Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fourth sitting)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

For the Government side, I call the Minister.

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

Q With permission, Mr Bone, I shall ask the first question, and then Minister O’Brien has some further questions to ask.

Good afternoon, Andy. It is good to see you and thank you for giving up your time.

Andy Street: You, too.

[Stuart Andrew]

Q You have been quite a champion of brownfield sites and regeneration, particularly with a focus of trying to preserve many of the greenfield areas in the West Midlands. There are a number of planning reforms in the Bill. Do you see those as potentially helping you in your aim to deliver the housing that the West Midlands needs and, in particular, to level up the parts of the region on which you are really keen to focus?

Andy Street: I will give you a straight answer to the question in one moment if I may, Mr Andrew, but let me give a bit of general context. This, I think, is a very good example of where the combined authority has been able to demonstrate the fundamental principle that each can achieve things that individual local authorities working on their own probably would not have done. Of course, the critical point is that we achieve it by working with our local authorities, but we can clearly demonstrate that we have brought additional firepower.

The stats are very clear: we have hit our housing target in this region over the last four or five years, and we had, pre pandemic, doubled the number of homes being built every year in this region. One way that we were able to do that is, of course, working with central Government by deploying the brownfield land funding that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities had allocated to us in various tranches. We have made the existing system work, and very clearly we probably would not have had a negotiation—for example, Walsall or Wolverhampton separately—with DLUHC had we not existed.

Coming to your question, we are doing this against a good backdrop. We hope we will win further funding in due course to advance this even further, but on the reforms in the paper—it is a general question—essentially I would be supportive of them because they do bring simplicity to the operation. I do think that one of the challenges we constantly face is the time difficulty in drawing these items to a conclusion.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Neil O’Brien)]

Q Thank you, Andy, for joining us. The Bill makes various provisions to speed up and to simplify the creation of new combined authorities and to make it easier, as we have just discussed, for Mayors to take on PCC powers. It also makes it easier to create combined authorities in two-tier areas through the combined county authorities clauses. Do you think the extension of mayoral combined authorities to more areas of the country is a good idea, and what would your advice be to places that are setting up new combined authorities?

Andy Street: The answer to the first question, in one word, is yes. Let me explain why, and this is something that Minister O’Brien and I have talked about for probably a decade, since we were both in previous roles. If you look at the economic history of this country and compare it with other, similar countries, we definitely have a weakness in the out of London areas. There is nothing original there; we know that. Of course, part of the answer is to try to address that in what you might call areas of sufficient scale. I think the thing that the combined authorities have done, as you could argue that the more successful and bigger LEPs did as the precursor to it, is begin to think about economic policy at an appropriate spatial level, or what the books would probably call a natural economic area—a travel-to-work area or whatever. That, I honestly think, has been one of our great successes. Transport policies do not stop at the end of Birmingham when it moves into Solihull, as Gill’s market does not stop at the end of Wolverhampton when it moves into Dudley. We have been able to think about these determinants of economic success across the appropriate geographical area. In our case, that is not yet fully complete, and if you look around the country, you see that other combined authorities are more clearly incomplete in that sense. I would argue that they should be encouraged to expand to fill their natural economic areas.

In terms of the advice, I think there is one simple word: you have to make sure that everybody is up for it. I do not believe this should be imposed. I do not think this should be about unwillingness. I do believe there needs to be a sort of buy-in to the core principle that the very first question is that everybody has got to be prepared to compromise and make this work for it to be a success.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you. I have a very brief supplementary. One of the levelling-up missions that this Bill puts on a statutory basis is to increase the public domestic R&D spending outside the greater south-east by a third over the spending review period, and one of the institutions helping us to drive that is the new innovation accelerator in the West Midlands. How, other than through the legislation that we are passing, can we achieve that goal of driving high-quality public investment in R&D outside the golden triangle, and what role do you think the innovation accelerator can play?

Andy Street: Brilliant. I actually think this is probably one of the single most important parts of this Bill, and I am not sure it has had—what is the word?—the celebration it probably deserves. If you look at the long-term determinants of inequality, the intensity of R&D in an area is absolutely critical. You only have to look at the states of the Union and at an area such as Massachusetts and its leadership in R&D in medtech to see how Boston has become the most successful city in that sector by a country mile.

We have had a lopsided country in terms of public R&D—not just a little lopsided, but hugely lopsided. If you look at the West Midlands, we are very successful at drawing in private R&D, and we are very weak at drawing in public R&D. Our ratio here is four to one. It is definitely the worst in the whole country. It is ironic, isn’t it, because the private sector sees the opportunity and the public sector has not seen it in the same way? So for the Government to commit to tilting that and leveraging in even more private sector cash on the back of that is very important.

What has got to happen to do it? Frankly, we have got to change our approach to some extent. There is a whole piece here about cluster theory. Our public R&D has been incredibly focused in a very small number of research councils and research universities, which are basically around our automotive sector. We need to continue to play to that strength, but then to balance that by looking at the medtech sector, the fintech sector and clean growth. That is where we will be putting our focus in the innovator accelerator, so that it is a catalyst for us to improve our performance in new, adjacent sectors. So that diversification approach is a very important sprat to catch a mackerel—that’s what I call it.

[The Chair]

I call Rachael Maskell.

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[The Chair]

We have unfortunately almost run out of time. I was tempted to see whether the Housing Minister wanted to come back and chat to our witness, but he seems to be pointing to the fact that time is up. Or does he want to use the remaining minute?

[Stuart Andrew]

The time is up.

[The Chair]

The time is up, I am told. Thank you so much for coming, Mr Street. Your evidence was extremely clear and very helpful to the Committee.

Andy Street: Thank you very much.

Examination of Witnesses

Nicholas Boys Smith, Lizzie Glithero-West and Adrian Dobson gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

Q Thank you, Mr Bone. There has been quite a bit of criticism that much of the development that we see around the country is the same wherever you are, and that there is a lack of imaginative design. Some would describe those developments as uninspiring places to live. How important is it to improve the design of new developments for the people who live there and to encourage more support for development in communities?

Nicholas Boys Smith: I assume that question is for me. Thank you, Minister. That is a very profound question, and I do not mean that in a sycophantic way. The current percentage of British people who trust planners to make their local neighbourhood better is in medium single figures, and for those who trust developers, it is in low single figures—between 4% and 7%. Despite the widely accepted desperate need for new housing, the instinctive assumption of most neighbourhoods, most of the time—sorry, this is a bit of a coda, but we have the lowest houses to households ratio in the western world—is that new development will make places worse. That informs the politics of all large developments and most small ones.

That is new, and it used not to be the case 50, 70, 100 or 200 years ago. It is something that is particularly prevalent in this country. Until we fundamentally fix the instinctive assumption that people have—before they learn more—that new development will worsen your bit of the world, the caught-between-the-horns nature of the politics of housing will never go away. As elected Members of Parliament, you do not need me to tell you that. This is not a criticism of the Bill, but it will not fix that—no one bit of legislation or set of actions can—although some elements of it are relevant.

I will say one final thing before I shush so other people can come in. This is not just about support for new housing, important though that is. Provably, where we live has very measurable and, in some large degree, quantifiable and predictable consequences for the lives we lead, our personal health, our mental health, how many of our neighbours we know and how much we walk in our daily existence, rather than just jumping in a car to go to the shops. It has very profound consequences, not just for spatial development patterns, but for the depth with which we tread upon the planet.

[The Chair]

Q Lizzie, do you want to come in on that?

Lizzie Glithero-West: Very briefly, because I am sure that Adrian will have some points on this. From the perspective of heritage and the environment, the Bill and the things around it—I support the point that this is not just about the Bill, but about the policies around it—should support sustainable reuse of buildings. Some of the best new homes are not necessarily new built; they can be renovated. Something that would be on our list for the Government to think about alongside the Bill would be the incentives to encourage reuse rather than demolition and new build.

We welcome the possible introduction of design codes, which would allow for developments that could recognise the local vernacular. Design codes should offer sustainability, safety and quality. There is a big point about the protection of designated heritage assets, as well as non-designated heritage assets, which are not necessarily included in the Bill. Some provisions could be made, either within the Bill or around it, to incentivise repair and saving buildings, and using them as a way to keep the character of a place rather than just resorting to new homes and new buildings.

There are two things that we could look at in particular. The first is removing the permitted development right for demolition, which is a problematic loophole at the moment; it incentivises flattening beautiful buildings that may not be listed. Secondly—I can presumably talk about this in more depth later—we could look at the VAT on the maintenance of current buildings. That is normally 20%, which is completely contrary to the 0% rate for new build and incentivises the wrong solutions for the environment as well as for local communities.

Adrian Dobson: The Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission highlighted the value of good design, presumably in part because communities are more likely to accept well designed buildings. It also highlighted a lack of resource within the planning system, particularly in design expertise. The Bill itself places a lot of emphasis on local design codes. I am sure the Committee will want to talk about that; it is something that excites quite strong opinions both ways. Some people see local design codes as a way of establishing good basic principles, greater certainty around development and the ability to reflect local needs, but some people see them as potentially stifling innovation. That would be one way of addressing the issue.

I think it is important for us to think about design as not just being skin deep, although it is about appearance. Good quality design needs to address issues around sustainability, quality of build and the health and welfare of the people who use the buildings. When we talk about the Bill, there are perhaps some contradictions at the moment. There is possibly a contradiction between emphasis on local design codes, but growth in permitted developments. They seem to contradict each other slightly, and that might be one thing to think about. Also, there is a tension in the Bill between national development management policy and its relative weight against local development plans. Again, that might be part of the area of debate on the issue.

To follow up on something Lizzie said about the sustainability and embodied carbon aspects, we probably ought to be making more presumptions on reuse, retrofitting and alteration of existing building stock, and not just looking to new build as the solution to those issues.

[Stuart Andrew]

Q Looking more broadly at heritage, there have been a number of calls for the strengthening of measures. Do you think the Bill goes far enough in answering the calls that the sector have been making for some time?

Lizzie Glithero-West: We believe that heritage is at the heart of the levelling-up and place agenda. We are really pleased that heritage is in the Bill and has its own chapter—chapter 3. There is a lot to welcome in the Bill. Given that heritage has not recently had any distinct legislation of its own, as we had hoped to have with the draft Heritage Protection Bill of 2008, nor is it likely to, it is important for us to take any opportunity to address some of the legislative aims of the sector and policy makers. Many of those aims had cross-party support. This Bill is one of those significant opportunities. There is always more to be done around heritage protection, but several elements of the Bill, and some further measures we have sent in a briefing to the Committee—I can unpack that, if it would be helpful—address some of those long-awaited calls from the sector.

We strongly support clause 185, which would make historic environment records statutory. That has been a long-term ask from the sector, and it features in our heritage manifestos. The sector is delighted that this has made it into the Bill, and I congratulate those working on that behind the scenes. We strongly support clause 92, which extends the protection of heritage assets. We suggested a limited number of key additions to the heritage assets list that would ensure that protection was clearer and more comprehensive, and those are outlined in our briefing.

Given the presidency of COP26 last year and the recognition of the climate emergency, we hope to see more action from Government in parallel with the Bill, or possibly within it—for example, the mention of permitted development that I made earlier for demolition —to encourage the use of current building stock over a presumption to new build. We hope that will be picked up in tandem.

Clauses 93 and 94 are also welcomed by the sector. Clause 93 makes stop notices, which have long been available within the wider planning system, applicable to heritage consent regimes. There is strong support from some in the sector for clause 94, which says that urgent works can be required in certain cases where listed buildings are occupied.

I think clause 95 is the one that you are probably referring to. There is general agreement from the sector that there needs to be a better system for the protection of buildings that are being considered for listing. The whole sector recognises that interim protection of heritage during the listing process is important. There are different views in the heritage sector on the proposals in the Bill to address that. Many in the sector welcome the removal of compensation in clause 95 and would go further by asking for a duty on local planning authorities to serve a building preservation notice where they believe criteria for listing can be met.

A significant minority, however, have concerns about the removal of compensation from those wrongly served a BPN, which could result in delays and losses. There is a concern that that would set a precedent for other compensation clauses. The organisations that I mentioned would rather have a system of interim protection akin to that in Wales. It is important for the whole sector that there is clarity on the approach taken in any transition period until the Act is fully effective. There are other bits I would like to mention, but they are not necessarily directly on the heritage angle and are particularly in relation to the replacement of environmental impact assessments and strategic environmental assessments. We can come on to those if the Committee would like to touch on them later.

[The Chair]

Q Nicholas, did you have anything that you wanted to add?

Nicholas Boys Smith: I will make a quick point linking to the wider discussion on levelling up. The danger in the years to come is that as public sector money rightly supports the regeneration and investment in left-behind towns and places, in areas with low land value, that could actually lead to the reduction in quality of the urban realm and thus the reduced liveability of lots of historic but low-value places—the Grimsbys, the Hulls and the Stoke-on-Trents of this world. It is very important that the Bill focuses on the protection of heritage.

I think it will be very important in the years to come to think hard about how we protect, as we do not do quite so well at the moment, late Victorian and early 20th century heritage. At the moment, the ability to list gets much tougher for the late 19th century. This is not something that needs to be done through the Bill; it could be done through secondary legislation or guidance. We should make sure that as lots of money and focus goes on to levelling up places, we do not, as we have too often in the past, erringly do great harm to areas with unlisted and perhaps not very fashionable early 20th century-style places.

The quality of the urban infrastructure and realm of many of our left-behind towns is fantastic. They are often post-industrial towns with much lower levels of listing than the Salisburys and the Winchesters of this world; that is no disrespect to Salisbury or Winchester. There is a quite urgent need to face into that. Doing so would have the added advantage that more of our housing requirement could hopefully come in a more sustainable pattern from these rather under-utilised, under-invested-in and under-lived-in towns in the midlands and the north.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Finally, do you believe that clause 117 could potentially lead to an erosion of existing environmental protections? Do you believe that clause 120 provides adequate protection? Will it ensure that, at a minimum, there is no regression from existing protections? If not, how would you ideally like to see the Bill strengthened?

Dr Benwell: I should have brought my copy of the Bill. There are actually some very good bits in clause 117. The Government have done quite a good job of writing in the mitigation hierarchy, which is welcome to see. The problem is linked through to clause 127, which allows everything in preceding parts simply to replace existing environmental law. It would be much better if the Government came forward with fully worked-up proposals for how to strengthen the existing system of the EIA and SEA, rather than taking the approach of giving themselves the powers to take out layers of environmental law and put in something different.

You mentioned clause 120, the so-called non-regression clause. It is obviously a good thing to have a commitment not to weaken environmental protection, but I am afraid that the efficacy of such a clause is really in doubt, for a number of reasons. First, it is the Secretary of State in whose opinion environmental law has to be maintained at an equal level. That is a highly subjective opinion left in the hands of Ministers—and, just to emphasise, not a court in the land would challenge that on the basis of ultra vires without it being patently absurd. Courts are really deferential to decision makers, so if a Minister were to say, “Yes, this is equivalent,” that statement would have to be really, really daft for a court to challenge it. So we think that that kind of non-regression provision is unlikely to be robust.

Secondly, the other noteworthy part of the non-regression provision is that it talks about overall levels of protection. That is where we come back to the idea of talking about the environment in aggregate and those big broad trends of species-level data, which is really important—like Carolyn, I think that we should be linking back to the Environment Act targets—but it is not sufficient. We must keep in place the rules that protect the particular, the peculiar and the exciting at the local level that matter to important people, and those local populations of species and habitats that are so important. Otherwise, we get into a runaway offsetting mentality where the assurance that things will be better overall can be taken to obscure a lot of harm to the natural environment at the local level.

So there are some good things in clause 117 and some nice sentiments in clause 120, but overall they do not give the reassurance that would be provided by simply taking time to work up provisions in full and bring them forward in primary legislation rather than giving Ministers the power to swip and swap through regulations.

Paul Miner: I have nothing further to add on this question.

Carolyn McKenzie: I have nothing further to add other than to reiterate the local element. You do get lots of peculiarities in different areas, and they can be lost, so we must make sure that they are not.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q This question is directed at Paul in the first instance. The Bill contains a number of measures from the infrastructure levy to strengthening compulsory purchase order powers, high street rental auctions and heritage protections that are intended to drive more brownfield, urban regeneration. It also contains measures to create more combined authorities with transport and regeneration powers as part of building on the Government’s urban uplift and shift towards a regeneration-led approach to planning and housing. What assessment have you made of the advantages in embodied carbon of building reuse and of denser, better public transport-connected cities in reducing pollution? What is your take on that model of development?

Paul Miner: We think that a brownfield-first approach to new housing and commercial building development can have a number of benefits. We have seen constantly over the years that there is enough brownfield land available for over 1 million new homes in any given year, and this supply of brownfield is constantly replenishing as more sites come forward, and it is possible to build at higher densities.

We think there are a number of clauses in the Bill that could help with brownfield regeneration, such as those relating to changing compulsory purchase order powers, as you have mentioned, and the infrastructure levy. Getting local plans in place more quickly will also help to bring brownfield sites forward. So we see a lot of benefits to a brownfield-first approach.

However, the problem we have consistently had over the past 15 years, under both Conservative and Labour Governments, is that it has been easier for large housebuilders to bring forward speculative developments through the planning system, often not contained within local plans, than to be able to get these schemes through at appeal. We think there are a number of measures the Government need to look at.

Some of these may involve legislation but more involve changes to policy to give councils more power to set targets for the amount of housing needed in their area, to make sure that housing targets reflect what is likely to be built in the area, as opposed to what house builders say when they claim to be meeting housing targets that they then do not build, and to identify local needs for affordable homes. In many areas of the country they are crying out for affordable homes, but the kind of housing that is being built is not meeting those identified needs.

We recognise that there is a lot in the Bill that is helping to bring forward the benefits of a brownfield-first approach, in terms of, as you say, embodied carbon, saving precious agricultural land and regenerating communities in of need levelling up. At the same time, we think there is scope to do much more.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Let me extend that question to Carolyn.

Carolyn McKenzie: To build on what Paul has said, I think the circular economy is missing from the Bill. There is not much that is looking at what can be reused, recycled or reclaimed. It is about the new, and sometimes that is not the best way to go. Specifically around things like housing retrofits, it is about repair and regenerate rather than new housing. There is not that look at retrofitting that there should be, bearing in mind that the majority of housing we have is already in existence.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q One of the other things the Bill does is take forward measures to widen and deepen the devolution agenda by making it easier to set up new combined authorities, for authorities to join them and for them to gain new powers. How would you like to see the devolution agenda drive positive environmental outcomes? Is it primarily through helping towards our transport mission and better public transport? Is it through the housing quality mission? Or is it something else entirely? How do you think the devolution agenda can best serve a wider environmental agenda? I put that to Carolyn first.

Carolyn McKenzie: The first thing would be to actually have a mission in the Bill that relates to environmental outcomes, as the Bill does not have such a mission in there. Even though there has been some commitment to sustainable and non-competitive funding, if there is no mission then you cannot link that back. When you have funds such as the shared prosperity fund, which will take regard of the environment, if there is no mission you cannot just say, “Well, this is a priority.” So having a mission on the environment would definitely push this along.

There is a need within devolution to be clear about people’s roles. At the minute, everything that is done around climate change is done by local authorities, both at county and district level, because they have been driven to do so by the public through climate emergencies. It is not because we are being asked to do it. That drives action, absolutely, but it drives different types of action—inconsistent action—and the data is different so you cannot compare.

Also, when you get things like covid coming along, or Ukraine, or inflation, the risk of dropping down the agenda is really high, so that sustainable approach to funding is needed, rather than there being small pots of funding and grant-based funding, which can change and is short-run and competitive. That approach is not great for really putting down the foundations and encouraging local authorities to work with partners and to partner up. We are looking at working with the private sector, residents and other public sector bodies to really partner up their funding with our funding, to get more bang for our bucks and to achieve more through things like volunteering to plant trees, which involves health and social, and tackling fuel poverty, which keeps people out of hospital as well as reducing carbon emissions. As I keep saying, that integration is really key.

Again, when we look at things to spend money on, we really need to look at what is needed at the local level. There are lots of things that will be consistent that people need to spend money on, but there will be lots of differences and nuances at the local level that will make it better spent. I reiterate again that 41% of Surrey’s emissions—we are not unusual among other authorities—are down to the private car. With little or no funding for public transport, it is a really difficult target to hit to get people out of the car. You can get people to change to electric vehicles, but that has an equalities aspect to it: not everybody drives and not everybody can afford it. Public transport and good safe routes for walking and cycling are really crucial, as is the housing side, again.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Thank you. Paul, on the transport powers that are devolved through devolution deals, as well as getting more people on to public transport, which is good for the environment, what is the potential impact of improved public transport in driving more brownfield regeneration rather than sprawl? You must have done quite a lot of work on this kind of thing.

Paul Miner: Yes, we have done plenty of work on that, which we can send to the Committee. In particular, we produced a report a few years ago on public transport-oriented development, which showed that you could get much higher densities in urban areas that were already served by an intensive public transport network. In turn, that mutually reinforced and made sustainable public transport improvements within that area. There is certainly more on that that we could send to the Committee, which we would be very happy to do.

In addition to Carolyn’s point, I also want to say something very quickly on the rural aspect as well. Cornwall in particular is a possible trailblazer on rural devolution, in terms of what it has been able to do to integrate its transport network—that is in trains, ticketing and single points of information. It has also done some great work in terms of setting housing policies and on retrofitting rural housing stock. It does seem to be an exciting model that others could look at.

[The Chair]

Richard, we have not forgotten you; we will ask you to comment in a second.

Carolyn McKenzie: The key point on that is that there are so many different actors and so many different funds in respect of devolution. It is about looking at how we co-ordinate that. I am proposing to my authority to look at taking a lead climate change authority approach, similar to the lead local flood authority approach, so that we can actually co-ordinate, get the data down, look at what is relevant for the local level and deliver on that. We can then use that data to influence the funding that we bring in or to influence Government funding pots, so it is appropriate. That co-ordination element among all the different sectors is really key. At the minute, it is not there around environment. There are lots of different people and lots of different areas to come from.

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[The Chair]

For your benefit, Sir, the purpose of this Committee is to gather evidence to help us when we consider the Bill as we go through it line by line next week. One advantage of this Committee is that the Minister gets to ask questions. That is the only fun that he will have in this Committee, so I think we will start with him.

[Stuart Andrew]

Q Thank you very much, Mr Bone.

Dr Ellis, thank you very much for your time this afternoon. Could you perhaps tell us what your organisation and its members think about many of the reforming aspects of the planning system that are contained in the Bill?

Dr Ellis: I think they regard it, and we regard it, as a mixed picture. We welcome the issues on hope value and on development corporations, and strengthening the development plan is certainly welcome. But then there are a series of issues on which we need some serious reassurance. There are just three. First, how can we drive delivery and does the Bill do enough on that. Secondly, democracy and public trust are absolutely critical to everyone because, as we have already heard, there is a lack of public trust in the system. Finally, there are the really positive measures that could be taken on climate change.

Briefly, I will throw one more in. When we write legislation on planning and when planners think about the future, we often have a tendency to think about it through our lens. I think it would have been great to see more creative, local community solutions in the Bill, particularly on the cost of living. The planning system has enormous potential to be a solution for things such as local food growing and local flood defence. It would have been great to see some concrete measures enabling that kind of activity from the bottom up.

[Stuart Andrew]

Q Given that about 39% of England is covered by up-to-date local plans at the moment, do you think that the measures in the Bill will make it easier, or is there anything else that should have been included to try to progress these plans; to give confidence to communities about what will be developed in their areas?

Dr Ellis: The primacy of the local plan is really important. We are very worried about the relationship with national development policies and whether that masks a centralising tendency. Local and neighbourhood plans are so important in giving certainty to communities. As is often the case, we are making some changes to the process of planning reform—that is nothing new—but the fundamental issue is about resources. Most people who talk to us about planning and the delivery of local plans would say, “Well, if we had more resources we could deliver them more quickly, and if we had more certainty we could also do that.” So we should not get too hung up about changing the law.

We have divided the local plan into several pieces now through this Bill: we have said there is a local plan, then a supplementary plan, and then a strategic plan, and two of those are voluntary and one is not. In that sense, we have created that framework. The answer is that it all depends: it depends on resources and on how much power the Secretary of State wants to take to the centre on the content of local plans. We have an honest concern that if you want to rebuild public trust, you need to handle those powers with extreme caution.

[Stuart Andrew]

Q Do you welcome the strengthening of neighbourhood planning and the neighbourhood statements included in the Bill to try to engage more of that community involvement?

Dr Ellis: I think we do. We are obviously desperate to preserve the rights to be heard. That is an important point. We are losing some rights to be heard and communities really need them. The TCPA fought for them from the 1960s onwards so that people had a right to be in the inquiry of a plan. Our planning system is very asymmetrical; the development sector is very dominant in that process.

A lot of people are sceptical about the idea of neighbourhood planning. I admit my own scepticism about it, because plans are often happening in places with more social and economic capital than others and we absolutely have to address that, but they are proving powerful—I speak as an ex-parish councillor, so I have served my time on this. Whether the statements get us over the line in creating something simple and meaningful is the challenge we want to see explored through this Bill’s progress. Will those statements actually have weight? Yes, you have to have regard to them, but what exactly will that mean in detail? Local and parish councils are denigrated, but they do have a powerful and meaningful role in the planning process.

[Stuart Andrew]

Q Finally, we have heard time and again about complexity and bureaucracy in the development of local and neighbourhood plans. What has been the reaction of your association’s members to the digitisation of the planning process in the Bill?

Dr Ellis: There are two sides to that reaction. First, what is not to like about digitisation? There are some very archaic practices in the planning process and it would be great if we could catch up and have the resources to digitise. That will make information more accessible. It is also really important that we are able to integrate environmental data, because there are competing datasets out there. One of the most important recommendations is that we sort of need a national laboratory for that spatial data, as that would simplify the process no end.

But digital data goes so far. There is an issue about digital exclusion that worries us for communities. We can have as much digital information as we like, but we also need access to the arenas where decisions are made, so there is a twin relationship between understanding what is going on and being able to do something about it. That is where rights to be heard, which we are so exercised about in the planning process, are so important.

[The Chair]

I call the shadow Minister, Matthew Pennycook.

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[The Chair]

I call the Minister.

[Neil O’Brien]

Q Through the devolution agenda, we have devolved powers at scale over things such as transport and regeneration, giving places the power to create things such as development co-operations. Through this Bill, we will make it easier and quicker to set up new combined authorities, particularly in two-tier areas, and make it easier for them to widen and take on new powers. There are also a range of measures in the Bill to drive more brownfield regeneration—the infrastructure levy, CPO reforms, high street rental options, street votes, heritage protections, and so on.

As we negotiate devolution deals with areas such as Derbyshire, where we are in talks at present, how do we best bring together the new instruments and new combined authorities to achieve everything we potentially can through spatial planning to drive the kind of join-up you have been arguing for in this session?

Dr Ellis: That is a complex question, but time is short. The single biggest issue is with trust and public consent—whether the people of Derbyshire understand the benefits of the combined authority. I am tempted to say, at the moment, that they do not. People have talked in the past about double devolution, and I think that is still important. You have two problems going on; you have the fantastic opportunity that devolution presents to empower local authorities and collections of local authorities, but then you have an important issue about the citizen and trust within communities, and how they relate to that.

In thinking about the devolution agenda, it is important to show regard and care to things such as parish and town councils—that lower tier—and what powers they might get. Otherwise, all that happens is that you shift the trust problem down a notch. The opportunity is there when resources and powers are provided for places to begin to set a new course that tells a story about that place. That is desperately needed in this country.

My only fear is that we need coverage across most of England—we do need that—and the ad hoc nature of this is giving different powers to different areas. The status of the strategic plan in Liverpool, legally, is different to the one in Manchester, which is different again to the London plan. That might be fine, but it also creates levels of legal uncertainty. There is a tension between those things, but I would continually emphasise the point on community trust and what communities can do, as well as what local authorities can do.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Mr Ellis, for your clear and concise evidence. We very much appreciate it. We must now move on to our seventh session of the day.

Examination of Witnesses

Gavin Smart and Kate Henderson gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

We are having slight problems with the sound. We will just give it a second. Do you want to carry on?

Kate Henderson: I was just saying that we are very, very keen that, as test and learn is rolled out, housing associations, working with councils and developers, are part of that programme, so we ensure we set the levies at a level that enables the delivery of great places with high-quality affordable housing on site in mixed communities. Doing that in a phased way to make sure it is working, while retaining parts of the old system as this is transitioned out, sounds like a sensible, pragmatic way forward.

[Stuart Andrew]

Q I thank you both for your time this afternoon. We know that protracted section 106 negotiations can sometimes result in a reduction in the amount of affordable housing from what was originally intended to be delivered. We are introducing the right to require, so we can get as much, if not almost all, of our ambition to achieve that. Are there any specific points you would like us to look at as we develop that side of the policy? More broadly, how do you see the proposals on access to information on land helping housing associations to look at opportunities to deliver more affordable housing?

Kate Henderson: Taking the second part first, transparency on land ownership is hugely welcome, as are the clauses in part 7 on compulsory purchase. I know this is not the same thing, but they are interlinked. Being able to access land at the right price to capture that land value is a really important mechanism for ensuring that we are able to deliver affordable housing. The best section 106 agreements do that because they understand the infrastructure need in a local area and those policies are in the local plan, so that when you go in for your planning application it is all costed in. I think the main principle of the infrastructure levy is that the cost of the levy is costed in so it can be factored into the price, which factors into what you are willing to pay for the land.

Land transparency is welcome, as is part 7 on compulsory purchase, regeneration and the enhanced role of Homes England, not just as a housing agency but as an agency involved in regeneration and place making.

Gavin Smart: I support much of what Kate says. I do not want to repeat her, but I have a couple of observations. Some of this is about the creation of a new planning system and some of it is about the resourcing of local authorities. Some of what characterises good section 106 negotiations is the ability to negotiate effectively. It is quite hard to design either a section 106 or a levy system in which developers may not come back, either legitimately or less legitimately, to argue that the situation has changed and needs to be looked at again. We have to accept that as a fact of life in these negotiations. It is not done until it is done.

I agree with Kate that land transparency is very helpful. Considering whether compensation needs to be paid in quite the same way as it has until now, and addressing hope value, is a very sensible proposition that we would support.

[Rachael Maskell]

Q In areas of high land value, how do we bring forward sites that are not built just for investment—Airbnb, asset homes and second homes—but are built to meet local need? What measures would you add to the Bill?

Gavin Smart: I do not know about adding measures to the Bill, but it is about the quality of local plans and the quality of local decision making. Going back to Kate’s point, it is about making sure we are operating on an objective assessment of need. We need to be sure that in our plans we are delivering the housing that is required for the whole community, rather than simply housing that can make the best return. In that sense, the planning system is something of an intervention to prevent what one might describe as a kind of market failure, which is that the housing market will not deliver the housing we need without being provided with a degree of direction. It is as much about what happens in implementation as what is actually in the Bill and the quality and strength of local plan-making behaviour.

Kate Henderson: There are already tools in the planning toolbox that enable local authorities to deliver different types of development that are right for their area. One example is rural exemption sites. I know your constituency is in York, so you are not necessarily rural, but our rural areas often have high land values and pressing affordability issues. The rural exemption policy enables affordable housing to be developed in perpetuity. A local landowner might be more likely to put forward a piece of land for affordable housing if they know it is going to stay in the community, for the community, so there are policies such as those that can be used. I agree with Gavin: it is really important that the local authority has a good evidence base of what is actually needed, so that when it is making decisions on schemes coming forward, there is an opportunity to argue for the social mix that it wants to see, including affordable housing.

I also think there is a role for different actors in the housing market: who is actually coming forward with proposals? What is the role of Homes England in terms of its land assembly role and its partnership role with local authorities, and how do we get HE more in the mix in its place-making role, as well?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Gosh. Is the Minister starting this one?

[Neil O'Brien]

What fun.

[The Chair]

What fun you will have, Mr O’Brien.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Thank you, Mr Bone. May I apologise, as I will have to leave a few minutes before the end of the session?

Alex and Will, thank you for joining us in person. The Bill takes forward the devolution agenda by making it easier and quicker to set up new combined authorities, particularly in two-tier areas. It also contains a number of powers to speed up and improve regeneration, from the infrastructure levy to compulsory purchase order powers, high street rental auctions, street votes, heritage protections and land market transparency. How can we use both the devolution agenda and these new tools best to drive urban regeneration and more brownfield development—the kind of development that a lot of people want to see? How can we build on what we are doing in the Bill and make the powers that we are creating work most effectively? I will pick first on Will and then go to Alex.

Will Tanner: First, thank you for having me. It is a very important question, and the Bill goes some way towards answering it. The Bill tries—if I may infer Ministers’ intentions from it—to establish a much greater level of strategic authority in the planning system to bring together different elements that are important for regeneration and economic development in local areas. That includes building some of the institutional framework in the form of both more and stronger mayoral combined authorities or equivalents in counties and giving them clearer incentives to intervene and bring land together with other forms of intervention—I point to the infrastructure levy in particular in that regard, not just at mayoral level but below—as well as creating much greater transparency in information to allow the system to work more effectively and generate more community buy-in. That is both at a national level through the levelling-up mission framework that the Bill sets out, setting a clear direction on where the levelling-up agenda is due to go, and more information for consumers of the planning system through the digital planning framework and, indeed, through greater powers to require information on behalf of local authorities such as owners of high street shops and other parties locally.

Alex Morton: I am a little more sceptical on parts of the devolution agenda. It has worked very well in some places, such as Manchester, but less so in others. London has probably one of the biggest housing backlogs, and obviously it has had a Mayor for a very long time.

For me, the most interesting and best thing about the Bill is the focus or push around trying to make local plans more delivery-oriented, moving towards a system of local plans as delivery mechanisms and not huge, long lists of policies by moving some of that policy up to a national level. It would be good to discuss that further. I think that is the right aim, but there are some difficulties in how that is planned to be done. The shift away from a five-year land supply is also welcome.

Listening to people earlier, what often came up is planning issues x, y and z. Really, planning is just to deliver enough land, so that enough homes are built, we meet housing delivery targets and we do not have a housing crisis. Almost everyone else has a strong interest in planning doing mixed communities, planning doing sustainability, planning doing an ageing society and planning doing obesity. Planning is not really meant to do all those things; it is not some kind of titan that can hold the world on its shoulders. The whole point of planning is that there are sufficient land released to a different mix of developers who will build enough homes so that we do not have a housing crisis. If the Minister is inclined to put in place some kind of definition of what planning is, I would say that planning is designed to make sure that we build sufficient homes of sufficient quality in the right places—full stop. If the planning system could just focus on doing that, we might have less of a housing crisis, with everyone shoehorning everything else under the sun—important and noble though those other things are—into the planning system.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q Thank you. Can I press Alex on street votes? Is this something you welcome? What observations, if any, do you have about how we could potentially make a success of that policy?

Alex Morton: I think street votes are a very good idea. They are a way to try and encourage communities. They are not a solution to everything—I think we have to be honest about what street votes are. Street votes are in areas where there is high demand in housing and you have relatively low density—particularly Metroland, for example, in London—where you might be able to persuade people to replace a certain amount of terraced housing with four or five-storey terrace streetscapes, which would be quite attractive. That could be a good way in lots of high-demand areas, without building on green belts and green fields, to get a recycling of space. That used to happen. For most of our city’s history, that densification process was natural. You had a single landowner usually—sometimes aristocratic, sometimes merchants, sometimes commercial holdings—who would buy blocks, demolish them and build them up. You have to do that now in a way that is consensual and fit for the 21st century.

Street votes are a way to try to get people together and say, “Look, we can all, on our street, agree that we can build up another few storeys. We will all benefit from this. This will mean that we do not have to build on greenfield sites on the edge of London.” I do not think we should be too optimistic about it in the next, say, five years solving the south-east’s housing crisis. However, it has to be something that the Government moves at great speed on, to try and put pilots in place to get this going, so that if it can work—I think it should—we can then roll it out on a wider scale. That said, I do not think, sadly, that it will alleviate the pressure on green fields in the next five or 10 years, but it is a thing we need to do now if we are to stop building on more and more of our land surface.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q I have one last question, for Will. One of the things the infrastructure levy does is have the neighbourhood share, in the way that CIL does, but CIL only applies to a certain number of authorities. How might that connect to the work you have been doing on what you called double devolution and neighbourhood-level governance?

Will Tanner: I thoroughly welcome the commitment to maintain the neighbourhood share within the new consolidated infrastructure levy. As you say, the infrastructure levy is compulsory rather than optional and it will apply everywhere, so it represents an opportunity to share a considerable amount of revenue directly with communities where the right governance exists. Parish and town councils only cover about 37% of the English population at current levels—about a third of local authorities are fully parished—so only a relatively small number of places will be able to take advantage of this at first. The inclusion of the neighbourhood share will create a very strong incentive for local areas to put in place strong, hyperlocal governance to control local decision making and some local services within a general power of competence that exists for parish and town councils.

We know from our research that there are strong benefits from that. If you look at rates of volunteering, rates of group membership or rates of local philanthropy, all those things are higher in areas where parish and town councils exist. So I am very supportive of the Government’s efforts to try and create a stronger incentive for places to put in that local governance and to benefit from the gain from development. I would also suggest that it should create a stronger incentive for places to become more welcoming of development as a whole and therefore embrace new housing.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q On CPO powers, which the Bill streamlines by speeding up the process and simplifies by taking out bits of the process, while also potentially enabling the capturing of more value for the community and for wider infrastructure projects, with implications for consent and regeneration, what observations, if any, do you both have about the plans in the Bill on CPOs and how we make a success of them? Shall we go to Will first, then Alex?

Will Tanner: As the Minister will know, Onward’s first ever paper looked at this issue in some detail. As the Committee will know, at the stroke of a planner’s pen, the value of a piece of land can go up 100-fold. There is an opportunity for the UK to do much more to capture the gains from development in a way that other countries, such as the Netherlands, do more systematically. The Bill goes some way towards doing that through the simplification and clarification of when local authorities can use CPO powers, which will hopefully make CPO more widespread.

I think the greatest opportunity lies in the clarification of what constitutes fair market value. That is a relatively contested area of policy; there are lots of different views from different areas. I thoroughly welcome the proposed Law Commission review into this area of legislation more generally, because I think legislation has spread over a number of years. However, there is an opportunity for the UK to more systematically capture those gains for development, and allow local authorities to buy and assemble land—especially with regard to ransom strips and small plots that hold up development—to capture those gains for public benefit. So I am supportive in principle but keen to see a bit more detail.

Alex Morton: I support the idea of streamlining CPO. I would be quite nervous, as a small “c” conservative and a small “l” liberal, about the measure to have a direction from the Secretary of State setting out the value of land. As Will has just suggested, there is a potential area in terms of ransom strips or other areas. If that was narrowly defined in legislation, so that, for example, on brownfield sites where there is multiple land ownership, there may, in exceptional circumstances, be a direction by the Secretary of State, that would be quite different from the current powers, which look like they could be abused by a future Government that was not sympathetic to property rights.

There is a case, with some ransom strip owners and some landowners who hold out and are unreasonable, for there to be some kind of change to get those people. But that is a big shift in property rights, which should probably be set out in primary legislation and very tightly circumscribed to small areas of brownfield land where there are multiple landowners, or be more tightly defined than the current situation, which I think could be abused—probably not under this Government, but under a future, more radical Government that did not support property rights.

[The Chair]

Mr Pennycook.