When Keir Starmer promises that his new government will “bulldoze” through the planning system as “the builders not the blockers”, there is bound to be opposition from noisy nimbys – but not from planners keen for “change”.

By nature idealists, planners talk of improving lives and environments, enthused by Labour’s promised new towns. Conservatives traditionally view them with loathing, seeing them as anti-free-market, socialist control demons. The very concept of planning sends shivers down their spines – until they want them to oppose development in their nimby shires. Ordinary citizens resent them either for stopping something – juliet balconies are a current vogue – or for permitting something, like the next-door juliet balcony overlooking their garden. People want housing and green electricity, but over there, not here. “Bulldozing” the system will clash with Labour’s devolution pledge: “change” rightly means removing some decisions from England’s 370-odd planning authorities.

“You don’t become a planner to make friends,” says Steve Birkinshaw, head of planning and regeneration in Erewash borough council, Derbyshire. The Royal Town Planning Institute reports that planners are often targeted by online trolls, with “insults, harassment and violent threats”. Birkinshaw says his job is “to make the world a better place”, with embarrassment at his own sincerity. I have been talking to him over the years as he struggles against multitudinous obstacles to get urgently needed new homes built. Here’s his HS2........

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