Gareth Bacon

And I was caught in this some years ago, and I thought at the time it was a little unfair.

But let's turn to the lo-- one of the local MPs, Conservative MP for Orpington, Gareth Bacon, who took up the fight about this, uh, for many of his constituents.

And Gareth, if I may, Mr. Bacon, if I may, I'm gonna ask you just to explain the background of, of what was put in where by whom and the questions that were asked.

Gareth Bacon, good morning to you, sir.

Good morning, Nick.

Good morning.

That's appalling.

Mr. Bacon, just shout in the direction of Leicester Square as to when you get developments, and we'll get you back on the radio, and give my, uh, best wishes to your colleagues, Laura Trott and to Louis French, who are helping you with that.

This has seen, you know, much more of the burden of new homes fall on rural authorities rather than urban authorities.

Um, a number of other politicians at the conference made similar points, and Shadow Housing Minister Gareth Bacon also made points about Labour's failure to insist on properly imposing a brownfield-first strategy.

So I think we can assume that there's gonna be a, a, a clear insistence in whatever this rewrite of policy will contain, that it's gonna have some focus on prioritizing urban development over rural development, on prioritizing brownfield development.

In addition, Gareth Bacon, in a separate fringe event, said he was, quote, "Very open to the idea of zonal planning." This is not something that we've traditionally had, uh, in England, and this is interestingly something, a form of which was proposed by the Conservative Party back in 2020 in, in the Planning for the Future white paper, only to be dropped following a, a, quite a, a, a major political backlash.

So i- it may be that also we see something on that as well.

So a couple of pointers perhaps, but nothing firm at this stage.

Well, so I mean, it is really very much as you say, the response has not really been very, very positive from the sector, as you suggest.

Overwhelmingly, the sense seems to be people want to let the current set of reforms that, that this government, and, and this is not really a party political point, but they seem to let the current set of reforms from the current government bed in rather than to yet again throw policy up in the air, which I, I think people see as likely to cause another set of delays.

Yeah, we talk about kind of the performance of the Conservatives in London.

And I think I was on the panel yesterday, Gareth Bacon, who's the shadow London minister, said the Tories have treated the London mayoralty like a paper candidacy before and not taking it seriously enough.

And you basically said that Susan Hall was basically cut adrift by the central party last time.

Do you think that the candidate this time around will get that support, that there is a real feeling as though it's an opportunity to win back City Hall?