CAMPAIGN groups are pressing the Government to drop proposals for a change in the planning system.

A White Paper proposes reforms with the aim of increasing the number of houses being built.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has written to all Hampshire MPs about the Government’s proposed reforms.

The City of Winchester Trust has also raised concerns in a letter to MP Steve Brine.

The Government proposes dividing land into three zones: fully protected will be national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty; then renewal areas which will see development and ‘growth areas’ where there will be a presumption for development.

Steve Tilbury, strategic director at the city council, told a Local Plan Panel that the reforms had “multiple levels of uncertainty. The Government proposes significant changes to the planning system. This is about making changes to the DNA of the planning system.”

The Government insists that 300,000 homes must be built every year across the UK and Winchester’s share will mean an increase in annual house building locally from 600 to 1,000.

The CPRE says that the national house building targets can be achieved without radical reforms and that the focus of Government action should be to ensure that the one million homes with existing planning permission are built immediately.

Dee Haas, chairman of CPRE Hampshire, said: “There are many aspects of the Planning for the Future White Paper that we would support. The ambition to bridge the generational divide; the emphasis on strict design codes; the commitment to streamlining the Local Plan process and the determination to involve many more local people and their communities into the Planning process are all welcomed.

“However, we also have substantial concerns about the proposals and many of them stem from the possibly unintended consequences of the algorithms used in the various calculations. These algorithms produce a number of distortions which fundamentally undermine the stated intentions of the Government’s proposals.”

The chairman of City of Winchester Trust Keith Leaman wrote to Mr Brine: “We are very concerned at the direction the Government is taking, which we believe will in effect emasculate part of the local planning procedures.

“To simply remove planning requirements and provide a free fall environment in order to try and achieve speed and cost saving is a route to potential disaster, which any government will not want on their CV.”

Mr Leaman said an issue in Winchester was a lack of strategic thinking. “It does not seem that many local authorities have the inbuilt ability to provide imaginative expertise and leadership; their strategic planning departments have been stripped and the development control sections follow questionable rules unquestioningly.”