There are plenty of reports, reviews etc out there. For example the "Living Working Countryside - The Taylor Review of Rural Economy and Affordable Housing" or the recent Downing Street gathering supporting self-build homes. In the real world of planning decisions do these 'signals', 'conclusions', 'desires', 'initiatives' have any effect or validity with regards to planning applications either at LPA level or at Appeal? For example, could a self-build applicant validly refer to Grant Shapps statement (below) from June 2012 as meaningful support for their application? "Over the next few years, I want to see the industry double in size, so more and more people get to make their self-build dreams a reality." We can of course extend these theme to the huge 'push we are now seeing from central government for more housing. Does this groundswell of opinion/comment etc from central government have any REAL validity in the planning decision process? If not, it raises the question of whether local planning departments and processes would be acting undemocratically if they were to use the small print in Local Plans to override the wishes of central government - especially in cases where the LPA had sufficient legal flexibility to 'push' a planning decision in the direction that our elected central government would deem desirable. The stance of any appeal Inspector in such cases would be interesting.
