Mid-term election blues (and what it means for the development world)
Over the past decade, we have repeatedly seen how the electorate punish political parties in Government. Surrey, for example. If you go back 10 years, 10 out of the 11 District Councils were run by the Conservatives. Then things started going hideously wrong for the Conservatives… a quick succession of Prime Ministers, a string of planning ministers etc. and now, there is one Conservative minority administration left.
On 7 May, when Surry elects the Councillors of the two new shadow Unitary Authorities, the Conservatives won’t be winning any significant numbers of seats. West Surrey is pretty much guaranteed to be LibDem with a healthy majority and East Surrey will have a large LibDem contingent with a good number of Greens and Independents. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour is going to pick up more than a hand full of seats (in fact, Labour even fewer than the Conservatives).
This will be repeated across the Country – from the South Coast to the North, from the East Coast to Lands End things are going to change in surprising places and there will be surprising results.
It is very clear that the big winners on 7 May will be the LibDems, Greens, Reform and Independents (with hyper local focus). And there will be a lot of coalitions of these colours clubbing together to form administrations. We will also see a lot of “progressive alliances” that will make strange bed partners to prevent Reform from forming administrations (as we have seen with getting the Conservatives out).
But what does this mean for your planning application?
Well, it means that you will have to be on the front foot and REALLY understand what is motivating the politicians. Yes, there is a swathe of reforms coming in that is going to (hopefully) change Planning Committees for the better, but as long as there is democracy (elections) in Local Government, political agendas will be in the planning system and influencing decision making.
What you have to remember is that every four years these Councillors have to “reapply” for their jobs, i.e. go to the electorate and tell them what they have done for them and why they should vote them back in. With the departure from the traditional two-party system in Local Government, this means that a lot of Council candidates will be going around making promises about improving the lives of local voters and people will vote for the ones that promise the best things for them. These Councillors will be keen to demonstrate to the electorate why they are different.
This is where it all gets quite dangerous if you don’t understand what motivates these new Councillors and what their political beliefs are and how they approach things.
So, if you have a site in somewhere where there are elections, please do get in touch with us! We are here to help you navigate the quagmire of politics!
Until next week,
Henry