The planning laws in this country are broken. What started as a reasonable attempt to recognise and deal with the externalities of construction has turned into a system where councils extort money out of companies in exchange for planning permission, communities are being destroyed because permission is given to flats but not houses, and building the buildings businesses need takes months, if not years.

Planning might seem an innocuous, minor issue. But it pervades the entire economy, just like government-set interest rates. And it’s stifling the economy. It is planning laws that prevent people building new private roads, schools and hospitals.

However, abolishing planning would open up a whole load of other problems. So, as a start, I suggest a very simple, subtle reform.

Abolish zoning. Zoning is where certain buildings or areas are only allowed to be used for certain purposes. By getting rid of these laws, we could enable a firm of solicitors to set up business in what was previously a residential house. We would enable the top floors of offices to be converted into accommodation or bars. Small schools could set up in commercial or residential property. Tower blocks could be converted into hospitals.

It should be legal to use a building for any purpose, and to gut and remodel the inside of the building, as long as the outside fabric and appearance of the building, and what comes out of the building (e.g. smells – though this should really be dealt with by the centuries-old nuisance law), remain unchanged. This would be a great start. By just abolishing zoning, we would get huge advantages without having to worry about people building tower blocks, chip shops or sewage treatment works in residential streets.

Tags: planning

This entry was posted by Hugo Hadlow on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.