Minister moves to reassure planning critics

LONDON (Reuters) - Proposals for the biggest shake-up to the building planning system in decades are not an attempt to trick those who cherish the nation's countryside, the minister responsible for the changes said on Thursday.

"They will see when the policy framework is adopted, that all of our intentions are making sure that we can have homes and jobs and we can do so in a way that safeguards, what is very precious, our natural and our historic environment," Planning Minister Greg Clark told Reuters.

Senior ministers said they would press ahead with proposals despite criticism that it would blight what remains of the nation's dwindling countryside in favour of greater development.

The government said that changes are vital to help to revive a faltering economy and to make housing more affordable. It says planning delays cost the economy 3 billion pounds per year.

Clark, a Conservative, defended the 52-page draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) on Thursday and suggested that the current debate is based on a misperception around the government's intentions.

"It's better to make changes that you know are necessary rather than simply tinker around with a broken system in order to avoid any controversy," he said, speaking after a presentation at a British Property Federation event.

"If you start with over 1,000 pages and you come to distillation ... then inevitably it is the case that not everything is maybe expressed in the clearest way but that doesn't signal any malign intent or signal any hidden agenda to subvert the process," he told the seminar.

The Director-General of the National Trust, Fiona Reynolds, said she had been "horrified by the draft" because the document focussed on promoting the economy over environmental concerns.

The debate over planning has been centred around one short phrase -- a "presumption in favour of sustainable development," which government critics say will prompt a free-for-all.

"The intention...is not in any way to provide a loophole through which alien developments can be progressively imposed, rather the reverse," Clark said.

U-TURN

But the National Trust's Reynolds argued that the spirit of localism, which the government is heavily promoting, should enable Local Authorities to build less, if they so choose.

"Don't tell Local Authorities they have to promote more developments not less, there will be some Local Authorities who want less because they are so passionate about their green fields," she said, with the National Trust boasting nearly 4 million members.

The business community and housebuilding industry fiercely defend the proposals, which will overhaul the current system that has seen new homes built in England and Wales dwindle to chronic low levels in recent years.

"This is a country that can ill afford a u-turn on what, at the end of the day, is a modest and rational plan to speed up rather than ditch our development control process," said Adam Marshall, director of policy and external affairs at the British Chamber of Commerce, speaking at the event.

"This is also a story of small and medium-sized companies who have lost confidence in the system, due to its ever-greater cost, complexity, uncertainty, and politicisation," he added.

The recent debate, also fuelled by the Daily Telegraph launching its "Hands Off Our Land" campaign, urging ministers to rethink the legislation that is at consultation stage, prompted the Prime Minister to pen a letter to the National Trust this week to reassure them that the British landscape should be "cherished and protected."

Clark was upbeat that the planning reform will go ahead -- with the consultation period set to close on October 17 -- though declined to comment on whether current criticism around proposals over brownfield land, housing targets and sustainable development will lead to a modification of the policy.

"I think (the misperception) is already being corrected through discussions like this," he told Reuters.

(Reporting by Lorraine Turner)