I’ve been thumbing through the Government’s Planning Bill which is currently in the final stages of it’s journey through the Commons. It has attracted a great deal of criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, particularly over proposals to hand over powers to decide on major planning applications to an unelected quanqo. Conservative MP John Redwood has a must-read post on his blog about the debate and 63 Labour MPs have expressed their concerns.
So will this have an immediate impact on local residents in Salford? Quite probably. The proposed legislation lists a whole series of developments that could be deal with by the new unelected quango.
The proposed freight development at Port Salford (Barton) is likely to meet the criteria. This means that under the new legislation the decision on whether to proceed with Port Salford could be taken out of the hands of elected representatives who are accountable to local residents and delegated to an unelected body who are not accountable to anybody.
This is clearly not acceptable. At a local and national level, Government must be accountable for the decisions that it takes and seen to be accountable for those decisions. This isn’t the case under the new Planning Bill as it stands – and that means that local residents in Eccles, Peel Green, Barton, Patricroft, Irlam and Cadishead who want to have their say on Port Salford are likely to have far less opportunity to do so.
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