While the Government is right to seek to speed up the delivery of homes and infrastructure, there is room for improvement on the legislation intended to do this. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill proposes radical reform to the planning system but the danger is that this comes at the expense of local democracy and, potentially, British food security. 

Councillors are being cut out of the decision-making process, heaping responsibility for decisions onto officers, who are not directly responsible to the electorate. Hard-working, often overstretched, officers already report all too frequent abuse from members of the public. Making them the face of many contentious decisions will only worsen this.