Sunday 28 June 2020

‘...the rotten heart of the UK planning system’

A former senior policy adviser to the prime minister, Rohan Silva, has claimed that planning corruption is “endemic” in councils across Britain...
“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.”
The subject has recently reared its ugly head again. It centres on one minister:



How much further does it go?

The trouble with planning decisions is that they can seem arbitrary, which means merely matters of opinion. Possibly corrupting factors can always be at play.

“The planning system has historically cast developers and politicians in poacher and gamekeeper roles. But in recent years an increased focus on financial negotiations between public authorities and developers has made simple yes/no decisions into more complex transactions, sparking concerns the system lacks transparency and is vulnerable to corruption.”
Developers have raised their eyebrows at Desmond’s admission that he directly lobbied Jenrick – seeing it as something of an own goal.
“As a developer the last thing you do is talk to the secretary of state because you get into exactly this [controversy],” said one. “You know not to get anywhere near the politicians.”
At a council level, it is different. Council leaders and planning committee chairmen can be approached before planning applications are submitted. Developers know they have something councils badly need: cash.
The pressure on councils to use planning to deliver funds to invest in public services had only been increased by austerity, said Nick Johnson, a former director of the Manchester-based property developer Urban Splash, making them “alert to the opportunity of planning deals to prop up their finances”.
“There’s a real tension,” he said. “You have to question whether they are being completely objective about the decisions they are taking.”
And you can see why:

In a BBC interview defending Jenrick earlier this week, business minister Nadhim Zahawi said that voters who wanted to raise planning issues with their MPs could likewise go to a Conservative fundraiser.
Sue Hawley of Spotlight on Corruption said: “It's time for a serious review of conflicts of interest in UK planning.
“It is entirely wrong that those with money can gain access to politicians that puts their interests above the rest of us,” she told openDemocracy.
A previous openDemocracy investigation found that Leader’s Group donors had given more than £130 million to the Conservatives since 2010. Previous commitments to publish lists of attendees have not been kept. Earlier this year, the Tories scrubbed details of previous Leader’s Group meetings off the party website.
Back in 2012, we posted how Aggregate Industries had donated £150k to the Conservative Party's Leader's Group, despite "unprecedented difficult operating conditions" that meant the company had to delay payments to drivers.

Planning corruption couldn’t be happening in the mining and minerals industry, could it?

Departmental registers reveal a meeting on 21 March 2018 between Jenrick, who was then exchequer secretary to the Treasury, and Ofer, the ultimate owner of the UK mining company Cleveland Potash.
At the time, Jenrick was assessing whether to offer state support for a new potash mine being built by a rival company, Sirius Minerals, which was set to provide intense competition to Ofer’s loss-making business.
A spokesman for Jenrick said he recused himself from any decisions on the Sirius project, but did not say when. The Guardian understands that Jenrick retained oversight of Sirius Minerals’ application for financial support from the Treasury for at least six months after his meeting with Ofer in March 2018.
One of Ofer’s other UK firms, the Mayfair-based Quantum Pacific UK Corporation, subsequently donated to the Conservatives for the first and only time, giving the party £10,000 in March 2019.

In September 2019, Sirius Minerals revealed that the government had refused to provide financial support, a decision that effectively left the company on the brink of financial collapse.

Sirius was eventually bought out in a cut-price deal by the mining firm Anglo American in January 2020, wiping out the shareholdings of hundreds of small investors. Some lost most of their life savings due to the collapse, which Sirius Minerals has said would not have happened if the government had supported the project.
The tale of Sirius Minerals has been the subject of various posts on this blog.
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