The new coalition government has issued its full programme for government but the 36-page document contains little or no reference to urban regeneration or countryside protection and only the scantiest details of planning reform.
Prime minister David Cameron described The Coalition: Our Programme for Government as "an historic document in British politics", but those hoping for some clear statement about the future of urban or spatial policy will have been disappointed.
But regional policy is headed for the scrap heap.
"As our parties have worked together it has become increasingly clear to us that, although there are differences, there is also common ground," said Mr Cameron, but that common ground plainly has its limits.
The document contains no mention of urban policy or regeneration, a key priority of New Labour in the 1990s but which declined in importance latterly.
There is no specific mention of brownfield policy or the 60% brownfield target for English house building and the only policy relevant to the brownfield issue is a negative one - a plan to give councils (unspecified) new powers to stop so-called "garden grabbing".
Greenfield policy is also a surprising omission given the interest among Conservatives, beyond a commitment to "maintain the green belt, SSSIs and other environmental protections" and a proposal to create an SSSI-like designation to protect green areas of particular importance to local communities.
On regional policy, regional spatial strategies are to be "rapidly" abolished and the housing and planning powers given to local authorities.
The Infrastructure Planning Commission is also to go and there is a specific commitment to implement planning reforms based on the Conservative Open Source Planning green paper (BB, March 2010).
The document contains a commitment to "a simple and consolidated national planning framework covering all forms of development and setting out national economic, environmental and social priorities".
It is widely believed that the new Government wants to scrap all the existing planning policy statements, including the under-review PPS23, and replace them with a few lines in the new statement.
The Conservatives have sustained their plan to scrap regional development agencies and local authorities will be able to organise joint local enterprise partnerships which can cover areas up to the present regions.
How far councils will be able to fund this following the forthcoming budget and the autumn spending review remains to be seen.
