Planning law doesn't distinguish between one man building a house and developers building 200 houses and everyone has to abide by the same rules.
This is not about stopping people building tanneries. This is about preventing urban sprawl. If this law didn't exist, there'd be no stopping those developers from building their 200. Even if the law did try to distinguish between individuals and developers the value of property near London is such that for every developer you stopped you'd have 200 individuals wanting to build.

This man seems to think that these laws don't apply to him because he has a lot of money.

The analogy with the car being scrapped is flawed. The law is against speeding, not against manufacturing cars. Here the law is against building, not buying.