If anyone thought that by putting a Conservative with a large 'C' in charge of planning we would get conservative, with a small 'c', policies on issues like rural development then they must be sorely disappointed. Tory Nick Boles, the planning minister, seems to go out of his way to undermine the notion that the Conservative Party in government sees protecting the rural acres from development as a priority.
His latest provocative statement promoting building on green spaces came at the weekend when it emerged he had written a letter to a concerned fellow Conservative MP saying that developers should be allowed to build on fields if they are 'boring'. One obvious question arises from that statement, made in a letter to Conservative Health Minister Anna Soubry, MP: Who gets to decide if a piece of countryside is 'boring' or not?
Because if it is Mr Boles then, given that he has already made his views on the importance of new homes v open spaces abundantly clear, not everyone would trust his judgment. It is worrying too, that the planning minister, who is charged with implementing policy based on a set of rules, should propose such a subjective means of determining which parts of the countryside can be built on and which cannot.
Mrs Soubry, MP for Broxtowe in the East Midlands, is understandably concerned about greenbelt land that protects parts of her constituency from the city of Nottingham, to the east – something that David Cameron has insisted would be protected. Her question, however, about building on open land could have come from any MP, including many in the Westcountry, whose constituents are deeply worried about creeping urbanisation.
Few issues raise rural hackles with more regularity than building on green fields. Nimby – not in my back yard – may routinely be used as a term of mild abuse aimed at people who are accused of wanting to keep their own piece of the countryside unsullied by new building. Yet one man's Nimby is another man's conservationist.
And conservation of the countryside, for environmental, agricultural and aesthetic reasons, would have been something many voters would have looked to a Conservative minister to support. When they look at Mr Boles for that, however, it seems they look in vain.
He is right to highlight the need for more homes in rural and urban areas and right to also suggest that a range of buildings, from farmers' barns to empty shops, could be pressed into service for residential use He – and the Government as a whole – also deserve credit for suggestion that capital investment can help lift us out of recession. But devising dubious measures to determine if planning permission should be granted, based on the entirely subjective question of whether a piece of land is 'boring' or not, won't do. Mr Boles needs to show those who care about the countryside a great deal more respect.