What joy - more land planning?

This does not inspire grand confidence:

About 7% of England’s land – an area roughly two-and-a-half times the size of Cornwall – will need to be given over to nature, forests and renewable energy, to meet the UK’s environmental targets, new data shows.

But there will still be enough land to grow the food needed, and to house a growing population, according to the government’s first land use framework, published on Wednesday.

We’ve had near 80 years of national and nationalised land planning through the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. That’s been working out as land to build upon being extortionately expensive and also Britain putting up, on average, the smallest new builds in Europe. As we keep pointing out, without that European consolation of folk having the country cottage to go with the urban chicken coop.

The reaction to absurd, destructive and impoverishing planning is to extend the idea into yet more tractor production statistics?

We can’t help but point out that the correct solution is fewer planners gurning over their slide rules, not more.

Tim Worstall