Growth versus the NIMBY-ism agenda

It has been entertaining watching BBC Four’s The Secret World Of Whitehall, if only to marvel at how any business in government is achieved at all, considering the process and bureaucracy entailed in making even the simplest decisions.
One of the comments made by a Cabinet minister interviewed was how often civil servants would suck in their breath with, ‘are you sure you want to do this, minister?’
Of course, all this process is done for very good reasons, as Sir Humphrey might say, namely, to ensure that government works as a well-oiled machine. Really? I wonder what Sir H would have made of the health Bill, now put on hold while minister Andrew Lansley is taken behind the Number 10 bike sheds?
Or how about the abolition of the Audit Commission, leaked out one soporific August afternoon last summer, and now causing some considerable angst as ministers work out how what to replace it.
Or the Localism Bill, with its lead minister, Eric Pickles, extolling all-power to the neighbourhoods and running slap up against chancellor George Osborne’s drive for growth and never mind what the NIMBYs think.
Ex-minister Nick Raynsford, who has had long experience of working with Whitehall, reveals this week in The MJ (this page) that a massive battle is going on behind the scenes between the DCLG and the Treasury over the Localism Bill.
We know that numerous housing projects have already been canned since the abolition of spatial targets, and the Treasury – and developers – are deeply concerned that the Government’s drive to create more jobs and regeneration will hit a brick wall of NIMBYs empowered by the neighbourhood clauses in the Bill.
The prime minister has already forced one Cabinet minister, Mr Lansley, to put his health Bill on hold. It is hard to see Mr Osborne not getting his way on the growth agenda on which the Government is placing so much of its credibility. For if more private sector jobs are not created to fill the gap left by public sector cuts, then its economic strategy is in shreds.
As Sir Humphrey might have said: ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Mr Pickles?’