Baroness Hanham
Main Page: Baroness Hanham (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Hanham
That this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s policies on planning.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, most decisions on planning are taken at a local level against a defined plan and in consultation with local people. Planning helps to protect the environment and ensure appropriate development, and helps with growth in the economy through business expansion. I wish to concentrate today on measures that the Government are taking to reform and speed up the planning system. We are undertaking these reforms because the planning system that we inherited as a Government was deficient in two key areas.
First, many local people did not feel involved with or sympathetic to the decisions that were being made. Policies such as imposed regional housing targets created antagonism. Local people saw only the disbenefits of growth, not the improvements it could bring. In the end, the real costs were borne by local communities, with fewer jobs, and fewer homes—an unsustainable future. Secondly, the system could be slow in reaching decisions. Not only did this create uncertainty, it did nothing to encourage the growth and housing provision that this country needs. Some change was required.
We took as our starting point Open Source Planning, a policy document that proposed a new approach to planning. This was adopted in the coalition agreement, with a promise to radically reform the planning system. We have already achieved much of this aim.
Last November’s Localism Act has reshaped the way in which planning is carried out. That was a major milestone towards achieving the commitment at the very heart of the coalition agreement. Its measures put power in the hands of local people and groups to engage in and shape their communities. Particularly in this respect, it introduced neighbourhood planning, which, backed by incentives such as a meaningful proportion of receipts from the community infrastructure levy being passed to neighbourhoods, will give local communities both the opportunity and the encouragement to think positively about future development.
We are keen for local people to take the opportunities to influence their local plan, as well as bringing forward a neighbourhood plan for their immediate area. It may be of interest to noble Lords that over 200 funded neighbourhood planning front-runners are now under way, and more than 100 non-front-runner neighbourhoods have begun the process. By mid-October, 52 neighbourhood planning areas had reached the first stage in the process of formally designating their neighbourhood planning areas, and another 100 had submitted applications for designation. We expect that up to three of these could reach independent examination stage this year. Thirty-five areas are aiming to go to referendum by 2013, and we expect around 80 to have plans in place by the end of next year.
Through a £3.1 million programme, four support organisations are providing advice and support to communities on neighbourhood planning. We are providing a £50 million programme to support local authorities in making neighbourhood planning a success, including funding new local authority burdens.
A further requirement will be for major developers in particular to undertake pre-application consultation with local residents and members of the neighbourhood forum. The new duty to co-operate ensures that councils have to collaborate when producing their local plans, so that issues such as the needs of strategic housing market areas that straddle local authority boundaries are addressed.
In March this year the National Planning Policy Framework streamlined over 1,000 pages of policy down to 50, reducing duplication, making it easier for ordinary people to understand the system and setting the strategic context to guide neighbourhood planning. The framework includes the presumption in favour of sustainable development, reinforces the role of local plans in meeting the needs of each area and ensures a positive approach to applications where up-to-date plans are not in place. The new, simplified framework was published in March and is already helping to deliver the homes and jobs that the country needs and an enhanced built, natural and historic environment. The emphasis on local plans in the framework, and the new incentive provided by the presumption to have an up-to-date plan in place, have resulted in intensified plan-making activity.
By May 2010, six years after Labour’s 2004 Planning Act, only 57 core strategies had been adopted out of 335 local planning authorities. By contrast, 65% of all local planning authorities now have at least a published plan, and 44% of all authorities have completed all the statutory stages and have agreed plans in place following community consultation. The framework also underlines the importance of town centres, while recognising that business in rural communities should be free to expand. However, it also guarantees robust protections for our natural and historic environment and protects the green belt. It also ultimately achieved the accolade of being praised by organisations across the planning spectrum, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England through to the CBI; and from the National Trust through to the British Property Federation. I readily acknowledge that many changes were made to it after close co-operation and consultation with those and other organisations.
In July we announced a package of measures to speed up and simplify the planning application process, many of which take forward the commitments in last year’s Plan for Growth. An effective planning system is a key part of the Government’s growth strategy. All too often we heard that the planning system is a brake rather than a motor for growth, but it should not be. Planning can help create the conditions for economic growth but only if it works in a cohesive way, recognising that opportunities in each area are different and that proposals are for local decision.
We are proud of the achievements to reform planning since 2010, but it was felt that more was needed to help trigger the provision of new housing and business development, to ensure that opportunities could be seized to encourage investment for the future. Therefore on 6 September we announced a major package on housing and growth. This included measures such as the Planning Inspectorate being given power to decide applications where local authorities consistently perform badly; the increased use of planning performance agreements for large schemes; planning inspectors being able to award costs at appeal—for example, where councils have refused schemes with little justification—the Planning Inspectorate prioritising those appeals that will help deliver growth; continuing the policy that enables planning authorities to allow unimplemented permissions to be extended easily; enabling developers with sites with unviable numbers of affordable homes the right to appeal against these obligations; a consultation on allowing developers to renegotiate non-viable Section 106 agreements; a review to rationalise local and national building standards; considering the use of call-in for major new settlements with larger than local impacts; encouraging councils to use flexibilities in the NPPF to tailor the extent of green-belt land to local circumstances, while continuing to preserve its protection; introducing permitted development rights to enable a change of use from commercial to residential; and consulting on a significant relaxation of planning controls over residential and commercial extensions, but for a limited period. Some, including this letter, will need consultations, and where that is the case we will be undertaking them shortly.
Some will require primary legislation, and these are included in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill that is receiving its Second Reading in another place today and will come to this House thereafter. However, I assure noble Lords that the measures in that Bill do not mean that we are throwing the planning system up in the air again and starting afresh; it is not a change of direction. These measures build on our existing reforms.
We have given councils and communities more power to plan and to identify, after widespread consultation and taking of views, what development their areas need and where it should go. With power, though, comes responsibility—the responsibility to get on and plan, to focus on the key decisions that affect the future of their areas and to deal in a positive and efficient way with individual planning proposals.
This is a long list of reforms but there is still more that we will do. Having streamlined the policy documents, we are doing the same with the 6,000 pages of guidance that has built up over the years. We have recently launched the review and my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor is leading a group of practitioners in identifying what can make this less complex.
It is not just a case of changing the rules, however; there needs to be good or better co-operation. We want developers to invest time in helping local authorities and planners understand the economic benefits of their proposed development and, most especially, to give local communities the opportunities to discuss and shape those plans in advance of the plans going forward. We are making clear to elected members and council officers the circumstances in which they can speak to developers without raising propriety issues. In turn we want the developers to seize every opportunity to make it easier for councils and local communities to understand their aspirations and be positive about economic development.
By developers and business working together with local authorities and local communities we firmly believe that we can deliver the sustainable development the country needs without treading on the toes of local communities and their absolute need to protect their environment into the future. Everyone involved in planning—whether a homeowner with a small-scale addition, a developer of small or larger projects or the planning authority itself—has to remember that the decisions that they make today will still be there scores of years later.
Lord Davies of Stamford
The noble Baroness did not mention at all by name the affordable housing obligation, and she only referred to it very obliquely, as if it did not really exist at all or had no significance. Is the report in the current issue of Private Eye—that the Prime Minister’s office in 10 Downing Street put out a statement that the affordable housing obligation could be abolished without the loss of any affordable houses, even though there is a ministerial Statement which states that the result of that abolition would be loss of 10,000 affordable homes a year—correct?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I did not know whether the noble Lord was going to intervene in the gap; this is a debate, not Question Time. However, I am not aware of the Private Eye article. I have not seen it, nor have I been advised about it. I usually take Private Eye with a fair degree of scepticism. I beg to move.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, as I expected, this has been an interesting and challenging debate at short notice, and I am very grateful to everybody who has been able to take part. We have covered a fair amount of ground today on all planning aspects.
I would like to start with the extremely thoughtful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on the conflict, if there is one, between country openness and the town. I reassure the noble Lord that we are as interested and concerned about open spaces and those parts of the countryside where planning permission should not be granted as those places where it should be granted. The NPPF contains policies on agriculture, farms, open spaces, areas of outstanding natural beauty, the green belt and national parks. It is all there and the expectation is that those policies will continue. I recognise exactly what the noble Lord is saying. We cannot grant planning consent all over the place. We must have areas where people are free to learn about agriculture, if nothing else, and to grow our food. After all, that is what we will need in the future. The noble Lord made a very adroit speech.
This is as good a moment as any to pick up on the fact that the noble Lord mentioned the green belt. As I have tried to say, policies on the green belt are in place. We have made it abundantly clear that councils are in control of the green belt and always have been. It is up to them to determine the boundaries of it. That has not changed. However, the expectation is that the amount of green belt will not change. The previous Government said that they had increased the green belt although there was a fair amount of eating into it from time to time. However, now and in the past other areas of green belt have been established. We have to ensure that there is green belt round the major city areas so that there is space between cities to provide the openness that we have described. The green belt is still a major policy of the Government.
I always expect the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, to be challenging, but there we are. This Government are not viscerally opposed to planning, nor are we opposed to affordable housing. A number of noble Lords have tried to indicate that we are against affordable housing. That is manifestly not the situation. We have made it clear from the outset that we recognise the need for affordable housing. The policies we have put forward are all about trying to ensure that more affordable housing is available. We will continue to put forward such policies. It is absolutely right that we need growth as much as anything else to ensure that people have houses in which to live and in the right areas.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, who I see is back in his place, referred to an article in Private Eye. I do not know what that article was about and, frankly, I do not care very much. At present, there are more than 1,400 stalled sites with 75,000 units of affordable housing across the country. We have talked about renegotiating Section 106 and making sure that land, which the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to as land retained in land banks, is freed up. We cannot go on having great chunks of land on which housing could be built being retained. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, wishes to intervene but I hope that he will let me finish as I have a very short time in which to speak. I accept that not all the housing which is approved is affordable housing. A great deal of housing is for shared ownership or ordinary private housing. However, there are 1,400 stalled sites and 75,000 units of affordable housing across the country. We need to unlock that as soon as we can.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Could the Minister confirm that the 1,400 sites are all stalled for economic reasons because of affordable housing? Or is it for other reasons as well?
Baroness Hanham
There are 1,400 sites with 75,000 units on them. It does not necessarily say that they are stalled for any reason. They need to be unlocked to get that housing out but there may be other things that are also tied up with it as well. However, that is the number of units that we know could be built.
To move as quickly as I can through this, there have been a number of comments about the extension of permitted development rights for homeowners. Rather than go into a whole diatribe about that, I can confirm that a formal consultation on it is about to come out. I know that there is a variety of views on this and we will receive those views under the consultation. The purpose is to enable people who want to extend a little bit and just want to make residential improvements. We know that there are almost 200,000 applications for residential improvements for things such as conservatories or small extensions which actually do not upset anybody very much. As one would expect, they would be expected to discuss the applications with their neighbours. As always, there are protected areas. Those protected areas are within the general permitted development order and include conservation areas, national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest.
I will come back to the noble Lord, Lord True, in a minute; he was asking about exceptions to this. I know that I have the answer to that within my hundreds of notes here and perhaps I can dig it out before we get to the end.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised a number of questions. He made the point that the proposals would result in poorer design and use-of-space standards for buildings. The National Planning Policy Framework makes it clear that good design is absolutely essential and that is part and parcel of any discussion that people will be having on planning approvals.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, along with a number of other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made the point that the Local Government Association has, perfectly reasonably, pointed out that a lot of authorities are working extremely well and efficiently. Sometimes when they are not getting planning approvals in a certain length of time there is a perfectly good reason for it. Our proposals to extend some of the areas under the growth Bill will affect only those authorities where it is perceived that they really are not trying. No one would deny that there are certain councils which are very slow, not because they are negotiating or for other reasons. They are just very slow. We hope that the proposals in the growth Bill will encourage them to quicken up and provide a bit of an edge to move forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was very kind to start with about the Bill though it veered off a little bit. I am beginning to know the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, very well: he fights a sturdy battle. He also made the perfectly reasonable point that the lack of housing development was not entirely due to lack of permissions. A lot of it is due to the economy and the fact that money is not available and not being lent in the same way. However, it is important that those permissions are there because there will come a time when it will be necessary to move them on. While it is an issue, it is not the total issue.
As regards Section 106, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also talked about overriding original agreements. As he and others rightly said, councils are free to reconsider the Section 106 agreements on a voluntary basis at any time. As with all things, we would rather that councils did this and did not have to be encouraged to do so. However, we found that 80% of councils would be willing to negotiate, but we want to ensure that this good practice is as widely spread as possible. Again, there is no undermining of what local authorities can do, but there is an expectation that the best should be followed by the least good, and that the least good should be encouraged by legislation to get on with it—if I can put it that way.
The noble Lord also commented on the process whereby some applications should be sent directly to the Planning Inspectorate. Once again, we are back to the limited number of authorities that do not act within a reasonable time, are slow with planning decisions and turn down some applications for no good reason. These delays are bad for communities and the economy. This measure will deal with the places where planning is not effective and local councils do not deal swiftly and effectively with applications. The powers are a last resort. We hope that they will not have to be used and that we can get enough encouragement through what I was going to say was the threat of legislation—although it will be there—to enable councils to get on and deal swiftly with planning applications.
As regards the points made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on town and village greens, I agree that we made a promise some time ago that we would put such provisions into legislation. There has been misuse of the main proposition regarding town and village greens, and bits of land were suddenly becoming part of mischievous objections—as I think they were called—to applications regarding town and village greens. Again, that issue will be dealt with, and it is important that we should do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, said correctly that, as with all planning for economic growth and development, leadership is required from local authorities. I know that many take that position and lead in the right way. However, some need a little encouragement to do so.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for his kind support on most things to do with planning, but I have answered his points about getting on with it. However, the important matter he mentioned, as did the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was the collaboration with local enterprise partnerships. The provisions on collaboration in the Localism Bill were pretty wide. They concerned next door councils being consulted on any applications that were cross-border, but of course there was the expectation that the public services will respond quickly to any of the requests put to them.
Local enterprise partnerships are the new scene. They are finding their way gradually and becoming quite a force in the way in which the land is dealt with. I totally agree that they need to be kept fully involved in what is going on and encouraged to take the necessary stance to ensure that the planning in their area is as well co-ordinated as it can be.
The noble Lord, Lord True, asked me why we have dropped the commitment to guard against garden grabbing. I am interpreting this as a sort of roundabout way of saying that he was objecting to extensions. The noble Lord knows, as I do, that we have already ruled out in the previous policy change the ability of local councils to class gardens as brownfield sites. They are not; they are now considered to be greenfield sites and therefore they are subject to planning permission and people cannot just build a mega building in their back gardens. I want to make it clear that garden grabbing is not allowed now and I am not sure whether I accept his point about extensions being garden grabbing although I think it is a neat way of raising the problem.
The noble Lords, Lord True, Lord Best and Lord Jenkin, were all concerned about the change of use between commercial and residential property without the need for planning permission. They specifically asked whether there were going to be exemptions to that. We have made it clear that there are areas where that form of development would be inappropriate and that local councils will be able to opt out. The national policy strongly supports business needs, and local councils should meet the need for offices and other business uses in full. They are not compromised by limited site availability but if there are proposals to change from commercial to residential then, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, that will affect such places as the City of London. I can give more information on how that can be done and how they can opt out in due course.
I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for smiling a little about the bats. I was not taking that for granted at all and I know that there are serious points to be made about natural habitat. I think his main point was the delay to major infrastructures. I can confirm that the national infrastructure planning system is starting to work and the national network, NPS, which he raised, is in the process of developing a high-level transport strategy. It may not quite be the firm answer that he wanted but it is as near as I am able to get.
The noble Lord, Lord Flight, referred to overzealous heritage controls. There are some areas with grade I listed buildings and others where local authorities will have to hang on to what goes on inside properties but that is not so for all properties. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, spoke about the green belt and I hope I have dealt with that.
We shall reflect on what has been said and if any questions have not been answered I will do so in writing to all Members. If I do not write it is because I do not think that the questions are there. If the questions are there I shall make sure that there is a response. I wish to thank everyone for taking part in the debate which I have found extremely useful.