This week, a planning inquiry opened into two planning applications, either side of Chiswell Green Lane.

Local residents, campaigners, developers, their lawyers and a Planning Inspector were “called to order” around the table in the civic centre to discuss the merits - or otherwise - of these two applications. But what concerned me most was the timing.

Regular readers will know about my long running campaign in Parliament to fix the broken planning system: a planning system that doesn’t produce the homes we need, but does destroy the Green Belt.

Time and time again, I’ve called for Green Belt land to be protected from speculative development and to incentivise developers to build on brownfield first.

I’ve called for top-down government housing targets to be based on up-to-date population data - a move that would half housing targets for our area.

And I’ve called for developers to pay the full cost of processing their applications to end the scandal of St Albans district tax-payers subsidising developers to the tune of £3 million a year.

The government have been slow to move on these issues. But finally, last December, they started to heed calls for reform and published draft revisions to planning rules.

The proposed changes aren’t perfect, and the Leaders of St Albans and Three Rivers district councils and I have responded formally suggesting ways they could be improved.

But it’s a good starting point and would make it a little harder for developers to bulldoze over our Green Belt, as they’re being allowed to by the existing planning rules, which just aren’t fit for purpose.

Frustratingly however, the government won’t say whether or when they’ll put these changes into practice. Even when I challenged the Secretary of State directly in Parliament, he refused to answer.

That’s why I asked the Planning Inspector to allow me to speak at the inquiry. Whilst MPs don’t have any say in planning applications – that’s the jurisdiction of our local councillors - I called on the Planning Inspector to suspend the Inquiry and seek clarity from the Secretary of State on his plans.

For as long as the government drags its heels, sites in Chiswell Green, Colney Heath and the rest of St Albans district remain under threat.