To build more houses we don’t need more planners, we need fewer pointless rules

The government seems to have woken up to the fact that there’s more to cutting red tape than fast-tracking major infrastructure. For small developers, there is a crazy maze to navigate to get permission for any small development.

There are noises about simplifying environmental compensation schemes. Good luck. When the Conservatives tried on nitrate mitigation, an EU regulation misapplied to housing instead of farming, there was a hysterical outcry about a loss of standards and betraying the natural environment.

When you put on a new regulation, however half-baked, it becomes a new standard. A whole single-issue industry and bureaucracy are created.

New regulations are catnip to regulators. A new issue turns up, make up a new set of regulations. If there aren’t new regulations, you can beef up the existing ones.

Design and Access Statements were set up in 2006 largely for disabled access. Now the ‘access’ bit has faded away as local authorities ask for more. One authority, saying they should be ‘short and concise’, asks how your couple of houses in a field will ‘value and embrace diversity and difference’. No surprise these often go to well over 100 pages.

As each coterie of specialists sets up their own set of regulations, their objective is just to protect their specialism. They have no perspective on the housing crisis. The result can be some bizarre contradictions.

If a tree is in the way, the logical answer is to fell it before the application

We want to repopulate town centres. Places where there is a natural hubbub. But noise regulators can tell you that doesn’t work because there would be too much noise for residents.

Flooding regulations for the so-called 100-year condition came in after the 2007 floods. But did anyone in 1925 have any idea what today’s environment would be like? Now, in places like Poole, new houses near the sea have to be raised two metres off the ground. With the promised deluge, the old town will be under water. The few residents left will be like climate refugees in their own town, surrounded by submerged, ruined houses.

You’ll have to report on all your trees on your site, even if not protected. Odds are, any consent will protect them. If a tree is in the way, the logical answer is to fell it before the application (as is your right). So contradicting the purpose of making the report.

A new constraint, Biodiversity Net Gain, might persuade you to keep the credit a tree gives you. But if your housing site has no biodiversity whatsoever and you want to plant a lot of trees, they count for nothing. The reason is, there can’t be bureaucrats coming round until 2055 to check the residents are taking care of them.

In the planning process, there are many more opportunities for control: planning conditions. These have become like another application, complete with their own fee.

A whole series of things can be put in.

You might have to get your gates approved, while on day one a resident can replace them without planning consent.

Surely, part of the answer is to tackle the granular inconsistencies, irrelevances, impracticalities and sectoral interests

Landscape officers have asked for lawns to be planted with wildflowers. Will they check that there isn’t a robot cutting the lawn to within millimetres of its life? Of course not, and if they did, could they do anything?

And then there are Building Regulations, with a whole new field of control. These seem to be mostly designed for major developments, needing Principal Designers and contracts signed for broadband that you won’t need for a year or two and can cancel any time you like.

In a regulation designed for glass-walled office blocks, you have to prove your houses won’t overheat in anticipation of a coming Mediterranean climate. But we don’t refer to what people do with things like shutters in the Mediterranean. You need a calculation for your simple houses with conventional windows that just shows what you knew already.

There is the notorious 1.1 m opening window height restriction on upper floors, introduced with no cogent evidence there was a problem. Questioned, there was ‘no apology’ for making things safer. This is an endless regression.

All architects will have their own stories. Put them into the comments.

The government wants to revive the fast-dwindling community of small developers, culled by the complexity and uncertainty of planning. Part of the answer proposed is more controllers.

Surely, part of the answer is to tackle the granular inconsistencies, irrelevances, impracticalities and sectoral interests. This will release more planning officer time and help to solve the housing crisis. We need an efficiency tsar to get down to the root and branch problems of over-regulation.