A survey revealed last year that 41% of councils do not employ any urban designers, and 76% lack access to any advice on architecture.

The change to the country’s planning rules was part of a package of measures that ministers claimed would ensure new housing was “beautiful and well-designed”. The government is setting up an “Office for Place” to help “communities encourage development they find beautiful, and refuse what they find ugly”.

The report, published by the UCL-based Place Alliance, highlights 12 schemes rejected on design grounds since last July. The inspectorate found proposals for an unattractive block of 15 flats on the site of a demolished car park in Crawley in West Sussex would offer “unsatisfactory living conditions”. Some flats had limited natural light and the outside spaces were close to roads and railway lines. Others lacked privacy as windows were next to people passing on a walkway and close to cars queueing on a traffic gyratory system.

The inspectorate also backed Braintree district council’s efforts to block two estates on the edges of villages in Essex, where developers were trying to squeeze in large numbers of houses, jarring with houses nearby. Officials also turned down an appeal relating to five tower blocks on the former Westferry newspaper printworks site in east London. It was ruled the scheme – which led to a row about media mogul Richard Desmond’s contact with ministers tasked with planning decisions – would harm appreciation of the Greenwich world heritage site.

Simplifying the planning system and making improvements for rural areas could unlock billions of pounds in the economy, according to the Country Land and Business Association (CLA).

The organisation’s policy report Rural Powerhouse: a planning system designed for the rural economy was published on Friday 17 July.

It explains how a simpler and properly resourced planning system can support, enable and enhance development in the countryside.

Currently, the planning system is complicated, lengthy and expensive, and actively discourages people from investing in rural areas through development, says the CLA.

Mark Bridgeman, CLA president, said the government is looking to adapt the planning system – as shown by the prime minister’s recent “Build, Build, Build” announcement – and it is crucial to ensure it works in rural areas as well as the urban high street.

“The sheer cost of going through the planning system makes it an increasing hurdle, and this is a big issue for many of our members,” said Mr Bridgeman.

“Applicants must spend thousands of pounds on planning costs without really knowing if they’re going to be able to make it a success. Our key focus is how can we simplify this?”

The current proposal, to widen and sink the road into a tunnel running for almost two miles, mostly about 600 metres south of the stones, was announced in 2014, although the basic idea goes right back to the 1990s. The main difficulty is the cost: the government has allocated £1.7bn, which is not enough for a passage sufficiently long to avoid the world heritage site. That means tunnel portals would be bored, and dual carriageways built, through an ancient landscape unique in the world. This protected area is home to traces of a mesolithic settlement long predating Stonehenge, the ancient “Avenue” linking the monument and the river Avon, and hundreds of bronze-age burial mounds, or barrows.

But the long planning process is entering its endgame. Later this year, a panel of inspectors will meet in Wiltshire and, over a period of six months, examine the evidence for and against the scheme. They will have three months to make their recommendation to the transport secretary, Chris Grayling. He will have a further three months to decide whether or not to accept it. Construction could start in 2021.

A new study by SmartNewHomes shows that more than half of people (53%) believe the UK is being ‘concreted over’.

Just over 80% of those surveyed disagreed that the Government is striking a sensible balance between housing requirements and protecting the countryside.

The study shows that three out of four of the 1,534 people surveyed  overestimated the proportion of land developed in England alone – one fifth of respondents correctly identified it as being 11% while nearly half believed it to be three times as much at 30% and a quarter felt it was six times as much at 70%.

The best way to bust this myth is to reveal that since the Romans the total amount of land with buildings on it, if England was a football pitch’ would not quite fill one penalty area. Now there’s something to think about!!

I recall that one of the reasons for closing the Commission for Rural Communities was that Government Agencies should not be set up to lobby Government – this clearly doesn’t apply to English Heritage. An organisation incidentally which I have supported financially for 6 years – I will be renewing my membership again this year and look forward to their consultation with their members on the issue of their approach to the NPPF.

The European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre is a £150m joint venture by utility company Vattenfall, engineering firm Technip and Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group.

In a statement, Trump said: “I am very disappointed that Scotland may allow the development of a wind-power plant directly off Aberdeen’s beautiful coastline.”

What is the relevance of this article? Although it may be in Scotland it reveal the generic challenge rural planners have in reconciling the needs and more often the wants of developers and local communities, even where proposed developments mean more jobs. It is a thankless task and likely to be made more challenging by the National Planning Framework and Neighbourhood Planning proposals now both nearing the statute book.

Some people might say that the answer is for planners to learn to love the rule book a bit less and get out a bit more. I don’t think its quite as simple as that but clearly one of the significant dynamics in the planned shake up of the way the planning system currently works is a significant loss of confidence in our apporach to planning on all sides.

It seems to me the adversarial roots of the way planning is managed and approached need a significant re-think, which needs to start with some of the fundamental values underpinning the way planners are trained.