First, contrary to what the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) internet home page says, I’m not for the abolition of planning, but for its overhaul into something more proactive and creative. I want to remove local politics from the planning process and see local experts and enthusiasts sit on planning committees.

Second, I want to see green-belt policy reviewed (so, by the way, does the RTPI).

Third, and most importantly, I want design — that inventive, expressive, creative process that, apart from sex, men and women were put on the planet to do — placed right at the heart of urban, suburban and rural growth.

What’s controversial about any of that? Not much. The late Brian Redhead, a good old-fashioned Mancunian controversialist, once suggested on the Today programme that all train drivers should be paid £50,000 (back in the 1980s) because their work was of the utmost responsibility. That’s what I feel about good planners.

Of course, there are bad planners in Britain who don’t much care; there are lazy planners; and there are fearful planners who are bullied by their councils. One senior figure in urban regeneration recently told me that the only obstacle in the way of successful urban renewal and new-town growth is the quality of staff in local government. That kind of statement makes you stop dead in your tracks.

But conversely — hooray! — there are many brilliant planners out there who deserve to be rewarded and encouraged. The future of our environment, our town centres, our countryside, and the quality of our housing resides in their hands. That is some remit. Their power is almost that of minor gods, so their salaries ought to be on a god-like scale as well. There are even some who have written in to say how important it is to have personal involvement with projects, seeing themselves as the fourth key component in any development, together with client, architect and builder. Whoa! That must be the hardcore provisional wing of the RTPI writing.

The problem comes in sorting the wheat from the chaff, and you or I can only try to assess the performance of our local authority planning department. As a rough and ready guide, look at the name. If they’re called “Planning”, they’re worth at least tuppence; the word has a whiff of creativity about it. If they’re called “Development Control”, quake in your boots. It’s a hideous term couched entirely in the negative, suggesting that every decision will be predicated on the principle of saying no. To help them, there’s the 1,700-page five-volume Development Control Guide. Staggering. Everything about the term represents all that’s wrong about planning law and policy: restrictive, reactive and rigid.

For a more in-depth review, visit the website of the Audit Commission (see below). Its job is to make sure local authorities do their work properly. It reviews planning departments, among others, and puts them in one of five categories (new reviews are published next month).

Last month, I visited a new Grand Designs site in Southampton, where the owner has received tremendous proactive support from his planners to build a contemporary jewel of a house in his own back garden (despite some local objections). The planners had championed the scheme to the council as an exemplary piece of urban infill.

Not surprisingly, I found Southampton scored a “good” on the Audit Commission’s scale. Better still, Taunton Deane in Somerset received a rare “excellent”. Woe betide you if your local council is rated “weak”, and if it gets “poor”, I’d sell up and move.

So is there a crisis in planning or is it going through an adolescent rough patch? Well, the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 is well past adolescence now. The real question is whether, after nearly 60 years, it isn’t approaching retirement age.

What your correspondence confirms is a lack of public confidence in the planning process, a frustration at the lack of co-operation from planning departments and a suspicion that legislation and centralised policy are too out of touch with local and modern needs — you think it’s getting slightly senile and incontinent. I’d replace it with the Town and Country and Suburb and City and Village Design Act 2005.

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