Your neighbour wants to build a large extension to the back of their home which could block the sunlight coming into your house. A housing developer wants to turn the playground your children go to after school into a new estate. The Council plans to build a new recycling centre just down the road from your home.

Thankfully, none of these examples are real, but they serve to illustrate just how important planning issues are to our daily lives.

Any change in our local environment can have profound consequences for us, both good and bad, depending on your viewpoint. Some of us might welcome a new recycling centre down the road, as it will be more convenient. Others may see the additional traffic as an unwelcome nuisance.

Whatever your view, the important principle is that you are made aware of the proposed changes before they get the green light. That way, the pros and cons can be debated openly, and everyone is given the opportunity to have their say.

This commitment to transparency is underpinned by a longstanding obligation on Councils to publish planning notices in local newspapers. In addition to using local papers, Councils are free to publicise the notices through their own channels and on social media if they wish to do so.

If you combine print and digital reach, local news brands now enjoy huge audiences – 40.6 million a month, according to JICREG.

We firmly believe that the obligation to publish public notices in printed local papers is critical to ensuring that Councils and local papers work effectively together in this way.

When it launched the ‘Planning for the Future’ consultation, the Government unveiled the most significant shake-up to the UK’s planning system since the 1940s. A key part of this, according to the White Paper, will be to enhance democracy and transparency in the planning system; laudable objectives which we wholeheartedly support.

But at least one measure in the consultation would do the exact opposite; the removal of the statutory requirement for Councils to publicise planning notices in local newspapers. If this were to go ahead, we fear that the public access to important information would be severely impaired.

Instead of being published in trusted local newspapers, planning notices would be cast into the void of misinformation and fake news that is social media, or placed in a little-visited part of a Council website.

If you believe in the public’s right to know, then please contact your MP

before the end of this month and ask them to make representations to Government about this. Residents in North East Somerset should contact Jacob Rees-Mogg by emailing: [email protected], or write to him at: House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA. MP for Bath, Wera Hobhouse, can be emailed at: office@wera hobhouse.co.uk, call: 01225 307024 or write to: 31 James Street West, Bath, BA1 2BT.