The Conservative Party has received millions of pounds in donations from property developers who stand to profit from the Government’s contentious planning reforms.
Apparently, dozens of property companies have gifted a total of £3.3 million to the party since 2008, including considerable gifts from developers seeking to build on protected rural land. In addition, developers are paying thousands of pounds for access to high-ranking Government ministers through the Conservative Property Forum, a club of influential donors that sets up meetings to talk about planning and property issues.
The disclosures are likely to bring about a fresh ‘cash-for-access’ dispute and will give rise to fears that planning policies may well have been influenced by powerful figures from the property industry.
The Government are also having to cope with a hostile response from more than 80 rural MPs and peers, who, by the time you will have read this, will have met to discuss concerns that relaxing planning policy will see hundreds of wind turbines built in the countryside. The National Trust, English Heritage, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and even the Daily Telegraph are now actively campaigning against this latest bout of corruption.
If the law is changed – and when big business is involved (and therefore greed) you can bet that it probably will – there will be a ‘presumption in favour’ of sustainable development, which would give developers ‘carte blanche’ to do whatever they liked.
A senior Conservative MP, who did not wish to be named, accused the Chancellor, George Osborne, of “shoe-horning in” the presumption in favour of development in a bid to fire up the economy. He explained: “This is a clear example of localism being hijacked. Developers will have state licence to print money and we will see a proliferation of identikit suburbs springing up in the countryside.”
It is not so much the construction that concerns me (although it does); it’s the corruption within big business and the Conservative party and the way it is all being ignored by the press and TV news programmes. Yet this is damaging our society, and the end result will be the same as usual: the poor getting kicked down and the rich getting away with breaking the law. Big Society, no. Big Brother, yes!
Rod Millington
Editor
