A former senior policy adviser to the prime minister, Rohan Silva, has claimed that planning corruption is “endemic” in councils across Britain. His comments follow last week’s revelations in The Sunday Times that a businessman with close ties to Labour had been secretly taped demanding a £2m bribe from property developers allegedly on behalf of the party’s politicians. Writing in News Review this weekend, Silva argues that the planning authorities have been given too much power to make decisions that could dramatically affect the value of properties and developments. He writes: “Given that the value of a property can increase by tens — or even hundreds — of millions of pounds depending on what the planners decide, the incentive for corruption among low-paid officials and councillors is overwhelming.” Silva adds: “The depressing truth is that corruption is endemic in Britain’s bureaucratic planning system. In every corner of the country, you can find stories of bribery, with local councillors and officials rigging the planning process for their own gain.
Unsurprisingly, the Planning Officers Society has rejected these conclusions:
"Rohan Silva's article in the Sunday Times is typical of that form of lazy journalism that takes a relatively isolated incident, adds a heavy dose of innuendo and concludes, with no real justification or evidence, that 'corruption is endemic in Britain's planning system'. Quite simply it is not. Where it does occur it is, in my experience, dealt with vigorously, as Mr Silva would have discovered if he had bothered to find out the facts around the Alpha Square incident that triggered his article.... No system is perfect, because people are not perfect, but Britain's planning system takes its responsibilities and duties very seriously and pursues the highest levels of probity and integrity. Where there is evidence of corruption, my advice to those making such accusations has always been, "please go straight to the Police so that they can properly investigate it".
