Reforms to planning laws, which make it easier for small-scale residential extensions, could cost council tax payers hundreds of thousands of pounds.

This week I will present a 10 Minute Rule Bill to Parliament calling for stricter rules to impose fines on developers who deliberately exceed planning consents.

As well as targeting specific funds to get stalled schemes in our most buoyant cities moving, we need to see more autonomy for cities to drive investment in new housing. By removing the restrictions on councils' ability to borrow money against their existing housing assets to invest in new housing, industry experts suggest councils could borrow an additional £2.8bn to invest in new housing.

The UK is facing an increasing housing shortage, and one which needs to be urgently addressed.

People opposed to onshore wind farms should not have their views "ridden over roughshod", the planning minister has told the energy minister in a priv...

We desperately need housing to be a national priority to deliver a huge increase in new homes. Our continued failure to tackle this problem head on hits millions of families hard, denies people the opportunity to buy their own home, traps increasing numbers of working people in benefit dependency at huge cost to the public purse and acts as a real brake on economic growth.

Earlier this week, the government announced a review into practical planning guidance. This may be seen as a technocratic announcement but the impacts could be enormous.

The redevelopment of London's historic Spitalfields Fruit and Wool Exchange is a loss to London socially and culturally, but also to its economy.

Town hall planners will work to block Government plans to temporarily relax rules on building extensions to homes, the Local Government Association in...

I travel the length and breadth of the country throughout the year visiting literally thousands of homes. I've seen first-hand the absolute carbuncles put up on properties under existing laws that already allow extensions that only half the size the Government is now proposing.

Getting our planning laws right was a big issue to ensure we protect our green spaces. But the countryside is not just pretty fields and forests; it is a living, breathing environment and the people who live there need to be listened to on all the issues, not just those that make prime time.

Some readers will recall that not so long ago, in the autumn of 2011, the government released its first stab at trimming down Britain's onerous planning regulations. The National Planning Policy Framework, or NPPF as it became known, was seen by the coalition as a useful new weapon in its battle to control the deficit - more houses, more wealth, more growth.

It's enough to make you gag on your value mince pies. Barely a week after Mary 'Queen of Shops' Portas to save the high street, we learned that there are enough supermarkets in the planning pipeline to swallow every Tesco store in the country.

Once upon a time that question was met with ridicule; the poser rendered a fool simply by having the temerity to ask it.

The UN should have bigger, worse things to worry about than the resolution of an ongoing planning dispute in South East England. Luckily it does. From China to Libya, from Yemen to Russia, governments daily abuse their citizens' human rights and deprive them of their dignity - perhaps the UN could concentrate on those hellholes before attacking Basildon Council?

Since I first wrote about the Battle for Planning Rights for this website just two weeks ago, the war of words on the Government's draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has steadily intensified, reaching fever pitch in the past week now Parliament has returned.