Hands Off Our Land: Reforms to planning rules 'unlikely to have any positive effect on growth' The Daily Telegraph has urged ministers to think again with its "Hands Off Our Land" campaign. The report suggests that economic claims about the benefits of the changes have been over-stated by the Government. It concludes that while "there is no evidence that planning has large, economy-wide effects on productivity or employment." The Government has already been under fire for using out of date figures to justify its planning reforms. Mr Osborne has justified controversial new changes to planning rules on forecasts by saying that planning delays cost the UK £3billion every year. But MPs were told during a Parliamentary hearing in November that the forecast was based on figures that were nearly two decades old, from an estimate made by the Confederation of British Industry in 1992. Professor Tom Burke, from the Imperial and University Colleges, London, said the report was "a timely antidote to the Government's planning policy which is a toxic conjunction of incompetence and ideology. Turning 1,000 pages of detailed planning guidance into 50 pages of ambiguous text is licence for planning lawyers to print money. Instead of the current speedy and predictable passage through the planning system developers will be faced with the uncertainty and cost of the courts. This will slow rather than accelerate growth. Since there is no evidence to support it, it is clear that the real driver for this foolish policy is simply de-regulatory mania of the nastier parts of the Conservative party. Ben Cowell, assistant External Affairs director at the National Trust, said: "Planning imposes costs but it also produces significant benefits. Without a strong planning system, our landscape would look very different today. Government needs properly to understand both sides of the equation before it reaches conclusions about the impact that planning has on the economy. Neil Sinden, the CPRE's director of policy, said: "The aim of planning should be to secure long term wellbeing. It should give pause to all those who care deeply about the countryside and the role the planning system plays in improving our quality of life through shaping the places we live. We urge ministers to heed its finding before finalising their planning reforms. Our reforms will put power into the hands of local communities to deliver the sustainable development they need for the future while safeguarding the countryside and other places that matter most to them. The current planning system is complex, unresponsive, and bureaucratic costing the economy up to £3 billion a year, and no-one disagrees with the need to make it easier to understand. A departmental source said the Government stood by the £3billion a year estimate as the cost "to the economy of delay associated with development," which was provided by a distinguised academic Professor Michael Ball.