Eric is clearly bored out of his mind. He’s been raging around about parking, yellow lines, even about bin collections in Wales – but then he likes to bash the Welsh. In my mind, he is truly the minister of hot air and no substance.
In recent months he has taken meddling in applications for really rather small gypsy and traveller sites. Now he has somewhat imperiously declared that he will call in planning appeals for small renewable energy projects for his own decision (£). When he first came to office, Pickles said he would only use this right occasionally. Now, it seems, such call ins are becoming his hobby.
I can only guess Pickles is doing this because he is bored. He claims he is doing so because he wants:
To give particular scrutiny to planning appeals involving renewable energy developments so that I can consider the extent to which the new practice guidance is meeting the government’s intentions.
Nonsense.
The communities department is not so broke that Eric can’t appoint a researcher or pay a consultant to trawl through decisions. It is anyway a non-sequitur that in deciding decisions himself that he will somehow understand what is happening at local level.
In reality everything Eric does shows that he has no real interest what is happening at local level. He just wants to tell councils what to do. He is a centralist. An authoritarian. It was his lot to introduce localism to government, but he’s done his best to undermine it ever since.
Pickles can’t even get housing right. He is on his third housing minister in three years. Sacking the steady if a little dull Mark Prisk and demoting the role sends a message that housing policy is not that important to him. That may be the case, but it is important to communities.
The Tory side of this coalition government no longer believes in communities. If there is a Conservative government after the next election, we can expect that the Department of Communities and Local Government will be abolished.
But there are real dangers if this were to happen. If communities are important, they should have their locus in government.
The Home Office harasses people that it thinks do not belong to our communities. Work and Pensions is busy putting the screw on the poorest it believes languish at the expense of the state. The Equality and Human Rights Commission champions some of the essential rights, but it’s rather bizarrely parked under the lightweight Department for Culture, Media & Sport. The Ministry of Justice is working hard to become the department that denies justice for the most vulnerable. Local councils in many Tory shires are rushing to withdraw support from their local communities because the poor and the vulnerable cost them more.
It’s pretty tough out there at the moment for those most at risk in our communities. But it’s not just the most vulnerable that need support. Communities are vital for the wellbeing of society and of individuals. Whether we are rich, poor, vulnerable or thriving, if we don’t support each other in the street where we live, the town where we shop and the area where we feel we belong, then the state and individuals just get bigger burdens.
Central government can’t create communities. But with so many national policies and local decisions undermining the fabric of society, we are truly in a new Thatcher age. Maggie said there is no such thing as society. Pickles has yet to say there is no such thing as a community, but I wonder if the words are already on his lips.
But I for one believe in communities. I think that having a department that champions communities in Whitehall is a good thing. It’s a vital thing.
So wake up Eric Pickles. Concentrate on the important things in your portfolio. Abandon your micromanagement of planning and please let DCLG become the department of communities again.
* Andy Boddington is a Lib Dem councillor in Shropshire. He blogs at andybodders.co.uk.
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10 Comments
Pickles is a social vandal – much more so than Cameron, Osborne, or anyone else in the Tory party.
Great article – who is it aimed at ? If only the Lib Dems negotiating team had thought local government was important! Could we have had electoral reform for local councils ? Would we be on our third very junior minister at the Department for communities and local government ? Would we have had some real localism ?
Would we have had our base in local government taking the biggest share of the cuts?
The negotiating team + Nick really were stitched up like a kipper.
According to the Daily Mail, Pickles’ action is intended as a way of ensuring that local objections are not overridden by national priorities. Which is the very opposite of what is being claimed here on LDV.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2453592/Move-curb-wind-farms-Eric-Pickles-concerned-visual-environmental-impact.html
Because our local council made so many decisions that were reversed on appeal our planning committee were warned that they could be placed in special measures with the threat that all future decisions would be made from Bristol.
Now, I did not agree with all the decisions as they were based on the nimbyism of a certain section of our community. However, they were for our council to make – rightly or wrongly – and we should not have suffered the interference of Pickles and central government.
Of course, nearly all contraversial planning applications are now passed for fear of being slapped down by Pickles.
LDP must take a proportion of the blame for enabling this thing to head up a government department.
If you are in a coalition you cannot dictate who the other party puts into positions. Otherwise they can do the same to you.
Do not assume that the previous ministers (Stunell and Foster) had no clout within the department. (I don’t know what is meant by “very junior” ministers – either you are a minister or you are not. The S of S is the boss but all the others have the influence they have by virtue of what they do and how they do it).
But Pickles is actively harmful. Not too long ago he told me he kept a picture of me on his bedside table. I think there was just a little irony in that comment!
Tony
” The Tory side of this coalition government no longer believes in communities.” When have Tory governments believed in communities? News to me. Thatcher’s government weakened local authorities and starved them of cash, sold off the housing stock without replacements. Gove is busily giving schools little choice but to leave local authority control and undermine their existence even more. His free schools are springing up in areas where they’re not needed – there is no strategic thinking.
Pickles glories in starving local government of cash and encouraging them to shrink their services and downsize. In Shropshire for example, the Tories plan to get rid of 50% of the workforce and outsource to private contractors – to save money, they argue. Pickles backs them all the way…
Overall, great article.
Richard
The Daily Mail doesn’t really understand planning. When Eric Pickles said he would call in more gypsy and traveller applications in the green belt, the newspaper thought that he would refuse them. Instead, he has approved the large majority (though Nick Boles turned down two in Eric Pickles’ constituency).
On renewable energy, Pickles has no need to call them in. He has just issued new guidance. If he had troubled to consult on it, it might have been worded rather better. But regardless, he can monitor what is going on just by looking at planning decisions, not making them. If he then thinks that the balance is wrong, he can then change planning guidance.
The issue of planning guidelines is one where the blatant hypocrisy and dishonesty of the Tories is most obvious. On renewable energy, Pickles wants the goalposts moved to affect a presumption against granting permission. Even if there are only 20 hardline Nimbys in a Parish of 15,000, and none of them could actually see the windfarm site from their homes, Pickles would try to prevent the windfarm getting planning permission. Contrast this with Fracking. Here Pickles would use Nationally Important Infrastructure criteria to ensure that every application for drilling is approved, regardless of potential groundwater pollution and visual intrusion in an AONB. Tories disgust me, but Pickles disgusts me most.