The planning system is really very bad, isn’t it?

Apparently people are building houses where houses are not sensible to build:

More than 100,000 new homes will be built on the highest-risk flood zones in England in the next five years as part of the government’s push for 1.5m extra properties by the end of this parliament, Guardian analysis suggests.

Building on areas with the highest risk of serious flooding is supposed to be discouraged. Experts say development should be avoided unless absolutely necessary because there is a significant chance of regular deluges, which will flood the properties, cause hundreds of millions of pounds of economic damage and make homes uninsurable.

But a push for housing growth by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, means tens of thousands of new homes will be built in areas at the highest risk of serious flooding unless the government intervenes, according to trends in the latest data.

But, but, how is this possible? Who may build what, where, has been nationalised this past 80 years. Those Rolls Royce minds in Whitehall have been in charge all this time.

Are we now to run from the room, screaming in terror, at the idea that such a nationalised, Rolls Royce driven from Whitehall, planning system is not, in fact, any good? Well, yes, apparently we should. If even Richard Murphy has managed to grasp that idea then:

The UK average house price hits a record high as clear indication of the housing crisis we have

That planning system has meant that no one’s allowed to build housing Britons want to live in, where Britons want to live, in the necessary volume for the number of Britons. This is why housing is being plonked upon flood plains - because the planning system is ridiculous. If a former Lecturer at Islington Technical College can grasp it then so should the rest of us be able to.

So, what is our correct reaction to this?

Afuera.

Rev up the chainsaws for we are all motoserristas now.

Abolish the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors, just blow up the system - proper blow up, kablooie. It doesn’t work. So, don’t have it. Then, when people are able to build the housing Britons desire, where they desire, no one will build upon flood plains. For watching one’s morning tea float past at table top height isn’t something people desire of their new des res - therefore that’s not where housing will be built if freedom to build elsewhere exists.

We really have tried national planning of, umm, planning for decade upon decade and it doesn’t work. So, let’s stop doing that then.

Tim Worstall