Shirley Eaton and Sean Connery in the 1964 film of Goldfinger, named for a Thirties planning battle
(Picture: Publicity image)There are many impediments to new home-building in the UK but local opposition, aka Nimbyism, is a major factor.
Previous communities secretary Robert Jenrick’s proposed planning reforms aimed to help the Government hit its target of 300,000 new homes a year by forcing through new developments in designated areas, an idea that proved deeply unpopular in several key Tory constituencies.
Unsurprisingly his successor, Michael Gove, has scrapped that idea, saying instead his Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will give people more say over housebuilding in their area.
Community-led planning done right is the best way to build homes people actually want to live in, in the places they actually want to live.
The north London neighbours who jointly got planning permission for matching extensions on their period terraced houses is a great example of how it can work on a small scale.
Of course, expanding their homes also added value to them. Would they have welcomed a large development of several hundred new homes nearby? Possibly not.
Meanwhile planning disputes between neighbours are already among the bitterest of battles. Formalising these frictions seems like a recipe for spite.
It also risks depriving us of adventurous architecture of the future, not least in the proposal’s incitement to encourage “beauty”.
Had conservation-minded author Ian Fleming been able to garner his Hampstead neighbours’ support with one of Gove’s street votes, Erno Goldfinger’s groundbreaking 2 Willow Road might never have seen the light of day.
Nor, for that matter, might Fleming’s revenge creation, the iconic Bond villain Goldfinger.
