 What is our planning system for? That is the question the Government is grappling with through its reform of England's planning rules - and the answer it has come up with is proving to be a lot more controversial than it expected.  The Daily Telegraph has taken up cudgels on behalf of those concerned that the proposed National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) will not protect our countryside from the march of urban sprawl. The public backlash is growing, as is the pressure on ministers to take a step back and reconsider where they are taking our planning system.  With my background in planning and nature conservation, I was asked to help to write the new reforms. But I certainly cannot support the proposals on the table. The essence of good planning is meeting the needs of people, the economy and the environment - and these reforms are threatening that approach.  Greg Clark, the planning minister, invited four experts to write a first draft of the NPPF. as well as myself, from the environmental sector, there were three others drawn from the local authority sector, developers and the housebuilding industry, although we were all there in a personal capacity rather than representing the views of our organisations.  It was a novel and challenging approach.Put four experts in a room who all think they are right and sparks will fly. Over five months we had plenty of lively debates as we battled over the text. Some battles I won, some I lost, and on others we found a compromise. By the end we had a succinct, but flawed document.  I can see why the Government wants to streamline planning policy - not least to make the system more accessible to the public. Back in the early 1990s, working as a local authority planner, I helped to write a lengthy development plan. Looking back, that weighty tome must have been a real headache for people wanting to build a house in our patch. But it was invaluable experience for writing a succinct national policy. That, I think, was the real achievement of the expert group.  after we published our draft, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) beavered away to turn it into an official government draft. That meant changes not only from them but from other departments across government, including those who don't place a high value on either the environment or the planning system. With changes like that on top of a flawed draft, the result is a document that sets out a markedly different emphasis for the future planning system.  I believe there are some welcome ideas in the text. There are new policies on restoring habitats and protecting local ecological networks. There's a tougher stance on peat extraction - no more planning permissions, even for extended sites - and there's a new designation to protect green spaces.  But the big argument isn't really over the environmental policies. It's over the "presumption in favour of sustainable development" and the overall tone of the document, which puts the economy first. This marks a profound shift in emphasis for planning policy.  Ideally, the presumption in favour of sustainable development would be just that - a presumption that unless development can prove it is sustainable, against a robust series of tests, it should not go ahead. In the draft NPPF, however, it reads more like a presumption in favour of d 