The planning minister Greg Clark left no room for doubt when asked on television who had written the controversial proposals to shake up Britain’s planning laws.
“I did,” he told Sir Simon Jenkins, chairman of the National Trust, on Newsnight on BBC2 earlier this month.
Now it has emerged that the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) signed off by Clark was largely drawn up by a group of four advisers, three of whom are involved in the building industry.
The revelation will add to Clark’s growing problems in convincing environmentalists, backbench Tories and even his own constituents in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, that the process of drafting the proposals has been balanced and objective.
The framework’s “presumption in favour of sustainable development” has infuriated rural