In recent months, I have written a couple of columns setting out my exasperation at top-down diktats from central government, which have fundamentally undermined the planning process in Cornwall and England.
The housing target for Cornwall was 2,625 new residential units per annum but, at the end of 2024, the UK Government imposed a new annual target of 4,421. This means that the unitary authority is unable to “demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites” and Ministers have decreed that key “local” housing policies should no longer carry weight.
As a consequence, in my home parish, a range of developments are coming forward on land excluded from unrestricted development in our local Neighbourhood Plan that was supported by over 90% of local people in a referendum. And many are being allowed, irrespective of local views and the opposition of parish councillors and myself as the local Cornwall Councillor.
Looking further afield, I was horrified to see a proposal for a ”£100 billion forest city eco-plan” of 400,000 new properties on the Suffolk-Cambridgeshire border, which would apparently incorporate “England’s biggest nature reserve.” A local MP has slammed the proposal, saying it would not be an “eco-friendly utopia” but would be a “dystopian, state-subsidised concrete sprawl.”
But someone who is in favour of the development is Tim Smit, the founder of the Eden Project. In a foreword to a representation submitted to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, he said – in his usual fanciful hyperbole – that “it is in the national interest that we put our faith in people and organisations that believe that the future remains ours to make … all across the country people are listless in the face of inertia. Forest City provides a creative spark, an imaginative leap and a roadmap for a beautiful future with a new way to live …”
It is just that I remember all the promises about the so-called eco-town near Penwithick, which for a period involved Mr Smit and the Eden Project through the Eco-bos Development Limited. The eco-town development – now rebranded as the West Carclaze Garden Village – is really not what was originally spun and, in my view, is a characterless development, simply comprising rows of square boxes.
And then there have been the reports of the Housing Secretary, Steve Reed, speaking at a “curry night” organised by the pro-development Labour “Yes In My Backyard,” at which developers paid £2,000 each for seats at a “corporate table” shared by Mr Reed.
This is all so wrong and the UK Government really does need to rethink its whole approach to planning.
Article published in the Cornish Guardian (15th April 2026) and West Briton (16th April 2026) newspapers