Kemi Badenoch’s Labour General Election opponent accuses her own party colleague, North East Herts’ Chris Hinchliff, of ‘peddling nonsense’ on planning

North East Hertfordshire Labour MP Chris Hinchliff has been accused of “peddling nonsense” about planning – by his own party’s North West Essex General Election candidate.

Issy Waite, national secretary of Labour Students, slashed Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch’s majority to come second in the former Saffron Walden constituency in last July’s poll.

She used X, formerly Twitter, to criticise Mr Hinchliff for an article he wrote for Politics Home, critical of the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

When he posted the article on X, Mr Hinchliff said: “Plans to reform environmental regulations risk irreversible harm to nature. My amendments to the Planning Bill would prevent this. Safeguarding nature and building homes can go hand in hand - with an empowered, well-funded planning system.”

Ms Waite said: “Disappointing to see a Labour MP pedalling [sic] this nonsense. Our current planning system does very little to protect nature, this bill will change that.

“Those that genuinely care about the environment will back it, rather than the opportunity to get a headline about themselves.”

Mr Hinchliff worked for countryside charity CPRE – formerly known as the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and the Campaign to Protect Rural England – before becoming the first Labour candidate to win the North East Hertfordshire seat since its establishment in 1997.

In his Politics Home article, he wrote: “The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act facilitated Labour’s historic council housebuilding programme and rebalanced power between wealthy landowners and workers. This policy embodies Labour values.

“Now, amid a deep housing crisis, with over eight million people facing unmet housing needs, the Government is seeking to reshape the planning system. But, there is a key limitation in its approach: a narrow focus on increasing housing supply when we already have substantially more homes per capita than we did 50 years ago.

“In 1971, we had roughly one dwelling for every three people in the UK. Today, there is one for every 2.2 people. Yet since 1971, UK house prices have risen by 3,878 per cent. England has seen 724,000 more net additional dwellings than new households since 2015.

“The misdiagnosis of supply leads to the flawed conclusion that the solution to the housing crisis is cutting so-called red tape. In this case, red tape seems to mean democratic engagement in the planning process, meaningful community consultation and essential environmental protections.”

Mr Hinchliff noted that “the overwhelming majority of planning applications are approved” and that more than a million homes granted planning permission in the past decade were yet to be built.

He accused developers of “drip-feeding” developments into the system to maximise profits.

The Cambridge University graduate wrote in Politics Home: “To tackle the housing crisis, we need a wide-reaching approach, incorporating economic reform alongside empowering local authorities.”

He said he was working on a range of amendments to the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill that were “pro-building, pro-worker, pro-public health and pro-environment”.

Mr Hinchliff, whose constituency includes the East Herts villages of Little Hadham, Braughing, Standon and Puckeridge, said there should be an end to the “call for sites” approach to making Local Plans.

Instead, he said: “Councils should be empowered to proactively identify the best locations for meeting housing need in line with strict criteria for sustainable development and assemble this land as necessary.

“Let’s put an end to local authorities having to choose where development can go from sub-optimal sites offered by wealthy landowners and developers, while also securing land value uplifts to fund desperately needed council housing alongside the parks, infrastructure and public services so often missing from new build estates.”

Ms Waite, who battled Mrs Badenoch for her seat while completing a degree in international relations and legal studies at the University of Sussex, has also written about planning.

She penned an article for Left Foot Forward: “For far too long, when it comes to building the housing and infrastructure our country so desperately needs, we have allowed delay to masquerade as environmental concern, allowing desperately needed infrastructure that would benefit working people, and the environment itself, to be kicked into the long grass.

“The Tories would have you believe that housing and nature cannot coexist, but the Planning and Infrastructure Bill finally dispels that myth.”

She said that smart planning could deliver homes sustainably. She wrote: “Today, our planning system is outdated and places huge constraints on the ability of governments to build any infrastructure.

“The loops and hurdles that planning applications need to go through mean that we too often face infrastructure paralysis.

“The requirement for HS2 to provide a bat tunnel costing £120 million, despite no real evidence that a single bat would be affected, is a perfect example of these ludicrous requirements.”

Advocating for a more strategic system rather than piecemeal mitigation measures, she said the Government should hold its nerve.

She wrote: “The Planning and Infrastructure Bill must succeed, as it is, to deliver for people and the planet. Growth and nature aren’t enemies – delay is.”