Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Baroness Cumberlege and Lord Tope

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con)]

My Lords, I also declare an interest. I have interests listed in the register and I have a pending legal case concerning a planning application. I have taken advice from the Clerk of the Parliaments and have been told that the sub judice rule does not apply here. I support Amendment 14 and I have been asked by the noble Lord, Lord Porter, to introduce his Amendment 44.

On Amendment 14, I am not opposed to imaginative reuse of buildings: it is sometimes a very good way of preserving or conserving them. In my area a huge mental asylum has been turned into housing. It is of modest architectural merit but it provides homes for people, and those people, fortunately, do not know its distressing and disturbing past.

I can also think of redundant churches, some of real architectural distinction, that have been preserved by being transformed into homes. I am sure noble Lords know lots of other examples. However, I share the caution of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and other noble Lords, that changes of use should not be given without careful consideration of the consequences. There should be a requirement for a community impact assessment.

There are many short-term financial gains to be made by turning employment sites into housing, especially if it is, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, has said, large-scale development. That can, however, have a detrimental effect on a whole area, and very long-term implications. I think back to the multi-storey office blocks, built for another purpose: it is appropriate for them to be occupied by staff during the day, but they may not be suitable places in which to live.

We have learned from the mistakes of the past, such as the badly designed tower blocks with broken lifts—places of misery and centres of crime. Now they are loudly cheered as they are demolished and come tumbling down. They were recognised as unsuitable places to live in and proved not to be socially beneficial. New tower blocks, however, appear almost daily, crowding the skyline. Presumably, considering the stringency of building regulations, they are good places to live in.

I wonder, however, whether converting office tower blocks of concrete and glass is an appropriate thing to do. We are in the middle of a housing boom right now. Booms do not last for ever, which is why the rush for numbers may be expedient now but not necessarily a solution for future housing needs. We have to be very careful, therefore, to get the balance right between homes that are desperately needed now and the long-standing impact on a local area. I think of my own business. I certainly could not run it on the hoof: my staff and I need a base. We are technologically pretty able but we still need a base. So we must look at the employment opportunities in an area before giving them up.

I move on to Amendment 44. The noble Lord, Lord Porter, has asked me to speak to this amendment on his behalf because unfortunately he cannot be here today; he is speaking at the District Councils’ Network conference in Warwick. The noble Lord, Lord Porter, would have told the Committee that permitted development can be a useful way of speeding up building the homes, infrastructure and communities that are needed. Councils should, however, have powers to consider the impact that new developments are having across an area. Many areas, particularly in London and the south-east, are concerned about the rate at which office space is being converted to residential sites. This could have a very negative impact on local employment and economic growth. The British Council for Offices has estimated that between 3 million and 9 million square feet of office space were converted in England in one year. From April 2014 to September 2016, there were nearly 9,000 applications for prior approvals for office-to-residential permitted development; nearly 3,000 of those did not require prior approval and an additional 4,000 were granted.

The Local Government Association and local councils have expressed their concerns about this issue, so in an attempt to address the problem a number of councils have introduced Article 4 directions to remove the permitted development rights for office-to-residential conversions. However, there have been limitations to the scope of the Article 4 directions in places and they will in many cases be restricted to certain areas within the local authority boundary. There are 17 local authorities that have individual buildings, roads or zones within their local area that are exempt from the rights until May 2019, including the City of London and Manchester city centre.

I share the concern of my noble friend Lord Porter and the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Tope, that local planning authorities and their communities should have a greater say on the cumulative impact of new development falling within existing permitted development rights that affects their local area. I am saying this rather than my noble friend Lord Porter, but local authorities should have the right to ask: “Is this desirable housing or are we providing the slums of the future, with all the social problems and attendant costs that poor-quality housing brings?”.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, my name is to Amendment 44 and I would certainly have been happy to add it to Amendment 14 as well, which I support. I first declare my interest as yet another vice-president of the Local Government Association. An interest in many ways more relevant to this debate which I no longer have to declare is that until May 2014, I was for 40 years the local councillor for a town centre ward in a south-west London borough. We debated the effect of permitted development rights, particularly the conversion of offices to residential development, during the passage of the Housing and Planning Bill less than a year ago. In Committee and on Report, we had some spirited debates led by the even more spirited noble Lord, Lord True. I think that he was speaking more in his capacity as leader of Richmond Council, another south-west London borough. Sadly, both debates were very late at night and inevitably therefore curtailed.

I will not repeat all that I said a year ago but this issue has had, and continues to have, a devastating effect on the town centre ward that I used to represent. It has particularly affected the town centre. I cited nine months ago the figures I had had from my local authority, showing that in the 18 months between the coming into effect of the prior approval permissions and being able to obtain an Article 4 direction to cover that area, the town centre lost 28% of its office space. This was just in that 18-month period. Many people assumed that those were vacant offices but they were not. Sixty-two per cent of those offices were then currently occupied and the businesses occupying them were, politely or impolitely, asked to leave. Employment was directly lost from the town centre, with an inevitable effect on its economy—not just the work that goes on in the offices, but all the commerce that is brought by the people working in them. Some businesses were able to move elsewhere; others, sadly, have gone out of business, with a consequent loss of jobs.