People should have a say in what gets built around them. A development can damage a place, overwhelm its services or destroy something that can't be replaced. "We need growth" isn't a sufficient answer to every objection.
But the cost of refusing permission deserves a hearing too. A home that isn't built leaves someone looking for one. A delayed grid connection can hold up investment. A reservoir that never receives approval won't be there when water is scarce.
I think Britain's planning arguments give those costs too little weight.
Who is missing from the argument?
The people living beside a proposed development can organise against it. They know where it will be and what they stand to lose. The people who might live or work there in ten years are much harder to identify, and often have no comparable voice.
That imbalance doesn't make the neighbours wrong. It makes a planning decision incomplete if it considers only the people already present.
The same issue recurs with housing, transport, energy infrastructure and industrial space. Objections and appeals may each have a defensible purpose while their combined effect is delay, uncertainty and a project becoming too expensive to pursue.
Calling that outcome cautious doesn't establish that it was the best choice. We need to compare the likely damage from building with the damage from not building.
Permission with conditions
The alternative isn't to approve every proposal. It is to make approval possible within clear rules and a predictable timetable, while protecting things we have good reasons to protect.
A developer should know what standards must be met. A community should know what infrastructure will accompany new homes. An objection should be considered properly without allowing the same decision to be postponed indefinitely.
Changing those rules isn't costless. Planning authorities need staff, and development can require substantial public investment in roads, schools or utilities. Permission alone doesn't guarantee that private capital will arrive either.
Even so, reform can enable investment that government couldn't afford to provide itself. It deserves attention alongside arguments about how much the Treasury should spend.
We can't protect a country's future by considering only what would change if something were built. We also have to consider who loses when it isn't.