Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles put a swift end to Whitehall's grip on local planning policy by scrapping Regional Strategies and their centrally imposed building targets.
Regional targets, intended to build 3 million homes nationally by 2020, were put in place by the previous Government despite fears that they would force councils to cut into the Greenbelt. However, the reality is that construction has slowed down and the country is facing the lowest peacetime housebuilding rates since 1924.
An Order laid in parliament (6th July) revoked Regional Strategies with immediate effect. Councils now have the freedom to prepare their local plans without having to follow top-down targets from regional quangos that prescribe exactly what, where and when to build.
Mr Pickles also pledged that direct and substantial benefits for councils who support construction would be the centrepiece of this radical restoration of local power. The money will be used to help ensure more new homes are built for local people, and matched with more new jobs and investment.
With immediate effect, power has been handed back to councils and communities to make their own decisions on planning, with the aim of getting the country building again. Communities will be able to solve local housing challenges in a way that makes sense for them. In return councils will be offered powerful new incentives that ensure they benefit from development they welcome.
In a keynote speech to the Local Government Association conference, Mr Pickles said:
"Communities will no longer have to endure top-down planning targets - they were a terrible, expensive, time-consuming way to impose house building and worst of all threatened the destruction of the Green Belt.
"I'm revoking regional plans with immediate effect - hammering another nail in the coffin of unwanted and an unaccountable regional bureaucracy. They were a national disaster that robbed local people of their democratic voice, alienating them and entrenching opposition against new development.
"Regional Strategies built nothing but resentment. Instead we will introduce powerful new incentives for local people so they support the construction of new homes in the right places and receive direct rewards from the proceeds of growth to improve their local area."