The demise of garden plots may not be upon us

The statements which accompanied the new guidance said only that councils would have the power to protect gardens from inappropriate development - the new guidance doesn’t say anywhere that gardens cannot be built on. The thrust of several proposed planning reforms is to give power to councils to set their own rules so we shall have to see what approach each council chooses to adopt for its area as new policy documents are drawn up. Most councils have existing policies which permit houses to be built on suitable sites inside the built-up areas of towns and villages. That’s likely to continue because the alternatives are for acute housing shortages leading to astronomic house prices with people sleeping ten to a room or building on 'greenfield' sites outside towns, which was even less popular with the public than building in gardens. A research report by Kingston University last year found that building on back gardens was not a widespread, national or growing problem.

This change in policy has the ring of a new government giving its supporters a headline to cheer about and, no doubt, some councils will use the new guidance as an excuse to turn down some locally unpopular garden planning applications. No one yet knows where this will end – least of all government ministers – and we shall have to see how councils react. Houses were being built in gardens long before the current or previous versions of this guidance existed. The chances are that garden building will continue for many years yet. Rumours of the death of garden self-builds may yet prove to have been greatly exaggerated.