This week, Wycombe MP Steve Baker writes exclusively to Bucks Free Press readers:

It is clear current planning laws are failing to meet expectations.

We need to find a way forward by putting residents at the front of the planning process. This is something I have spoken about in the Commons and have also raised with ministers.

People who have been born in the area, or have lived here a long time, often despair of ever being able to own their own home, or worry their children will not be able to live near them.

We need more and more affordable homes, with public consent for development which improves our town.

We should allow residents and communities to take control of their areas, not continue with a planning system that is so complex specialist expertise is required to work out whether a proposal is permitted development.

We need a genuine simplification of the existing rules so complexity does not undermine trust in the system.

I have spoken to many resident groups and local families, discovering just how angry they are at having building imposed on them without adequate compensation for open spaces being taken away or views spoiled.

The public are not put at the front of the planning process and, in turn, they often resist new building.

Compensation for development is provided to councils, not to the people affected. People simply have inadequate reason to consent and every reason to object.

We need a planning system where the public have the opportunity to say no, but the incentives to say yes. As the Government reflects on the recent result in Chesham and Amersham, that is the approach I want them to consider.

It is time for sympathetic development to meet local needs, improving our environment and creating homes people want.

The challenge of public consent is one the system must now meet.