On the morning of Friday 7th May, avoiding much of the hype and most of the coverage of the General Election result, I caught a flight to Vienna for a long weekend.

Amid the charms of this eminently walkable city, the clamour surrounding the main political parties here in the UK faded entirely from view.

Indeed, the outcome of the UK’s election was an also-ran item in many of the news broadcasts: something far more important was going on in the meeting of EC Finance Ministers, sorting out the debt crisis in Greece and across the Euro zone. Against this headline item, the UK’s electoral issues were a minor concern.

Which is pretty much how planning and development sits in the outcome of the election and the building of the new coalition Government. Important though it is to those of us in the development industry, it’s of little or no interest to the national press and to most people.

A colleague of mine was invited to the Leaders’ Debate in Bristol and asked to send in his intended question. His first attempt focused on the Parties’ planning and housing policies. “Sorry,” he was told, “that’s not interesting enough – try something more topical”.

As I write, we’re still awaiting the details of the coalition’s policies but the summaries released on news websites have little to do with planning, development or housing.

It’s not easy to foresee the implications of the election result for planning and development. More than ever, the priority lies in getting the economy under control and returning the UK Plc to a profitable standing – with spending cuts to the forefront.

Reform to the Planning system is a shared Tory and Liberal Democrat ideal under the heading of local decision-making; regional planning is unlikely to survive long; and the Third Heathrow Runway is a lost cause. Yet I suspect it will be quite a while before a reformed Planning Act emerges. Our political leaders will have more important things to worry about for quite a while yet.

Ian Tant is senior planner at planning consultancy Barton Willmore

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