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Decentralisation Minister Greg Clark has announced new powers to prevent the act of garden grabbing, and the news is music to a lot of people’s ears.

Garden grabbing is the increasingly common practice of new houses being built on previously residential land, including people’s back gardens.
 
Planning guidance previously placed gardens in the Brownfield category as ‘previously residential land’, effectively putting them on the same footing as derelict factories and disused railway sidings, rather than safe places for children to play and sanctuaries for urban wildlife.
 
Between 1997 and 2008 the proportion of new houses built on previously residential land has soared from one in ten to one in four. This move to restore gardens as Greenfield sites will impart councils with more power to prevent unwanted development on gardens, particularly where there have been objections from locals, and ensure their decisions are not constantly overruled.
 
“Local communities will once again get the chance to decide whether they want to keep a particular garden or whether they think it is better that it should be built on. That's where decision making power should rest,” said Clarke.
 
Since the announcement, he’s been inundated with support from residents, who are “thrilled” will the changes.
 
“This week's news is music to my ears … it can only be hoped that the majority of terrible applications will now be prevented,” one Solihull resident told his local paper
 
Amanda Lazar from Bournemouth, who personally wrote to Clarke, also backed the changes: “I have been horrified to see house after house being bulldozed over the last eight or so years, and blocks of tiny flats put up in their places, with beautiful, mature gardens being tarmacked over to provide parking spaces."