Localism Bill sacrificing our countryside to the forces of the market | Simon Jenkins

"Direct action of a new army of Swampies may soon be only defense of conservation". Photograph: Christopher Thomond the Guardian

With Parliament in recess the Government this week sneak to the most surprising change the face of England in half a century. A "national planning policy framework" replaces all the previous regulation and encouraged the construction provided that the market has fundamentally in two thirds of the rural England outside national parks, green belts and areas of natural beauty. Farms, forests, hills, valleys, coasts and estuaries are at the mercy of a "presumption for sustainable development". The "default answer" for any planning application is to be "Yes".

The Sustainable Word should never appear in an act of Parliament. It is a weasel word, an adjective does not qualify a noun but her slightly cleaned with vague political approval. Sustainability is the kind of Blairism which gave us reduction of humanitarian intervention in the war and looting. The only sustainable meadow is a meadow. Sustainable development is a contradiction in terms. It means development.

Localism bill now before the Parliament pending a straight from the developer. Drafted by the Secretary of local government, Eric Pickles, the Secretary of business, Vince Cable, emphasizes business and "national economic policy" on the conservation at all times. It is the result of intense pressure from the construction industry. Pickles and Cable are mere suppliers of construction plots to capitalist classes. The words and business development occur in the draft law 340 times, the word four field.

The draft law and adding violate the basic principle of planning, long-term of the Earth, the scarcest of resources use should take precedence over the right of an owner of benefits. Why there are no bungalows in the white cliffs of Dover and not wind farms in the Chiltern. That is why, when you see the Severn Valley, don't see Bristol merged with Gloucester.

Great champions of the rural areas, such as Octavia Hill, Oliver Rackham, Clough Williams-Ellis and Marion Shoard, sought a regime in which rural England kept its head above the tide of urbanization. Protection enshrined in the city of 1947 and law of the country and planning a presumption, given the irreversibility of urbanization, building on the ground.

All my life I have read bills parliamentary, but one Localism is the surrender of more horrible for a single lobby group that I know. It is a lot of garbage from cliché. States that the building should be acceptable "for the prosperity...... the people and places". Only needs to be sustainable economically, socially or environmentally: "components in an integrated manner, looking for solutions that offer multiple objectives", which means. Development need only show it is "planned and carried out in a responsible manner." There is no definition of "responsible way". Such vagueness puts every acre rural work such as "worth to try it".

Planning, once that proudly independent, is now effectively an arm of the Department of the Cable. It is said that "it should not act as an impediment to growth". This is the purpose of planning, which is to protect the public interest, irrespective of the market forces in his head. Its goal is to be an impediment.

Under the draft law the old top-level regional objectives and spatial strategies are scrapped, with the local authorities to write new based on what you want "local population". It is guided by "business forums" and Parish Councils. It can be any group of 21 people who "live or work" locally. These bleak, self-selected individuals are charged do not determine the local opinion, but the allocation of plots for the construction and promotion of even "more development in the local plan". In particular it should help to "offer" a 20% increase in land available for housing.

Does it must be a neighborhood so imprudent as to want to protect their environment, the planning authority is obliged to "satisfy the needs of local development" with "sufficient flexibility to respond to rapid changes in demand".? This confusion of the need and demand is an elementary economic HOWLER.

Still worse. Half of the Councils in England have no strategy plan at all. In this case, approval of planning is assumed. Also is to assume "provided that the plan is silent, indeterminate or if policies are obsolete," an impressive Orwellian phrase.

This Bill is philistine, an abuse of the local democracy and an invitation to corruption. His impact statement accepts that local voters can "resist development proposals that are not in keeping with its aspirations", in other words, can opt for conservation. However, when the appeal of the developers, the inspectors say that his duty is to grant to replace the national politics. The bias is shameful.

Two groups, in addition to the developers, will benefit. One is planning to lawyers, who will be rubbing their hands in glee and St. Eric saluting and San Vicente. The other will be a new army of "swampies", which will defend the England rural with the same anarchy as he is attacking it with Pickles. With the field against a return to the tape of options-and-expansion of the 1930s, litigation and direct action will be only defense of conservation.

There is no argument that the planning is too slow. It does not justify throwing baby, bath water and everything. There is no evidence that land shortage impedes growth. Casa-constructores and hypermarkets already hold large land banks. There is no "need" to build sites of green field anywhere in Great Britain. It is simply a "demand" for those who wish to benefit from it.

Now Earth probably more development of manufacturing and lying unused in England that never in the history. It is mostly served with infrastructure, housing, schools, and a population of working hand. It is by definition more sustainable countryside Virgin. It is there that planning must address the development.

Field needs sentimental defence. The majority of Britons are beautiful and wish to preserve. When Chipping Norton as a whole see what they have unleashed on its displacement acres it shall undoubtedly be horrified. But back to the NHS, forests, and education ministers hastily exploited by pressure groups in the brand.

This time is really important. So the field without protection to become the lasting victim of the credit crunch is tragic. Vince Cable last week had sponsored America be a slave to "some right nutters". So is he.

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