We need to learn from planning mistakes

A regulator could ensure that development plans complied with best planning practice, writes Michael Clifford.

BACK in the mid-2000s a friend remarked to me that we were living in the land of boybands and tribunals.

The boybands have since grown up and become something else. The tribunals transmogrified into commissions of investigation, with hearings in private rather than public, and have multiplied like rabbits. Now that the public inquiry has been moved behind closed doors, there appears to be a lot more of them. Anytime a government sniffs trouble on the breeze, a commission is opened up and run out the long finger.