Architects and planners have hit out after the man appointed to set up the government’s new Office for Place expressed his support for the government’s controversial policy of expanding permitted development rights.

Nicholas Boys Smith, former chair of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission and now chair of the advisory board overseeing the set up of the Office for Place, also put his support behind the government’s controversial planning reform agenda contained in last year’s white paper.

Housing architect and former RIBA president Ben Derbyshire said Boys Smith’s comments indicated the commission was actually “a Trojan Horse” for radical reform of planning, while others said it was “perverse” to expand permitted development while claiming to be committed to beauty.

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