Hertfordshire Green Belt: National Planning Policy

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, I think for the first time. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) on bringing forward this important matter for debate. I am conscious that it is of concern and interest to her, as well as to other Members across Hertfordshire, including my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) who is an industrious campaigner on behalf of his constituents, as of course is the hon. Lady for hers. They both strongly challenge what I believe can be challenging councils.

It is worth pointing out that the planning system to which the hon. Member for St Albans refers as the Government’s planning system is, in fact, England’s planning system, as it has existed since 1948 under successive Governments. It has grown in complexity and opacity during that period. Successive Governments have tried to make it clearer and more sensible, including the coalition Government of which the hon. Lady’s party was a part with the Conservatives. That Government contributed to the creation of the national planning policy framework some 10 years ago. It is England’s planning system, not the Government’s.

However, the hon. Lady is right to raise the issue of the green belt. Our commitment to the green belt is absolutely steadfast: the Prime Minister made that clear in his Conservative party conference speech last month. It is a manifesto commitment on which the Government were elected, to protect the green belt and associated countryside for future generations. The green belt in our country presently accounts for 12.4% of the land mass. In fact, it is larger now than when records began in 1997, taking into account that national parkland as categorised has been disregarded. In the hon. Lady’s constituency, it is somewhere in excess of 81% of the land mass.

We believe that the green belt is vital for preventing urban sprawl from towns and cities—it helps stop the advance of developments on to precious countryside—and national planning policies deliver strict protections for the green belt along with strong safeguards against development and changes to boundaries. Any proposals to release land from the green belt are subject to consultation with local people followed by a rigorous and independent examination of the revised local plan by a qualified planning inspector. Additionally, if a local authority finds that it cannot avoid releasing land from the green belt, it should offset that loss with environmental and access standards to land remaining in the green belt. As well as protecting the green belt, we must also look to other sites, such as brownfield land, that can be used to deliver new and beautiful homes of all types for people.

The national planning policy framework sets out national planning policy for England. It must be taken into account by local authorities in preparing their development plans. It is also a material consideration in all planning decisions. We believe that the NPPF ensures the protection of green-belt land by defining how most new buildings are inappropriate for the green belt and should be refused planning permission unless there are very special circumstances. Local authorities, through their planning policies and decisions, should show consideration of all relevant policies in the NPPF, including protection of the natural environment, irreplaceable habitats and valued landscapes.

Let me reiterate that green-belt land can change only in exceptional circumstances and that must be done in accordance with the NPPF and the local plan process, in consultation with local people, followed by rigorous examination of the revised plan. That is why the NPPF provides for two tests in safeguarding the green belt. The first prevents local authorities from changing a green-belt boundary unless there are exceptional circumstances and they have shown that they have examined every other option—using brownfield land, optimising the density of development and discussing whether neighbouring authorities can take some of the necessary development. The second test requires that most new buildings in the green belt are inappropriate and should be refused planning permission unless there are very special circumstances, as determined by the local authority.

As we improve the planning system, our existing policy for protecting the green belt will be upheld. Local authorities will be able to protect green-belt land using new digital local plans. I will take away the specific items raised by the hon. Lady and respond to her more fully. I stress that as we approach revisions to our planning framework and to the NPPF, we want to make sure that they work for the green belt as well as for brownfield sites, given the importance of developing those. I will say more about that in a moment.

Let me also point out that the Environment Act 2021, which received Royal Assent earlier this month, brings a mandatory biodiversity net gain requirement as a condition of most new development. That will make it quicker and simpler to assess environmental effects as well as speed up the decision making on and delivery of a development while continuing to protect and enhance the environment.

The hon. Lady mentioned local housing need and recognised the importance of providing housing for the people of our country who want and need it. We have a target of building 300,000 new homes each year by 2025. The Liberal Democrats, I believe, wish to out-do us, and to build 380,000 new homes each year in our country. I welcome their ambition. We want to help people rent or own their own homes. We know that we need to deliver more homes. To get more homes built in the places where people and communities need them, a crucial first step is determining the right number of homes in the right places. That is why, in 2018, we introduced the standard method for assessing local housing need, which makes the process of identifying the number of homes needed in an area as simple, quick and transparent as possible.

As the hon. Member for St Albans rightly says, that formula is a starting point; it is not an end point. It is for local authorities, working with the Planning Inspectorate, to determine the right number of homes based on the constraints or ambitions that they may have. I refer her to a letter that I circulated to Members of Parliament on, I think, 16 December of last year, which made it absolutely clear that local authorities are able to cite, to the Planning Inspectorate, constraints as reasons why the numbers into their plans are different from the local housing need number, which is the default calculation. As I have said, it is for local authorities to demonstrate and determine what the number should be. The constraints are outlined in footnotes 7 and 38, from memory, of the NPPF. In the local housing need calculations, we have also made it clear that none of the authorities outside of the 20 largest metropolitan authorities in England will see any changes to their local housing need numbers.

The challenge for all authorities, however, is to get an up-to-date plan in place. We might say that, in the land of no plan, the local housing need number is king. If there is no set number in an up-to-date local plan, it is quite possible for developers to submit speculative development applications to local authorities. The local authorities may choose to turn them down, but if they have no number in their plan, the local housing need number is the default that the Planning Inspectorate will look at. It is entirely possible that the Planning Inspectorate will overturn refusals sent down by local authorities that do not have up-to-date plans or targets, and will instead look at the local housing need target. It is incumbent on local authorities that wish to protect their communities and avoid speculative development to get up-to-date plans in place.

The hon. Member for St Albans asked me about the number of authorities that have revised their targets. A number have. Stoke, for example, has revised its target up, because it is an ambitious authority. Many others have been able to revise their numbers in other ways. However, having no up-to-date plan at all leaves communities open to speculative development. Of the authorities in our country, 91% have plans made to the 2004 standard. Of the 9% that remain, the hon. Lady’s own local authority is one. St Albans has not had an up-to-date plan since 1994. I would encourage her to encourage her authority to put that plan in place, to protect her community from speculative development.

We believe the green belt is of huge importance to our constituents and to our country. We want to make sure we do more to support it by building on brownfield sites, which we will look to achieve through our planning reforms. We have already made £5 billion, or as near as damn it, available to Homes England to support builders, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, to develop brownfield-site opportunities. We made £400 million available to mayoral combined authorities last year to identify brownfield sites for regeneration in their geographies. We have only recently announced a further £58 million for 53 local authorities to identify small sites for regeneration that will contribute to their local numbers without the need to impinge on green spaces.

One reason why we have introduced permitted development rights is to encourage the development of unused or underused commercial premises, which can now be demolished more easily and be rebuilt as residential premises. Since 2016 that has seen the construction on brownfield and town-centre sites of some 70,000 additional residences that might not otherwise have been built, to the benefit of local communities, to the benefit of those high streets and to the benefit of the green belt and greener spaces that have not had to have greater strain placed upon them.

I assure the hon. Member for St Albans that we are committed to protecting and enhancing land for future generations and that we are committed to protecting the green belt, as we set out in our manifesto. We will continue to uphold those strong protections, and I look forward to further debates, whether in this Chamber or in the main Chamber, to demonstrate that our policies are biting.

Question put and agreed to.