While the Lib Dems are unpopular, they are organised and hard working and adept at driving down the turnout, mostly by persuading everyone that no-one can beat them.
There is logic in a single council offering residents a one-stop shop, bringing Planning and Highways together.
Without new homes, young people delay marriage and children, birth rates fall, and the social contract begins to break. Failing to build is not just bad economics: it is moral negligence.
Homeowners extending, self-building, or adding annexes, are supposed to be exempt. Yet they are being hit with life-changing bills due to poorly drafted legislation, confusing exemption paperwork, and councils applying the rules with no discretion.
Brentwood has a network of villages. It is alarming to note that some newly developed areas have already been acquired by housing associations who are primarily focused on fulfilling their own housing requirements, rather than the needs of our local community.
The focus should be on building up. Building well-designed mid-rise developments in towns and cities.
A Conservative government must take the practical path: back the North Sea, back nuclear, protect our green and pleasant land, and build the infrastructure that will actually deliver the power Britain needs.
A future government that is minded to improve matters would be contending as much with a Conservative legacy as with a Labour one.
Despite the last Conservative Government awarding Cheshire East Council record sums of money to fix the holes blighting our roads, there seems to be little action from the council.
Land-banking is the problem, and nationalising housebuilding is the answer.
In Ipswich alone there are 17 allotment fields providing 2,100 plots across 60 acres, with a standard plot size of 250 square meters.
Remember that the capital is a city where floorspace values are several times higher than they are in most of Britain – higher, in fact, than they have been in almost any time or place in the history of the world.
We represent value for money, strong community investment, and, above all, helping our residents to help themselves.
When it comes to getting planners out of the way of people who want to build homes, this should apply everywhere in England, not just in Chipping Barnet or Orpington.
Government by ‘good vibes’ creates what might be called a Samaritan’s Dilemma of the State: endless acts of well-intentioned protection that cumulatively trap the very people and businesses they were meant to help.