When our green fields become battlefields

The term “Nimby” was first used in political debate some 25 years ago, by the late Nicholas Ridley, then environment secretary. In characteristically bullish style, he took on the critics of his plans for a network of new towns. “Our English countryside is one of the most heavily man-made habitats in Europe,” he said. “To make it into a green museum would be to belie its whole history.”

This was a courageous policy, since opposition to development was strongest in the Conservative Party’s rural heartlands. There was, therefore, a sense of poetic justice in the shires when it transpired that Mr Ridley had himself objected to a housing development near his Cotswolds home. Not long afterwards, he was out of office; and the shortfall in housing, especially in the south of England, has never been made up. Indeed, the pressure is now even greater, due to population growth caused in large part by an unplanned increase in immigration under Labour. Although the last government set out to plug the gap, it ended up building fewer homes than in any peacetime year since 1924.

Now another Tory-led administration has set out to convince rural England that its green fields and bucolic vistas should not be sacrosanct. But it is not making a very good fist of it. Ministers have unwisely picked a fight with such august bodies as the National Trust and Campaign to Protect Rural England over proposed changes to the planning regime, which are intended to make building easier. The most important reform is a new “presumption in favour of sustainable development”. There is deep concern that this provision will skew the system too much in favour of the developer, not to mention an obvious conflict with the Coalition’s localist agenda of giving communities more power over their own affairs.

Greg Clark, the minister for planning policy, yesterday criticised the National Trust for making “risible” claims about the reforms and accused those who wanted to preserve their towns “in aspic” of “nihilistic selfishness”. His departmental colleague, Bob Neill, recently claimed that a “Left-wing smear campaign” to undermine the policy was under way. This sort of intemperate language seems designed to close down legitimate debate on a subject of great importance to people who are understandably worried about the new regime’s effect. The Government’s point that unwieldy planning laws are holding back economic growth is a powerful one; to that end, reducing the relevant documentation from more than 1,000 pages to just 52 is a welcome cut in red tape. But if ministers believe there is a strong case in favour of building more houses in the countryside, they should make it in a more measured way.