legislative vandalism has been visceral and has united people and organisations of all shades of the political spectrum in condemnation and common cause. Who wants to see bungalows on the white cliffs of Dover?

Using the cosy language of localism, 'Big Society' and sustainability, the document sets out with a decent ambition - to involve the people affected by planning decisions in the process of making them. It simplifies a complex system which, some argue, is an unnecessary restraint on economic growth. Its critics (and I'm among them) say it threatens disaster for large parts of rural England (and precious green oases in urban settlements), presaging almost uncontrolled sprawl. The draft national planning policy framework is caught at the crossroads between communities, the state and the marketplace. The fear is that the latter will triumph.

In the 1930s Britain built its way out of recession; and in the post-war period too. John Betjeman's Metroland was the result. There is more than a hint of that in the new proposals, which have been subject to contradictory pressures inside a mongrel government. Some departments have emphasised the right of people to decide what is and is not built near their homes, which might lead to less development, not more. Others, such as the Treasury and the business department, under fire for the stagnant pace of economic growth, want to ease England's exceptionally tight planning restrictions without any thought to our natural capital.

One reason why this is such an expensive country to live in is the restricted supply of property at a time of population growth and high demand for stuff. There is nothing progressive, in a nation with a growing population, about choking off the supply of new homes, which only further enriches people who already own property. And if Cambridge, for instance, were allowed to become a well-planned science city of one million people, rather than a small medieval core surrounded by fenland, Britain would undoubtedly be richer in immediate economic terms - but not environmental ones. This is the stark choice.

Not all building is bad and not all green land (not the same as greenbelt) is sacrosanct. What matters is the process by which development is decided and where it takes place. On this the new proposals are badly deficient. They have not only been attacked by the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the National Trust, but professional bodies too. They take the view that 'economic growth is generally set to trump the aspirations of local people expressed in local and neighbourhood plans'. Polite talk of community empowerment and sustainable development may turn out to mean very little when set against a wealthy and determined developer with very sharp elbows (and the ear of ministers).

The crucial change in the new proposals is what ministers call 'a presumption in favour of sustainable development'. In short, this means proposals that comply with as yet ill-defined local plans (half of local authorities do not have one, by the way) will get an almost automatic go-ahead. There will be restrictions, especially in National Parks and in greenbelts. And the local plans, which must comply with national guidelines, will not allow a free-for-all. But as it stands the proposed planning framework is far too feeble when it comes to specifying how local plans will be drawn up and enforced. It also supports a category of neighbourhood plan that could allow development on the say-so of Parish Councils and Business Forums of self-appointed local people of questionable provenance, motive and purpose. And they must help deliver a 20 per cent increase in land available for housing.  To my mind, this sounds like a builders' charter. 'Neighbourhoods will have the power to promote more development than is set out in the strategic policies of the local plan,' say the proposals.

The government says it is being misunderstood, that it wants simpler, cheaper and better development, not more.  Perhaps it does; but development is something that cannot be reversed and planning should involve restriction as much as encouragement. As things stand, the presumption in favour of sustainable development will reward powerful and hungry developers, while neglecting sustainability and environmental considerations. That is the precise opposite of everything ministers promised and is a two-fingered salute to the Natural Environment White Paper. Instead of a reverse in the decline of Britain's natural capital we will see an acceleration of it. 

There is no argument that planning is too slow. That does not justify throwing out baby, bath water and all. There is no evidence that a shortage of green land is impeding growth. House-builders and hyper-markets already hold huge land banks. There is no 'need' to build on greenfield sites anywhere in Britain. There is merely a 'demand' from those wishing to profit from it. There is probably more developable land left over from manufacture and lying unused in England than ever before in history. By definition it is more sustainable than virgin countryside and urban green space. That is where planning should direct development.

Countryside needs no sentimental defence. Most of us find it beautiful and understand its vital contribution to biodiversity and human happiness. When the Chipping Norton set see what has been unleashed on their rolling acres they will surely be appalled.

The bill (and its national planning framework) is philistine, an abuse of local democracy and an invitation to corruption. Its impact statement accepts that local electors may 'resist development proposals that are not in line with their aspirations'.  In other words, they may opt for conservation. Yet when developers appeal, inspectors are told that their duty is to concede on grounds of overriding national policy. The bias is shameless. Planning, once proudly independent, is now effectively an arm of Vince Cable's business department. It is told that it 'must not act as an impediment to growth'. This stands on its head the purpose of planning, which is to safeguard the public interest regardless of market forces. Its whole point is to be an impediment.

But this time it really matters. For unprotected countryside and urban green space to become the last victim of the credit crunch is shocking, tragic even. Development that works must pass the triple bottom-line test - by showing that it meets the needs of people and the environment, as well as the economy. The framework must not put considerations of profit and driving the economy above those of people and places. Famously, Vince Cable patronised America for being in thrall to 'a few rightwing nutters'. He needs to look closer to home.