Member

People are not the problem. Ordinary people are not blockers, and they should not be swept out of the way. As I have said, they and we want to see new homes and development, but these particular changes, which so damage rights and trust in a damaged system, will not deliver any significant growth or development, because council planning committees already approve over 90% of the planning applications that come before them. Lib Dem-run Somerset council has consented to thousands of new homes and is building hundreds of new council houses, including for the first time in a generation in parts of the county, and it wants to build more.