Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
I know that the issues I am about to raise are of as much concern to you and your Ribble Valley constituents, Mr Deputy Speaker, as they are to my constituents.
I am grateful to have this opportunity to raise some important concerns about the clear and unequivocal advice that I suggest Ministers need to give to the Planning Inspectorate in the period prior to the adoption of new local plans under the national planning policy framework. I am also grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), for being present on a Friday to respond to the debate.
We need to build more houses. At every constituency surgery I hold in Banbury or Bicester, I hear heart-rending stories of families with very real housing difficulties. It is essential that councils make proper and adequate provision for new houses. During the debates on the national planning policy framework, Ministers have rightly made it clear that decisions on where new housing should go should be taken by local councillors, elected and accountable to local people, and decisions should be informed by new local neighbourhood plans expressing the views and wishes of local people.
Local decision making, local accountability, localism and neighbourhood planning are at the heart of this Government’s approach to the planning system. No longer are we going to have top-down, imposed regional spatial strategies and a whole number of planning mechanisms that undermine local decision making.
Local authorities, including Cherwell district council, have been working hard on developing a new local plan. Cherwell published its proposed new local plan last August. Its details can be found at www.cherwell.gov.uk/localdevelopmentframeworks. The draft Cherwell local plan looks forward for the next 20 years and beyond. It sets out how the area will grow and evolve in the period up to 2031. Cherwell district council estimates that between 2006 and 2031 we are going to need to build some 16,750 new homes in Cherwell, of which 2,542 were built by 2011. The intention is that between 2011 and 2031 some 14,208 new houses will be provided, with 6,997 new houses being built in Bicester, 4,352 new houses being built in Banbury, and 1,709 new houses being built in the rest of the district.
Cherwell’s draft plan rightly seeks to utilise brownfield sites wherever possible, including the canal-side development in Banbury, on which it is now possible to build as a consequence of the construction of the Banbury flood defences and the fact that the land is now no longer within a potential flood plain. It also seeks to use significant building on brownfield land in Bicester as a consequence of the Ministry of Defence divesting itself of some 227 hectares of land from MOD storage distribution lands. So, over the survey period, Bicester will see nearly 7,000 new houses being built. Part of the new development will involve the new eco-town project, and I hope that Bicester can become a new garden city. Will the Minister update the House on what progress the Government are making with their garden cities initiative?
As the Minister will know, Cherwell district council is committed to sustainable housing growth. I would be grateful if he updated the House on whether the former defence land at Graven hill can be transferred to Cherwell district council so that it can be developed quickly. There would then be the prospect of this being the largest self-build scheme in the country, with early work starting well before the next general election. The site lends itself to being a hub for off-site construction and, thus, provides an opportunity for national and local gain. I understand that Cherwell district council has come forward with a solution to protect the interests of the public purse and would ask if ministerial support could be given to make this happen, to enable officers of the district council to devote their energies to ensuring delivery on this site.
Cherwell’s draft local plan makes it clear that Cherwell, as a district, is determined to ensure that full and proper housing provision is made in the local plan over the survey period, with robust proposals for new housing development. Comparatively few towns in England can have grown as fast over the past 30 years as Banbury and Bicester, and they continue to grow. Cherwell is a district that is determined to make robust and credible housing provision for the future. The consultation on the draft local plan proposals concluded last October. I understand that elected councillors will consider final submissions and suggestions at a meeting next month. It will then be a matter of waiting for the Planning Inspectorate to be able to appoint an inspector to consider Cherwell’s draft local plan in due course. Then, as soon as possible, and at an examination in public—we hope this will not be long afterwards—it can become an adopted local plan.
As the House and everyone knows, once there is an adopted local plan, there is a general presumption that planning applications that are consistent with the adopted local plan are very likely to be allowed. Likewise, planning applications that do not accord with the adopted local plan will be refused. Obviously, I hope that Cherwell’s examination in public will take place as soon as possible. I am conscious that the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which is currently in the other place, will give the Planning Inspectorate considerable new duties, but that notwithstanding I hope that any extension of the Planning Inspectorate’s role will not take resources away from the speedy and timely consideration of local plans.
Recent legislation also made provision for local areas to draw up their own neighbourhood plans, and I am glad to be able to report to the House that a number of sizeable villages in my constituency are actively engaged in developing and producing them, in accordance with the legislation. Such villages include Adderbury, Bloxham, Hook Norton, Deddington and others. In short, local councillors, local councils and local communities are doing exactly what the Government want them to do to ensure that there is adequate housing provision locally between now and 2031.
So if everyone is doing what they are meant to be doing, the Minister might be prompted to ask what is causing me concern and why have I initiated this debate. I am concerned at the way in which house builders and developers are behaving in anticipation of the introduction of the new local plan. I am no stranger to the planning system. During my ministerial career, I was for some four years a Minister at the then Department of Environment, and throughout that time I was a planning Minister. I have to report to the Minister and to the House that what I am witnessing in my area at the moment is something akin to planning anarchy.
For historical reasons, Cherwell district council does not, at present, have an adopted local plan, and it is not alone in that. I understand from the House of Commons Library that some 198 planning authorities in England—some 54%—do not have an up-to-date current local plan. One of the benefits of the national planning policy framework is, of course, that it is ensuring that all local planning authorities in England are working on agreeing new local plans, and that is much to be welcomed.
There is also a dispute about whether Cherwell has an adequate five-year housing supply. The straightforward reality on housing supply is not that Cherwell district council has failed to make planning provision for new houses, but rather that house builders and developers have failed to build new houses, for which they have been granted planning permission. Such sites include: Bodicote/Bankside in Banbury, which has planning permission for 1,092 homes; Heyford Park, at Upper Heyford, which was itself subject to a lengthy planning inquiry a number of years ago and which has planning permission for some 700 new houses; and the Kingsmere estate at Bicester, where progress is comparatively slow because developers and house builders are building new houses only at the rate that they are selling built houses.
Cherwell is not unusual in that regard, as the Local Government Association reports significant land banking across the country. The Local Government Association estimates that there are some 400,000 approved units with planning approval across the country. Indeed, the LGA has illustrated its figures on an interactive map, available at www.local.gov.uk/mapping-unimplemented-planning-permissions-by-local-authority-area, which allows anyone to click on to any local planning authority to acquire their figures on approved but unimplemented planning applications.
Of course the district council, district councillors and local people have no control over the rate at which house builders build houses once planning permissions have been granted. There is no scintilla of a suggestion that Cherwell district council has granted planning permissions to developers other than in complete good faith in the expectation that house building would follow reasonably swiftly after the planning permissions had been granted. House builders and developers are making opportunist planning applications on sites that they consider to be the most attractive and their arguments, put simply, run something along these lines: Cherwell district council does not have an adopted local plan, and because it has no local plan housing should be allowed to go anywhere in the district and, as it is alleged that Cherwell does not have an adequate five-year housing supply, any new houses, wherever they are built, should be allowed on appeal on the basis that any new houses wherever in the district they are built will count in some five-year housing supply figure. That is planning anarchy. It effectively means that house builders and developers who get their planning applications in first, irrespective of where they are and irrespective of the number of houses, expect those applications to be granted, if not by local councillors, on appeal.
If that continues to happen it will completely undermine any concept of a local plan-led system and any concept of localism and neighbourhood planning. I obviously do not expect the Minister to comment on any individual planning application and I fully appreciate that it would indeed be improper for him to do so. However, I want simply by way of example to highlight the sort of difficulties about which I am concerned.
In the draft local plan, Cherwell district councillors have determined that the southern boundary of Banbury should be an ancient trackway known as the Salt way. Not unreasonably, local councillors are keen that Banbury should have some reasonably well defined boundaries. They are also keen that there should be clear green buffers between Banbury and surrounding villages to make sure that they maintain their own identities and prevent areas from merging
It seems to me to be a wholly reasonable and proportionate policy objective for a local planning authority to want to set planning boundaries and to ensure adequate green spaces between towns and other communities. A local landowner recently applied to build 150 houses on land below the Salt way. The application was refused, the applicants went to appeal and it is now clear that other landowners and developers who own options on land below the Salt way are not waiting to argue at the examination in public that their sites should be included in the new local plan. Those landowners and developers are now simply submitting planning applications in the hope that under the present system, whereby Cherwell does not have the protection of an adopted local plan and whereby they hope to persuade a planning inspector that Cherwell does not have an adequate five-year housing supply, any housing, built anywhere, will be allowed.
Locally, developers are making planning applications for housing in villages that they consider to be particularly popular and attractive, even though such villages are required by the emerging local plans to take only limited new development consistent with Cherwell district council’s policy to seek to focus development on Banbury and Bicester. It is particularly galling that some of those house builders have had planning permissions to build on sizeable sites elsewhere in the district, but have failed to build houses and now seek to pray in aid the fact that those houses were not built as grounds for being allowed to build houses elsewhere in the district where they would prefer to build—not where local councillors or local communities want them built, but where house builders decide they want them to be built. Again, I suggest to the Minister that that is akin to anarchy.
What will be the point of communities such as Hook Norton, Bloxham, Adderbury, Deddington and many others in my constituency undertaking neighbourhood plans in accordance with the new legislation if before they are even considered neighbourhood plans are undermined by planning applications from developers hoping they can get their planning permissions home before a new local plan for Cherwell is adopted? Some four appeals are already before the Planning Inspectorate, at different stages, against decisions by elected councillors in Cherwell recently to refuse planning applications for new housing, all of which are entirely inconsistent with Cherwell’s draft local plan.
If Ministers want planning permission to be given simply on a first come, first served, irrespective of where it is built basis, they need simply do nothing, because that is effectively what will happen. If, however, they want to see a responsible, plan-led system, with decisions taken locally, based on neighbourhood planning, they will need to give some very clear guidance now to the Planning Inspectorate.
I suggest that Ministers should make it very clear to the Planning Inspectorate that in considering planning appeals, inspectors give considerable weight to the provisions of draft local plans. Otherwise, what is the point of planning inspectors allowing planning appeals that undermine the draft local plan? I would suggest that this is particularly important for those 198 planning authorities in England that at present do not have an adopted local plan.
I further suggest that Ministers make it very clear to the Planning Inspectorate that in considering the adequacy of a five-year housing supply, inspectors have regard to unimplemented planning permissions. Indeed, that would be to do no more than make clear what Ministers have already said on a number of occasions in this House.
On 30 January 2012 I asked my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), the then Minister of State with responsibility for planning:
“Will my right hon. Friend instruct the Planning Inspectorate that in considering whether a local authority has made adequate provision for housing over a five-year period it should take into account all the extant granted permissions for housing that a local authority has given, irrespective of whether construction work on such housing has started?"
The Minister’s response was clear and unequivocal:
“My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We want to strengthen the sovereignty of local plans and it seems to me that if councils have done their bit by granting planning permission, that ought to be taken into account by the Planning Inspectorate. I will certainly make sure that this point is reflected in the new framework on which we are consulting.”—[Official Report, 30 January 2012; Vol. 539, c. 546.]
Later, on 27 March, I asked my right hon. Friend similarly:
“Will my right hon. Friend confirm that local authorities and the Planning Inspectorate, when considering whether a local authority has an adequate five-year housing supply, will take into account where planning permissions have been granted but where houses have not started to be constructed?”
to which my right hon. Friend replied, again unequivocally:
“Yes. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for raising this issue. That has found expression in the framework.”—[Official Report, 27 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 1351.]
And indeed, on 30 July 2012, the Minister wrote to me and said:
“‘The policy is clear that unimplemented planning permissions count towards the five year supply’. The footnote does require consideration to be given to whether such permissions can be expected to be built. This is necessary because it would otherwise be possible for councils to meet their housing requirements by approving applications for land that is never likely in practice to be financially viable to build out. So viability does have a role to play. The footnote makes clear that all sites with planning permission should be considered deliverable, ‘unless there is clear evidence that schemes will not be implemented within five years’, so the onus of proof is correctly to show clearly that they will not be implemented if they are not to be included’.”
There is not a scintilla or a shred of evidence of Cherwell district council having granted any planning permission at any time for land that it considered was not likely to be built upon. However, the local council and local councillors, having granted planning permission in good faith, are not in a position to control the speed at which house builders and developers utilise such planning permission.
Ministers are going to need to make it very, very clear to the Planning Inspectorate that, in considering the five-year housing supply, inspectors need to have regard and take into account planning permissions that have been granted or, as the Minister put it,
“it seems to me that if councils have done their bit by granting planning permission, that ought to be taken into account by the Planning Inspectorate”.—[Official Report, 30 January 2012; Vol. 546, c. 539.]
I would hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that Ministers are giving the Planning Inspectorate guidance on the weight that it should give to draft local plans and on the account that it should take of planning permissions that have already been granted.
If such guidance is given, I think there is every prospect of the national planning policy framework being introduced in an orderly, sensible, plan-led way, based on the principles of localism, local decision taking and neighbourhood planning. If not, I think between now and the adoption of new local plans we are simply going to see some very opportunist planning applications, with house builders and developers simply hoping that those who put in their applications first will have their housing applications granted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) on securing this debate, on a subject that I know is of close concern to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as well as to my hon. Friend.
I want to start by addressing my hon. Friend’s proposals for a new garden city extension to the town of Bicester in his constituency, before moving on to the main point in his speech. I am very pleased to say that the Deputy Prime Minister has very much welcomed my hon. Friend’s invitation to work with him and local partners in Cherwell district council to explore the various factors necessary for Bicester to become a garden city for the 21st century. On a personal note, I entirely share my hon. Friend’s enthusiasms for garden city principles. I have visited Letchworth Garden City twice in the short time that I have been planning Minister, and I am inspired by the way in which Letchworth has combined a huge amount of green space, a huge amount of trees and parks and gardens and broad verges, with a great deal of housing that, when it was built, was very much affordable housing. It was not housing just for the well-heeled. If we can find a way to do that again, nobody will be more pleased than I.
What is important—this is why it is so good that my hon. Friend made the speech that he did about Bicester’s future as a garden city—is that the proposals are locally determined, and that these communities spring up in response to local suggestion. I encourage more communities around the country to come forward with such proposals, and the Government will be thinking more about how we can encourage that. My hon. Friend mentioned Graven Hill, and there is another site in north-west Bicester. They have different needs and we are determined to work across Government and with local partners to ensure these are addressed.
In addition to the ongoing discussions on each of these sites, officials from my Department have been in contact with Cherwell district council with a view to starting discussions on how all the development in and around Bicester can be brought together under the garden city banner. The Deputy Prime Minister announced a special fund of £225 million to support large locally determined developments of this kind and to help unblock any obstacles, infrastructural or otherwise, to such welcome developments.
I congratulate my hon. Friend’s district council, Cherwell district council, on publishing its local plan in August 2012, and on producing a plan which, from everything that he has told us and all the evidence we have, does what the Government and the country would like to see, by embracing growth and the need for more housing development. That is vital, as my hon. Friend said. One of the greatest crises of social justice facing our country is that young people increasingly have no prospect of getting a home of their own until they are well into their 30s, and that there are many young families with both partners working who nevertheless have to bring up small children in a pokey flat with no green space.
That is an affront to all of us and the Government are determined to tackle it. The important question is how. We tackle it by persuading local communities and local authorities that it is in their interest too to meet that need locally. The way to do that is to follow the policies set out in the national planning policy framework and draw up a local plan, as Cherwell district council has done.
Let me reassure my hon. Friend that the Planning Inspectorate will proceed promptly and expeditiously with the public examination of that local plan, once it has been submitted. Although my hon. Friend referred to the new duties that the Planning Inspectorate will take on if the Growth and Infrastructure Bill achieves Royal Assent, I can reassure him that those duties are relatively limited and not as expansive as some have feared or suggested, and that there is no reason why the Planning Inspectorate will not be able to examine Cherwell district council’s plans and all the other plans coming forward for examination promptly and expeditiously, as I said.
Let me also reassure my hon. Friend that the draft plan that Cherwell district council has produced emphatically does have some weight in decisions. Of course the weight that attaches to it is not as great as it will be once the plan has passed examination, and of course not as much as it will have once it has been fully and finally adopted. It was produced on the basis of extensive consultation locally, so it is not the case that developers can propose sites for development and that the plan will be entirely ignored by the decision makers in their decisions about such applications.
Let me turn to the issue that my hon. Friend raised about sites that have received planning permission, but on which building work has not commenced. He was right to point out how that works in the national planning policy framework. I am grateful to him for quoting my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), now the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The framework is very clear that sites with planning permission should be considered deliverable until that planning permission expires unless they have become clearly and demonstrably unviable. I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that if, for instance, a scheme were proposed, perhaps in the heady years of the boom, that was even then a marginal scheme the economics of which did not seem to stack up, it would not be sensible for it to be considered a deliverable part of the five-year plan that the council is now adopting given that it was clear that houses would never be built on the site.
That is a pretty tough test for any site with planning permission to pass, and it cannot be passed merely on the claim of the developer that was associated with the original application. There needs to be clear evidence, which will be considered by the inspector in their examination, and all that evidence needs to be available to the public so that they can see and test why the inspector has come to such conclusions. This is not an easy hurdle to surmount. It presumes that sites with planning permission will be considered deliverable unless that hurdle is surmounted and it is demonstrated that a particular site is unviable.
I hope that I have reassured my hon. Friend and his constituents that even though a number of applications are coming to the local authority from developers for building in areas that are not contained within the local plan, and even though some of those applications might have been appealed to the Planning Inspectorate, the Planning Inspectorate will be following the policy that he voted for and thought he understood. That policy does indeed say what he thinks it says, which is that only in exceptional cases will sites be removed from the plan because they are clearly unviable.
I conclude by returning to the example that Cherwell district council offers to the whole country, particularly to other parts of England with areas of great housing need and housing demand. The authority embraces its responsibilities. It is imaginative and creative, and, with my hon. Friend’s support and leadership, it is coming forward with exactly the kind of proposals that this Government want to see. I would love it if more authorities wanted to act in this way. I hope that they will be inspired by the work of Cherwell district council, its councillors, and my hon. Friend.
Question put and agreed to.