Britain has failed the beauty test: in our cities and countryside, planners run amok | Simon Jenkins

If adopted, proposals for the rural and urban environment could see the greatest reordering of public space in 70 yearsSeldom does a philosopher get to rule. Now one does - if, sadly, posthumously. The late Roger Scruton's government-backed report on "building better, building beautiful" is political philosophy in the raw. It comes hot on the heels of the government's agriculture bill proposing a complete shift in farm support away from food and into "public money for public goods". If adopted, these twin pillars of rural and urban environment could see the greatest reordering of Britain's public face in the 75 years since the war. They are both about that most elusive concept, beauty.The farm bill remains opaque. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, which separated towns from countryside as an inherent "good", all but collapsed under David Cameron's developer-driven government. It delivered sheds, hypermarkets and housing estates sprawling unplanned round almost every town in southern England. It turned communities into raging nimbys, and planning decisions into court cases. Rules on everything from tower blocks to expanded villages were made so uncertain that planning defaulted to anyone who could afford a lawyer. Continue reading...