Neighbourhood Planning Bill
Monday 10th October 2016
(8 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberNeighbourhood Planning Act 2017 Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Sajid Javid)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I welcome the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) to her new position. I wish her and her team all the very best.
I have been a Member of this House for six-and-a-half years. In the countless contacts I have had with my constituents over that time, one issue has come up more often and more consistently than any other: housing. I am sure other hon. Members would say the same. Whether it is a lack of affordable accommodation, standards not being met, calls for housing to be built on one site or campaigns against it being built on another, the subject dominates inbox, postbag and surgery alike. Meeting that challenge requires action on many fronts, but at the heart of it all is the need for a clear, fair and, above all, effective planning system.
My two Conservative predecessors at the Department for Communities and Local Government did more to reform planning than all their Labour counterparts combined. More than 1,000 pages of policy was reduced to just 50 and the Housing and Planning Act 2016 did much to streamline and speed up the process. It is a record of real action and real change that is already paying off. The year 2015 saw more planning permissions delivered than in any year since records began. Almost 900,000 new homes have been delivered in England alone since the start of 2010.
As I said just last week, however, there is much more to do. The Prime Minister has been absolutely clear that, if we are going to build a Britain that works for everyone, we need a housing market that works for everyone. That means doing still more to tackle the housing shortage by giving communities greater certainty over development and reducing the time it takes to get from planning permission to completion. This Bill will help us to do just that.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way so early. He is quite right about the inbox: this subject dominates so much of the dealings we have with our constituents. There are two areas the Bill does not cover that I think it ought to. I wonder if, over the course of the next few weeks, he and his fellow Ministers could consider whether the Bill should be amended to deal with them.
The first point is that inspectors, on dealing with developers’ appeals, take into account the number of planning permissions given but not the number of housing starts. Planning permissions are in the hands of the district planning authority, but housing starts are in the hands of the developer. If the developer will not make use of the planning permission, it is unfair on the district council and unfair on the affected neighbourhood that does not want to see the planning go ahead.
Secondly—I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will be very, very quick indeed—in relation to matters going up to an inspector, I gather from the Minister for Housing and Planning that they cannot be called in once they have gone to the inspector, but they ought to be if there is to be any even-handed justice and equality of arms.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Just before the Secretary of State responds, my patience with and tolerance of the extremely long intervention by the right hon. and learned Gentleman is not to be taken as a precedent.
Sajid Javid
My right hon. and learned Friend makes some very good points. The first part of his question was whether we might be able to take some of them into account in the Bill. I anticipate that at some point there will very likely be some amendments to the Bill. If that is the case, they will of course be discussed properly at that time. He made some suggestions that I will think about carefully, in particular regarding what some people call “landbanking” by certain developers.. I talked about that very important point last week in my party conference speech. It is something on which we will be taking further action.
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
Might the Secretary of State also consider amendments that focus on the sustainability of new housing, in particular moving towards carbon-neutral housing, which also has the benefit of reducing cost to occupiers because of lower energy costs?
Sajid Javid
The right hon. Gentleman will know that several initiatives are already in place to make sure that new development is sustainable. A review is looking at what further measures we could take.
Neighbourhood plans are a key part of the Bill. Not all planning takes place at local authority level. Neighbourhood development plans, which were introduced in 2011, have proved to be extremely effective. Far from being a so-called nimby’s charter, some neighbourhood groups with plans in force have planned for housing numbers above the number set by the local authority for that area. Those communities have, on average, planned for 10% more homes. Neighbourhood planning gives residents and businesses greater certainty about developments in their area, ensuring that they have a choice on how best to meet local housing needs.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
The Bill contains some excellent provisions on neighbourhood planning, but neighbourhood plans are predicated on a local plan being in place. I represent two authorities: one has a local plan and the other does not. Will the Secretary of State, either through the Bill or otherwise, take strong action against those authorities that do not have a local plan in place?
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend makes a good point about the lack of consistency in approach by neighbourhoods. So far some 2,000 community groups have got together, out of which some 240 neighbourhood plans have been adopted. We would like to see a lot more, and these measures will achieve just that. My hon. Friend will know that giving communities greater influence over the planning process can reduce the number of objections to planning applications so that more homes can be built more quickly.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
The introduction to the Bill says that one of its central aims is strengthening neighbourhood planning and giving local people more certainty over where homes will be built in their area. The Minister for Housing and Planning has said that putting power into the hands of local people to decide where development occurs is a key objective. The Secretary of State will be aware that Birmingham’s Labour council wishes to build 6,000 homes on the Sutton Coldfield green belt and no account has been taken of the virtually unanimous opposition of the royal town’s 100,000 residents, who have been completely disfranchised. Will he agree to take account of the unanimous view of the newly elected Sutton Coldfield town council, who are adamantly opposed to this on behalf of the 100,000 people they represent?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I have already made it clear that the first long intervention was not to be a precedent. This second long intervention is definitely not a precedent. I have been patient because this is the first day back, but perhaps Members who have served several decades in the House have forgotten that interventions have to be short. We have many Members wishing to speak this evening and I will have to impose a time limit, so it is simply wrong for interventions to take so long. Short interventions make good debate!
Sajid Javid
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) has spoken passionately about this issue before. I listened to him then and I have just listened to him again, and I will of course reflect on what he has said. I am sure he will understand that it would not be appropriate for me to talk about a specific planning application, but I will reflect on what he has just shared with the House.
The Housing and Planning Act reforms to speed up and simplify the process came into force just a few days ago, and the Bill will strengthen the process still further. It will make it easier to update a neighbourhood plan as local circumstances change. It will give communities confidence that advanced neighbourhood plans will be given proper consideration in planning decisions, and it will give neighbourhood plans full legal effect at an earlier stage.
Of course, there is no point giving control to communities if they do not know that they have it or lack the skills to use it. So the Bill will also require planning authorities to publish their policies for giving advice or assistance to neighbourhood planning groups. It will also allow the Secretary of State to require planning authorities to keep those policies up to date. These provisions will make the neighbourhood planning process fit for the future. They will make it more accessible for everyone, and they will ensure that neighbourhood plans are fully respected by decision makers.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Should the Bill become an Act, will there be any circumstances in which a local authority can overrule a neighbourhood development plan that has been duly endorsed by said authority?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman may be aware that for a neighbourhood plan to become effective it needs to be adopted. It will be looked at by the inspector and a local referendum will be held. As I mentioned earlier, some 240 plans have gone through that process and, when that happens, they need to be given due weight in the consideration of planning decisions.
John Mann
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way again. He will know that Bassetlaw has more local plans in process and agreed than anywhere else, so we do know a little bit about them. If he is saying that a local council or the Secretary of State can decide to overrule a local community that has been through a huge, state-funded consultation, had a referendum and decided where the housing will go, what is the point?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman will know that once a neighbourhood plan is adopted, it becomes statutory and is taken into account when planning decisions are made. It is not a question of a local authority overruling a neighbourhood plan; once it is adopted, it is part of the local plan, so they are part of the same package, when it comes to making those decisions. Local authorities do not have the right to overrule a plan once it has been adopted.
Local and neighbourhood plans are vital tools for delivering new planning permissions. If we are to tackle the housing deficit, it is crucial that shovels hit the ground as soon as possible once permission has been granted for a development. There are a number of reasons why that does not always happen. One is because too many planning authorities impose too many pre-commencement conditions that unreasonably hold up the start of construction.
Of course, conditions can play a vital role. They ensure that important issues such as flood mitigation and archaeological investigation are undertaken at the right time. That is not going to change, but pre-commencement conditions should not be allowed to become unreasonable barriers to building. Not only do they delay the delivery of much-needed houses, but they create cash-flow issues for builders—something that is particularly problematic for smaller builders and new entrants to the market. To tackle this, the Bill reflects best practice by stopping pre-commencement conditions being imposed without the written agreement of the applicant. It will also create a power to restrict the use of certain other types of planning conditions that do not meet the well-established policy tests in the national planning policy framework. We are currently seeking views on both measures in a consultation paper published by my Department last month.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for taking a short lawyer’s intervention. When he is consulting on planning obligations, will he also consult on the option that was considered in the Housing and Planning Act 2016: the ability for local authorities to buy their own land with planning obligations, as the local planning authority? That would greatly speed up the redevelopment process in urban areas.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend speaks with great experience on this subject, and it is something that I will consider.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the changes to pre-commencement regulations will not mean that developers will not be held to their obligations to develop the infrastructure surrounding new housing? It is often a real challenge for local communities if that is not delivered in a timely way.
Sajid Javid
I can assure my hon. Friend that the provisions will not mean that happens. Developers will still have clear obligations, and this process will ensure that they will be held to them.
The system of permitted development rights already offers a rapid means of turning commercial premises into much-needed homes. However, we lack accurate and precise data on how many homes are created in this way, which makes it all the harder to build the right number of homes in the right areas, so the Bill will create a requirement to record on the planning register certain applications made under permitted development rights. Collecting these data will bring more facts to the national conversation on house building, help communities to develop neighbourhood plans, and help planning authorities and inspectors to make informed, appropriate decisions. Such a move is long overdue.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Before my right hon. Friend moves on, may I ask whether he will use this Bill to clarify an issue that is much discussed in Wycombe: the status of green-belt land? Is it sacrosanct, or should local authorities review it with a view to getting their local plans through the inspector, who I am told will not pass local plans unless the green belt has been reviewed?
Sajid Javid
The Bill does not look at green-belt issues, and it does not change in any way the very important protections for the green belt. As my hon. Friend will know, green-belt development can be looked at only in the most exceptional circumstances, and the Bill will not change that.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
Before my right hon. Friend moves on, I was wondering whether he would mention the privatisation of the Land Registry. I understood that that was to have been done under the Bill, but that no decision was taken, and that the issue was, in effect, kicked into the long grass. Has privatisation of the Land Registry gone? Could it be brought back? Where are the Government on the issue?
Sajid Javid
As my hon. Friend has rightly identified, measures on the Land Registry are not part of the Bill, and the decision on privatisation will be for the Government to make in the future; it will not form part of this Bill, nor will it be introduced into the Bill in any shape or form at a later date.
Part 2 concerns compulsory purchase. In an ideal world, such a process would not exist. I would always prefer to see agreement secured through negotiation. However, as a last resort, we all know that it is sometimes necessary, and when that is the case, it is right that the process operates clearly, quickly and, above all, fairly. That does not always happen. Part of the problem is that the process is governed by a complex patchwork of statute and case law that has built up over many years. This slows the process down, increases costs, and bewilders individuals who are caught up in it. Ultimately, it benefits nobody—with the possible exception of lawyers. Clauses 9 to 30 will tackle these issues, making the system more effective, more transparent, cheaper and easier to navigate. Untying the tangle of red tape will speed up the process. Once again, this will mean more homes—and the infrastructure that is required to support them—getting built more quickly.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
On the compulsory purchase clauses, what action have the Government taken adequately to consult with Welsh stakeholders, and to learn the lessons of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, given that the Assembly voted down a legislative consent motion relating to the Act on the grounds of insufficient consultation with Welsh stakeholders?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Lady will know that there has been widespread discussion, and we are still in discussions with the Wales Office and Welsh stakeholders on the issue that she raises.
The first set of provisions will make the process of compulsory purchase clearer. They include consistent rules for temporary possession of land where a permanent compulsory purchase is not required, giving all relevant bodies the same powers. The Bill also establishes a clear and coherent framework for compensation in such cases, filling a long-standing gap in the law and ensuring that all landowners are treated fairly. It sets out exactly what a property owner’s rights and options are when faced with a temporary possession; it is the first time that has been enshrined in primary legislation. The Bill also provides a clearer way to identify market value, making it quicker and easier to agree compensation.
At the moment, the price paid for property subject to compulsory purchase is assessed in the so-called “no scheme world”. This is the market value of land if there were no threat of compulsory purchase, not taking account of any increase or decrease caused by the scheme. The no scheme world is a mixture of obscurely worded statute and over 100 years of sometimes conflicting case law. This Bill brings things up to date; it clarifies and codifies the no scheme world, without altering its core principles, to provide a clearer starting point for all compensation payments.
The new provisions put mayoral development corporations on the same footing as new town and urban development corporations for the purposes of assessing compensation, and extend the definition of “scheme” in those limited circumstances in which regeneration is enabled by a transport project. The Bill repeals redundant legislation that allowed additional compensation to be negotiated after the original settlement. This will further reduce the potential for confusion and uncertainty.
The next set of provisions make the process faster. They create a statutory deadline for bringing confirmed compulsory purchase orders into effect. They also allow Transport for London and the Greater London Authority to make a single, overarching compulsory purchase order for transport and regeneration purposes. At present, they have to artificially divide projects and run parallel processes. This causes unnecessary cost, confusion and delay to much-needed development.
The final clauses will make compulsory purchase fairer. In particular, they ensure that where property is acquired by compulsion, the compensation entitlement is fair to all business tenants occupying the property. They will align the disturbance compensation entitlement of businesses with minor or unprotected tenancies with the more generous entitlement of licensees.
There are already many excellent examples of local authorities working together to meet the housing needs of their areas. Through devolution deals, we have seen combined authorities’ ambitions to bring forward strategic plans that address the needs of real-world communities, rather than of administrative divisions. I want to see more of this. I want more joint planning, more tiers of government working together and, of course, more plans put in place. I want all areas to have one. Failing to put a plan in place creates uncertainty among communities, who are left with no idea of what will be built where, and it creates resentment when developments are eventually imposed through speculative applications.
The House will not be surprised to learn that I agree with the central thrust of the local plans expert group’s recommendations in this area. We need more co-operation and joint planning. The requirement to have a plan should not be in doubt, and the process for putting a plan in place needs to be streamlined. As the expert group set out, most of those changes can and should be made through national policy and guidance, rather than through primary legislation. Should primary legislation be required, I look to use this Bill as the vehicle for it. If we do use the Bill in that way, we will of course ensure that the House has sufficient time to consider the provisions.
In conclusion, we have a nationwide shortage of high-quality, secure, affordable housing. To tackle this, we need new ideas, new policies and new legislation. This Bill provides a solid foundation on which to build. The Bill gives greater responsibility to local communities, letting them decide what sort of development they should have, and where it should take place. It removes more of the red tape that all too often delays construction. It gives us more of the data we need to make informed decisions about planning, and brings the compulsory purchase system firmly into the 21st century, turning it into a well-tuned machine for making development happen. Moreover, the Bill has been welcomed by the British Property Federation, the Royal Town Planning Institute and many others. Above all, the Bill will make it easier to build the homes that our children and grandchildren are crying out for. That is why I am delighted to commend it to the House.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I would like to put on record my thanks to the Secretary of State for his warm welcome.
The Neighbourhood Planning Bill does not appear at first glance to be a controversial one. Indeed, it includes many measures that we support. There are, however, elements of the Bill that could be strengthened or amended, so it was good to hear the Secretary of State say that he might be open to amendments in Committee. Labour Members will support appropriate measures that seek to streamline the delivery of much-needed new homes and further engage local people in the shaping of their communities.
We urgently need new homes, so it is a shame that the Bill misses measures to achieve what was announced in the Queen’s Speech in May, namely putting the National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory footing. However, we are pleased that, following pressure from both sides of the House, the unnecessary step to privatise the Land Registry has been dropped. That has been warmly welcomed by almost everybody in the housing sector, but the Bill must be seen in context, and it cannot be detached from the wider housing crisis we currently face.
The Government say that the aim of the Bill is to free up more land for new housing and to expedite the beginning of building once planning permission has been granted. We face the biggest housing crisis in a generation and urgently need more homes, and the Bill does not go far enough to provide them. The Bill could do so much more to encourage development and engage local residents in the process.
The Bill introduces measures in four key areas: neighbourhood planning, planning conditions, the planning register and compulsory purchase orders. The proposals on neighbourhood planning will allow neighbourhood plans to influence the planning process at an earlier stage, and will help to streamline the making and revision of neighbourhood plans. We support measures to streamline neighbourhood planning and to promote the ability of local residents to participate, but the Bill raises a number of questions. First, as the British Property Federation has noted, greater clarity is needed on the level and weight attributed to neighbourhood plans at every stage of their preparation. For example, more clarity is needed on whether a general direction of travel of a neighbourhood plan would be considered in the determination of a planning application.
Secondly, there is huge concern surrounding resources and the impact that the measure will have on our already stretched local planning authorities. Many of them already lack the resources they need to promote quality placemaking. The new measures make significant demands in terms of time and resources, and many planning departments are working on local plans before the deadline next year. How will the Minister ensure that they will be able to resource both adequately? Local authorities have a statutory duty to support neighbourhood planning groups and to provide a local plan. That could present problems for smaller district councils that have limited resources and capacity to respond to multiple pressures.
Teresa Pearce
I would rather not give way because many hon. Members want to speak and we are short of time.
The Bill needs further measures to clarify the true costs of neighbourhood plans. Currently, councils receive £5,000 for each neighbourhood plan area designated, and £20,000 for each neighbourhood plan referendum, but those figures are the same regardless of the number of electors or the complexity or size of the neighbourhood plan. The costs can exceed the moneys that the council receives.
In addition, neighbourhood planning must be open to all, and disadvantaged communities need to be able to participate. Neighbourhood planning comes with complexities and can require professional support. Planning Aid England and the RTPI help to support groups across the country pro bono, but the Government should adequately support local planning authorities and local communities to shape development in their areas.
The Bill allows the Secretary of State to prescribe when councils should review their statement of community involvement, but why are local councils, which understand their communities and can respond directly to local needs, not trusted to decide when to review their statements of community involvement? Why cannot that be decided at local level rather than being imposed from above? A better balance can be achieved, possibly through amendments in Committee.
The British Property Federation has made a number of recommendations on neighbourhood planning that the Government have failed to explore, including ensuring that neighbourhood plans are consistent with and conform to the national planning policy framework, and setting a minimum turnout threshold in referendums on the adoption of neighbourhood plans. I would be interested to hear whether the Minister is receptive to those suggestions.
The greatest concern in the Bill is on pre-commencement planning conditions. Councils approve almost nine of every 10 planning applications and there is little evidence to suggest that development is being delayed by pre-commencement planning conditions. There has been a cautious reception for the Bill from the sector. London Councils has said that there is little robust evidence to suggest that the current planning conditions system has led to an under-supply of housing.
Chris Philp
Before being elected to the House, I ran a business that financed construction projects. I have to tell the hon. Lady that people engaged in such projects frequently complain about the onerous conditions. To give one example, they complain about the requirement to have a bat survey.
Chris Philp
And newt surveys. Such surveys can be done only at certain times of the year. That is a very onerous and often very serious set of conditions.
Teresa Pearce
I am very interested in the hon. Gentleman’s previous employment, but people always complain about restrictions. Our job is to balance the complaints of the developer against what is best for a local community. I am yet to see firm statistical evidence of how much pre-commencement planning conditions restrict building.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
Will the hon. Lady give way?
Gavin Barwell
If the hon. Lady is not inclined necessarily to listen to the voice of developers, may I refer her to the representations all hon. Members have received from the District Councils Network? It states:
“The DCN has acknowledged that the discharge of planning conditions can be a factor in slow decision making and supports the government in seeking to address conditions.”
Teresa Pearce
I thank the Minister for his intervention but I would like to see real statistical evidence. Are we trying to solve a problem that does not exist? We all have anecdotal evidence, but perhaps in Committee we will see more evidence.
It is my experience that some developers welcome pre-commencement planning conditions because they enable planning permission to be secured without finalising the full details. It can save work duplication. For example, a developer may not wish to spend significant amounts of time deciding between different types of render for the outside of a development when they know it could be agreed at a later date. Indeed, a condition could be established in the consent to match the local area and street scene.
London Councils says that the measure will put considerable strain on the resources of local planning authorities. It proposes that a better solution would be to promote best practice in pre-application discussions between developers and local planning authorities. There are questions on the process. For example, what if late representations are received, and what if a councillor wishes to add a pre-commencement condition on the night of the planning committee?
Behind that lies the fact that pre-commencement planning conditions are not a bad thing. They have an important role in securing sustainable development that is careful and considerate of local communities. Conditions should be imposed only when consent would not be acceptable without them. By allowing room for negotiation, we are changing the nature of how conditions are set and their purpose. We could inadvertently either encourage inappropriate development by lowering our standards of acceptable development or, when disagreement arises between applicant and planning authority, discourage developers from building, which no hon. Member wants. There are questions about whether the measure is necessary. I look forward to seeing the stats behind it to show that it is. There is an existing framework for applicants to appeal specific conditions that they consider do not meet the national policy tests.
If we are to proceed, it is essential to ensure that the Bill does not have unintended negative consequences. Greater clarity is needed on appeal routes when agreement cannot be reached, and on pre-completion and pre-occupation conditions. It is right that there is a public consultation, but even if the Bill becomes law, I do not anticipate it adding any of the extra homes that we urgently need. It is not pre-commencement planning conditions that slow planning consent, but the chronic underfunding of local planning authorities. It is not pre-commencement planning conditions that slow construction, but the drastic skills shortage in the construction sector. It is not pre-commencement planning conditions that slow new schemes coming forward, but the lack of strategic infrastructure involvement.
Teresa Pearce
I am afraid I need to move on because many hon. Members wish to speak and the hour is late. [Interruption.] There are lots of Government Members.
The Bill makes provision for permitted development to be recorded on the planning register. Given the existing pressures and further commitments in the Bill— I have mentioned the wider question of resourcing—I should like the Minister to consider the funding of planning authorities. When local authorities are pressed for resources—they must decide, for example, between child protection and adult social services—planning is often squeezed.
The Bill attempts to streamline compulsory purchase powers, and includes temporary possession of land to enable schemes to store equipment and machinery so that they can be delivered. The temporary possession of land has been used widely in my constituency under the Crossrail Act 2008. The proposed changes to compulsory purchase orders would enable councils to capture the value from increased land prices to invest in the local infrastructure needed to complement and facilitate new housing schemes. While that can accelerate development, CPOs still require approval from the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, it is hoped that those measures will help to encourage development.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the Bill is what is not in it. Along with the Local Government Association and others, we welcome the news that the Government have not included the planned privatisation of the Land Registry. Will the Minister clarify whether the initiative to privatise the Land Registry has bitten the dust? Has it been kicked into the long grass or is in the rubbish bin?
The Bill is quite different from the measure outlined in the Queen’s Speech earlier this year. The Prime Minister said in her conference speech last week,
“something…we need to do: take big, sometimes even controversial, decisions about our country’s infrastructure.”
However, in the Bill, the Government’s proposal to place the National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory footing has been withdrawn. I hope that the Government will think again.
The Bill aims to build houses, but it does nothing to build communities. The failure to provide the commission with statutory powers to enable strategic decision making on infrastructure is a missed opportunity to tackle the housing crisis. The House Builders Association, which represents small and medium-sized builders, said that the Bill was unlikely meaningfully to increase supply.
This is the sixth piece of legislation in the past six years to make provision for planning. Another Bill passes and the Government fail adequately to resource planning departments, which have faced a 46% cut in funding over the past five years. A recent survey by the British Property Federation identified under-resourcing as the primary cause of delays to development. Another Bill passes, and the Government fail to increase the transparency of viability assessments, which many people believe is the key to ensuring that there is sufficient and appropriate affordable housing. Another Bill passes and we are no closer to developing garden cities and new towns, which we need to build to ensure that our children and our children’s children can find a home of their own.
The Bill will not deliver social housing and the genuinely affordable homes that are desperately needed. It will not provide facilities on new housing developments that are required to build communities, and it is unlikely to facilitate opportunities for the struggling SME builder, or tackle the growing skills crisis in the construction sector. The Bill has failed to tackle those issues, but I am interested to hear the Minister say that there is an appetite to look at the Bill and perhaps amend it in Committee. If it is not amended, the missed opportunity will manifest itself in a continued housing crisis until the Government can step up and match their rhetoric with substance.
Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)
I have to admit that I did not expect to be stirred by the statements of the shadow Secretary of State, but her remarks about clause 7 would strike anyone who has been engaged with the planning system over the past many years as quite extraordinary. Pre-commencement conditions imposed by local authorities are a major cause of delay and also distract the officials who she complained were underfunded. One reason why they are over-occupied is that they are too preoccupied issuing absurd pre-commencement conditions that are not properly enforced and lead to massive delays in the process. I warmly welcome clause 7, and hope that the regulations introduced by the Secretary of State will be extremely strong on that issue and will be accompanied by measures to enable us to do in parallel what is currently done in sequence. It takes about two years on average from the time of the first application to the actual completion of homes. Other countries manage that in a year or less, and we could too if processes that are currently done repetitively and in sequence were done in parallel and singly. I hope that we will see those regulations as the Bill proceeds.
Those of us who have been involved with neighbourhood planning since the Conservatives first introduced the proposals—amazingly, nine years ago—are conscious of its huge success. We were told at the beginning that it would be a nimby’s charter, as the Secretary of State rightly mentioned. We were told by others that it would never grip the nation and that there would not really be any neighbourhood plans, but we find that they have been introduced in some 2,000 places. Judging by my constituency, that is the beginning of a tidal wave: more than half the villages of West Dorset intend to engage in neighbourhood planning, and that is increasingly the case for the towns as well. There is no doubt, as the Secretary of State rightly said, that the measure is far from being a nimby’s charter, but as communities engage in neighbourhood planning they wrestle with two conflicting issues: their desire to preserve the look and feel of the places in which they live, which is a reasonable human desire; and the desire that their children and grandchildren should be able to find a home in the locality. I do not know whether the Secretary of State has experienced this, but people have come to my constituency surgery in tears because they could not get a foot on the housing ladder. I cannot remember another subject that has provoked that kind of emotional intensity. For families who have grown up, in some cases over hundreds of years, in small villages where they simply have not been able to build, this is liberation. It has been brought about by neighbourhood planning, because the community feels that it can control the shape and character of what is built so that it is appropriate to the location. That is not something that can be judged from miles away: it is judged on the spot by the locals, and it is a huge success. I therefore warmly welcome clauses 1, 2 and 5, which are the guts of the Bill.
I want to make a few observations about things that I hope can be developed in Committee and on Report. Clause 5 deals with assistance for neighbourhood plans. I had hoped that it would be a little stronger and meatier. It simply requires local authorities to produce an explanation of what they will do to support neighbourhood planning. That is fine—there is nothing wrong with that at all—but I know local authorities, and I suspect that the Department does too, that will write any number of plans and do absolutely nothing. What is needed is the ability for neighbourhoods—in some cases, hard-pressed neighbourhoods that do not have much money; in other cases, neighbourhoods that are small parishes that do not have much money—to get on with the job of neighbourhood planning. I do not think that anyone can expect the public purse to meet those costs, so we need to examine the proposal introduced by the National Association of Local Councils for more of the community infrastructure levy to be devoted to neighbourhood plans, at least when they introduce local development orders, which are extremely effective. We should also look at the possibility of a loan arrangement, in which money from the community infrastructure levy for a neighbourhood plan is used to repay or defray the costs of engaging in the exercise.
It is not a simple exercise. In most neighbourhoods that I have visited up and down the country, and in my own constituency, hundreds of people get involved and it is quite a management exercise. Neighbourhoods can only do it if they employ one or two people who can put the vision up on the board, explain what is proposed, and go through the detailed process—the examination, the referendum and so on—which requires up-front funding. I hope that that can be looked at.
Finally, clauses 1 and 2 are long overdue. In retrospect, we should have introduced them right at the beginning, in the 2010 legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and I were both involved in that, and it is great to see weight being given to post-examination, as in clause 1, and it is absolutely right that post-referendum neighbourhood plans should go into local development plans even if the local authority does not, for one reason or another, complete the task of introducing them. That is an excellent provision in clause 2. However, my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) made a point that is highly relevant. As the Secretary of State said, there are too many local authorities that have not yet introduced new-style local development plans. Unless the neighbourhood plan is couched in terms of a new-style local development plan with a proper strategic grip it is impossible to formulate the right kind of neighbourhood plan, which must conform to the strategic considerations of the local development plan. In some cases, I fear, local authorities have discovered that they can stymie the ability of neighbourhoods to produce neighbourhood plans simply by being recalcitrant about producing new-style development plans.
Given that, in clause 7, the Secretary of State is rightly taking powers to make regulations relating to pre-commencement conditions, I think he should at least consider the possibility of taking further powers to force local authorities to produce new-style local development plans, or else simply to allow a neighbourhood plan to stand in as the development plan for that neighbourhood, sui generis. Either would do, but I think that something must be done to address the problem raised by my hon. Friend.
Having said that, I will end by saying that the Bill is a progressive piece of legislation which should be welcomed throughout the House and throughout the country, because it may help our children and grandchildren to have the homes that they need.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I must congratulate the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on a perfect speech. In my opinion, of course, the content does not count; what counts is merely the length, in precise minutes. I was about to say to the House—but the right hon. Gentleman has illustrated my point perfectly—that if everyone who wishes to take part in the debate speaks for between seven and eight minutes, as the right hon. Gentleman has just done, everyone will have the opportunity to speak, and there will be no need for a formal time limit. If Members do not stick to a self-imposed time limit, there will be a formal time limit, which makes for much less easy-flowing debate.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Before I express my agreement with the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on one important point, let me congratulate the Secretary of State on his brilliant campaign 18 months ago to stop the development of more than 2,000 houses, which was well advertised in his local newspaper. He is truly the king of the nimbys—or, as some would say, he is backing his constituents and his local communities. That contrasts slightly with the message that I understand him to have conveyed somewhere last week when he was attacking the nimbys, because over the past two or three years, following his successful campaign, he has been the greatest of all the nimbys in the House.
I should like to see precisely what the right hon. Member for West Dorset proposed. If a neighbourhood goes through the pain and democracy of agreeing on where more houses should be built in its community, which is part of the requirement of a neighbourhood development plan, and if that is agreed by referendum and endorsed by the local council, it should not be possible to overrule such a level of democracy; but it is.
For example, at the most recent planning committee meeting in the Sturton ward in Bassetlaw, which I know extremely well, the neighbourhood development plan was overruled because the planning officers pointed to the Government’s five-year housing land supply, as identified by the developer. They said, “You can’t have that; you’ve got to have this.” In other words, they said, “You have a plan. You have specified where the housing should be, and what type of housing it should be. A huge number of members of the community participated in the consultation, there was a massive turnout for the ballot, and the plan was unanimously adopted by the district council, but you cannot do it, because Big Brother”—the king of the nimbys—“says that you have to have this, because you have not got enough housing.” However, they had just agreed that they would have more housing. The people who had agreed to have more housing were overruled, which is a total nonsense. The Government could do something about it today, but if they feel that they do not have the necessary power they could stick it in the Bill and then some of us would be happy, because that would be local democracy.
It is not true that the Government are not responsible for the delays in local development plans. On 1 March 2013, 95% of councils in England had to start their development plans again because of a change in the rules that was announced out of the blue, whereby everyone had to consult every adjoining authority. That is why there has been a delay in my area, which, proportionally, has more neighbourhood development plans either agreed or under way than anywhere else in the country. We have adopted this philosophy. I have argued the case in communities throughout my constituency. However, the whole process has to start again because we have not consulted Sheffield, Mansfield and other places that are nowhere near the 500 square miles of Bassetlaw.
That is a nonsense, and the Government could do something about it instantly. Our plan would be speeded up overnight if that happened. The public would be consulted, and would agree where housing should go. The Government would get their numbers, and we would get our housing everywhere. Even Bromsgrove would get the housing that it needs.
Let me give a couple of examples of the beauty of neighbourhood development plans. The Sturton ward provides one of the prime examples in the country of how a development plan should be written: an environmentally green development plan that specifies the kind of energy that we want in the community, the implication being that priority in new housing will go to developers who use green technologies. That is a community which is looking to the future and encouraging the right kind of housing. Such planning will enhance green technologies in this country, unlike the arbitrary wind farms and so forth which communities, strangely, do not like. Let communities have control through their development plans. The Government could announce that today—and that is my second request to the Minister.
When mayors are coming to city regions like the new Sheffield city region of which Bassetlaw will doubtless become a part, we should let those new mayors have the appeals. Let us localise the process more, so that there is more accountability, which will mean more housing rather than less. Let us take the process away from the Minister and the Minister’s officials. Surely that appeals to Tory Back Benchers and their sense of community.
Another big plan of which we in Bassetlaw are pioneers is the urban neighbourhood development plan. Virtually everywhere in the country has villages and parishes with parish precepts. They have a bit of money, and they have a democratic structure—rightly so—and that includes parts of my area. But how can such plans be created in an urban area where there is no such structure? It is necessary to think imaginatively. We had the great historic priory church and the Chesterfield canal, and we said to the community, “This is why the church is here, and this is how houses have developed. The church, as an institution and as a building, formed the centre of the community.” Neighbourhood planning of that kind would transform urban environments through lateral thinking. As for funding, hopefully the Canal & River Trust might lend us a plan or put in a bit of money, because the development of the canal would obviously be in its interests.
We have recreated the old, traditional church community. Imagine how planning in this country would have developed if the same had been done in the case of great cathedrals such as St Paul’s 30 years ago! Perhaps people who would visit the other place rather than here would be happy about what might have happened at St Paul’s.
The ability to define community by what has historically been there—waterways, forests and churches—is fundamental to the possibility of transforming urban planning through neighbourhood development planning. The key barrier will be money. That little impoverished community in my area around the great priory church, which was once the biggest church in the country—the end of the road through the forest, historically—has no funding itself, and has no structures for funding. We could have 30 or 40 urban neighbourhood development plans in my communities, but that would impose a huge burden on a small district council. The Government need to think about how to provide incentives, and get the models going. In Retford, for instance, the church is keen to be not just “church as building” but “church as the heart of the community”. Retford can lead the way in developing the built community around the church. Not just churches, but the many communities that have been built around those churches historically, need that kind of original thinking. That could be allowed, but the Government need to give a bit of flexibility. The powers that are local must be kept local. The Government must not overrule them.
Mark Pawsey
The hon. Gentleman is speaking with great eloquence about local powers. Would he care to tell us what happened to local powers between 1997 and 2010?
John Mann
The hon. Gentleman ought to know that neighbourhood planning had its origins in the 2003 legislation. That is how Bassetlaw got in first, and I have been around since then promoting it. The concept has been part of the planning arrangements since 2003.
I have endorsed the moves by the Government, except for the absurd one introduced on 1 March 2013 to stop all the development plans and frameworks that were in progress and delay them for three years. That was a chronic error on the part of past Ministers. I hope to hear from the Minister that the Secretary of State and the Government will not overrule neighbourhood development plans on appeal. They must send out the message that if a community takes responsibility for where its new housing and the rest of its developments should be, it will not be overruled by the Government. That could be done today; it would be a huge boost to communities across the country.
Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Finding a way to build the new homes we need while ensuring that we safeguard our green spaces and protect the character and quality of life in our urban and suburban neighbourhoods is one of the biggest challenges we face in modern Britain. We clearly have to respond to the concerns of the many young people who are finding it difficult to buy or rent the homes they want in the places where they want to live. In my view, however, it is also crucial that we do all we can to protect our open spaces, which play such an important role in the towns and cities of this great country of ours. As an MP representing a constituency that includes substantial areas of green-belt land, I am very much aware of how important it is to maintain full green-belt protection. I welcome the fact that the Bill is entirely consistent with that aim. It is crucial to prevent the unrestricted sprawl of large built-up areas, to conserve wildlife habitats and to provide crucial opportunities for outdoor health and sporting activities.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend also acknowledge that we need to conserve the ecology of such areas, especially through the use of hedgehog superhighways?
Mrs Villiers
I warmly agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment and commend his hedgehog campaign.
A number of provisions in the Bill will be helpful in delivering the new homes that we need and to which the Government are committed. We have had some helpful insight into how clauses 1 to 6 will help to strengthen neighbourhood planning and make it more effective. Establishing a register of prior approval applications for permitted development rights under clause 8 will also be welcomed, not least because of the concern felt about such rights. More visibility and transparency will be helpful in that regard. Clauses 9 to 30 look as though they will make the eye-watering complexity of some aspects of the compulsory purchase system somewhat easier to navigate. I hope that that will assist some of the major regeneration schemes.
However, a concern has been raised with me by my constituent Dr Oliver Natelson about the provisions in clause 7 on pre-commencement planning conditions, about which my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) has spoken eloquently. Dr Natelson was worried when media coverage of the announcement of the Bill in the Queen’s Speech indicated that obligations to carry out archaeological and wildlife surveys would be “swept away”. I welcome the Secretary of State’s clarification on that today, and I invite the Minister to expand on it and to confirm that clause 7 will not restrict the power of local councils to impose the planning conditions necessary to make a development acceptable, including those relating to wildlife, habitats, flooding and heritage.
I would also urge the Minister to consider an important point that is not covered by the Bill. It relates to vacant public sector land. An example in my constituency is a site in Wood Street in High Barnet that is owned by the NHS but has not been used for many years and is becoming increasingly derelict. No matter how many times I raise this with the NHS, nothing seems to happen. In my view, it should take a decision either to use it for healthcare purposes or to sell it on so that it can be used for new homes or open space.
I should like to illustrate some of the general issues underlying the Bill and its objectives by considering the situation in my Chipping Barnet constituency. Over the last five years, around 5,300 new homes have been delivered in the borough of Barnet, including more than 2,000 affordable homes. This is the biggest programme of house building in outer London, and Barnet’s Conservative council plans to deliver another 20,000 homes over the next 10 years. In order to do that while conserving our precious green spaces and protecting the character of our suburban environment, the council has embarked on a number of large regeneration projects. These include four of the borough’s largest housing estates, one of which is Dollis Valley in my constituency. These regeneration projects are due to deliver 7,000 new homes—4,000 more than were previously on the estates—with a mix of social rent, affordable and market rate homes to buy. Although this work started over 10 years ago, it has much in common with the council estate regeneration strategy announced by the Government in February. By 2020, it is hoped that the council will have built 500 new council homes. So far, 40 have been built but the pace of delivery is increasing.
A key consideration in relation to planning and house building, whether in national debates in Parliament such as this one or in local discussions on development proposals, is whether the local infrastructure can cope with the new demands being placed on it. Locally in Barnet, work is under way to try to deliver this in relation to the housing schemes I have mentioned. For example, 10 new or replacement schools are planned across the borough at primary and secondary level, as well as new college and university buildings. I also warmly welcomed the recent opening of the Hope Corner community centre as part of the Dollis Valley regeneration scheme in my constituency, and I thank Barnet Council and Barnet Churches Action for enabling that to happen. I am sure that the community centre will be a great asset for the many new homes that are already being delivered as part of the regeneration.
However, issues surrounding infrastructure are sometimes difficult or impossible to resolve. In my constituency, that is particularly true when they relate to local roads and transport. This was one of the many reasons I opposed the redevelopment of Cat Hill on the boundary of my constituency. It is deeply regrettable that my constituents are already suffering the negative consequences of Enfield Council’s decision to grant planning permission for that project. I am also concerned about a proposal to redevelop the North London Business Park in the Brunswick Park area of my constituency. Many residents are strongly opposed to this plan, and understandably so. I try to support new homes where I can, but that application is just not acceptable. Some 1,200 new homes are proposed, including five blocks at least seven storeys high, with other blocks of up to 10 storeys high. As my constituent Gilbert Knight put it in his representations to the planning authority, this would be
“massive in scale and out of keeping with the surrounding low-rise residential areas”.
Another grave concern is the proposal to create an entrance to the site from Ashbourne Avenue. A similar proposal was rejected back in the 1960s because the roads could not cope with it, and I sincerely hope that it will be rejected again for that reason. That is one of the many reasons I am resolutely opposed to this development, alongside ward councillor Lisa Rutter.
I should like to move on to some happier examples in which the planning system looks as though it will deliver new homes in a way that is much more acceptable to local residents and much more in tune with the local environment. New Barnet provides an example of how active community associations can shape the character of their local neighbourhoods, defeat plans they do not like and still deliver significant numbers of new homes. In a four-year battle, the Save New Barnet campaign group defeated attempts by both Asda and Tesco for new supermarkets in the area. Rather than just opposing the plans, residents put forward a credible and workable alternative for new homes. Eventually, both supermarket giants gave up the struggle and decided that it was best to work with rather than against the local community. New homes have been built on the Tesco site, and around 364 are now likely to go ahead on the Asda land. There are still issues to be resolved, not least in ensuring that section 106 money goes to benefit the immediate surrounding area rather than being spent further afield. None the less, this is an illustration of how a system that has a very active role for local communities is not incompatible with delivering new homes, which is why I thought it was appropriate to refer to it in a debate on this Bill.
In conclusion, although the Bill provides some useful improvements to a number of aspects of the planning system, there are still some important issues with which to grapple. I will leave the Minister with a few questions about the Bill and the Government’s approach to delivering more homes. First, I would like his views on the calls by local authorities to be able to recover more clearly the costs of the planning process through the fees that they levy on applications made. Secondly, what further steps can be taken to ensure that landowners build the homes for which they have been given planning permission, rather than land banking them? Thirdly, what further action can be taken to help London residents to buy property in the capital and compete with investment buyers from around the world who are pushing up prices?
Finally, I wish to draw the House’s attention to some picturesque fields in the northern part of my constituency in High Barnet. This is known locally as Whalebones because of the whalebone gateway that frames the entrance to the land. With its field of geese, it is a local landmark that is held in great affection. Sadly, it is now under threat from development.
In my speech this evening, I have sought to emphasise some of the big efforts that are being made to deliver thousands of new homes in my local borough through regeneration and brownfield development. We need new homes, and this Bill will help to deliver more of them. We can build them without sacrificing vital green spaces such as Whalebones. That is why I will be campaigning with determination to protect this much-loved enclave of green space, which matters so much to my constituents in Chipping Barnet.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, and it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers).
I am a supporter of neighbourhood planning. Before entering this place, I spent my working life as a town planner seeking to involve and engage communities in planning policymaking. I know the benefits that come from giving communities the ability to shape planning policy and from giving that policy formal weight in the planning process. I therefore welcome the measures in this Bill, which will strengthen neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood planning. I also have concerns about several aspects of this Bill, which reflect my wider concerns about the Government’s approach to planning.
We have in the UK a strong plan-led system, which allows democratically elected local authorities to lay out the basis on which applications for new development will be considered. There is no excuse for not having a plan in place or for poor performance. Last year, the Government made that system less coherent with the introduction of permission in principle, which introduces a blunt form of zoning into our finely balanced plan-led system that is capable of balancing so many different interests and concerns to get to a good decision.
I am concerned that this Bill does nothing to address the serious under-resourcing of planning departments while also giving local authorities new responsibilities to resource neighbourhood planning. Resources for local planning departments have been cut by 46% in the past five years, and the British Property Federation—not councils themselves but the private sector—identifies that this under-resource is the primary cause of problems in the planning system. During debates on the Housing and Planning Bill, I argued that councils should be able to recover the full cost of development management services through fees. I was very disappointed that the Government rejected that proposal at the time, and I hope that the new Minister will reconsider it. It is a common-sense proposal that will make a huge difference to efficient planning decision making.
Councils must also be properly resourced to support neighbourhood planning, Involving and engaging communities is resource intensive, particularly in areas where there are high levels of deprivation, but unless it is done properly we will not have neighbourhood plans that fully represent the views of the local community. Sadly, it remains the case that those in our communities who often stand to gain the most from the things that planning can deliver—for example those in housing need—are often those whose voices are not heard in debates about planning policy, and that must change.
I am concerned that this Bill proposes to water down pre-commencement conditions. Planning conditions are one of the significant levers that local planning authorities have to secure the best possible outcomes for communities. Very often, the things that form the basis for conditions are make or break issues for communities—anything from providing additional sewer capacity to the choice of bricks. Conditions should not be unreasonable, but it should remain the prerogative of the local authority to decide what conditions best protect the interests of local residents. The idea that conditions can be imposed only following the written agreement of the developer greatly underestimates the role that conditions play in ensuring good outcomes. This proposal also sets up an unnecessarily adversarial relationship between applicant and local authority where, in reality, it is best practice for the parties to come together to discuss and agree conditions through the pre-application process. I hope that the Government will reconsider this proposal.
I am concerned that the measures in this Bill relating to permitted development rights do not even begin to address the problems that are being caused by the extension of those rights to allow the conversion of offices to residential without planning consent. In London, the policy is having a detrimental effect on the supply of business space in some areas. We are also seeing new homes being delivered without regard for the physical infrastructure or public services to support an increasing population because they are not subject to section 106 agreements. We are seeing new homes being delivered without regard to minimum space standards or the types of homes that are most needed. Most importantly, we are seeing new homes being delivered with no affordable housing being provided in areas where it is desperately needed.
Instead of tinkering with the policy around permitted development rights, the Government should be radically rethinking it so that all new homes are subject to the full requirements of the planning process and developers are not able to profit from new homes without contributing to the green space, play space, school places and medical facilities that their residents will need in the future.
Fundamentally, this is a tinkering piece of legislation when we need major reform. It is polishing the bannister when the staircase is falling down. The housing crisis is one of the most significant issues facing our country. The planning system is critical to delivering both the new homes that we need and the successful communities that we want to see. This is no less than a debate about the future of our communities for our children and our grandchildren, the kind of places that we want them to be able to live in and the quality of life that we want them to have. Properly resourced planning is a tool for delivery not a barrier—a tool for ensuring fair outcomes and high quality. Instead of this paltry Bill, the Government should be setting out a vision for planning and for involving communities in planning; bringing forward a national infrastructure commission on a statutory footing, because infrastructure is critical to the delivery of new homes; building up our plan-led system as the basis for certainty in decision making; establishing a basis in legislation for new towns and garden cities; setting a context for communities and councils to come together to plan for the future; and resourcing councils to build the genuinely affordable council homes that we so desperately need. As this Bill passes through Parliament, I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to reconsider it and to make it fit for the challenges that we face.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I agreed with some of the things that she said, and certainly with the emphasis that she placed on infrastructure and the need to get it right. We have a strange system in which we bring forward development as if it is a bad thing, and put in facilities—she mentioned green spaces, but there are many other things that communities want, such as health facilities and primary schools—afterwards to mitigate the “bad effects” of development. However, recognising that the words “cities” and “civic” are cognate with “civilisation”, we should be bringing forward holistic schemes that create good places in the first instance.
I disagreed with the hon. Lady, though, when she nearly made it sound as though the planning system would be almost as perfect a work of art as any rendered by Leonardo da Vinci were it not for one thing—the way that not enough taxpayers’ money was being hosed over the planning departments of this country. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) said something similar. It seems to me that the problems are rather more fundamental.
I welcome the Bill, mainly because it gives people a local voice. I agree with all the views expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin); he is no longer here, so I shall not dwell on this, but I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) is in his place. He is a great tribune of his constituents and is also the vice-chairman of the all-party group on self-build, custom and community house building and place-making, which has a longer name than any other all-party group as it is a better and more important all-party group than any other, with the possible exception of the all-party beer group. It recognises, as does the hon. Gentleman, that the really important thing about getting the voice right is that it should be the voice of the people who are going to live in the dwellings.
The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood said that the local planning system should embrace every single house, and talked about the colour of bricks as if it were a good thing that local councillors were deciding the colour of bricks. I had a conversation recently with a local house builder who had a plan for a very modern house. Naturally, he wanted a render that was appropriate for that. It was bright white. He had a conversation with his local planning officer—I am not making this up—who said, “No, no. It’s too white. It’s too stark. You shouldn’t do that,” so he asked the planning officer to look at the relevant page on the website and choose the colour. She was a little nonplussed by this, but the house builder said, “You don’t want the one that I want, so why don’t you choose one and save a lot of time?” Eventually she chose a colour, which he said he would change in due course if he did not like it. It ought not to be necessary to have such a conversation. I have met house builders who have had seven or eight choices of gutter colour refused.
Helen Hayes
In each of our constituencies, we can think of examples of developments that, because of poor finishing and poor-quality choices of building materials, blight their communities for decades. It is not a trivial point that I am making. Once something is built, it affects that community for many, many years to come. These things are important.
Mr Bacon
I agree that they are important. The best people to choose the quality of the materials, and to make sure that they are of the highest possible standard, are the people who will live in those dwellings, not somebody else working to a profit margin, which is why more self-build and custom house building will result in higher quality.
I said earlier that I agreed with the hon. Lady on the subject of the local voice. I support the Bill because we need more local voice. The fundamental problem we face is that when people oppose development, they do so not because they want to see their family in trouble or not having somewhere to live. I have yet to meet the woman who wants her daughter or granddaughter to live in a ditch, and I do not think I am going to meet that person. They oppose development because they feel that local people have no say—no voice—in what gets built, where it is built, what it looks like or who has the first chance to live there. If we change that, we change the conversation completely.
Another reason why self-build and custom house building driven by customers is so important is that instead of opposition, it is met with local acceptance. I know that the chairs of many parish councils want to see dwellings in their local areas designed by local people for local people, to help local people. Of course, that also has the benefit of helping local house builders—local small and medium-sized enterprises, rather than large combines such as Persimmon, which are interested only in the bonus pool, which will result in 150 top managers getting a £600 million bonus pot, if they do reasonably well; it will be larger than that if they do very well. That business, like the banks, has been propped up by huge amounts—many billions of pounds—of taxpayers’ money through Help to Buy and various other schemes. I would rather see that money going into higher-quality materials, better thermal performance and bigger spaces.
The fundamental question, which we have not been very good at answering so far, is why we have a shortage. People give different answers. We have heard about the lack of planning resource, although we have thousands of unbuilt extant planning permissions, so the reason can hardly be planning by itself. We often hear that there is a lack of land. Only 1.2% of the land area of this country is taken up with houses. The Ministry of Defence alone has 2% of the land area of the UK. There are more golf courses in Surrey than there are houses. The problem is not planning per se; it is a lack of accessible land, a lack of financeable propositions, rather than a lack of finance, and a planning model that is broken.
If we want to correct that, we need to put customers at the heart of that model—people who will live in those dwellings. The way to do that is to separate the business of placemaking—all the things that I am sure the hon. Lady would agree with: creating places that are well served, well designed, well run, well governed and well connected—from the business of building houses on infrastructure that is already in place, with well serviced plots that have all the things that we would expect, including fibre to the premises, water, gas and so on, provided by one of the many hundreds of suppliers. There is a growing market of people out there who are willing to supply the house that people want, rather than what a very small number of large companies are telling people that they want. We need to put the customer at the centre, as in all other successful markets. That is the way that we will solve the housing crisis.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon), who is an authority on housing and planning. It did not take him long to get on to self-build homes.
It is a great pleasure to participate in a debate on planning—an area in which we get only one opportunity in many generations to get it right. Once land is developed, it stays developed for many years—perhaps several hundred years, if it is housing. We need to give more thought to getting that right. Development provides economic activity, the homes that are so badly needed, better conditions and a better environment.
Since the Localism Act 2011, the role of neighbourhood planning has been well entrenched as an integral part of our planning system. I am proud that in my constituency the 100th referendum has taken place in Coton Park. That arose as my constituency is the fastest-growing town in the west midlands. I am pleased that the neighbourhood plan was developed in an urban area. It was interesting that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) seemed to indicate that it was easy for villages to draw up a neighbourhood plan, but more challenging for urban areas. That certainly is the case. One of the first issues for Coton Park was identifying the area that the plan would relate to. I was very proud to add my foreword to its neighbourhood plan, and I would like to learn from its experience.
It is important to understand how the neighbourhood plan came about. This was a new community with housing that was built 10 or 15 years ago. There was no established community in the area. The community came together, interestingly, to oppose a planning application for industrial use close by. It argued its case and succeeded, causing the developer to change his plans for the site. I advised members of the community that, having come together to effect that change in planning, there was a strong reason for them to remain together and produce a neighbourhood plan that would influence future development in the area. They started in 2011 with their application for front-runner status. It took them until October 2014 to submit their neighbourhood plan, which went to a referendum in October 2015 and was finally approved in December last year.
Among the many observations I have about the plan, the first is that it took too long. The process took four years, and I am concerned that the time taken on the only such plan that has been prepared in my constituency will be a disincentive to other communities. It was my hope that, the community having been a front runner and having got its neighbourhood plan in place, I would see other communities in my constituency come forward. However, only four others have done so, which is disappointing. I hope that when he responds, the Minister will talk about ways of speeding up and simplifying the process. I am pleased to see the provisions in the Bill that require local authorities to set out the nature of the support that they are able to provide to communities. That will give those communities the confidence to embark on the project.
In Coton, the community was incredibly lucky to have a number of forum members who were not in full-time employment and were able to put in the work involved in developing the neighbourhood plan. That is pretty extensive. It involves surveying the entire area, talking to residents and getting those surveys back before starting the work of drawing up the document. Perhaps the Minister will speak about the level of detail required in some neighbourhood plans. In some instances, it goes too far, which exaggerates the amount of work and time required to develop the plan.
It is certainly harder for urban areas to bring forward a neighbourhood plan, but in constituencies such as mine, where the majority of development is focused in the urban areas, rural communities often wonder why they should bother with a neighbourhood plan when it is so much easier, cheaper and quicker to develop a parish plan. Parish plans do not carry the same weight within the planning system, of course, but if development is unlikely, there is a question mark over whether a community would want to go through the substantial amount of work involved in drawing up a neighbourhood plan.
However, there are some absolutely wonderful benefits of a community undertaking a neighbourhood plan, and one of them is that it gets new people involved in the democratic process. It strengthens local democracy and brings forward people we might not otherwise see. A great example is a lady called Jill Simpson-Vince, who chaired the Coton Park neighbourhood plan team. She had never considered getting involved in local democracy, but she was persuaded, through her involvement in the community, to become a councillor. She now chairs our local planning committee. Neighbourhood plans are therefore a great way of bringing people forward.
Of course, when people get engaged in that way, they become much more receptive to development, because they can have a hand in influencing exactly what takes place. The Secretary of State spoke about this earlier. Communities that develop their own neighbourhood plan tend to take, on average, 10% to 11% more housing than they otherwise would, because they find themselves in the driving seat. To pick up on the remarks from the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), where people can shape development, they will ensure better development. Sometimes it is hard to get a community to understand what good development is. They often know what bad development is, because they have seen it, but too often they do not recognise good development when they see it. However, if they are involved in a neighbourhood plan, they will go to places to see what good development is, and they will then be able to recognise what is good in their own neighbourhood plan.
I have one negative point to make. One experience from the Coton Park neighbourhood plan is that the community at times felt a little hamstrung by the control that the local planning authority held. For example, the grant that was provided to the community to develop the neighbourhood plan was initially devolved to the local authority, which led to a feeling within the neighbourhood plan team that the local authority had a say in what they were bringing forward. If the Minister can find some way to subvert that, so that the money goes directly to those communities, we will end up with better neighbourhood plans.
I want to thank the Royal Town Planning Institute and its team of Planning Aid officials. For example, a gentleman called Bob Keith provided expertise to Coton Park. I gather that that advice and expertise is being provided from other sources. It is incredibly important that a community that is coming together to draw up a plan has someone who can offer help and assistance but is not part of the local authority.
The success of Coton’s neighbourhood plan is that the team identified serious issues within their community, particularly with access roads and existing roundabouts. The area covered by the neighbourhood plan has been extended and will include Coton Park East, and the developer of the area has adopted within its planning the principles laid down in the Coton Park neighbourhood plan. I am delighted that the community has just been informed that the section 106 moneys that are coming forward from development will improve the roundabouts, which were the biggest single item that emerged from the local survey. That would not have happened without the neighbourhood plan, but it is frustrating that it took as long as it did to rectify a problem that was identified five years ago.
I am delighted that more weight will be given to neighbourhood plans as this process is developed. It means that even if the process does take time, there will be much greater regard for it, and the results will be evidence-based.
Madam Deputy Speaker, you are indicating that I should bring my remarks to a close. There is much in this Bill that is of great advantage. The neighbourhood plans system is working effectively. We just need more encouragement for more communities to take advantage of the opportunities that the Bill will provide them with.
Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey). Since becoming a Member of Parliament, I have found that, rather like the Secretary of State, concerns about planning are by far the most common issue that constituents raise with me, whether it is increasing pressure on local services and transport infrastructure or frustrations with the local council for failing to listen to and act on their concerns. A recent email I received perfectly captured local feelings in just four words: “Enough housing, infrastructure required”.
Planning failures—everything from the daily commute, to people’s children having access to a good local school, to the place where they live having a sense of community— have the greatest impact on peoples’ lives. When building new houses, the focus has too often been on providing new dwellings for newcomers, with an apparent disregard for existing residents. Road networks designed for a village have to cope with the traffic of a town, plus the additional out-of-town traffic thundering through narrow streets. As the demand for housing increases, we must recognise and respond to the challenges that additional housing brings for existing residents, rather than focusing all our attention on creating new residents.
A glaring example of the failure of planning is the A5225 in my constituency, which ought to be serving the local population. Wigan Borough Council has built most of the route that goes through its borough, but Bolton Council has not followed suit. In fact, in Atherton there is a roundabout junction with massive concrete blocks showing where the A5225 should have been continued, and daily we see the problems that its absence creates. There is now a proposal for 1,700 houses to be built over the proposed route of the A5225, thus preventing its completion. That is a double failure that guarantees that road upgrades will be impossible while delivering massive and unsustainable housing development.
Hundreds of constituents replied to my online survey about congestion in Bolton West, and the vast majority of people from Westhoughton thought that a revived plan for the A5225 would be the right solution to our congestion problems. I am currently running a petition, to be presented to Bolton Council, against the proposed 1,700 houses at the Chequerbent roundabout, and it has been signed by over 1,000 local people. This development, and those proposed for Hulton and south of Atherton, will add many thousands of people and cars to the local area. Local opinion is that the council, rather than seeking to fulfil a house building quota, should be playing catch-up for the decades of missing infrastructure.
My constituency is now part of the commuter belt for Manchester, a work destination for other commuters and a place where people further out in Lancashire use the local railway stations for park and ride. That all adds pressures on the local road and rail network that do not seem to have been addressed when each individual housing project is designed and built. The pace of development for transport is lacking considerably in Bolton West. For example, I receive many complaints about the rail service and how capacity can be increased on the line, which takes people from Blackrod, Horwich and Lostock en route to Bolton and Manchester. Although I welcome the electrification that will add 281 new carriages to the local route, with an increased service of 12% by 2019, in the longer term that will not reduce the pressure on services due to an increased population resulting from the additional housing.
I would be grateful if the Minister informed the House what discussions his Department has had with the Department for Transport on what type of housing developments are best for encouraging the use of public transport, and what conclusions have been drawn from this. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is not in his place at the moment, highlighted carbon neutrality as an important part of any new development. A great problem with suburban developments and rolling suburbia is that it is very difficult to have local transport infrastructure—whether buses or railways—that works. We perhaps need to be more mindful of the need to build up and not necessarily always out.
I am pleased that the Bill includes measures to further strengthen neighbourhood planning and to give even more power to local people, but I hope that, by setting ambitious targets to build 1 million homes by 2020, the Government are not creating an environment in which councils—perhaps under pressure from developers—will disregard infrastructure requirements or the opinions of local residents. After all, the original title of the Bill, as introduced in the Queen’s Speech, was the Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and we should not make a decision on one without being mindful of the other.
Communities need as much certainty as possible about where and when development will take place. I am encouraged that the Bill seeks to increase transparency on the part of the local council, requiring local planning authorities to publish their policies for giving advice and assistance to people preparing or updating neighbourhood plans. At present people have little faith that their council has the bigger picture in mind when several smaller developments are approved without thought to local amenities, while a development that is as large as the sum of those smaller developments would require accompanying infrastructure support. There is much more to be done to give communities—not councils—more rights in the planning process.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green).
Let me say at the outset that I have no quibbles at all with the provisions of the Bill, which are sensible enhancements to the neighbourhood planning process. I very much support the overall principles of neighbourhood planning: it is absolutely right that local communities have the ability to shape the future size and content of development. I also accept absolutely that neighbourhood plans cannot be out of kilter with the overall strategic housing needs of a town or a wider local authority area. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) correctly made the point that neighbourhood plans have not been a nimbys’ charter, and communities engage enthusiastically with them.
However, I do have some concerns, which I would like to put on the record. I am concerned that the potential for neighbourhood planning is impaired by some of the unintended consequences of wider planning issues, and several Members, particularly the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), alluded to that. Let me illustrate the point further with an example from my constituency.
On the southern edge of Milton Keynes is a charming little village called Bow Brickhill. It has a few hundred residents. It is a place of great civic pride and engagement. If there is a charity event to raise funds for a local facility, the residents are the ones who put together all the events to raise the money. They have engaged enthusiastically with neighbourhood planning, and many of them have devoted considerable time and energy and their own resources to developing the plans. They are far from being nimbys; in their plans, they wish to see some sensible development. They want, naturally, to preserve the semi-rural character of the village, both for its own sake and because it is one of the leisure facilities of the Milton Keynes area, with plenty of open spaces. However, the residents are now becoming confused, exasperated and, indeed, angry that the hard work they have put in may come to nothing. The problem is nothing to do with their neighbourhood plan; it is to do with Milton Keynes’s ability to meet the rigid five-year supply target. Let me just put that in context.
Milton Keynes has made an enormous contribution to the number of new houses in this country. We celebrate our 50th birthday in January, and our population is already well in excess of the quarter of a million the original planners envisaged. We have developed plans, which are now being considered by the local authority, to further expand the population—potentially by as much as 400,000—over the next few decades. The National Infrastructure Commission has been tasked by the Government to look at developing the Oxford-Milton Keynes-Cambridge corridor as an economic and housing growth and a transport development project, with projects such as east-west rail and the Oxford to Cambridge expressway. I am in the top 10 electorates in the country, and at every election I contest there—I have done four now—there are more and more doors through which to deliver leaflets.
In addition, in 2013, Milton Keynes Council passed its core strategy, which will deliver 28,000 houses over the next 10 years, but they are not being developed quickly enough. I do not have time to go into all the reasons why that is the case, but we are not meeting that target. Consequently, unplanned, speculative applications for housing outside the development areas are being granted, and some of those are immediately adjacent to the village of Bow Brickhill. If they are granted, they will, effectively, render redundant its neighbourhood plan. That is why the neighbourhood is considerably concerned.
Compounding this situation is the fact that the neighbouring authority—Aylesbury Vale—had a local plan that did not get through the inspectorate. It is now working on a new plan, but in the absence of that, applications for even larger speculative developments are being put in right on the border between Aylesbury Vale and Milton Keynes. These are massive developments and would change utterly the semi-rural area around Milton Keynes.
Therefore, we have a situation in which, in a part of the country where we have expanded and want to develop; where we have enthusiastic communities that want to take part in shaping their neighbourhoods; and where we are in line with wider Government objectives on transport planning and we are developing the Oxford to Cambridge corridor; all that planned, sustainable development is under threat because we are not meeting the rigid targets I mentioned.
I therefore simply ask the Minister to give us some space and flexibility to develop our plans, either by giving flexibility on the five-year target or by bringing in measures to speed up the delivery of already agreed housing. That would be widely applauded in the local area, and it would reignite the enthusiasm for neighbourhood planning.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I am grateful to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). I will be brief, as the hour is late. I have one or two things, as a chartered surveyor and declaring my Member’s interests as a landowner, that I would like to say about the Bill, which I warmly welcome.
Neighbourhood planning is very important. The problem is that, in my constituency, it is not working. It is not working because I represent two local authorities, one of which has a local plan and the other of which—Cotswold—does not have a local plan, for reasons best known to itself. The result, I say to my hon. Friend the Minister, is that, in The Cotswolds, which is 80% in the area of natural beauty, we have one of the most complicated planning systems anywhere in the country. I represent over 100 towns and villages, and we do not have a single neighbourhood plan adopted, because we do not have a local plan in place. That cannot be acceptable, and I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s statement today that he will take powers in the Bill to force local authorities, that have been laggards, like mine, to get a local plan in place.
Mr Bacon
Does my hon. Friend agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), who said that it would be a good idea, where the planning authority does not have a local plan, for the neighbourhood plan to become, sui generis, the local plan for that parish?
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My hon. Friend has taken the words out of my mouth—I would do exactly that. We need to simplify neighbourhood plans, as we have done in this Bill. We need to give them greater weight, as we have done in the Bill.
However, there are problems even where there is a local plan in place. Stroud District Council has a local plan in place. I have a village in the very south of my constituency, which is huge—65 miles long—that has an advanced-stage, very professional neighbourhood plan, and there is also a local plan in place. However, a developer took the district council to appeal over an area right next to the cricket pitch and the village hall. The village was desperate not to develop it, but the decision was overturned on appeal. I would just say to my hon. Friend the Minister that, where there is a local plan and a neighbourhood plan in place, it should be de rigueur that the Planning Inspectorate does not overturn those plans on appeal, except in wholly exceptional circumstances.
I warmly welcome the powers to look at pre-commencement orders. As a chartered surveyor, I have advised, on an unpaid basis, on a very big development in East Anglia. Although it was designated in the local plan from the beginning, the process took five years because of the over-zealousness of the local authority. Think of all the houses that could have been built by now if the over-zealous pre-commencement conditions were not in place.
Finally, I want quickly to move on to compulsory purchase because nobody has said much about that in this debate. I spent many months sitting on the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill Select Committee, and I have seen how HS2, as a major public acquiring authority, works. Some of the compulsory acquisitions, of which there were a very large number, were in my view over-zealous. We need to be careful about large acquiring authorities being over-zealous.
I am grateful for the provisions in the Bill on temporary acquisitions, but, equally, the requirement for such acquisitions should be tempered by what the acquiring authority needs to do on them. If it needs to demolish somebody’s house, proper compensation should be paid.
I am concerned about the provision to do away with the 10-year disturbance payment. Where there is an uplift in the value of the land, even subsequently, the person whose land has been acquired gets some benefit from that uplift. I heard what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said about the no scheme world. In theory, that is an ideal way of valuing a property—as a chartered surveyor, I know about these things—because it ignores the uplift, or indeed the fall, caused by the scheme itself. The danger is that the acquiring authority will acquire properties too cheaply, because there will be no allowance for any hope value for potential planning permission. Given that a lot of the big schemes are near centres of population, where the land will—if not immediately, at least in due course a few years down the line—get planning permission, it seems to me that the acquiring authority is getting an unnecessary advantage.
However, I warmly welcome the provisions for compulsory purchase whereby interest can be paid and payments in advance can be made. As we saw on the HS2 Bill, all these things are desperately necessary. With those few words, I warmly welcome this Bill.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate because planning has certainly affected my constituency for a good number of years. I was going to touch on the five-year land supply issue, but that has been ably covered by a number of colleagues.
My constituency is part of Leeds. It has enjoyed a great deal of prosperity and growth, but if I look at just one of the wards in my constituency, it has seen more than 1,000 homes built in it during the past few years, with very little infrastructure to support it. There is therefore a growing sense of frustration when people cannot get to work because the roads are congested, when their children cannot get into the school or when they struggle to get a doctor’s appointment. As a consequence, when neighbourhood planning was first introduced, it was seen as an opportunity for communities such as mine.
I must say, however, that in our instance there was concern right from the very outset. In its core strategy, the city council decided to build 70,000 homes during the plan period. That is an ambitious target—it will mean a considerable number of houses have to be built each year—but the problem is that that target, we believe, was based on outdated information. It was based on the 2008 population projections, which said that the number of people across the city would go up to 765,000 by 2011. The census showed us that that was wrong, with a 14,000 difference.
I am raising this matter because the city council obviously has to find sites on which to build these houses. In my constituency, all the mills and factories have gone, and we have done the right thing by building houses to regenerate those sites. However, all we have left now is the green belt. The neighbourhood plans in my areas have to conform to the strategic approach of the city council, which says that we have to build 70,000 houses. My areas have to adhere to that in the neighbourhood plans, and are therefore being forced to look at green-belt sites. They do not want to do that—of course they do not want to—and they are actively trying to stop that happening. I see a real problem because if my areas put forward such green-belt sites in a referendum, there is absolutely no way that that would get through, and we would not therefore have a neighbourhood plan.
I have asked questions time and again. I welcome my hon. Friend to his post. He will be hearing a lot from me, I am sure, over the coming months.
Stuart Andrew
Indeed. I extend to my hon. Friend a warm invitation to visit my constituency so that he can see the issues that we face at first hand.
Time and again, in questions and letters, I have asked about the exceptional circumstance in which the green belt can be developed and, time and again, we have been told that housing targets cannot be considered as an exceptional circumstance. However, in the neighbouring authority of Bradford—it abuts my constituency—the inspector recently said that such houses can be built because the figure is aspirational and the employment criteria allow it to happen. There is now even more concern in my constituency that when this goes to the inspector, he will say, because the figure of 70,000 has been agreed, that we can build on the green belt. That would have a terrible effect on my constituency. The green belt is there to stop urban sprawl. We do not want to be just a part of the big city of Leeds. The identifiable towns of Guiseley, Yeadon, Rawdon, Horsforth, Calverley, Farsley and Pudsey all have their own identity.
Stuart Andrew
Yes, Rodley. If I miss one out, I will be in real trouble.
I am trying to make the point that there is a willingness to make neighbourhood plans work, but when there is such a conflict with the city council, it is very difficult to introduce them. There is real concern about the green belt, and I hope that the Minister will come to my constituency soon so that I can show him, in detail, the problems we are facing.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, and to welcome the Minister to his place. I will be comparatively brief because I endorse everything said by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) about neighbourhood plans. One of the great enjoyments of my earlier career was to work with him in developing the policy at an early stage. He is right that we did not pick up on some bits of it at the time, but the Minister and his colleagues now have a chance to finish the job.
I have two thoughts about neighbourhood plans. It is important that we push forward with them. I have been disappointed by the slow take-up in areas of outer London, for example, compared with many other parts of the country. That is why it is right to take the measures we are taking. If I may be blunt, I also have a concern that, in some cases, some of our colleagues on local government planning authorities do not always encourage the development of neighbourhood plans because, frankly, they do not want to give up the power that comes from sitting on the borough or district planning committee. That goes wholly against the spirit of what we, as a party, are trying to do. I therefore welcome such steps.
I have another practical suggestion. Currently, the Government leave a gap of eight weeks between the referendum and the making of the plan. I understand why that is done. According to the statute, it is essentially to enable the consideration of any conflict with European and human rights law. Will the Minister consider whether that gap is necessary? Eminent lawyers have suggested that it is almost inconceivable that a plan would advance to the referendum stage without those issues being considered. If we revisited that, we could probably shave another two months off the bringing of a plan into force. Perhaps we may discuss that as the Bill progresses.
The proposal on planning conditions is right. I have seen the abuse of planning conditions. To give just one example, a religious body based in my constituency wanted planning permission for a place of worship in a neighbouring authority, I am glad to say. It was hit with 24 conditions, 14 of them pre-commencement. A number of them in effect duplicated building regulation requirements, including one that undermined the exemption that the faith group has under part L of the building regulations on fuel conservation. That cannot be right and is an abuse.
There is a concern that if one appeals against a planning condition, potentially the whole permission is up for consideration by the inspector. Would it not be sensible to amend the regulations such that it is purely the condition that is appealed against that is subject to the appeal and any consideration of papers or, although unlikely, an inquiry? That would save uncertainty for the whole scheme and encourage people to move swiftly.
Robert Neill
It would certainly speed things along markedly.
The planning register is a sensible and useful device. May I float another suggestion with the Minister? The Welsh Assembly Government have put the historic environmental record on a statutory footing. It might be useful to do that here so that local heritage information is available. That would avoid the risk of something being thrown up that delays the process after a good deal of investment has taken place.
Finally, I endorse all the comments made by my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), about compulsory purchase. He referred to the rates of interest. It is important that we deal swiftly with those matters. As I said to the Secretary of State, perhaps he would be prepared to meet some of us to yet again revisit the vexed issue of the inability of local planning authorities to impose planning conditions on their own land—land that they own as a landowner—that they would enforce as a local authority. Their inability to do that is bizarre. My London Borough of Bromley has ambitious schemes to drive business and business rates growth, but it is bizarre that it cannot, as an authority, put an obligation on its own land that it wishes to comply with in order to drive the rest of a scheme.
I hope that those are constructive suggestions that will make a good Bill even more useful.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I am delighted that the Government are giving local people the opportunity to shape the future of their communities. Our constituents have long asked for a greater say on planning, so I welcome the fact that the Bill gives them more power and delivers on our manifesto promises.
There can be no doubt that there is a need for housing, but it is vital that it is delivered in a way that is not only sustainable, but that complements and enhances our local areas. I am therefore very supportive of the key aims of the Bill. Results are already emerging to show that the Government are right to trust our communities to develop their own neighbourhood plans. As has been pointed out, early figures indicate that the level of house building in areas that have a plan is more than 10% higher than in the council’s local plan.
I will raise three matters with the Minister that are of concern to my constituents. He may be able to reassure them that they need not worry. First, I am conscious that although an acceleration in house building is required, developing a neighbourhood plan is a long drawn-out process. That means that those who are now starting on the journey and have a plan that is sufficiently developed to provide meaningful input to the local plan do not have the protections of those who have gone through the referendum phase. Clause 1 goes some way towards addressing that, but will the Minister clarify what guidance will be given to local authorities so that there is consistency in the decision-making process not only from community to community, but across all decision makers? I welcome clause 5, which sets out the support a local authority will offer those who wish to create a neighbourhood plan by way of a statement of community involvement, which should be an enabler of quicker implementation.
Secondly, sustainability should be a key consideration for any development. It is understandable that local residents show concern when consultations are put forward for sizeable developments in their area. A good example is Dordon and Polesworth in my constituency, where 3,000 new houses have been proposed. That would have a huge impact on the infrastructure and services that residents enjoy, not least on the already creaking road network. It is important that plans are made and that residents always have an input on potential new schools, roads, doctors’ surgeries and other local services. With that in mind, I ask the Minister to ensure that the provision of infrastructure and amenities is always a key consideration for local authorities when granting planning consent, and that when there is any significant house building the sustainability of the area is at the forefront of the design plans.
Finally, I wish to raise an issue of particular interest to me and to many of my constituents and those of other Members: the protection of our green belt. I am fully aware that the NPPF puts great emphasis on that, and there has been minimal development on it under the Conservative Government. However, areas such as Keresley and Fillongley in my constituency live in constant fear that a perceived demand for housing, particularly under the duty to co-operate with larger neighbouring councils, puts their green belt at risk of being developed on.
One of the key messages that I receive regularly from parish councils is that the calculation of housing needs seems to be over-inflated and does not reflect actual requirements, especially when local borough councils have met their supply targets. There is a real threat that predominantly rural areas such as North Warwickshire, which, as I have said, are annexed by much larger authorities, will be forced to develop on their green belt to meet the needs of other areas. That cannot be fair.
I must question the method of calculation. I was recently given the example of Coventry, which is seeking to take a number of properties in my constituency as it is unable to meet its own housing demand. It was calculated by the Office for National Statistics that there would be a population increase of about 79,000 in Coventry by 2031, which Coventry was unable to satisfy. Closer inspection of that number is quite revealing, however, showing that the predicted numbers of internal migration and immigration movements essentially cancel each other out, leaving the 79,000 people to come almost wholly from international immigration. As a result of the referendum in June, the Government are committed to a system of controlled immigration, so it is reasonable to assume that that number may no longer be a true reflection of need once the Brexit negotiation is concluded.
I would therefore like the Minister to consider including a further measure in the Bill: a pause on green-belt development unless there is a specific request from local residents. That would enable a review of the demand that our councils will face, which is surely difficult to estimate until the exact nature of what breakfast will look like—[Interruption.] I mean Brexit—somebody else got into trouble for that the other day. It is catching. It is difficult to estimate until the exact nature of what Brexit will look like is concluded. Once the green belt is developed on, it is lost for ever. We should always ensure that we have strong safeguards to protect it wherever possible.
Good development requires the developer, local people and the council to work together, and the Bill encourages dialogue to ensure that development better meets the needs of all interested parties. There should always be a balanced approach between providing the right number of houses and affording our local communities the opportunity to improve their infrastructure while retaining their identity. The Bill strikes that balance by giving local people real control over their future, and I will support it tonight. However, I ask that due consideration be given to the important concerns that I have raised.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to support the Second Reading of the Bill, and it is always a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey). I do not intend to speak for more than five minutes, because I have noticed for the last hour that when Members do that, the cough of the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), gets worse and worse. In the interests of preserving his voice, I will keep my contribution short.
I wish to focus on a couple of key points. First, we in Fylde are not against development. Indeed, about 6,000 houses have been developed there, mostly on greenfield land. However, Fylde is a small local authority, so 6,000 houses represent a lot of new build. We are currently working through an emerging local plan, and during the first stage, as part of an agreement, certain sites were taken off the plan and others were added. However, developers who realised that lucrative sites had come off the plan slapped planning applications on them, regardless of the will of the neighbourhood or the council. That was particularly true in villages such as Warton and Wrea Green, much to the frustration of local people. The result is an even greater number of houses than the plan started with.
I find it frustrating as a Member of Parliament that after people and the council have been asked to go along with the process of neighbourhood plans and local plans, and after they have identified suitable sites near the M55 that could be developed without controversy, developers seem to have given them the two-finger salute by putting in big applications on sites that were taken out of the plan. Everyone seems to lose out but the developers.
My main focus is on the number of sites for which planning applications have been granted yet nothing seems to have happened. There is no great reason for that—there are no infrastructure blockages or any of the other reasons outlined tonight by other Members. It is just land agents sitting on top of blocks of land with planning applications, and God only knows what is happening other than that they are trying to extract the best possible price from developers. That is not acceptable. If a site has a successful planning application and there is no good reason why it is not being developed, it should be developed to meet housing needs.
Another key point is that on many sites developers seem to be building just 30 or 40 houses a year, regardless of the market conditions. They drip them out to a steady drumbeat of 30 or 40. That makes it more difficult to deliver against the five-year housing supply number and the local council’s annual build targets. Frustratingly, it does nothing to make houses more affordable for local people. The prices keep going up. The Government are being robbed of their whole aim of building more houses and making them affordable, because we are dependent on a large number of developers who have got us by the throat. They decide how many houses enter the local supply chain, and nobody else. That is not right.
I urge the Minister to get tough with the developers. We want to build houses that are affordable and available to buy, and it should not be down to developers to dictate planning policy and tell us what ultimately is going to happen. We are the Government. We decide. This is something we care passionately about.
My other key point is that I want councils to be imaginative about provision of affordable homes, and not simply pass over responsibility to housing associations. They should not just pass the buck, pass the cash and hope it all comes out in the end. I want councils to ensure that there are more affordable homes to buy, to allow people to get on the housing ladder, have a stake in the game, feel part of their community and own part of that community. It is not acceptable for a council to say that it is building 30% affordable homes, when that provision is being made by housing associations, which are often very unresponsive to the needs of local people. Councils must understand that we as a Government want affordable homes to be owned by people, to give those people the opportunity to trade up.
I can see that the throat of my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness is starting to go again, and I do not want to make the cough any worse. I am delighted to see the Minister in his place. I know that he is committed to housing. As an MP for a Greater London constituency he knows the pain of not being able to get on the housing ladder more than many other people in this House. I wish him well in his endeavours, but he needs to know that we on the Conservative Benches will support the Government provided that we see the Government doing everything they can to get those houses built.
William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I am pleased to be able to speak on Second Reading of the Bill, which I broadly welcome. I support its main aims of making the housing market work better for everybody, helping to identify and free up more land to build homes, and speeding up the delivery of the new homes that are so badly needed in many areas of the country. Those aspects of the Bill will help to improve the planning system to make it easier to deliver the Government’s ambition of 1 million new homes by the end of this Parliament.
When I arrived in the House last year a sage senior colleague advised me never to get involved in planning matters. Although that may be very sound advice on conservatories and house extensions, it is none the less our duty to ensure that we play a full role in the scrutiny of the Bill. With that in mind, it is good so see such a strong new ministerial team on the Treasury Bench; I look forward to engaging with that team constructively.
I also support the Government’s manifesto commitment to encourage communities to be more engaged in neighbourhood planning, particularly as a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for civic societies. Community engagement is vital; we need it to build homes and infrastructure while ensuring that that is done in a way that is sympathetic and sensitive to the wishes of local communities. In my view, that will mean that we can build more, not less, as developers and local authorities ensure communities are brought on board at an early stage and are therefore more likely to support developments. That process is under way in Marple in my constituency.
There is no magic wand to solve the housing shortage. It will require many years of investment, hard work and difficult choices, and while Government play a role, ultimately the work is done by those building houses: the developers. To my mind, there are three ways that developers are stalling in the process to deliver the homes we need at the rate required. The first is land banking, which many hon. Members have mentioned, whereby developers buy up land, often brownfield sites suitable for building and sometimes with planning permissions already granted, but do not build on it, either because they have priorities elsewhere or because they are waiting for the value to increase.
The second issue is when developers are keen to build, but there are delays between the granting of an outline application and the submission of the full planning application. Thirdly, once planning approval has been granted, there can be delays from developers in starting construction, which can sometimes be the result of deliberate land banking, as I have mentioned. These delays cannot always be laid at the door of the planning system, which is a common cry of developers. Developers must take some responsibility themselves. However, measures from the Government to encourage developers to reduce delays are welcome, and these are contained in the Bill.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In Northern Ireland we have a planning system that enables social housing to be set aside in each new development for private house building. When it comes to social housing and those who cannot afford a new house but need a rented house, does the hon. Gentleman feel that some of the land in a development should be set aside for that purpose?
William Wragg
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. That is something that my local authority in Stockport is looking at, to ensure it can use its land assets for the development of housing, so I agree with him on that.
One thing missing from the Bill, although certainly not from our debate this evening, is the issue of the green belt. We know that green-belt land is protected under the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, and it plays an important role in protecting the environment and semi-rural communities, such as the ones I represent, from urban sprawl. Fundamentally, the green belt preserves natural green land, open spaces, wildlife habitats and the character of such areas.
Although it is not currently addressed by the Bill, I am deeply concerned about the threat posed to the local green belt in my constituency by potential massive building development. For instance, the Greater Manchester spatial framework, a policy of the Greater Manchester combined authority, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) referred to, will determine where residential development can take place, including the release of green-belt land. The policy could threaten large areas of green belt in my constituency. I am concerned by the prospect of thousands of properties being built on previously protected land, especially in the High Lane and Marple areas of my constituency. There are significant doubts about whether already stretched local infrastructure could support such development.
Saying that, there is no doubt that we need more housing. However, the areas that should be developed first are brownfield sites, which are those areas previously used for other purposes. Stockport has many such sites that have not yet been developed for housing, and across the country it is conservatively estimated that there is enough brownfield land for the development of some 650,000 properties, making a significant contribution to the Government’s target. I therefore want to ask my hon. Friend the Minister, if this is not covered in the Bill, what is being done or can be done to prioritise brownfield development and to protect green belts from over-zealous local authority plans, such as that in Greater Manchester. I can only hope that development in the green belt in my constituency will be as sparse as Members on the Opposition Benches are this evening.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I welcome this Bill. The importance it places on neighbourhood plans validates the extremely hard and challenging work that so many of my constituents in the village of Brereton and the town of Sandbach have undertaken, in some cases over years, to develop neighbourhood plans and have them adopted. I congratulate them. Other areas in my constituency are working on their neighbourhood plans, which are vital in a constituency with distinct and individual local communities, lying as it does in a relatively large unitary council, Cheshire East, which stretches from the fringe of Greater Manchester down towards Shropshire. If localism is to mean anything, it is important that the people who live in such towns and villages have a real say in the development of their communities.
Does this Bill go far enough? I want to challenge the Minister in one or two ways.
I am pleased to hear the Minister say that neighbourhood plans will be given “proper consideration” in the planning process, that “due weight” will be given to them and that they will have full effect. However, will he clarify precisely what that means where a large principal authority still has no local plan and no agreed housing supply numbers? My constituents who have gone to the trouble of preparing neighbourhood plans are asking whether, if there is no local plan and no agreed housing supply number, their plans should have the status and strength of a local plan when planning decisions are made. That is the critical question.
Without that reassurance, my constituents—particularly those in Sandbach, who are besieged by developers and who have gone far beyond making what I believe is a reasonable contribution to housing numbers in the Cheshire East area—are saying they are becoming “very disillusioned” with the neighbourhood planning process. They quote a recent planning decision in September with respect to an area of land in Sandbach. The inspector acknowledged that the Sandbach neighbourhood plan had been adopted, but said he would not examine the application in the light of that plan. Instead, he set it against the as-yet unadopted local plan with the housing supply number as yet not agreed, which relates to the whole Cheshire East area. According to my constituents, the inspector seems to be saying that the neighbourhood plan is “an irrelevance”. Will the Minister look again at strengthening the authority of neighbourhood plans where there is no completed local plan and no agreed five-year land supply, and declare that the neighbourhood plan has the weight of a local plan where there is no such plan in place?
My constituents have been encouraged by three recent appeal decisions to the Secretary of State in East Sussex, West Sussex and Bath. The Secretary of State cited local plans in the appeals and prevented developments, highlighting neighbourhood plans as a key factor in his decision. I thank the Minister for that and hope that it indicates a trend of thinking in this area.
I support the references that have been made to land banking, or, as I refer to it, permission banking. The former mayor of Sandbach, Mike Benson, wrote to me saying:
“During the Public Inquiries held in Sandbach…Cheshire East’s Head of Planning Strategy…gave evidence that in some parts of the Borough, planning permissions granted over the last 5 years”
had resulted in not one house being built in those locations. Nevertheless, appeals continue to be allowed across Cheshire East on the basis that Cheshire East Council does not have a five-year housing supply. He says:
“What would be fairer is a formula which regards the granting of permissions as the determining factor, not the number of houses actually being built.”
Will the Minister consider that as the Bill progresses? Will he also consider the fact that it is very important to ensure we balance the need for housing with the need for employment land? Businessmen in Congleton tell me that they need more employment land. We cannot afford to have our communities turned into vast commuter belts, because there are simply not the jobs for local people to work in.
I have two final points. First, it is quite clear that in some cases where developments are occurring, for example in Congleton where 4,000 houses are projected to be built in the draft local plan, we will need extra health facilities. However, Cheshire East Council officers have contacted Public Health England, which has been unable to identify any community infrastructure levy-compliant projects to which contributions could be sought for development. It is very important that the Minister liaises with his counterparts in the Department of Health to ensure that health provision projects that can be used for community infrastructure funding are in place.
If I may stretch your patience, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to add one further point, which relates to an issue I have been asked to raise by Cheshire East Council on the importance of guiding developments so that they avoid the most sensitive locations. I refer to a recent decision by the Court of Appeal that renders protective policies, such as green belt, green gap, wildlife conservation and Jodrell Bank safeguarding, which is critical in my constituency, as similar to “housing supply policies”. If a local authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of housing, such housing supply policies are deemed out of date, carrying much less weight.
I have an appeal going through now to the Secretary of State for a large development near Jodrell Bank. Jodrell Bank is concerned that having many more houses in the area will interfere with its instruments. It is a critical, individual, specific issue, and that area needs protection. It is important that that protection is not weakened if the council is unable to resist housing in unsuitable locations. Will the Minister clarify that the Bill will ensure that such sensitive designations will not be overridden and developers’ appeals will not be allowed? Will he confirm that that will be embodied as an amendment to the NPPF?
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I welcome my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), to his place; I am delighted to see him on the Front Bench. I am also glad to see the hon. Members for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), and for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), fighting the fight from the Opposition Front Bench. I recall with fondness the many hours we spent this time last year on the Housing and Planning Bill Committee.
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I have a shareholding in a company that finances construction projects.
I welcome the power that the first part of the Bill on neighbourhood plans will place in the hands of local communities. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to consider strengthening that power further in two ways. First, the preamble to the Bill says that in all but exceptional circumstances local authorities are expected to grant planning permission only in conformity with a neighbourhood plan, but if permission is granted in contradiction to a neighbourhood plan, I ask that it be made clear that it would be expected that the Secretary of State would call that in as a matter of routine, in order to create a clear incentive for local planning authorities to respect neighbourhood plans.
Secondly, is there any way to strengthen further neighbourhood plans in relation to local plans, given that neighbourhood plans will, by definition, have been passed by local referendum? The stronger they are in relation to local plans, the better. I fully accept that the local plan must be respected when it comes to total housing supply, but on questions of detail, I wonder whether the neighbourhood plan should trump the local plan, providing that it would not damage overall housing supply. The Minister will know some examples from our borough of where that might happen.
I say gently to the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead that pre-commencement conditions are frequently a significant problem. The bureaucracy they create ties up both the local planning authority office and developments. When I intervened earlier, I touched briefly on a couple of examples—the notorious cases of bat and newt studies. Bat studies can be done only at a certain time of year, so some developments get held up for an entire year while the bat survey gets done. As for newts, the greater crested newt is apparently an endangered species across Europe. It is not an endangered species in the United Kingdom, as the wretched creature pops up on every site for development as a potential reason for delay. If the Minister could give serious consideration to making sure that the requirements relating to bats, newts and similar creatures were proportionate and appropriate, it would help to expedite the construction of housing in our country.
I agree with the point made by the hon. Lady about resources for local planning departments. The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) also correctly pointed out that resources in those departments are under great pressure. They do not have enough officers, time or resources, and that is a real constraint on the granting of planning consents. Although I am not of course usually in favour of any taxes or fees, many developers would be willing pay significantly higher planning fees if they were ring-fenced to fund local planning offices and attached to a particular service level—so if a planning decision were delivered within a certain time, a higher fee would be payable.
As Louis XIV’s Finance Minister, Colbert, said, the art of taxation is about plucking the goose so as to produce the least possible amount of hissing; well, here is a goose that is begging to be plucked. The goose, if I may put it this way, wants to pay extra money to have these decisions made more quickly. It wants to pay more fees. That would help local authority planning departments, as they would then be properly resourced. I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to that point in his concluding remarks. I shall trespass no further on the House’s time or patience, and conclude with that point.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
Beneath the thatch and clay tiles, in the shady byways and cobbled marketplaces of North West Hampshire, people are breathing a little easier as this Bill starts its passage. I would go so far as to say that on the village hall wall, next to the portrait of the Queen and the newly hoisted portrait of the Minister with responsibility for broadband, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), they are making space for a picture of the Minister for Housing and Planning, because he has finally taken a big step in bringing some sanity to what has previously been a gamble of a planning system.
We managed to get ourselves into a high-stakes game of poker between developers, councils, landowners and the Planning Inspectorate, and the compromise that emerged was often unsatisfactory to local residents, extremely expensive, and bureaucratic. That injected a sense of tension and an adversarial tone into the planning system, which should be constructive, in all senses of the word, and try to build the homes that we need.
The Government’s great peace offering to local people was the neighbourhood plan. Nowhere has embraced neighbourhood planning as strongly as my constituency, and the string of pearls running down the A303 from Oakley, Overton and Whitchurch down to Andover. We are destined to take tens of thousands of houses there over the next 20 or 30 years. Those places are embracing neighbourhood planning as the only way that they can see of making sure that planning is done with them, rather than to them.
Notwithstanding that, some ridiculous decisions have been taken in my constituency over the last year or so. In Oakley, just seven days before the referendum on the neighbourhood plan, which had been three years in the making, the Planning Inspectorate allowed an appeal for a slab development of 80 houses, which drove a coach and horses through the plan. The community might as well not have bothered. At that stage, people in the village had already voted by post, yet they knew that permission had gone through. I am very pleased that this Minister and his predecessor took on board the concerns of lots of Members, particularly rural Members, about the need to strengthen such plans.
I would like to raise with the Minister a couple of areas where the Bill could be given even greater strength. The interaction of the different actors I mentioned and the interaction between neighbourhood plans and local plans are absolutely key. Many Members have talked about providing some kind of stick to make sure that councils have a local plan in place. Thus far, neighbourhood plans are pretty pointless without the local plan being in place. Too many councils do not have them.
I wonder whether we could offer councils an incentive, rather than a stick. Where a village has put a neighbourhood plan together and it has been approved, where a borough has a local plan that has been approved, and where there is a five-year land supply, there should be a double lock, whereby the Planning Inspectorate has no remit. These people are playing ball. They have said, “Yes, we will take the houses. This is where we want them, and this is the size and mix we want.” That has all been approved by the Planning Inspectorate, so why should a speculative developer, with an ability to pay legal fees and for hearings, and with QCs on tap, be able to come along and bully the council into reaching some kind of compromise? The council knows that if it goes to the Planning Inspectorate, the decision may not go its way, and is worried about the fines it faces if it loses. A double lock would be a way of freeing people from the man in the suit from Bristol; that would be an enormous incentive. There would certainly be a huge amount of pressure from local residents on borough councils to get a neighbourhood plan, so as to protect the residents. I put that proposal on the Minister’s plate.
My second point is on getting local people to accept housing estates. Neighbourhood planning certainly makes people much more accepting of housing, but the Government’s admirable starter homes scheme could be used to get even more acceptance. When starter homes are built as part of a development—I will have a huge development with lots of starter homes outside Basingstoke in my constituency—anybody from anywhere in the country can apply for them. How about we give local people a short period of perhaps 28 days after completion in which they have first dibs on the houses built in their neighbourhood? That way, the children and relatives of local people—people who can prove a local connection—could snap up those houses first. It would go a long way to getting people over the line, particularly as regards the large-scale developments I will have, if they have that incentive, on a generational basis.
My final point, which I would be grateful if the Minister could address, is on the provision of broadband in new developments. I raised the issue in debates on the Digital Economy Bill. It seems mad to me that we are not putting broadband compulsorily into new developments, as we would gas and electricity.
Kevin Hollinrake
My hon. Friend makes a fine point. When he refers to broadband, is he talking about fibre to cabinet, or fibre to premises? Is not the latter the key future-proof mechanism we need to enable properties to access high-speed broadband?
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend shows his customary ambition. I agree that we should make developers provide fibre to premises in all developments, particularly large ones. The Government are pumping billions into the housing industry over the next few years—rightly, because we need more houses. That will inflate the housing industry, and there will be a lot more activity and a lot more money to be made. The least developers could do is absorb the cost of putting future-proofed broadband in those houses. If we can get those measures into this great Bill, we will have something that neighbourhoods, particularly in North West Hampshire, will welcome. They will wave aloft the Bill as they hoist the Minister’s portrait in the village hall.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who made important points about the local development plan process, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin). My constituency is a tale of two halves. The half that is in the Cheshire West and Chester Council area is protected by a local development plan. The numerous beautiful areas in my constituency that have put their neighbourhood plans in place have a protection that is not afforded to the other half of my constituency, which is in the Cheshire East Council area. Without an LDP, the neighbourhood plans do not have the same legal status. I join other hon. Members in urging the Minister to ensure that neighbourhood plans carry full protection and force.
I agree with the suggestion for an incentive. When Cheshire West and Chester Council was run by Conservatives, a proportion—10%—of the new homes bonus automatically went to the local parish council to allow it to improve amenities. I urge the Minister to consider putting that proportion in the Bill, because it allowed my local communities to make improvements to their area when they could see a direct result from new housing. For example, Tattenhall in my constituency would have used the money to build six homes for rent for local people in the agricultural community—they would have been permanent protected homes available for young people, allowing them to stay in their farming communities. Unfortunately, the council has switched to Labour control, and has swiped the whole of the new homes bonus. It will not now go to my local communities that are bearing the brunt of the housing development.
I, too, have a string of pearls in my constituency—wonderful villages such as Bunbury, Audlem, Tattenhall, Malpas and Tarporley, which developers are desperate to develop. It is vital that those communities that accept housing see a direct benefit from it. I urge the Minister therefore to consider allocating a proportion of the new homes bones to those communities. Ten per cent. is not unreasonable, and would give an incentive to people to accept development.
On the impact on infrastructure, the Minister has heard many Members of Parliament say the same thing. A recent planning decision exempted doctors’ surgeries and schools, which are statutory services, from section 106 agreements and leveraging funding from developers. This is an ideal opportunity to deal with that and allow the developers to contribute to the additional infrastructure costs that otherwise fall on the local council.
Finally, I urge the Minister to crack down hard on developers who repeatedly put in applications against neighbourhood plans, knowing that they are acting against an adopted neighbourhood or local plan. If planning permission is turned down by the local council, and the developer appeals unsuccessfully and is turned down again, I urge the Minister to consider penalty costs against them. A third of those costs could go to local councils; that could contribute towards alleviating the legal costs that they incur trying to fight these appeals. Another third could go to his Department to provide the resource that is needed for it to look at those appeals, and the final third could go to the Treasury to deal with the infrastructure impact of other developments. That would be a real win.
I urge the Minister to look at that in the Bill, because my constituents are frustrated when they see a planning process in which developers have deep involvement. They think that it is an unfair fight, with no incentive for councils to appeal against decisions or stand up to what they regard as bully developers. Not all developers are the same—we have many good developers in Cheshire—but the feeling among local people is that they are fighting a tide of applications that are swamping them. Some form of disincentive to tackle those repeated applications would, I hope, go some way towards discouraging that type of behaviour.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). I fully support the provisions of the Bill, and I congratulate Ministers on giving people unprecedented power over planning. It is clear that this is a power not to limit development, but to decide where properties will go and what infrastructure is required. It is a power to decide how it looks—design is a key element in persuading local communities to support new housing in their area.
I welcome the Bill’s giving more weight to neighbourhood plans, which, as detailed in clause 1, will be effective earlier in the process. However, there is a conundrum, as colleagues have mentioned, but, as is not uncommon in the House, I will mention it again. A neighbourhood may have an effective neighbourhood plan that works with the numbers given by the district in its local plan, but it may not be able to demonstrate a five-year land supply. In those circumstances, would it not be appropriate to give full protection to a neighbourhood that delivers those numbers within the overall context of the local plan? That would be a great incentive for local communities to develop a neighbourhood plan and deliver the extra houses that are important to our communities and our national economy.
The neighbourhood planning process is dealt with in clause 5. Local authorities can give help, support and advice to neighbourhood planning steering committees. Some local authorities are less keen than others on neighbourhood plans, and regard them as an encumbrance. Would it be possible to provide some formal training, perhaps delivered centrally? I was delighted when my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who has been such an advocate of neighbourhood plans, came to my constituency to talk to local steering groups about how to develop them. As a result of his intervention, we now have some neighbourhood plans back on track.
I also think that small and medium-sized enterprises should be given more help. As we know, SME developers used to build 100,000 houses a year, whereas today they build about 20,000. They are critical to the supply element of the equation. I understand that the idea of extra financial support for SMEs has been mooted in connection with the autumn statement, because lack of finance constitutes one of their biggest difficulties when it comes to developing new homes, but another of their difficulties relates to land, and finding suitable small sites. The whole planning system seems to be stacked against SMEs. It is far simpler to build houses on allocated land than to build them on the windfall sites on which SMEs tend to develop them, but such sites are few and far between.
SMEs are important not just in terms of the number of houses that are delivered, but in terms of their contribution to local communities. They employ local people: local suppliers and local apprentices—SMEs account for a much higher percentage of penetration of apprenticeships per completion than larger developers—and local consultants as well. There are plenty of good reasons for the provision of more small sites that would be suitable for SME house builders, and there are a number of ways in which we could do that. It is frustrating that one of the local authorities in my constituency concentrates all its housing on large allocated sites, rather than spreading the load around the towns and villages for the purpose of not just sustainable development but sustainable communities.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman has mentioned sustainable communities in the context of planning. Does he agree with Dame Alice Hudson, the head teacher at Twyford Church of England High School in my constituency? The school wants to expand, but feels that it is stymied by planning legislation. It has identified the site for a badly needed new high school, but at present there is opposition because of housing that will come with it. Dame Alice says that there must be a way of helping the school to provide more performance and other facilities for community use and public benefit. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me, and with my constituent, that there should be more joined-up thinking?
Kevin Hollinrake
I definitely agree that there should be more community engagement. However, although many people in smaller villages and towns want more development, the policies of local authorities prevent that from happening, which is entirely counter-intuitive. The lack of new development puts schools, shops and public houses at risk. I wonder how we can influence local authorities and encourage them to spread the load around our smaller communities as well. Alternatively, could not a percentage of one of the larger sites—10% or 20%—be allocated to SME developers, so that they could meet some of the needs of larger communities?
Those are some thoughts for the new Housing Minister. SMEs are critical to the successful delivery of the houses that we need in the United Kingdom. However, I am happy to support the measures in the Bill and the ideas behind them.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
It is a delight and a pleasure to see the Minister for Housing and Planning, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), sitting on the Front Bench. I have known him for 20 or 25 years, since he worked in the environmental research department of Conservative central office. He was also the special adviser in the department, and he has been following this issue for a long time.
I must declare an interest. As is shown in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I still have some shares in a public relations consultancy which advised developers on how to obtain planning permission. I have to say that I have also worked for the opposition, notably in Fulham. However, I have a fairly good understanding of the importance of taking the local community with you to get a planning application through.
One of the best people I ever came across was a man called David Prout, who was in the Department. He was also the director of planning at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea when we were trying to do a development on what was known as the Tesco tower on the West Cromwell Road. We had failed to get planning permission, and he eventually decided that we needed to produce a master plan in order to ensure that the local community was very much engaged in the whole process. In such cases, it is important to talk not only about the design but about the other community facilities that will be made available. I therefore urge my hon. Friend the Minister to ensure that as we seek to put housing development in place, we also look at other issues such as community facilities. I shall say more about design in a moment.
I am the chairman of the all-party group for excellence in the built environment, and we have just published an important piece of work on the quality of housing. I am pretty unique—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am pretty unique on the Conservative Benches in that I represent a totally inner-city seat. The only piece of countryside in my constituency is the Ponderosa pony sanctuary, which, to be honest, is just a rather muddy field. However, I have a large amount of parkland, which was developed by the Victorians and is absolutely wonderful. What is so super about it is that it has space and the settings of the properties are absolutely brilliant.
We need to recognise that if local authorities grant planning permission, that should not be the end of the matter. They must also ensure that the developers produce the development for which they have been given the planning permission. All too often, companies build up land banks but do not do anything with them. I therefore urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider a proposal whereby a local authority could charge a developer business rates if it had not produced the development, having got people’s expectations up. Developers should not be allowed to have property sitting around doing nothing. It is not good enough simply to get planning permission; getting the property developed is the most important thing. That is what we on this side of the House will be judged on.
We also need to ensure that we have good-quality design. I have a lot of new build in my constituency, thanks to the party opposite. When Labour was in power, it provided a lot of money for new development down in Devonport. I have to say that I am appalled by some of that development. There is brown mould on some of the buildings, and I hear stories of windows and doors that do not fit. The other day I even heard of an instance of sewage going in underneath the floorboards. That is not good enough. This is one of the reasons that I am looking forward to talking to my hon. Friend the Minister about the all-party group’s report. We must ensure that we have better-quality buildings, rather than shoddy developments that could become the slums of the future. We need to have quality in our design as well as quantity.
I also want to encourage the Government to consider ways of getting local authorities to appoint someone to review the quality of the building and design in their area. I have been very lucky. I went to the most beautiful school in the whole country: Stowe. It has the most beautiful Palladian architecture; it is absolutely fantastic. I am not arguing that we should have Palladian architecture throughout the whole country—well, I probably am, actually—but we need to ensure that the volume house builders do not simply build the same factory-produced developments all over the country. I am passionate about this. It is vital that we give people a sense of belonging in their communities, and we need to ensure that we have quality development that will also deliver good community facilities such as doctors surgeries and village halls. It is vital that neighbourhood planning should be done in the round, rather than in isolation.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
I thank all Members—they were mostly Government Members—who have contributed to this debate. They did an excellent job speaking up for their constituencies and the various planning issues that affect them, and extolling the virtues of neighbourhood planning. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) also did an excellent job in explaining how important neighbourhood planning was to his constituency and the need for local plans to refer to it. I was also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) who, as always, pointed out exactly what was wrong with the Bill, what needs to be improved and how we need to support planning more effectively.
I am rather surprised to be speaking again on planning legislation so soon after our proceedings on the Housing and Planning Act 2016. After all, the ink is barely dry on the paper. However, as there have been six pieces of planning legislation in the past six years, I perhaps should not be that surprised.
The Minister said that he wants to have shovels put in the ground, but I am not sure that this is the Bill to do it. Indeed, the Bill is much more interesting for what is not in it than for what is. I am not sure whether it represents—in the words of the Secretary of State earlier— “action on many fronts”. In fact, his own colleagues came up with quite a substantial list of things that should have been in this Bill. They thought that there should be something about infrastructure and how it could be funded effectively to underpin developments and something about carbon-neutral housing. They felt that local plans should have a strong relationship with neighbourhood plans, or that neighbourhood plans should trump local plans, and that there should be a green-belt review. There was some suggestion that there should be a statutory footing for local plans and deadlines for their delivery. There were other suggestions that the Bill should cover broadband in developments, the use of vacant public sector land, how to protect hedgehogs, how to pluck geese, how to repeal applications, how to use fees more effectively, land banking and permission banking, the failure to address Brexit, and a call-in procedure for neighbourhood plans. Those were just some of the issues that were raised, so there is a lot to be addressed by the new Minister, whom I welcome to his post. I look forward to working with him in Committee on improving the Bill.
We strongly welcome the measures to strengthen neighbourhood planning. We all agree that communities should be at the heart of development and that development should start with our neighbourhoods. Any measure that will strengthen neighbourhood planning should be welcomed. Too many people think that planning is done to them, and we need to return to a much happier place in which communities feel that they and their representatives have some control over planning.
There are a few issues about neighbourhood planning that I hope to address in Committee. We need to look at whether it is being properly resourced, and whether the links to local plans are strong enough. We welcome the opportunity of a planning register that will allow for better scrutiny of permitted development and, in particular, the scale of use of permitted development. The Government Front-Bench team will know that we have a long-standing objection to permitted development being used for the delivery of housing in this country. Indeed, we would not need a register if we did not use permitted development in the way that it is used, as all homes would have to go through the planning process properly, and there would be some control of the infrastructure that supports them and the quality and standards of the properties being built. However, as the Government are using permitted development, it seems sensible for a register to be in place.
One of our main bugbears with the Bill is that it does not sufficiently recognise the difficulties that local planning departments are facing as a result of the lack of resources to carry out their responsibilities. Ministers would be living in a cupboard if they did not know that right across the housing and planning sector, developers large and small, a large number of agencies and planning departments are saying that the lack of resource for planning departments is the major spanner in the works for delivery. Since 2010 spending on planning by local authorities has almost halved, from £2.2 billion in 2010 to £1.2 billion last year. The Royal Town Planning Institute, the Local Government Association, the Town and Country Planning Association and the British Property Federation have all pointed to the fact that greater expectations must mean greater support for planning, yet the opposite is happening. Planning fees are vital to plug the gap.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Would the hon. Lady support greater flexibility for each local authority to be able to set its own planning fees to meet its own circumstances, and possibly to allow higher fees to give accelerated results?
Dr Blackman-Woods
Indeed. That was one of the amendments that I tabled to the Housing and Planning Bill when it was going through the House. Alas, it was rejected by the then Housing Minister. It was interesting to hear the same point being made earlier in our discussion. I am pleased if Conservative Members are coming round to our view that planning departments should be able to set fees at full recovery level.
On a more positive note, we welcome the measures to streamline compulsory purchase orders. The new Ministers must have been studying their copy of the Lyons review. We argued strongly there that CPOs were not fit for purpose and needed to be streamlined. I am pleased to see those measures in the Bill but, again, they could be improved.
I want to spend a minute or two on pre-commencement planning conditions, which is the area of the Bill on which we will probably have most discussion in Committee. I am pleased that the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) is in his place. He criticised pre-commencement planning conditions at length, yet I have a list from a development taking place in my constituency and I cannot see what is wrong with any of these conditions. The developers have to provide samples of materials. The development is in a conservation area, so that is important. They have to provide full details about bats. Well, we must protect bats. There must be noise mitigation and notice of demolition.
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Lady gives the example of notice of materials. I can entirely see why that is a legitimate issue if the development is in a conservation area, but why must that be settled before a spade goes into the ground and the groundworks start?
Dr Blackman-Woods
That is a question that I would like the Minister to put to his constituents. People surrounding new developments very much want to know what the development looks like, what the quality of the build will be, what materials are going to be used and whether they fit into the surrounding landscape. If he is serious about neighbourhood planning and giving people a say over what happens in their area, pre-commencement planning is important. Some of the measures could lead to more delays in the planning system, rather than speeding it up, which I think is what the Minister is trying to do.
Kevin Hollinrake
The hon. Lady mentioned landscape. One of my SME developers was required to submit a landscape scheme before starting on the development itself, as a pre-commencement condition. Does she not see that some of these conditions are completely inappropriate?
Dr Blackman-Woods
The problem is that we do not know why the local authority required that particular condition. It could have been worried that no plan might ever be produced.
John Mann
I recall that when I was knocking down and rebuilding a wall, for which I required planning permission, I was expected to provide a sample of brick in advance, from the wall that I had not yet taken down because I did not have planning permission. Is there not the potential for some compromise between the two sides on this?
Dr Blackman-Woods
Certainly not is the answer to that question—absolutely not.
In conclusion, we think that it is a real pity that the Bill does not contain more about infrastructure and how to deliver garden cities and new towns, but we look forward to having those discussions with the Minister in Committee. We do not intend to divide the House tonight, but we will see what happens in Committee.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
This has been an excellent debate, with contributions from 18 colleagues on the Government Benches. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) and my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) got to the heart of the matter: the interaction between neighbourhood plans and local plans, and particularly the issue of the five-year land supply. We will want to return to that issue as the Bill goes through Parliament.
We should be honest that there is a tension here. On the one hand, clearly we cannot expect our constituents to put a huge amount of work into neighbourhood plans if they do not hold weight in certain situations. On the other hand, if there is a local authority that either does not have a plan, or that has a wholly deficient plan that does not meet housing need in its area, any Member of this House who cares as passionately as we do about building the homes this country needs cannot allow such a situation to persist for years and years. That is a difficult issue, and I think that the suggestion of a mix of carrots and sticks is probably the right way to address it.
Sir Oliver Letwin
Does my hon. Friend think that there is at least a potential for the NPPF to be used as the reference point under those circumstances?
Gavin Barwell
I certainly do, and I think that there are ways we could look at addressing the issue, either through the Bill or through policy changes. I am very conscious of what the problem is, and I am sure that we can work together to find a solution as the Bill goes through.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers) spoke passionately about the green spaces in her constituency. She also sought reassurance on pre-commencement conditions, which I can provide. The consultation paper states:
“This measure will not restrict the ability of local planning authority to propose pre-commencement conditions that may be necessary—for example, conditions in relation to archaeological investigations or wildlife surveys.”
So there is protection there.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) spoke with his customary passion about the importance of custom build. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) asked about support for groups producing neighbourhood plans. We have made £22.5 million available between 2015 and 2018. I can reassure him that that money will go directly to the groups doing the relevant work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) said that the view of his constituents was, “Enough housing, infrastructure required.” I half agree with them; it is absolutely right that we must get a much better linkage between the provision of infrastructure in return for taking more housing, but I cannot agree that we have enough housing in this country. We need more housing, but the infrastructure must go with it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), who is such a fantastic advocate for his constituency, spoke with passion about the difficulties it is facing. It is certainly the case that neighbourhood plans must be consistent with the relevant local plan, but he tested the issues in relation to the green belt. If he will forgive me, I cannot talk about the particular plan, because it may well cross my desk at some point, but if I can talk in the generality, we would expect inspectors to test the figure for objectively assessed need and to test whether the circumstances in which an authority seeks to change green-belt boundaries meet the test in the NPPF, which is that they should be exceptional circumstances.
Dr Huq
The Minister mentioned green-belt de-designation, and I just wondered whether he had any thoughts on metropolitan open land. Twyford C of E High School in my constituency, which I mentioned, has identified a new site—a disused Barclays sports ground—but the school is tied up in knots because of the land’s status.
Gavin Barwell
Metropolitan open land is a status that is specific to Greater London, but it holds the same weight, effectively, in Greater London as green belt. If the hon. Lady were to consult the London plan, similar circumstances should apply in terms of its de-designation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) showed his huge experience in this area in his contribution. He made a number of constructive suggestions, which we will certainly look at.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) raised issues around the calculation of assessed need and in particular in relation to migration. The population projection figures do assume a fall in migration. While migration is clearly a factor, about a third of household growth nationally is due to net migration, so even if there were no migration into the country, there would still be significant pressure for more housing.
My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) made two very powerful points. The first was about build-out rates. As a Government, we want to listen to developers and to address evidenced concerns about things that are slowing up development, be it pre-commencement conditions, the time it takes to agree section 106 agreements or concerns about utilities. However, if we do all those things, I think we have a right to turn to the development industry and ask what it is going to do to raise its game in terms of the speed with which it builds out. My hon. Friend also made another critical point, which is that, when we talk about affordable housing, yes, council and housing association housing are a part of that, but what most of our constituents want is a home that is affordable to buy, and he was absolutely right to stress that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg) made the powerful point that this problem is going to take time to solve. There is no quick switch that anyone can throw to deal with it. He rightly wanted to hear more about what we can do to focus development on brownfield land. The Act that received Royal Assent earlier this year set up the principle of brownfield registers, where local authorities will set out clearly the brownfield land that is available in their areas and suitable for housing development.
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), and Opposition Members as well, referred to resourcing for planning departments, and that is something the Government have consulted on. As part of the White Paper, we will want to come forward with a response to that consultation.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
Are we going to intervene in the case of indolent councils that claim they have the right resources but continually fail to provide a local or a neighbourhood plan, which we will certainly not see until the end of next year at the earliest? Can we bring in a planning inspector sooner?
Gavin Barwell
The Government have signalled that we will intervene early in 2017, potentially, on councils that do not have local plans in place. The Secretary of State talked about that issue and about our determination to take it forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) raised the critical issue of broadband, and I hope I can provide him with some reassurance on it. We have legislated through the building regulations to require that, from January 2017, all new buildings, including homes and major renovations, include in-building physical infrastructure. We are also legislating to introduce a new broadband universal service obligation to ensure people can request an affordable connection at a minimum speed from a designated provider. There are therefore measures in place, and I am happy to discuss them with him and to check that they reassure him on that vital issue.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) talked about the importance of incentivising communities by seeing a proportion of the uplift in land value going back to the community. I do not know whether her council has adopted the community infrastructure levy, but if it has, there is a proportion—15%—that goes to the local area, and that increases to 25% if the relevant local community has a neighbourhood plan.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) made an absolutely vital point about the importance of small sites. If we want to get small builders involved in greater numbers, it is about not just financing but releasing small sites.
Finally on the Government side of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) made the absolutely critical point that this is about quality as well quantity, and that if we build beautiful buildings, it will encourage communities to go for growth.
Turning very briefly to the Opposition, there is no doubting the passion of Labour Members in addressing our housing problems, but several things were said that show their policy prescriptions sometimes do not match such ambition. I entirely understand concerns about permitted developments, but it is worth putting on the record that we have had over 11,000 permitted development applications. We do not know the number of homes involved—we want to collect data on that—but reform of permitted developments has made a significant contribution to increasing the housing supply.
We have also heard concerns about the duty to co-operate. I know that that is difficult, but for a core urban area that cannot meet all its housing need, it is vital that surrounding areas play their part. Getting rid of the duty to co-operate might mean not providing the housing we need in such areas.
Finally, concerns were raised about planning conditions. The shadow Secretary of State asked for data, and I have had time to dig some out. A survey of small and medium-sized builders carried out by the National House Building Council reported that 34% of them were concerned about the time to clear conditions and 29% of them were concerned about the extent of those conditions, so there is real evidence of concern on that issue.
In conclusion, last week the Secretary of State set out the first step in our plan to get this country building the homes it desperately needs. This Bill is the second step. We entirely accept that it is not on its own a solution to the problem and, later in the autumn, we will publish a White Paper. However, the fact is that for years and years we have not built enough homes in this country. The consequences for the ability of young people to get on to the housing ladder have been dramatic: 50% of 45-years-old owned their own home by the time they were 30, but only 35% of 35-years-old owned their own home by the time they were 30 and the projection is that only 26% of 25-years-old will own their own home by the time they are 30. This Government are determined to build a country that works for everyone, and critical to that will be creating a housing market that works for everyone. The Bill is an important step in a wider plan to deliver that critical ambition for the future of this country.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Neighbourhood Planning Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on 1 November 2016.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration and any proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Heather Wheeler.)
Question agreed to.
Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:
(a) any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by a Minister of the Crown, a person holding office under Her Majesty or a government department, and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Heather Wheeler.)
Question agreed to.
Neighbourhood Planning Bill (First sitting)
Tuesday 18th October 2016
(8 years, 4 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesNeighbourhood Planning Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 October 2016 - (18 Oct 2016)
The Chair
Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements. Please switch off electronic devices, or turn them to silent. Teas and coffees are not allowed as props during sittings. We will first consider the programme motion. We will then consider a motion to allow us to deliberate in private about our questions before the oral evidence session and a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication. In view of the time available, I hope that we can take those matters formally, without debate.
Ordered,
That—
(1) the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 18 October) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 18 October;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 20 October;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 25 October;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 27 October;
(e) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 1 November;
(2) the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
Date | Time | Witness |
|---|---|---|
Tuesday 18 October | Until no later than 10.30 am | British Property Federation Federation of Master Builders Home Builders Federation Country Land and Business Association |
Tuesday 18 October | Until no later than 11.25 am | Local Government Association Historic England National Infrastructure Planning Association Town and Country Planning Association |
Tuesday 18 October | Until no later than 2.30 pm | National Association of Local Councils Royal Institute of British Architects |
Tuesday 18 October | Until no later than 3.00 pm | Locality Campaign to Protect Rural England |
Tuesday 18 October | Until no later than 4.00 pm | Compulsory Purchase Association Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Law Society Royal Town Planning Institute |
Tuesday 18 October | Until no later than 4.45 pm | Department for Communities and Local Government |
(3) proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 3; Schedule 1; Clauses 4 to 7; Schedule 2; Clauses 8 to 36; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
(4) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Tuesday 1 November.—(Jackie Doyle-Price.)
Resolved,
That, at this and any subsequent meeting at which oral evidence is to be heard, the Committee shall sit in private until the witnesses are admitted.—(Gavin Barwell.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Gavin Barwell.)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee room. We will now go into private session to discuss lines of questioning.
The Chair
Before we start hearing from the witnesses, do any Members wish to make declarations of interest?
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I think I probably need to do so, because I still have shares in a company called Polity Communications, which gives advice to developers on how to get planning permission. I have in the past done work on opposing things with community groups as well.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I should mention that I employ a local authority council member in my parliamentary team.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I should draw colleagues’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a shareholder in a business that provides finance for construction projects.
Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)
I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am the majority shareholder of a company that provides finance for construction equipment.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
I employ two local authority members in my parliamentary and constituency office. For the record, I should probably also say that one of the witnesses is the leader of the council in my local area.
Examination of Witnesses
Andrew Whitaker, Roy Pinnock, Andrew Dixon and Ross Murray gave evidence.
The Chair
We will now hear oral evidence from the British Property Federation, the Federation of Master Builders, the Home Builders Federation and the Country Land and Business Association.
Before calling the first Member to ask a question, I remind all Members that questions should be limited to matters within the scope of the Bill, and that we must stick to the timings in the programme order. The Committee has agreed that, for this session, we have until 10.30 am. Welcome, witnesses. Would you introduce yourselves, from left to right?
Andrew Whitaker: Certainly, sir. I am Andrew Whitaker. I am the planning director at the Home Builders Federation.
Roy Pinnock: I am Roy Pinnock. I am a solicitor and partner at the law firm Dentons, and I am here on behalf of the British Property Federation.
Andrew Dixon: I am Andrew Dixon. I am head of policy at the Federation of Master Builders.
Ross Murray: Chairman, good morning. I am Ross Murray. I am president of the Country Land and Business Association, representing the rural interest and the rural economy.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Q Thank you, Mr Bone. Good morning. It is a pleasure to see some of you again. We have been around the houses a bit on planning and housing Bills.
I will start with the most contentious part of the Bill for the Labour party, which is the changes to pre-commencement planning conditions. What evidence is there to suggest that pre-commencement conditions are overused and cause delays in planning processes? It would be helpful if you could give some examples to help us understand the issue.
Andrew Whitaker: Obviously, anything that prevents somebody from getting on site and starting implementation of their planning permission is a delay to implementation. Any condition on a planning permission that says that you have to do something before you can commence that development is an obvious delay. Therefore, by very definition, pre-commencement conditions are a delay. However, I want to make it very clear that we are not against pre-commencement conditions per se. They perform a valuable role and are a valuable tool in allowing permission to be granted subject to various things that still need to be sorted out. Therefore, we are supportive of the provision in the Bill.
We want to see greater dialogue between local planning authorities and applicants about the kind of conditions that they believe are necessary on their permission and the timing of those conditions. At the moment, the default for those conditions is to make them pre-commencement, rather than to have a discussion with the applicant about the most appropriate time for those conditions to be discharged in the development process.
We accept that some very important conditions must be discharged before the commencement of development but, similarly, we believe that a lot of unnecessary pre-commencement conditions are put on planning applications that, by definition, delay implementation.
Roy Pinnock: I will address the question in relation to the number of instances of those conditions. The Killian Pretty review, which reported eight years ago almost to the day, conducted research that identified an average of eight pre-commencement conditions. I am not sure which sample of consents it looked at, because now the number of pre-commencement conditions could range up to as many as 22.
In my experience as a practitioner, you would be lucky these days to get away with eight pre-commencement conditions; 22 is more likely to be the norm. That is a lot to work through to get on site, particularly when there is an effect on the ability to fund schemes, to get them across the line and to get them moving in a period where there may be uncertainty. The BPF’s position, to reflect Mr Whitaker’s points, is that pre-commencement conditions play an important role. They often reflect the choices made when applying for consent, and do not provide detail or engage in fully detailing some of the plans and costs before consent is granted. But pre-commencement conditions are often imposed in a way that is arbitrary, unnecessary and indiscriminate. The British Property Federation would support greater use of model conditions backed by a system for being able to seek determination of whether it is appropriate to use those model conditions and modifications to the proposed section 100ZA, which is proposed by clause 7(5). I would be happy to outline the BPF’s proposals for those amendments in due course.
Andrew Dixon: Those of our members who are small-scale house builders consistently tell us that the number of planning conditions they are facing has increased very significantly in recent years. Our 2016 House Builders’ Survey asked a question as to which of a number of different causes of delays within the planning application system—
The Chair
I am sorry to interrupt. It may be that I am going deaf, but the volume seems a little low in here today. I do not know if anyone can flick a switch or something to try to get it turned up, or perhaps the witnesses could speak closer to the microphone. It was just a little difficult to hear at this end.
Andrew Dixon: I may have been mumbling—I apologise. I was saying that our latest House Builders’ Survey asked a question as to what our members saw as the most significant causes of delay within the planning application process, and the signing off of planning conditions came at No. 2 out of six, I think, just behind the under-resourcing of local planning departments and ahead of things like negotiations and signing off of section 106 and delays caused by statutory consultees that have traditionally been seen as major causes of delay and stasis within the system. There is some evidence there. As the last two speakers have said, our members report this is a problem.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q I am sorry to interrupt you, Andrew. You said there is evidence there. Actually, what you have collected is the opinions of your members. Did they provide examples to demonstrate what was actually causing the delays?
Andrew Dixon: In terms of what causes the delays, it is not just undertaking the actions specified in the conditions but the delays in signing off those conditions. It is the delays in having those conditions discharged. Unfortunately, quite significant delays in signing off conditions are, we think, the norm.
There are any number of reasons for that, but I think one of them is that the incentives within the system for local authorities are to process applications within a given period of time and, to some extent, to have permissions in place, but the strong perception from our members is that once the permission is granted, the impetus from the local authority’s point of view goes out of the window. Quite reasonably, their priorities then may be elsewhere. That is the fault within the system that leads to conditions causing unnecessary delays.
Ross Murray: The Country Land and Business Association carried out a survey of its members this summer, in July, and over half said they wished to partake in provision of more rural housing, which we thought was very encouraging. But a third of them said that they are frustrated in making these investments because of the planning system in general. This is not specific to your question, but we also provide our 32,000 members with an advisory service and by far the largest call on advice was to do with planning: roughly 4,000 inquiries a year are to do with planning, of which a proportion—I cannot give an exact amount—relate to conditionality.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q Are the measures in the Bill sufficient to speed up the whole pre-commencement planning conditions issue, so that you will get quicker agreement on what needs to be done by your members and in the discharge?
Ross Murray: No, not at all. In my experience, the problem with the whole planning process is that the potato stamp comes out from the harassed officer who is dealing with the application, and the first time the applicant generally sees the conditions is when the report goes to committee and becomes public five days before committee hearing. Best practice would suggest that actually the planning officer should negotiate and discuss with the applicant pre-commencement conditions during the process of assessing the application, but in reality I do not believe that happens. So the problem is that the applicant, if he is successful when the committee has passed the application, has then got to deal with pre-commencement conditions that might not accord with section 206 of the national planning policy framework, in that they are unreasonable or whatever.
Andrew Whitaker: We actually think that it will help. We have tried to get local authorities to have a conversation with applicants about the conditions they wish to place on planning applications in order to grant permission, and it has just not happened. Good practice has not worked, so using legislation appears to be the only way we will be able to get local authorities and applicants to have a dialogue about what conditions are being imposed on the decision, which of those should rightly be pre-commencement and which should be discharged further in the development process.
Roy Pinnock: Could I put forward a middle way in that context? The BPF’s position is that it has concerns that the measures as put forward under section 100ZA(5) would not deliver a faster outcome for applicants. That is because where applicants disagree with the draft conditions, the only recourse they have is the recourse they have already got, which is ineffective given the time and cost implications of pursuing a full-blown planning appeal. So it leads us no further forward, but we have introduced a further layer of complexity to the planning onion for people to talk about.
Although I agree with Mr Whitaker’s comments and the other comments that have been made about the need for dialogue and the need to promote that dialogue—where that is done, it can lead to some quite good results—the difficulty, in particular in the context of local authority resourcing, which we might come on to later, is that those authorities simply do not have the capability, the capacity and, I stress, in a few cases, the competence to deal with it now, because they have been totally denuded of that. So the ability to actually deliver what the Government are seeking is under huge pressure.
The BPF’s proposal is that there is a specific right of appeal under section 100ZA, so that if a consent is refused or has to be appealed solely because of a failure to reach agreement in relation to pre-commencement conditions—where peace has been given a chance—it should be possible to appeal and to appeal on that point alone. That appeal is then dealt with on a constrained basis, so that, rather than a wholescale reconsideration of the application de novo, only the issues relevant to the condition itself are considered. Obviously, as you know, applications to vary existing planning conditions under section 73 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 are already dealt with on that basis, so there is already a clear legal framework, both in terms of statute and case law, for dealing with appeals on that narrow basis. How narrow it is—and the law confirms—depends on the nature of the condition.
My last point on that is that that appeal system should provide for a fast-track written reps appeal process. That was done for the section 106BC appeal route that was provided for under the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013. It was very successful in terms of timescale, and there is absolutely no reason why that could not be done here, subject to resources being available within the Planning Inspectorate to deal with it. Given that it should reduce the overall burden on the inspectorate in relation to appeals, one would hope that a fast-track system would actually deliver something. We are hearing that it is required, ultimately, and sometimes it would be inevitable that it would be. The BPF’s position is that costs should sit squarely and clearly from the outset with the party that fails. The BPF’s position is simply that in using the legislation—the levers Government have—there can be changes, like section 96A and other changes that have been introduced, that drive a cultural change quickly, so that people do not constantly need to have recourse to legislation to effect what we are trying to achieve on delivery.
Oliver Colvile
Q Thank you very much, gentlemen, for giving up your time to come and have a chat with us. Before I was elected to this place, I did a lot of work in the development industry, giving advice to developers on how to manage community consultations and stuff like that. A number of my clients would have said that every time the Government get involved in producing another piece of planning law, frankly, that delays everything. I would be interested in your comments.
Turning to preconditions, I am very keen to make sure that local communities are absolutely and utterly involved in the whole decision-making process and feel that they should have their say. How do you think we can ensure that the preconditions are also considered by local communities in the process?
Andrew Whitaker: I do not think there is any doubt that local communities are involved in the planning process and in the planning application process. Therefore, the discussion over the determination of the planning application should involve whether things about the planning application need to be sorted out at a later date, and therefore communities should be expressing those concerns in their representations as part of the planning process. They are represented by elected members at a local level, so I have no worries that local communities are not involved in the determination of a planning application as it proceeds through all the legal procedures. Whether to place a condition on that planning permission is part of the determination process, so whether or not as a community you agree that condition or that the condition should be pre-commencement, it is possible to raise that through the normal procedure, rather than as a discussion on the particular schedule of those conditions. That is a technical process as to whether you need the condition in the first place.
Andrew Dixon: We would very much agree with that. We do not see this as in any way reducing the extent to which local communities and local residents can be involved in the process or can have their say on particular applications. Broadly speaking, the Federation of Master Builders is positive about the provisions on conditions in the Bill because we think that they would institute an earlier conversation about which conditions are necessary, which need to be pre-commencement conditions and which do not, and which can perhaps be pre-occupation conditions, but none of that precludes those conditions being in place or those issues being tackled in some other way. It should serve to institute an earlier conversation about how best to deal with those issues.
Helen Hayes
Q Mr Whitaker, you mentioned a couple of times that it is best practice for conditions to be agreed in discussion between the local authority and the applicant, and I agree with you. The Bill proposes a much more formal process than that through an exchange of letters between an applicant and the local authority to agree the conditions. The mechanisms in the Bill for resolving a dispute, when that process can be resolved through an exchange of letters, are pretty blunt: the rejection of the application wholesale, and the developer is then left in the position of going to appeal. Notwithstanding what you said about the system not working so well at the moment, can you comment on whether this will help to further encourage best practice, or whether formalising the process in the way proposed in the Bill might have unintended consequences?
Andrew Whitaker: Formalising the discussion in writing—of course, that does not mean by post these days—is reasonable. It makes it very clear what people have and have not agreed to, and one can go back and check that that is the case. We would agree with the BPF’s proposal that a fast-track appeal mechanism when disagreement continues would be a good idea, because that would sort out some of the potential further delay that this provision would introduce.
In terms of whether this is a blunt sword—a blunt instrument—the whole point is that one is not supposed to hold the other party to ransom. The applicant is not going to say, “I am not going to accept any pre-commencement conditions on my planning decision at all,” because then it might be perfectly right for the local planning authority to say, “In which case we will refuse your application, on the basis that you haven’t sorted out a particular detail that you could do via condition, so long as you do it prior to commencement of your application.” Or they have to think to themselves, “Would we be happy defending that at an appeal when the only thing we are concerned about is not whether this particular issue can be dealt with via condition but whether it needs to be worded as a pre-commencement condition, rather than as a condition that can be discharged at a different stage in the development process?”
There are lots of trigger points in a development, the most obvious of which is prior to the occupation of a dwelling. You are allowed to do all the groundwork—to slab level, as we call it—so you can word conditions like that. You do not need to agree everything prior to commencement, and we believe that that discussion will be able to focus minds and, ultimately, will lead to the best practice that we all seek.
Roy Pinnock: I have just two points on that in relation to the discussion and dialogue, and the role of the planning onion—we just add another layer to it and make things more complex, rather than less complex. I think that is in part your point: do we add to the systemic complexity that we already have in this regime, which is already a series of layers? As I have already said, the BPF’s position is that there is an opportunity here to do something that is quick, clear and effective, which is where a measure that has real teeth tends to drive cultural changes.
I go back to the question on whether more legislation can really achieve anything in the planning world. Section 96A is a really good example of that. It is a very small amendment to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 that has had a great impact on the day-to-day lives of practitioners by making things a lot easier, and it has driven a cultural change without people having to rely too heavily on legalistic points.
The second point is in relation to how we actually speed up the dialogue and use this as a tool. In part, the solution may be to have greater use of model conditions, which the Planning Inspectorate used to promote. We feel there is an opportunity for the Government to be much clearer about what their model conditions are, using working groups from industry and the government sector to say, “This should be the starting point. This should be when these kinds of conditions are imposed. We shouldn’t be asking for details of windows when you are decontaminating a site or knocking buildings down. This is the form of the conditions imposed.” By doing that we would drain away a lot of the administrative tasks that planning officers, of whom there are too few, are being required to do. They can rely on those model conditions and say, “We have done our job and have justified departures from them because we think it’s important to local people on this particular issue. We are prepared”—as Mr Whitaker said—“to justify that in front of an inspector, and we think they will reach the same decision.”
Helen Hayes
Q I am a member of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, and yesterday we heard evidence from a range of witnesses within the sector, including from the Federation of Master Builders and the Home Builders Federation, about the lack of resource and capacity in local authority planning departments. It was suggested in that evidence session that the reported overuse of pre-commencement planning conditions is a symptom of a lack of resource in planning departments, rather than a wilful misuse of pre-commencement conditions on the part of local authorities. Will you comment on your experience of the resourcing issues in local authority planning departments?
Andrew Dixon: We would certainly agree that under-resourcing is one of the major drivers behind the high level of use of planning conditions. The strong perception among our members is that planning conditions are often being used to limit the necessity of engaging in detail with a full application. Among the things that often arise from that are planning conditions that have actually been covered in the full application. An example of that would be landscaping. I have heard a number of our members say that detailed landscaping plans were included in their full application but that there did not seem to be any engagement with it, there then being a condition to bring forward those details. Under-resourcing is a major issue that causes numerous hold-ups within the system, and we think it is one of the drivers behind the excessive use of conditions.
Ross Murray: This is very profound in rural planning authorities, which are significantly under-resourced in planning. Our members around the country see that all the time. The Committee must also have a mind to the resource of the applicant and the risks within the process. We should do anything that we can to provide certainty of process after the application has been determined, and when an applicant finds that the pre-commencement conditions just do not work for him. In a rural context, these are often low-return projects, and the planning process is the highest risk point at the start of the process.
Andrew Whitaker: It is very much a chicken-and-egg situation. If local authorities do not put enough resources into determining a planning application, the temptation is—rather lazily, in my opinion—to deal with everything via condition, rather than as part of the primary application. If authorities focused their resources on what needed to be done as part of the application, they would need to condition less. That would relieve them of having to discharge conditions, which can take just as many resources as the primary application. Therefore, we think that local authorities should reassess their systems and processes to focus their limited resources into the right parts of the process.
Chris Philp
Q I would like to continue the line of questioning on resourcing and planning departments that Helen Hayes started. Mr Dixon, you said earlier that the lack of resourcing in planning departments was the No. 1 impediment to getting more applications. Will you confirm that that was the case?
Andrew Dixon: That was the case.
Chris Philp
Q Mr Murray said that certainty of process was the most important thing. Would your members or the development community be willing to pay for further resources in local authority planning departments by way of higher planning fees if, in exchange, they had guaranteed service levels—that is, the extra planning fee would be refundable if the service level was not met? Are you willing to pay to remedy the problem you are highlighting?
Andrew Dixon: The overwhelming feeling of our members is that they are quite happy to pay a higher application fee as long as those resources are ring-fenced and go into a demonstrably improved service. There would be very little resistance to that.
Chris Philp
Q It is relatively rare to find people volunteering to pay more money.
Andrew Dixon: It is fairly standard in any walk of life that people are prepared to pay more for a better service. Our members are no different in that sense.
Ross Murray: From my perspective, I would agree. Delay is risk; risk is money.
Roy Pinnock: The BPF’s position is absolutely in agreement with that. It has set that out in its response to technical consultations. There are issues of how the application is structured, indexation, inflation, and the linking of that fee not just for authorities that are performing well, but for those that are under real pressure for other reasons. There is a general consensus, particularly among commercial development investors, that you get what you pay for. There is a completely profound lack of resource in authorities to deal with the situation in which we find ourselves. It is the single biggest brake on development, in terms of applications and starts on site, in my experience as a practitioner.
Chris Philp
Q What level of fee uplift, compared to today’s levels, would your members or the development community be willing to pay if a guaranteed service level—an application determined within x period—was associated with that fee uplift? Give us a feel for the quantum.
Roy Pinnock: I might just duck that question, like any true lawyer. The critical point is that we are very used to planning performance agreements, and to guaranteed service levels being offered and assumed, and then not being delivered. There is sympathy for the reasons for that, not least because applications are complex. Local people’s relationship with planning is complex, and quite rightly so, as we are making difficult decisions. Probably the worst thing, from an applicant’s point of view, is that a guaranteed committee date is set and you do not get that committee. You then go into the long grass, and that is used to ransom the applicant. Concessions are made throughout the application process to get to that committee.
Chris Philp
Q So if the fee uplift was refundable if the date got missed, would that give comfort?
Roy Pinnock: It would and the planning guarantee should achieve that currently. The BPF would support that planning guarantee being amended, which would require the application regulations to be changed. The original idea of the planning guarantee was that you should determine either way—refuse if it is a rubbish scheme or approve if it is a great scheme. Within 25 weeks there should be certainty. That certainty is crucial to everyone.
How the planning guarantee works at the moment is that where there is an agreed extension of time, it drops away entirely. It is not the case that if you agree to extend the time to enable a sensible dialogue about the detail of planning application matters, and then that extension fails to deliver a result, you go back to the position of being able to claw back the application fee. What happens, for no good reason, is that it kills off altogether the ability to rely on the planning guarantee. That is completely wrong and undermines the whole purpose and intended effect of the guarantee. In our view, that should be amended so that the system has real teeth.
Chris Philp
Q Am I right in thinking that the current planning agreements apply only to large applications? The planning agreements that can already be entered into do not currently help small applications, so one could also introduce that.
Roy Pinnock: Yes, although there is another resourcing issue around entering into and administering planning performance agreements. There is a cultural shift that needs to go on around how applications are project- managed. That is true of the commercial sector, in terms of how it approaches negotiating section 106 agreements, when it looks at conditions in the application process and how much it is prepared to take things on at the earliest stage.
There is also an issue around how to programme-manage people’s diaries. Within an authority, you need sign-off from transport, the education aspect of the authority and housing officers. At the moment, you cannot get a meeting. I have waited three months for an authority to sit down. We said, “Look, there’s no point us sending ping-pong emails on this agreement because you keep telling us everything is not agreed. We just want to sit around the table with everyone and understand your views.” That is impossible, and it is partly due to the chaos, unfortunately, that is going on because of the multiple restructurings and the lack of resource.
Chris Philp
Q Are you satisfied that section 106 agreements, which are currently entered into after planning permission is granted, are adequate? It can take a long time to agree them. Are you satisfied that they are adequately addressed by the Bill or not? Do you think that they can still be a source of delay?
Roy Pinnock: They can be a source of delay, but equally, they are highly sophisticated tools for development. I will give you one example: the North Greenwich peninsula. There are 15,000 new homes approved on public land, despite the number of parties involved: the Greater London Authority, the developer and the Royal Borough of Greenwich. That took place within three months of the planning board.
There are other examples. I have just done two schemes further south and west in the country, and it has taken more than a year to get from committee resolution to approval to planning consent. It depends very much how that is approached, but fundamentally, far too much is in section 106 agreements. Much more should be in planning conditions. The Housing and Planning Act 2016 provides a mechanism for a dispute resolution service. We think that should be used in the same way as the appeal that we have spoken about in relation to section 100ZA to provide recourse where planning obligations are used unnecessarily.
Chris Philp
Q Should we make section 106 part of the main planning application so that the whole thing gets dealt with in an expeditious fashion in one go?
Roy Pinnock: The difficulty with that, from a practical point of view, is that there should be dialogue about what needs to go into that agreement. It is fine to do a first draft, but there is a dialogue in planning applications. Other witnesses will have a contribution on this as well.
Chris Philp
Q Yes, but dialogue can happen in pre-app.
Roy Pinnock: Yes. No plan survives contact with reality. There is always dialogue. There should be dialogue in planning; it is fundamental. I think BPF members value pre-application discussions but recognise that once you are in the mix, having submitted the application, the most important thing is how you project and programme-manage those discussions so that you know when local authority resources are available. The crucial thing is that we preserve the ability to have a sensible dialogue about quality, but drain off some of the issues involving technical things, which can be addressed by model planning obligations and model conditions.
Andrew Dixon: Just to pick up on a couple of points, you asked about the use of PPAs on small sites. They are not normally used on small sites—they are probably too clunky and an inappropriate tool for small sites—but we think there would be value in a standard, very basic, perhaps one-page agreement for covering small sites that would perform the role of some kind of service level agreement against which the applicant can hold the planning authority.
Chris Philp
Q So if I pay a higher fee, then this is a service I get in return?
Andrew Dixon: You could have that range or, whatever fee you pay, you could have an agreed service level that the planning authority has to meet—
Chris Philp
Q Without extra resources, there will not be any extra service, and extra resources mean more money.
Andrew Dixon: No, and in response to your other question, I cannot put a figure on how much more our members would be prepared to pay, but the planning application fee is a fairly small proportion of the total cost of moving forward a planning application. For an improved service, they would be prepared to pay more.
Chris Philp
Excellent.
Ross Murray: Can I take the Committee on a journey from the Greenwich peninsula, with applications for 15,000 homes, to the barn conversion, which is my members’ domain? The concept that someone would instruct lawyers, pay for the authority’s legal department and negotiate a section 106 agreement for a very small, low-value application beforehand is just not practical. There is not time and it will load risk and cost on to the applicant, so I think there are probably circumstances when the section 106 agreement will follow after the determination of the resolution to grant.
Chris Philp
Q Finally, on the question of pre-commencements, are there any particular conditions or parts of the planning process that you think are particularly onerous or absurd and would like to draw the Committee’s attention to? It might be anything to do with great crested newts, for example, without wishing to lead the witnesses.
Andrew Whitaker: No. It is possible to discuss everything. It is right that we have conditions that control various things that are not controlled in the planning application, but as I said before, people should be focusing on what is in the application and what the applicant is going to do to mitigate all the concerns on any subject. We frequently find that the mitigation that is proposed in the planning application itself is ignored. A planning condition is placed on the decision notice and the applicant then resubmits the self-same evidence that they submitted as part of the planning application and it is approved under discharge of planning conditions. That is a total nonsense. It is absolutely right that we take a lot of things into account. A lot of people are engaged in the planning application process.
I am interested in the evidence from your questioning of the other witnesses in respect of whether people pay for a better service and whether they get one. Small applications already have a PPA. Those are statutory timetables within which local authorities need to determine a planning application, and they get a fee for that.
Chris Philp
Q If the LPA breaks that, no consequence flows from it, other than a bad statistic in its report.
Andrew Whitaker: Absolutely, and we have suggested in various documents that a staged payment process of all the planning application fees would be better, because the other thing that your questions draw attention to is that there are lots of stages of a development, and not just the tiny part that is the planning application and/or the conditioning of that planning decision. We are also talking about allocations of site in local plans and in neighbourhood plans—the other part of the Bill—and then pre-application discussions, the application discharge conditions and section 106 agreements. All those things need to be looked at in the round, rather than merely focusing on a tiny little part and asking, “Would you pay more for a planning application fee?”. It is a very simple approach but it does not have a very simple answer.
Roy Pinnock: Just to round that off, where those additional fees are ring-fenced for the planning service—either where they are going into a smaller application so that an officer who might be a specialist in the 15,000-unit scheme, but who is dealing with smaller but no less valuable schemes, is freed up, or where they are funding on a locum basis, or however we need to deal with this problem—we should use that fee. We should ring-fence it and use it to allocate resource. I think the industry would probably support that. You get what you pay for, in that sense, and I think that is more important than the idea that we have a specific set of milestones, which may well be missed, just because that’s life.
We need to know that we have someone dealing with the application, that they have read all the papers and are not going to get switched over, that they understand the ecological mitigation because they have read, unfortunately, the three habitat surveys that have been done, and that they can have that conviction, because it comes from a deep knowledge of these complex schemes. At the moment, we have a real crisis in dealing with these applications, because we do not have the deep knowledge available. Unfortunately, with the best will in the world, this is a resource issue.
Ross Murray: May I come back to your point about newts, Chair? Newts and bats are totemic in rural England and Wales in the planning process. I offer you a personal story about an application for a barn conversion. Thieves came and stole the slate roof. There was no roof and, therefore, there were no bats. The planning authority insisted on the bat survey—and there we were, £1,000 later.
Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
Q I possibly take a slightly different view from my colleague of newts and bats. There is some anxiety about the Bill, probably based on a misunderstanding of what the changes on pre-commencement conditions actually involve, so this discussion is very helpful from that point of view. I have constituents who are keen to see local authorities retain the power to ensure that proper surveys are done in relation to wildlife and archaeological heritage. From what I understand from the debate on Second Reading and from what you have said today, the planning authorities will retain the power to impose conditions of that kind; there will just be a change in how that is done to ensure that it involves the developer at an earlier stage and does not necessarily have to happen right at the start, before the whole process has begun.
Mr Whitaker, can you explain, in simple terms, at what stage of the process surveys of that kind can be required? I can then reassure my constituents that the Bill will not prevent an archaeological survey if it is necessary, and that the aim is to ensure that it happens in a way that causes less delay and cost to developments. It is obviously important to ensure that such work is done before a final decision is made on a planning application.
Andrew Whitaker: You are absolutely right and we agree with you. There are many stages in the planning process at which a local planning authority can reflect the community, in many instances, by asking what are the important things that need to be considered as part of the development of a site. They can do that when they allocate the site in a local plan—they can set out various matters that will need to be addressed as part of the development. That can be done by the community themselves at a neighbourhood plan level; it can be done as part of the pre-application and consultation discussion, with the potential applicant, of the issues that the local authority will want to be addressed via the planning application process; and it can then be discussed as part of the planning application process itself, prior to a decision being made. It can also be addressed as part of a planning condition attached to the planning permission.
At all those stages, one can quite legitimately raise any issue that one sees as being key to the planning decision, whether that is archaeology, bats and newts, or any other issue—for example, drainage is often seen as causing delay. Some of those issues will be so critical to whether the development is allowed to go ahead that they should, of course, be addressed very early on in the planning process.
If my local plan allocated a site but said, “This is a difficult site to drain. We will want to see all drainage details sorted out as part of the planning application. We are not going to leave this to a planning condition because it is fundamental to how much development you are allowed to put on the site, depending on your drainage scheme”, the developer would accept that as a constraint and would submit a detailed drainage scheme with their planning application. It is up to the local planning authority to then say, “Okay, this is an important issue for this site. Is the proposed drainage system capable of mitigating the drainage issues and should we approve the planning application on the basis of the scheme submitted with it?” The problem we see is that a lot of local authorities say, “We haven’t got time to do that now. We will make a planning condition that says that, prior to the commencement of the development, we want to agree a drainage system for the site.”
As I have previously explained, frequently, all that happens is that you submit exactly the same drainage system as was submitted with the planning application, or the same mitigation for wildlife, or the same detail that you knew was critical to the determination of your planning application later down the line as a pre-commencement planning condition, rather than it being sorted out as part of the original planning application. We think there are lots and lots of points along the planning journey at which the things that are key to the development of sites can be sorted out. The Bill does not change that at all.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
Q I was pleased to hear that answer, Mr Whitaker, because that issue was on my mind as well. You suggested earlier that planners might focus on the essentials of preconditions. We have to be clear about who determines what the essentials are. For example, when is a bat more essential than a ditch? I think you have made it quite clear, and I do not think that those of our environmental colleagues who are listening will feel you are trying to steamroller over the environment. Can you just give me a yes or no?
Andrew Whitaker: Yes.
Roy Pinnock: He is not.
Rebecca Pow
Q You are not. Good. Then I would like to go on to my main question, which I put to Mr Murray first. If the local authority and the developer disagree on a pre-commencement condition, there is no recourse in the Bill other than to reject the application and to then appeal the whole thing. I wonder whether that puts off, in particular, rural folk from applying for planning conditions. Does the system put them off because it is too arduous if they fear being turned down the first time?
Ross Murray: They can be put off at two stages. They can be frightened by the whole prospect of a change of use and actually applying in the first place. In the post-common agricultural policy Brexit world, we know that the rural economy has got to diversify and we have got to reduce our reliance on agriculture, so there has to be development. I think if we have legislation that does not ease that process of the scrutiny of applications, it will put people off. It will also discourage people from actually going through with appeals. I have members who have applied for planning permission, and when the list of conditions comes out, even if it is passed, they know an appeal is not affordable. They are put off by the prospect of a very expensive appeal, because there is the prospect of the inspector opening up the whole principle of the application.
Rebecca Pow
Q They cannot just appeal on one of the small preconditions that was under debate, is that right?
Ross Murray: They cannot appeal just on that, or they are at risk of it being opened up. I must say I think clause 7 is almost there, but it could be bettered if you put in a simplified appeals process. We already have a simplified system for householder or advertisement development, which is eight weeks’ written representations rather than a full-blown appeal. There is a precedent there, and I think that would help.
Rebecca Pow
Q Do you think we would get more houses and more developments as a result of a small tweak like that?
Ross Murray: I think there is absolutely no doubt about that. If we get the legislation right with clause 7 and bring in a proposal like that, I think people will understand that the planning process is fairer, simpler and less costly.
Rebecca Pow
Q Shall we just put that to Mr Dixon? Do you think that would help small and medium-sized developers as well?
Andrew Dixon: Some kind of appeals process on the issue of pre-commencement conditions?
Rebecca Pow
Yes; making it simpler, rather than have to go through everything.
Andrew Dixon: It could be a useful addition to the system. By and large, and perhaps we are being too optimistic, we do not think it is very likely that there will be protracted negotiations about the use of pre-commencement conditions. The aim should be for some of those conversations to be conducted fairly simply and fairly quickly. We are perhaps a bit more optimistic, particularly around smaller applications, about the scope for huge controversy in those conversations. We think the most important thing is that that conversation takes place at an early point in the process.
Roy Pinnock: Just to be clear, the BPF’s perspective is that the clause, as it stands, will not achieve anything—that is to be somewhat bleak. It will leave applicants in the position they are already in, which is that, if they do not like their consent, they can appeal and have a de novo consideration by the Planning Inspectorate, which will take some time. That is very weak as a dialogue and as a negotiating position.
Oliver Colvile
Q Thank you for allowing me to have a second go, Mr Bone.
I have always thought very seriously that we should make sure we have master planning taking place at a very early stage as well, which would mean the local community could get very involved in it. I am also not going to miss an opportunity to talk about ecology and about making sure that we include hedgehog superhighways in the development, too. That is important, because it is something that does not often necessarily feature in the discussion that takes place with developers. It would be a really good thing if we could encourage that, in my view, because hedgehog numbers have declined by 50% over the past 15 years.
Roy Pinnock: Planning application resources have also declined by 50%, which I think was recently noted in the Communities and Local Government Committee’s evidence session on the local plans expert group. That is perhaps unrelated.
Gavin Barwell
Q Thank you, Mr Bone.
There are just three brief points I want to make, picking up on what a number of you have said. The first is a request of Mr Dixon. You referred to the survey you had done of your members. First, can you tell us how many members you had surveyed? Committee members might find it helpful to see a copy of the results of that survey.
Andrew Dixon: We are very happy to submit that information to the Committee. I understand that 108 SME housebuilders took part in that survey, so a not insignificant number.
Gavin Barwell
Q With all due respect to the HBF, I suspect there is a very strong consensus across the House that one of the things we want to do is to encourage more SME builders. If this is particularly a concern to that sector, it is highly relevant.
Mr Murray, if I understood you correctly, I think you were saying that you were not sure that these changes regarding pre-commencement conditions would achieve anything, because dialogue between applicants and planning committees was needed. I put it to you that surely that is what this change will require. Because it is going to stop local authorities imposing pre-commencement conditions without an applicant’s agreement, it will surely create the kind of dialogue you want to see.
Ross Murray: The proof will be in the pudding going forward. My principal concern about clause 7 is the process of appeal afterwards, if those conditions are not acceptable and not viable. Regarding the point we have just discussed, an appeal that focuses purely on the offending commencement condition would be beneficial to everybody, if the dialogue has not resolved it beforehand.
Gavin Barwell
Q Yes. I think we will go on to discuss this when we get to line-by-line consideration, but the difficulty is that when an inspector looks at a condition, it is difficult to judge it in the absence of the overall application, because the council would say that the condition is necessary to make the overall application acceptable. It is difficult to just look at one condition in the absence of the overall package.
My last question is for Mr Pinnock. I understand the point you are making that there will still be an issue if this Bill goes through as it stands. I want to challenge you on what you said, that people would be in no better a position at all. At the moment, as an applicant, if you do not like the conditions attached to your application, you can appeal. I would argue that there is a beneficial step here in that, now, authorities will not be able to attach conditions that you do not agree to. The authority would have to feel so strongly about one of these pre-commencement conditions as to turn down permission for the whole application. Do you not think that it is at least going to reduce the number of cases where there is a problem, even if it will not eliminate the problem altogether?
Roy Pinnock: It may do, but it is an uncertain position. The issue for investors and also for communities is about how we create a more certain pathway to the number of homes that need to be delivered, and the amount of supported development and infrastructure. It will stop local authorities granting planning permission. That is what clause 7 does at the moment, and the BPF is wary of any measure that arguably stops authorities granting consent. There is a real risk that it is in the “too difficult” box already, and in terms of that dialogue and that negotiation, the authority will just sit back and say, “We’ve got a load of other applications that have come in, and we’ve got to meet our deadlines on that. This one’s just gone straight into the ‘we’re under a statutory restriction to grant consent’ box, so come back to us in a few months’ time when you want to agree our pre-commencement condition,” which, probably, is what would happen. We would still have the delays of discharging the pre-commencement conditions.
A targeted, fair system that allows authorities to stand by their concerns and have those adjudicated by the planning inspector on the same basis as the section 73 consideration that is undertaken at the moment, which has opened out where a condition goes to other points of the application. Quite fairly, it is broadened out. If the majority could be dealt with by written representations, that would provide a real release valve.
Also, as I say, the key thing about any legal change is that it drives a cultural shift, rather than necessarily being something people rely on. The BPF’s view is that this must have teeth and must be speedy and deliver the ultimate objective of certainty for everyone, in order to be a meaningful provision.
Jim McMahon
Q This follows on from the Minister’s point about how you compile an application with conditions to make it acceptable to the local community and the design elements within that locality. We have heard a lot about bats and newts, and a bit about hedgehogs too. There have probably been more discussions on those than on people and community. I want to explore a bit more the points you were making about the type of conditions being put forward and how reasonable or unreasonable they were perceived to be. Let us use the example of landscaping, which has been used to say, “This is how ridiculous the system is.” Following on from the Minister’s point, the idea that landscaping—planting a few plants here and there—will somehow delay an important development could be the difference between whether an application is acceptable to the local community or not. If a development is alongside your house, the screening and treatment of that could be critical to whether you support it.
Equally, the idea of phasing elements, whereby some conditions could be delayed or brought further into the application—drainage was mentioned—was predicated on the view that costing delays mount up, and that it is better to crack on, get the site done and resolve those issues later. The counter-challenge is that if you are applying for plant equipment or site security, but you cannot get an agreement on drainage, surely there is an inherent cost with that proposal. I want to challenge that to try to get some balance. We are in danger of going from one extreme to the other, and the truth is always somewhere in the middle.
Andrew Whitaker: I do not think we are. We are obviously talking about something different. We appreciate that some conditions on a planning permission will have to be pre-commencement. They are right at the heart of the application, and all types of different conditions may well be at the heart of a particular application. We are not suggesting that all landscape conditions cannot be pre-commencement.
You are absolutely right that in some cases—few, I would suggest—the landscaping proposals might well be the fundamental determining issue of that application. In others, it will be other things. The whole point of this proposal is to have that dialogue so that applicants to local planning authorities can say, “Is this really fundamental to you granting me a planning consent, given what I have already put into my planning application proposal?”
To use your example, if I have already screened the neighbour using whatever it was we agreed at the pre-application discussion, it is there as part of the plans of my planning application, and all you need to do is grant me consent in accordance with the plans that I have already submitted to you. You do not need an unnecessary condition requiring further landscaping details to be submitted.
If we have that discussion, I can point out to you that I have already submitted what I believe to be an adequate landscaping scheme. You, as the local planning authority, must then tell me why that is not adequate, whether I could address it through amended plans and all sorts of things, rather than just using the potato stamp—I think we heard that term earlier—of saying, “There is a pre-commencement landscape condition. Let’s sort this out later.” That leads to the delay, but we could have had a discussion about it as part of the planning application or as part of the determination process.
Andrew Dixon: I mentioned landscaping, so I am keen to clarify that point. I was not for a second suggesting that landscaping is not a proper consideration within a planning application. Above all, I stress that we do not see the provisions as a means to exclude certain considerations from the planning process. This should be about rationalising when certain information is needed and the optimum point in the process for it to be submitted, so that the development can come forward as speedily and efficiently as possible. If we get that right, the gains are huge.
Roy Pinnock: I have one point to add. I have sympathy for authorities, in that they will raise the issue of monitoring. They can generally see, when site operations start, that they will receive pre-commencement discharges anyway. Sorry to hit on this point again, but it goes back to resourcing. They will say, “It is just too difficult for us to monitor, after commencement, what is going on at the site, so we need it to be pre-commencement to create certainty.” We always have to be sympathetic to real life, boots-on-the-ground planning where we understand what is happening with these sites.
Some thought needs to take place between the Government, the sector and the commercial sector as to how we can assist the process and set the right stage. There is a preoccupation with many things. There will be a genuine concern that that trigger is missed, that you then cannot evict people and that it is a weak trigger. Therefore, getting it right, and having examples, guidance and model conditions from the Government is important.
The Chair
We will have to end this session. We could have gone on for a lot longer, but 10.30 am is our limit. I thank all the witnesses. The conversation we have had today is most helpful, and undoubtedly will inform and help Members as we progress the Bill. Thank you.
Examination of Witnesses
Councillor Tony Newman, Duncan Wilson, Angus Walker and Hugh Ellis gave evidence.
The Chair
We now come to the second panel of witnesses. I refer Members to page 28 of the brief.
We will hear oral evidence from the Local Government Association, Historic England, National Infrastructure Planning Association and the Town and Country Planning Association. For this session we have until 11.25 am. I welcome the witnesses. Could you please introduce yourselves?
Councillor Newman: I am Councillor Tony Newman representing the Local Government Association. I am a member of the LGA’s Towns and Environment Board and also leader of the London Borough of Croydon.
Duncan Wilson: I am Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England.
Hugh Ellis: I am Hugh Ellis, interim chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association.
Angus Walker: I am Angus Walker, board chair of the National Infrastructure Planning Association.
The Chair
Does the shadow Minister want to go first on this one? We have already done declarations of interest so the Minister has made it clear, councillor, that he is going to be on his best behaviour.
Councillor Newman: Likewise.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q Thank you and welcome everyone. We are going to continue the discussion on pre-commencement conditions. It would be helpful to hear your views on whether they are overused, whether they do in fact cause delays in the planning process and whether you have evidence to support that.
Councillor Newman: If you are looking at the whole of clause 7 of the Bill—the conditions and the pre-commencement—best practice is where there is a strong, well-resourced local government planning department, to use traditional language, working in partnership with developers. I know that is a view the British Property Federation share: two thirds of them support the LGA’s view that we should see well-resourced planning departments. The whole perspective of what I am seeing in the Bill looks very much like a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach—another layer of red tape. If you look at the actual outcomes in terms of local government and planning, nine out of 10 permissions are given, and 470,000 permissions are already granted for homes up and down the land that await development for various reasons.
I am not saying there is not room for improvement from an LGA perspective and from a planning perspective on how you conduct pre-commencement conversations or any other approach. There is always room for improvement, which I think the starting point of the clause—this is a huge issue that the LGA needs to address. There is a collective issue about how we genuinely work better.
On best practice, I am not here specifically to talk about Croydon, but there is an awful lot of development happening there. As the Minister would recognise, where there are strong relationships between a council and the developers, it is all about taking a strategic view—what is a sustainable position and what do you want to achieve for the wider community?—and coming up with really exciting plans that are actually happening. Where development becomes mired in red tape and becomes a legal battle, more often than not the end result, as we have seen in my borough in the past, is a piece of land that sits empty for years while legal wrangling takes place. This does feel like unnecessary red tape, I think.
Duncan Wilson: On behalf of Historic England, our primary concern is with archaeological investigation pre-commencement conditions. Essentially, we believe the current system works quite well. We understand that developers need certainty and the system provides for conditions relating to investigation of sensitive sites. Only about 2% of planning applications are covered by these archaeological pre-commencement conditions. Most developers want to know what is there.
I go back quite a way at English Heritage in a former existence and I remember the Rose theatre, where there was a lot of messing around that did not really suit the developer and did not necessarily provide the best archaeological outcome either. That was because there was no clear archaeology pre-condition. Afterwards PPG 16 was introduced and has worked quite well, we believe.
We are more than happy to discuss any perceived problems with the system or any real problems with the system. We are not actually aware that archaeology in particular is causing those problems. We think, on balance, the system as it exists works pretty well for developers because it is based on an investigation of what is actually there and an assessment of the risks. That relies on local authority expertise and resources to help make that assessment, and we have our part to play in that too. I suppose it would all depend on the regulations that came with the Bill, which we do not yet know about, as to whether archaeology was mentioned as something where a pre-commencement condition would normally be appropriate in a very small number of sites. In a sense, we would have to await that.
Hugh Ellis: From our point of view, the concern about conditions is that they are fairly crucial in delivering quality outcomes. The short answer to your question about whether we have evidence that conditions result in delay is that we do not. What we do have is a growing concern that planning has to strike the right balance between the efficiency of the system for applicants and outcomes for people. The evidence about outcomes is a bit more worrying, particularly in relation to things like quality design, flood risk and various other issues, which are often secured through conditions.
The reasons for that are complicated. The discussion about resources, though, is overwhelmingly crucial, because that really is about the expertise of setting conditions, ensuring that they deliver strong outcomes and, ultimately, ensuring that they deliver the objective of sustainable development in the round. The question is: how does this measure help us with that wider endeavour of planning and delivering sustainable development?
Angus Walker: I also cannot provide you with any evidence this morning. Indeed, my expertise is more in the national infrastructure planning system where all this will not apply, but I can see that there may be one or two unintended consequences of this clause when put into operation. It is clearly designed to eliminate the lazy application of conditions where the survey, as you heard earlier, is already in the application and all that sort of thing. I can see situations where more planning permissions are refused because the applicant and the planning authority cannot agree on whether to impose a condition. I can also see conditions being recast as not being pre-commencement conditions but as having the same effect later on—pre-operation conditions, if you like—so I am not sure whether this will work, essentially.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q Do you think that the measures in the Bill change the balance of power more towards the developer, and what are the risks with that? We have not yet talked this morning of the risks, particularly in clause 7.
Hugh Ellis: Pursuing that point, it is an issue about whether you end up with a planning system whose primary purpose is the efficient allocation of units or a wider endeavour around place-making and inclusion. Although it seems like a good idea because it is difficult to defend inefficiency or apparent inefficiency when it is thrown up, really good place-making requires good dialogue with developers, but also strong control from local government and an empowered local government to ensure that community visions are truly delivered.
The system has been weakened—permitted development is one example of that—and the Bill needs to strike the right balance. I suppose that if it went forward, the safeguard would be, and would need to be in the wider system, the place-making objective, otherwise we would find a series of outcomes that potentially have very long-term and serious impacts on everything from public health to wider economic efficiency.
Councillor Newman: I agree with that. As I said earlier, the Bill would potentially build in a more confrontational approach, and we would lose that ability to have a place-making and sustainability overview of a development, along with the benefits and perhaps future development to come.
Somebody mentioned permitted development. We have certainly seen the flip-side of that. Where permitted development has sometimes let rip, we have seen poor-quality provision of homes—perhaps people do not have any choice in a market such as London. Permitted development has proved not to be the answer. At one point, I think, half the permitted development in London was happening in Croydon. We got an article 4 direction for Croydon town centre, and we were able to protect what is now thriving business use and office space, so permitted development was not only delivering poor-quality planning outcomes but threating our local economy by damaging a space that is now at a premium for investment in jobs.
All that would reinforce my view that you need a holistic approach where possible. That is not to be naïve—there will always be confrontation in the system, but to build it in at the start seems to me to be the wrong approach, and in the LGA’s view it is an unnecessary further layer of legislation or red tape in the process.
Duncan Wilson: It seems to me that there are two issues. One is the imposition of unnecessary conditions and the other is the time taken to discharge conditions. I have been on the other side of the table too as, in effect, the developer of a number of major heritage schemes in London, and inasmuch as we had any trouble, it was to do with the time taken to discharge conditions, which was largely related to the people and resource within the local authority—it is simply a matter of getting people up to the place to tick the box and see that we had done what was required of us. The same applies to a whole load of other things such as building regulations.
On the imposition of unnecessary conditions, the local authority has to be reasonable already—if it is felt that unnecessary conditions are being imposed, it is challengeable. I worry that the proposed new system will lead the local authority to have to make a choice early on as to whether it wants to impose a condition that would be challenged—the application could be turned down and the condition challenged again. That whole system would surely take longer than arguing about the condition and determining whether to impose it at the beginning.
Angus Walker: In line with the other speakers, I think that the planning system is a balance. Although economic growth is important and development contributes to that, it still has to be in the right context and have regard to social and environmental factors.
I can see that, if an applicant and a local planning authority cannot agree on a condition, in some cases the planning authority will refuse permission, which may be appealed and then allowed. In others, the authority will agree the application without the condition in it, even though it might have been one that ought to have been imposed. In answer to your question, it seems to me that there is a slight increase in the balance being weighed towards applicants by the measure.
Chris Philp
Q Good morning. One of the speakers briefly touched on this. What is the panellists’ opinion about whether planning departments in local authorities are adequately resourced to deal with the kind of issues we are discussing—pre-commencement conditions and the determination of applications?
Councillor Newman: Local government has taken more than its fair share of efficiency savings in the past few years and has faced serious cuts. Planning has to be properly resourced: the LGA would put forward the figure of £150 million a year for the planning department, which is effectively subsidised by the council tax payer. The British Property Federation—two thirds of it anyway—supports the view that they would rather see a contribution that meant it was properly resourced and not subsidised by the taxpayer, and there are always issues around recruitment. Many planning departments work well but are stretched to the limit. There are extra pressures and other challenges in growth areas. I do not just want to sit here and say that more resources are needed, but local government is operating on tight budgets after year-on-year decreases in our budgets.
Chris Philp
Q Will other members of the panel comment on the resourcing question: do you think local authority planning departments are adequately resourced bearing in mind the demands being placed on them?
Duncan Wilson: In relation to archaeology, it very much depends on the archaeological advice rather than the planning department. Some local authorities have that advice, but in the past few years there has been a reduction of around 30% in the volume of archaeological advice directly available to local authorities. There is no straight-line relationship between the quality of the advice, its timeliness and the number of hours that the local authority has, but obviously there is a relationship. There is also the question of conservation offices, which is another specialist area where there has been a significant decline in local authority resources. It would be counterintuitive to suggest that there is no relationship between the volume of resources available to the local authority in terms of its planning department and conservation and archaeological advice, and the timeliness of turning casework around, but it is not quite as simple as that.
Hugh Ellis: I am trying to choose my words carefully based on research we have just carried out on the production of local plans. The research showed that planning teams had fallen below the critical mass capable of delivering a local plan effectively in the rural areas that we looked at that were at severe risk of flooding. In some of those authorities we visited, we found 1.2 full-time equivalent members of staff were working on a local plan process, which I found quite shocking. There is no fixed limit for how many people you need in a planning department, but minimum service levels are a critical issue, both establishing them effectively and resourcing them properly.
What struck me about your discussion with previous witnesses was that, while fees could be increased—that is an option—there are low-demand areas where not many applications are submitted. Those applications would not attract much fee income but would require significant planning services, particularly in those areas trying to deal with the aftermath of significant severe weather and flood risk. Cumbria is one of those places.
There is a crisis in the planning service—it is not everywhere because some urban areas have sustained resource—that overwhelmingly affects efficiency and the quality of neighbourhood planning service that the community receives. That is probably the single biggest thing for us as an organisation presented to us by applicants and communities about the state of the modern local planning process in England.
Angus Walker: I do not think there is any question that a large number of local authorities are not adequately resourced in their planning departments.
Chris Philp
Sorry, can you say that again?
Angus Walker: A large number of local authorities—perhaps not all—are not adequately resourced.
Chris Philp
Q The previous group of witnesses, who by and large represented the property development industry, appeared unanimously to support the idea of paying higher planning fees for some kind of guaranteed service level—for a determination within a particular time. If that target was not met, the extra planning fee might be refunded. Do panel members think that that might be one way of getting extra financial resources into local authority planning departments? If one proposed that idea, the Chancellor would probably say—I am putting words in his mouth—“The danger is that you put the extra money into the planning department, and the council reduces its subsidy, to spend it on something else, so the total amount of money stays the same; it just comes from applicants, rather than the subsidy.” If you do think extra planning fees for a guaranteed service is a good idea, how do you prevent existing resource being diverted to another part of the council’s activities? I suppose that is a question for Councillor Newman.
Councillor Newman: As you alluded to, if there was a different planning fee, there would be some relationship with, or expectation relating to, the outcome. I think what you are asking is whether it would be ring-fenced. There is a way of doing that without getting into the ring-fenced budget piece. The other position on that, the LGA would say—I welcome the question in that sense—is to have locally set planning fees. That would involve people who know an area, know what the demand is, and know what the recruitment issues are for the planning department in one area, vis-à-vis another. Then it would be for the local authority to justify both the fees it charges and the outcomes of the service it offers. Locally set planning fees and, related to them, performance indicators on how the process works—that is something that should be explored.
Chris Philp
Q Would you support the specific idea of extra planning fees conditional on service delivery?
Councillor Newman: I have to be careful what I support. I represent LGA policy here. There is a principle in the line of questioning you are asking. I think there is a way forward around locally set planning fees related to an expectation of the service one gets. That would be a step forward in terms of localism, and democratic accountability locally for the performance of the planning department.
Chris Philp
Q Do you accept that there is a danger that if you allowed local authorities to charge higher planning fees, you would at the same time have to stop them from simply diverting existing financial resources elsewhere, in order to make sure that you got an increase in total resource level in the planning department?
Councillor Newman: I do not think it would be beyond somebody to construct the model, but the key test would be the outcome—whether the planning process was working well, or was speeded up, depending on what the local challenge was.
Chris Philp
Q Can I invite other panel members to comment on that exchange?
Duncan Wilson: In the Historic England context, clearly the issue of hypothecation is really important. My colleague has said more or less what I would want to say on that. However, it is probably worth noting that Historic England has operated something called enhanced advisory services for the last year or so on more or less that basis. If it is worth your while as a developer, you can buy a tighter outcome, in terms of deadlines and delivery, and a more detailed assessment in relation to listed buildings and scheduled monuments. That has been introduced with the encouragement of the development industry, on the whole, and the British Property Federation.
Chris Philp
Q Have you found them coming forward and saying that they would like to pay these higher planning fees?
Duncan Wilson: Exactly. It can be consensual, because the cost of a planning application, certainly in the sorts of services that we provide in relation to listed buildings, is a tiny percentage of a major development project.
Hugh Ellis: I would add that there are two problems here; it is partly the planning service in local authorities, but I would not want us to completely ignore the fact that there is also a crisis in the number of planners. There is direct investment in planning schools that we also need to get right. There is a major recruitment problem in local government, not just in being able to afford planners, but in finding them. We need to take a wider step back and look at how we bring planners through the process. It is also about the messages you send to young people about why planning is important and why it might be a career that they want to take up. That is important.
Chris Philp
Q One of the challenges is that local authorities lose planning experts to private practice, because private practice can afford to pay more, and because local authorities are very stretched, so it is a slightly stressful and harassed environment to work in. The resource issue might partly address the brain drain to private practice.
Angus Walker: Undoubtedly, if you pay more for dedicated resources, you will get a better service. My concern would be that those who made applications and had not paid any more would get a worse service as a consequence. Maybe the diversion of funds would be a consequence of that. It would not necessarily be more money in the system that everyone would benefit from.
Chris Philp
Q Of course, you would still have the statutory time targets, and if you increased total resource levels, it may most directly benefit those paying more, but it might have wider benefits as well, even to applicants who were not paying the extra fees.
Angus Walker: It is possible, but in my field, it is not financial deadlines—we have time deadlines in some areas, and not in others. The ones that have a decision required, statutorily, in a certain length of time get their decisions within that time; the others probably take longer than they otherwise would have done, because more of the resources are devoted to making those decisions on time.
Helen Hayes
Q I have a question for Councillor Newman, and perhaps Hugh Ellis as well. Have either of you undertaken any assessment of the likely additional burden to local planning authorities from the new proposed process in the Bill? Supplementary to that, and following the discussion that was just had about the possibility of applicants paying for an enhanced level of service, might a better system be for local authorities to be able, on a transparent and consultative basis, to charge the full cost of their development management service through fees? One concern I have about the proposal that developers be able to buy in an enhanced level of service is that it is potentially quite difficult for local authorities to manage fluctuating demand, in relation to individual applications. Surely what we actually want is for local authorities to be properly resourced to do the job well for everybody, irrespective of who the applicant is.
Councillor Newman: We do want to be properly resourced anyway, as a starting point. There is a £150 million tax subsidy going in; that would absolutely be the starting point for me, but I still think that this is worth exploring, in terms of the particular recruitment issues we have, because there will never be agreement on what “properly resourced” would be. That is why I would not rule out looking at—I do not like the word “enhanced”. There is something around fast-track and something around some major developments perhaps requiring more resource than other developments, but there is a discussion to be had. One way or another, we have to get more resource into a system that is under-resourced financially, and where in many areas, as we have heard, there are pressures regarding recruitment and staff coming forward.
On the other question you asked, I know the LGA is submitting written evidence later in the week. I have not got figures in front of me to evidence the extra burden, but I think the extra work this would potentially bring round is significant. As colleagues here have said, you could see more refusals, and the whole thing could become mired in a more confrontational process that, by definition, will set planning applications back, rather than them being, where possible, resolved, sometimes in a mature manner.
Hugh Ellis: Just to reiterate, planning is a key service with vital outputs for communities; in that sense, it needs to be resourced properly, and certainly at a minimum level. It also worries me that a lot of this resource in fees would go into development management, leaving open the question of how you fund the rest of the planning service, which is, in some senses, the most important part for us—the development plan, neighbourhood planning and master planning process, and getting it right up front.
On the idea that applicants would pay a fee base for a particular service, and that that would somehow sustain the planning service, there are some real questions to answer. It could be part of the answer—that is absolutely true—but I return to the point, on section 106 and the community infrastructure levy, that there is already, in pure taxation terms, a slightly regressive element to planning: you get most in high-demand areas. If this was another measure that led to that, it would be challenging, partly because the planning system has to deal with all sorts of varied issues. The examples coming in from Cumbria really reinforce that. They need very powerful local plans; how are they to pay for them if the predominant form of income generation is fees from applications that they do not get?
Helen Hayes
Q I have a further question for Duncan Wilson. You mentioned concerns about archaeology. It seems there have been indications from the Government that some assurance might be provided around the question of archaeology, and we will wait to see what comes forward in that regard. Are there other areas of heritage about which you have potential concerns relating to pre-commencement planning conditions?
Duncan Wilson: Less severe ones. A number of concerns were raised in the context of the Housing and Planning Act that were perhaps more significant than in relation to this particular clause, other than for archaeology. Our concerns on brownfield land, design, massing and density are not really centre stage, as I understand, with pre-commencement conditions here.
Kit Malthouse
Q Obviously, the Government are trying to strengthen neighbourhood plans in the Bill. Do you think the provisions they have in there at the moment are likely to eliminate the erratic decision making from the Planning Inspectorate that we have seen with regard to neighbourhood plans?
Hugh Ellis: They go some way. The relationship between neighbourhood plans and local plans in law is still really quite problematic. There is a direction of travel question about whether or not we end up with a full coverage of neighbourhood plans and in some sense an idea that they might replace local plans. That is talked about but it is important to get that right.
There are a range of challenges. For example, the neighbourhood planning process is producing neighbourhood plans of variable coverage, predominantly in areas with the social and economic capital to prepare them. In law, neighbourhood plans escape a number of the placemaking duties that the wider planning system has applied; those on good design, for example, in law, do not apply to neighbourhood planning but do apply to local plans. I think these measures try, do they not, to fill some of those loopholes in relation to the status of an unadopted neighbourhood plan as it comes through the process, which might help solve part of that appeal process.
For us there is still a wider issue about how the system will work as a whole and the friction that is inevitably produced by neighbourhood plans coming forward in advance of a local plan; the different legal status between the two plans; and ultimately the adoption of a neighbourhood plan as part of the development plan. Part of this debate could very usefully settle what the vision is for neighbourhood planning. Is the idea that the neighbourhood plan ultimately becomes the key lodestone of the English planning process with local plans doing something else, or are local plans going to remain intact? That is a very important question going forward, because many neighbourhood plans are not dealing with the full range of placemaking issues that we need to resolve. That is perfectly fine because communities have a measure of choice about what they do with them, but in relation to good design, flood risk and climate change, for example, those issues are not well represented in the content of neighbourhood plans. So, this is a step; I am not sure it resolves the full range of legal issues that we are confronted with between neighbourhood and local plan status.
Kit Malthouse
Q So in your view, even if this provision goes through and a post-examination neighbourhood plan is given full weight in a planning application, in the absence of an approved local plan, do you still think we are likely to see neighbourhood plans effectively upended?
Hugh Ellis: You can still see neighbourhood plans upended because of the tensions that exist about whether we have a plan-led system, which is probably another three-hour debate. In a nutshell, the difficulty we have at the moment is that because of the tension between the national planning policy framework presumption in policy in favour of development and the legal presumption in favour of the development plan, you can find circumstances where a brand-new development plan can be rendered out of date because of its performance on five-year land supply—literally within months of adoption, rendering the entire framework of housing policy in that plan out of date. If they have adopted neighbourhood plans in support of that plan, then communities can quite understandably feel confused about that. That is a wider issue about the status of whether we have a plan-led system. For us, that balance needs some attention, to say the least.
Kit Malthouse
Q But if we do have a plan-led system, which seems to be the way that we are going, would you therefore support greater strength being given to local authorities’ ability to defend the five-year land supply?
Hugh Ellis: There is a need to end that uncertainty and it seems to me that the core issue—very crudely and very quickly—is that local development plans allocate five-year land supply but have very little influence over delivering it. The issue about joining those two things together is about other measures in play: local authorities playing a much stronger role with housing companies, and as lead and master developers. That is the way to resolve it. But the position at the moment, whereby allocations can be made and then overturned because of a deliverability issue that the local authority has no control over, needs attention. Otherwise, what happens—five-year land supply is crucial, by the way, to deliver the housing we need—is that the system becomes discredited in the public’s mind, particularly when neighbourhood plans are being overturned as a result of it.
Kit Malthouse
Q Given that the overall objective perhaps ought to be certainty for resident, council and developer alike about what is allowed where over time, if you can get to a situation where you have a post-inspection neighbourhood plan and an approved local plan—in other words, you have got two of the pillars in place—with a five-year land supply available, do you think that the role of the planning inspector in that circumstance should be diminished or not?
Hugh Ellis: That is an attractive proposition, but it is extremely difficult to see how you could remove an individual developer’s appeal rights without engaging a whole other legal debate. Whether you want to balance legal rights in the planning system between communities and applicants is a very interesting question.
Councillor Newman: I certainly would not want a position where neighbourhood plans were seen to override a local plan. I don’t think that is what you are suggesting, but the local plan does enable strategic and sustainable planning, in terms of health provision, schools or whatever, and a neighbourhood plan, by definition, is coming from a different starting point. The LGA would want to see local government having, in relation to the local plan, more powers to agree, for example, where homes should be, when they are not coming forward. That takes me back to the nearly half a million planning permissions granted that have not been acted upon as we sit here today.
As you said, it is about credibility in the system, so that the public do not start believing that their neighbourhood plan is going to have no impact or will probably be overridden, either by the local plan or by developers going to appeal. I do not have the answer sitting here, but I think it has to be about a system that has credibility—where people believe that if they make representations to their council or their Member of Parliament, although it may not always come out how they would want, the system is responsive, and respects their—there are tensions in this.
Kit Malthouse
Q On that point, is it possible for a developer to obtain a large permission in an area, and then not develop it out, and then challenge a refusal on another site in that area on the basis that a five-year land supply has not been fulfilled? That happens, right?
Hugh Ellis: Yes.
Kit Malthouse
Q That does happen. Therefore, by being patient, they are able to blow a hole in the land supply and get a permission that they otherwise would not have done, and double up.
Hugh Ellis: I would not want to comment on their motivations, but as a strict matter of policy and law, yes, absolutely that is what can happen.
Duncan Wilson: On behalf of Historic England, we do get engaged with neighbourhood plans when we are asked for advice and expertise, and it has been pretty positive, in the sense that it gives the local community a voice in a system that can seem, frankly, rather arcane otherwise. Where that has happened, we have found that neighbourhood plans have been quite strategically drawn and they have not fulfilled people’s worst fears, which were that they would be very narrowly drawn.
Angus Walker: I suppose it would be interesting to know, as Mr Ellis said, whether the intention is that the whole country will eventually be covered by neighbourhood plans. The resourcing issues that were raised earlier would be a lot worse if it were reliant on parish councils and neighbourhood forums to produce all these plans.
Kit Malthouse
Q Presumably the Bill is designed to provide that incentive. The incentive is that if you have a neighbourhood plan and it is strengthened you are more likely to have certainty about what is going to be developed in your area, so if you are bothered about development you should have a neighbourhood plan. I am interested in what you say about local plans. We hear that neighbourhood plans deliver more housing than was otherwise predicted. Is that your experience?
Hugh Ellis: It is. I think the Government produced some statistics about that. It has been one of the really positive surprises about the neighbourhood planning process. On housing, there are positive ways forward. On whether or not neighbourhood plans offer the full range of issues that planning needs to cover in a local area, the evidence we have is that they probably do not. But then, that is not what they are being set up to do. That is why I ask, is the ambition for them to be a kind of replacement for the local plan, or not? In our view, you need both. Neighbourhood plans are great at articulating community aspiration inside the local plan framework. When both work together very powerfully, that can be a very strong framework for a community.
The Chair
Q I just want to clarify for the Committee what Mr Malthouse was asking. If I understood right, Mr Malthouse was asking: if there is a neighbourhood plan, a local plan and an established five-year land supply, should there be a restriction on the right of developers to appeal?
The Chair
I was not quite sure whether the witnesses had answered that. Would everyone just say yes or no to that?
Hugh Ellis: I will try and be a bit clearer. In policy terms, you could probably strengthen that issue, but a legal restriction on an applicant’s right to appeal has always been in the legal territory of impossible because of engages of the legislation. You could certainly tighten the policy framework, but an absolute restriction on appeal is probably impossible in law.
Oliver Colvile
Q Thank you, gentlemen, for coming to see us. What a delight, Councillor Newman, to have you here, for the simple reason that I was the Tory party agent in Mitcham in the 1980s when Nicholas Ridley introduced the whole local plan process in the first place. I have been very interested in following all this.
You have talked quite a bit about resources. I am pretty aware that my council in Plymouth, for which I am the Member of Parliament, has similar issues. However, we have a university and a planning school. To my mind, councils could have a much closer relationship with their planning schools and try to use some of those resources. Is that something that you have looked at?
Councillor Newman: Periodically but, to be completely frank, not enough. As the LGA, and perhaps as local councils, sometimes we do not sell the exciting career that local planning can be for many people. Many people who are part of it stay for many years and have a good career. There is more work to be done on how we market a career in the local planning department and some other roles in local government.
There are other pressures. If you are in London, it is not about marketing the career. Social workers, for example, cannot afford to live in many localities. In London, the question is whether people can afford to live in the area where they might want to come to work. It is not just a single issue. I would encourage the sort of practice you describe in Plymouth.
Oliver Colvile
Q It seems to my mind that students, I keep being told, find it very difficult to make ends meet. They have tuition fee loans and all those kinds of things. It would actually be a way of trying to get them to have some practical experience in the planning world. Similarly, local archaeology people come to see me, some of whom are doing things at the university. Is that a resource that you might think about using and looking at?
Duncan Wilson: There are certainly supply-side issues with archaeology over the whole country in relation not just to local authority advice, but to the large number of archaeologists we will need to fulfil the demand for archaeology arising from major infrastructure projects. It would be an oversimplification to say that that is just an aggregate supply of archaeologists. The higher education sector is not necessarily producing archaeologists with exactly the right kind of skills to deal with the different kinds of problems that archaeology in Britain throws up. More fieldwork is rather an important issue in that context.
The Chair
I am sorry to interrupt, Mr Colvile, but I am very conscious that we have limited time and three people want to ask questions. I will bring in John Mann, because I know he will be brief.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Q How many of these 500,000 unmet house planning consents are in neighbourhood development plan areas? Does anyone know?
Councillor Newman: I do not, but we will write to you rapidly with that information.
John Mann
Q Nobody knows. What is the increase from what the position was in the same areas covered by neighbourhood plans, in terms of proposed new housing units in areas covered by neighbourhood development plans?
Angus Walker: I do not know the answer to that, but I think the Secretary of State said on Second Reading of the Bill that, of those who had an increase, the average increase was 10%. That does not give how many there were overall.
John Mann
Q You said that the five-year land supply for housing was critical for housing development. How do you know that?
Hugh Ellis: It is an element of it. To be clear, the problem with the delivery of housing in this country is not primarily the planning system; it is development, but five-year supply is important.
John Mann
Q Correct. Am I right in saying that every neighbourhood development plan, in order to be in any way legal, has to incorporate new housing development?
Hugh Ellis: The position is that it has to be in conformity with the development plan, if there is one, and the NPPF, which means that it has to recognise local housing need and the five-year land supply to go with it.
Hon. Members
No.
Hugh Ellis: The general view, when neighbourhood plans were being developed, was that they could not plan for less housing—which is sometimes how people tried to use them—than the local development plan had allocated, so there is a kind of floor. They certainly can plan, and have planned, for more housing than the local development plan has allocated.
John Mann
Q Is there a reason why English Heritage has not tried to initiate neighbourhood development plans using major historic buildings, such as cathedrals, as the core basis for defining urban communities?
Duncan Wilson: As I said before, we do engage with neighbourhood development plans, but normally on request, rather than proactive consultation on every neighbourhood development plan. When we do engage, we certainly encourage proper consideration of the historical character of the area and how development can sit alongside that. Cathedral cities are a really important subset of that group.
John Mann
Q My final question: is not the strength of neighbourhood development plans also their weakness? The strength is that at the moment a plan lends itself perfectly to villages with parish councils, which can easily, and very ably and effectively, localise the planning process—in my area virtually every parish council has or is developing a neighbourhood development plan, all of them increasing the housing supply significantly, and they will be delivering on that housing supply significantly over the next five years—whereas the weaknesses are in urban areas, where defining what the community is actually requires a bit of original thinking; otherwise everything simply becomes one urban mass. Is that not the opportunity, be it for the English Heritages, the good planners or enlightened councils, to get urbanised neighbourhood planning to involve communities in exactly the way that villages have hugely successfully involved vast numbers of people in the development of the existing neighbourhood plans that have been agreed, or are currently rolling forward?
Councillor Newman: I think you could have more urban neighbourhood plans, but I would want to see them still sitting with the overarching plan in an urban area—such as the one I am very familiar with, Croydon—to be the local plan. As we have learned from mistakes in the past—although I know this is not what you are suggesting—we should not just focus on increasing housing numbers without looking at the sustainability of the community in terms of health provision, school provision, transport links and everything else. Much as we need new homes, it should not just be a numbers game that leaves us in the same place we were in the ’70s.
Duncan Wilson: In relation to our historic towns, yes, I agree that neighbourhood plans would be and sometimes are a good way of crystallising that discussion, but it is really important that the areas around towns are brought into consideration too. Otherwise, you have a plan for an historic town and all the housing gets pushed out to the periphery, without a proper strategic consideration of how that relates to the historic town in terms of transport links, public spaces, infrastructure or design.
Hugh Ellis: In a way, the critical flaw in neighbourhood planning is the neighbourhood forum model. There has to be an issue around making that accountable. The differences in neighbourhood planning between an accountable parish or town council and an unaccountable forum were always pretty stark. It was always unclear where that ended up. There would probably be more enthusiasm for urban neighbourhood planning if that problem could be resolved.
Rebecca Pow
Q Will the changes proposed to the pre-commencement conditions leave enough flexibility to deal with things that local communities are really concerned about? In my area of Taunton, the big issues are all about what Mr Ellis referred to: design quality, the look of the houses, vernacular character, flood resilience. Can we get all that cleared through the changes proposed, or are we relying utterly on neighbourhood plans to do that? Are there enough teeth for that to be taken into account when the planning consents are given?
Hugh Ellis: Although there is conflicting evidence in planning, one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that the design quality of domestic housing in this country is one of the great lost opportunities.
Rebecca Pow
Q And it is one of the big bugbears locally, when you talk to people, in all neighbourhood planning.
Hugh Ellis: We are capable of delivering so much better. That would require two things: a sense that planning is part of the solution to these problems and not always part of the problem, and a fairly robust local planning process. I think it would also include a greater emphasis on good design as an outcome in planning.
Rebecca Pow
Q But where would you put it? In the pre-commencements?
Hugh Ellis: You would need to think about it right from the top. The content of the NPPF on design is actually quite good, but I do not see it being enforced, particularly, through plan-making.
Gavin Barwell
Q I have two quick questions for Councillor Newman. You felt that the planning conditions measures were a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I want to get a sense of the size of the nut. Among the previous witnesses, there was a consensus that the use of pre-commencement conditions has been growing over time. Does the LGA share that view?
Councillor Newman: As I said at the start, I think there is sometimes a perception in Government that planning is the problem. Maybe we are not even looking to crack a nut. To repeat what I said at the start, we risk setting up a far more confrontational process at the start. Conversations around design, sustainability and so on get lost, because people have to take a fixed position very early on in the process. Look, it is not perfect—there will always be examples that people can give of where it has ended up in confrontation—but the evidence seems to suggest that the nut is not particularly large.
Gavin Barwell
Q It is not getting bigger, in the LGA’s view?
Councillor Newman: No.
Gavin Barwell
Q In its submission to us, the District Councils Network acknowledged that the discharge of planning conditions can be a factor in slow decision making and supported the Government in seeking to address conditions. Why did district councils take a different view on this from the LGA as a whole?
Councillor Newman: I have not had district councils coming to me, knowing that I was coming here, but if that is the position of their network, we will include it in our evidence.
Gavin Barwell
Q You made a very good point that in the year to 30 June, this country granted a record number of planning applications for housing, but that there is a gap between the planning permissions we are granting and homes being built out. If you do not think planning conditions are part of the problem—I would certainly say they are not the sole problem—what do the panel think are the reasons for that gap?
Hugh Ellis: The core reason is that we have restricted our delivery of housing to a single development model. You have signalled, Minister, that you are interested in exploring how we can find new ways to challenge that. The critical issue is that from 2019-20 onwards, the private sector will probably go on building 150,000 homes a year, almost forever. The critical elements missing from our debate—I know your mind is open to this issue—are how we deal with scale strategic development, how we join up infrastructure with housing development and, crucially, how we deliver a new generation of new settlements.
I am very conscious of Macmillan’s achievement in delivering 350,000 homes in the mid-1950s, but he did have a programme that was 32 new towns strong at that point. They are a fantastic way of delivery. They overcome the issue of delivering numbers. Milton Keynes is delivering almost 4,000 homes a year. I believe that there is an exciting opportunity for us to take that up again, but it seems to me above all that in our collective debate about housing delivery in this nation, we need to address our attention to that strategic scale.
Councillor Newman: I will finish with an example from Croydon. If a planning permission has not been taken up within three years, perhaps a council building company like Brick by Brick should be invited to step in and start building the homes that somebody promised they would build but did not.
The Chair
I am afraid that time has beaten us, although we could have gone on much longer. Thank you, witnesses. That ends this morning’s evidence session.
Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Second sitting)
Tuesday 18th October 2016
(8 years, 4 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesNeighbourhood Planning Act 2017 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 October 2016 - (18 Oct 2016)