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Contact Damian Hinds
In May 2025, I wrote to Damian Hinds MP in response to his kind invitation to meet and discuss planning issues. Rather than proceeding immediately to a meeting, I provided a detailed written submission outlining my key concerns and the comprehensive reforms I am proposing.
This approach reflects my view that structured, well-prepared discussions—supported by clear agenda-setting documents such as my Planning Integrity and Accountability Framework (PIAF)—offer the best opportunity for meaningful engagement.
By sharing my framework in advance, I aim to ensure that any future meeting can be as focused and productive as possible, with both sides fully prepared to address substantive issues and questions.
My letter focuses on exposing the structural dysfunctions within the current planning system, particularly how it disadvantages the public while enabling developers and other privileged actors to exploit systemic weaknesses. I highlighted concerns about opaque decision-making, misplaced assumptions of developer good faith, and the absence of meaningful deterrence when planning obligations are breached.
At the heart of my submission is the principle that:
You cannot regulate for delivery while protecting those who profit from non-delivery. Until speculative resistance is broken—through stronger controls, enforcement, and a realignment of incentives—housing targets will remain little more than numbers on a broken scoreboard.
To restore fairness, accountability, and functional land use in the UK planning system by ensuring land is developed responsibly, transparently, and in alignment with public need — not held speculatively or manipulated for private timing advantages.
To close the loopholes in viability assessments that allow developers to reduce or eliminate affordable housing obligations, delay delivery, or inflate costs and profits. VAP reasserts local authority control, mandates transparency, and ensures the public shares in development gains — not just in its risks.
To expose and dismantle coordinated developer abuse within the planning system — including shell company networks, false independence of applicants, and systematic delivery failure. CEAP provides investigatory tools, misconduct tracking, and enterprise-wide enforcement to stop abuse at its organisational root.
To modernise the UK’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) screening process and infrastructure analysis tools. This portfolio ensures that cumulative development, real-world service capacity, and environmental resilience are fully factored into planning decisions — especially in vulnerable rural or edge-of-settlement locations.
To replace subjective and inconsistent “planning balance” judgements with a national, transparent, and measurable evaluation system. PERA empowers both planning officers and the public with predictable tools, grounded in risk sensitivity, to ensure fairer and more accountable decisions.
To ensure that public consultation in planning is meaningful, accessible, and democratically legitimate — not procedural or tokenistic. DPP empowers citizens to participate with clarity, confidence, and traceable impact, transforming planning from an expert-controlled process into a shared civic space.
To rebalance housing delivery and spatial planning across the UK by accounting for internal migration trends, digital-era working patterns, and over-concentration in overstretched areas. This portfolio ensures that planning becomes a national strategy, not a disconnected set of local burdens — tackling both overdevelopment and under-utilisation.
To restore public sector leadership in development by equipping local and regional authorities with tools to assemble land, directly deliver homes, and intervene where private actors delay, speculate, or fail to act. PSD ensures the state can lead or rescue development in the public interest — not just wait and hope.
To raise environmental standards in housing delivery by ensuring that carbon intensity, energy infrastructure, and future efficiency are not afterthoughts — but central, enforceable parts of the planning test. This portfolio prevents development that undermines climate targets and embeds long-term environmental failure.
To build an oversight ecosystem that makes planning enforcement possible, public performance visible, and trust in the system durable. PGO introduces independent roles, institutional audit tools, and national transparency protocols that turn planning from a paper system into an accountable one.
To reward integrity and reliability in development by introducing a national accreditation system that distinguishes trustworthy developers from repeat manipulators. TDA ensures that compliance, transparency, and delivery are not just ethical expectations — but pathways to faster approvals and better access.
