The Joy of Planning

As a result of the coronavirus we’re all - where possible at least - working from home. As we all return to our full employment the bet is that we’ll all be working from home more than we used to and perhaps less than we are now. Well, OK, facts have changed and so minds are.

Britain builds the smallest new housing in Europe. Some 80 square metres is the average of a new dwelling. We’re told that there is a thriving industry in three quarters sized furniture specifically designed and sold to be installed in show homes - to make them appear less of the chicken coops they are.

Some 3% of our green and pleasant land is covered with housing. As we’ve noted here before more of Surrey is underneath golf courses than is under that housing that isn’t allowed to be built there. For the planners have decreed that Britons must be herded into that smallest housing in Europe in order to preserve the Green Belt. Or perhaps be punished for the temerity of whatever sins it is we’re all guilty of.

We are now all to work more from those homes that cats cannot be swung in.

So, clearly, those regulations on housing density - the small size is indeed as a result of government’s insistence on how many dwellings must, must, be put in a hectare of land that gains planning permission - are going to be changed, aren’t they?

Which is where we get to a major problem with planning overall. Because of course those housing density rules aren’t going to be changed. Facts may have, minds in one sense have, but the rules and regulations that plan us ain’t. That is, the one thing that planning doesn’t do is actually plan.

Britons are going to be working from home more often. Planning law is not going to change to increase the size of housing. What a lovely example of how planning doesn’t, you know, plan?