Give some credit to Nick Boles, he's actually making an effort to confront part of the problem with housing - the socialist central planning focused planning laws that make just about any alteration to a property a matter, not for the property owner, but for "society".
That means the immediate neighbours, the near neighbours, the people down the road, the local residents' association, the local environmental group, maybe a competing business, a charity and of course, the council itself.
Your property isn't yours, and it isn't about protecting the property rights of others, it is simply about gaining the consent of those whose property it isn't. In other words, it is communitarianism.
So I applaud the attempts to simplify planning laws, to make it easier for property owners to build on their own land, and to change the use of properties from commercial to residential purposes.
However, it isn't enough. The fundamental philosophy behind the planning system is rooted in 1940s style socialism - the belief that property is communal, not private.
This needs to be scrapped and replaced with a new approach, based entirely on private property rights.
