It has been good to see our local newspaper generating discussion on the vexed question of development.

There was plenty of response to my last article laying bare the fact that the Government is driving development by tripling Watford’s targets and introducing a Housing Delivery Test which it has announced Watford is failing!

As a town we are only delivering half the development the Government requires and we are being told we must do better. This is fact and there’s no hiding from it, however much our MP and his activists seek to deny and deflect it.

Another weapon in the Government’s armoury is to increase the circumstances that you can change a building to residential use without needing planning permission. These are known as Permitted Development Rights (PDRs).This means very little public scrutiny of the plans and no, or very limited, right to object.

Recently, Housing Minister Robert Jenrick expanded the scope of PDRs to include shops, cafés, crèches, gyms and other local facilities. Starting in August they can be converted into residential units without planning permission. They only have to be empty for six months before this is allowed – a loophole easily exploited.

This can happen regardless of any impact on the high street or a neighbourhood centre. It has been described by planning professionals as a ‘golden gift to unscrupulous landlords and developers who will be falling over themselves to make a quick buck on residential conversions’.

Already, offices can be converted into residential units, a developer can add two additional storeys to a block of flats and your neighbour can extend at the rear and side and add two storeys without any of this needing a full planning permission. There’s 500 pages of ifs, ands and buts but the principles are there now enshrined in law.

The Government cloaks these reforms with warm words about wanting to ‘simplify’ the planning system. But a report published last summer, commissioned by the Government, was pretty scathing about the fact that the conversion of offices to residential use has created seriously sub-standard homes.

There has been widespread condemnation of the Government’s ongoing obsession with extending permitted development rights. But this announcement shows this has fallen on deaf ears. Of course, we need new homes in Watford, but the right type in the right place.

And of course our high streets need to be revitalised but this total free-for-all, which denies a say to local communities and their elected councillors and planning officers, is not the way to do it.

Baroness Dorothy Thornhill

Former mayor of Watford