Housing minister Grant Shapps has revealed the Government's "Community Right to Build Programme" which will allow communities' housing to expand by up to 10% without planning permission, given 90% support in local referenda, will initially have a greenfield focus.
Mr Shapps revealed his plans to primary school children in the Hertfordshire village of Essendon whose school intake is less than 10.
"Far from the NIMBYism that often hits the headlines, up and down the country there are entire communities willing and eager to give the go-ahead for new developments in their area," he said.
"The countryside must be a vibrant place to live, and cannot be allowed to become a museum."
DCLG said the Localism Bill would provide the powers for the scheme which initially would be getting off the ground in rural areas because communities are smaller and local people have a vast amount of shared knowledge about opportunities and challenges.
But the Campaign to Protect Rural England said while it welcomed moves to give local people a say, bypassing the planning process is not the way to deliver affordable housing as proposals need proper scrutiny.
"The level and location of development should be informed by a proper assessment of local housing need and an understanding of whether the local environment can accommodate more development," said head of planning Fiona Howie.
"This capacity should be assessed through democratic local plans and not a simple public ballot."
She said communities should be involved in planning for their communities as a whole rather than a right-to-build.
"A central part of the Government's wider planning reform proposals is to give local communities a pivotal role in shaping local plans," she said.
"The Government should focus their efforts on getting these broader reforms right, so that local communities are truly involved in planning for their area as a whole."
Environmental Protection UK chief executive Philip Mulligan pointed out that planning decisions are already made by bodies which are democratically accountable to local people and asked for immediate clairfication of the proposals.
If the Government truly wants to give local people a greater say in planning decisions it should look to enhance the role of existing bodies, such as parish councils, in the planning system rather than create another layer of bureaucracy,” he said.
"The planning framework helps ensure that when developments are proposed, relevant factors such as infrastructure provision, environmental impacts and land quality are considered and reconciled. It is difficult to see how these factors could be considered by a community body without input from skilled and knowledgeable specialists at the local authority, which begs the question of why remove planning decisions from the democratically elected local authority at all?”
The Royal Town Planning Institute warned the proposals would undermine the long-established role of elected councillors and, while ways of building more affordable housing especially in rural areas are needed, local plans are the most democratic way of doing this.
“Proper planning scrutiny has served us well whereas this proposal appears to disempower local authorities by removing their right to determine development proposals and may mean that new housing built as a result may conflict with existing wider community priorities, and will only have to meet nationally prescribed minimum standards, even if the local authority wishes to see higher design standards in its own area,” said the Institute.
