Caroline Spelman

Bob Neill, Shadow Local Government & Planning Minister, has announced that the Conservatives will stop gardens up and down "the country" being concreted over:

The practice of “garden grabbing”, where developers build homes or blocks of flats on back gardens, is dramatically changing the character of many suburban areas throughout the UK, leading to high levels of unsustainable development and increasing housing densities in areas previously characterised as leafy suburbs. Some figures suggest that over 180,000 buildings have been put on back gardens in the last five years.

Bob implies that the 180,000 figure relates to the UK. However, the figures actually come from councils' responses to a Government survey of 42 local authorities, covering a seventh of England's population.

Findings of the survey, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that between 2003 and 2008, the councils granted planning permission for 26,688 new homes on land which was previously occupied by houses and their front and back gardens.

The amount is a net total – for instance, if one large Edwardian house is replaced with a block of ten flats, it would count as nine new homes in the figures.

The survey totals equate to a figure of 186,000 new homes in England as a whole – 102 a day – or 210,000 for the UK.

So although he mentions the UK and doesn't mention England, Bob's article on Garden Grabbing is about England. And any Tory change to the legislation will affect England (and may also apply to Wales).

Credit where credit is due though. Where Bob fails, at least Caroline Spelman gets it correct:

The only people who are not losing out from the rush to develop back gardens are the developers and land speculators. For them, England is literally becoming a treasure island. Right now, land agents may be putting this Bill and my speech on their website in a bid to convince people speculatively to buy plots of land in the expectation of being granted planning permission.

The Telegraph:

While he was still employed using her Parliamentary allowances, Mr Cawte is said to have written letters of an "openly" political nature, including one to campaigners for an English Parliament urging them to vote for the Conservatives.

A Tory insider dismissed the claims in a Sunday tabloid as "rubbish" and Mrs Spelman herself insisted that no rules had been broken.

This letter perchance?

It has long been our position to abolish unelected regional assemblies. This commitment was restated by both David Cameron and Caroline Spelman at Party in their speeches at conference. Unelected regional assemblies have leached powers up from elected local authorities and the sooner they are abolished the better. The only way to guarantee the abolition of regional assemblies is to ensure that the Conservatives form the next government as they are the only main Party committed to their abolition.

The government is determined to persist with its regional agenda regardless of the extent of opposition to them either locally or in Westminster, for proof of this you need only look at the way it ignored the referendum in the north east when over 80% of people said they did not want a regional assembly. The quickest way of bringing the regional agenda to an end is with a change of government.

With kind regards

Simon Cawte
Chief of Staff to:
Caroline Spelman MP

On John Prescott's plans to concrete over cricket pitches Caroline Spelman comments:

This is a licence to build on green fields. Mr Prescott seems single-handedly to be transforming the British countryside.

Actually John Prescott's personal fiefdom has powers over just England, not Britain. The Tories are stuck in pre-1997 mode; they don't understand devolution; and they cannot accept that they are the party of England, and that North and West Britain doesn't want them.