Your excellent Brickonomics blog entry (23 February, building.co.uk) highlights the sheer naivity of those putting forward this New Utopia planning system.

It is true that New Labour has wrecked the pre-2004 system whilst only 15% of planning authorities have even got a core strategy adopted - the fundamental document in the bureaucratic and confusing replacement local development frameworks - after having six years to do it it in. But, having found ourselves in Labour鈥檚 deep hole, not only should we stop digging, but we shouldn鈥檛 dig an even deeper hole to get the soil to fill in the first one 鈥� and then jump into it!

The sensible response to a major mistake is to revert to what prevailed before and correct recognised defects in it - there was little wrong with that system apart from the way the policies were obstructively applied by many authorities. There are even bigger problems in the proposed new system, involving giving totalitarian powers to unelected bureaucrats. The essence of democracy is accountability and a right of independent appeal against the unjust decisions of unelected bureaucrats. That is to be removed in the case of planning decisions except where it can be proven that the decision was not in accord with the local plan, or correct procedure was not followed.

But there are many other factors involved in planning proposals, and these will simply not be allowed in future as grounds of appeal. If Labour had proposed this utterly Stalinist planning system, the Tories would have been waving their order papers like men and women demented.

There will be few houses built unless this madcap new system is torpedoed, and the entire construction industry, together with its supportive professions and businesses, needs to get organised to achieve that before irreparable damage is done by our politicians.

Trevor Dennington

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