Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
Main Page: Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Labour - Life peer)(13 years, 1 month ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government on what basis they consider that the current planning system needs substantial change.
My Lords, the planning system that we inherited is very bureaucratic and does too little to encourage sustainable development or community involvement. Rather than imposing targets or blueprints from above, this Government are changing things so that local people and their councils can decide what they need and how they accommodate it. Our reforms will create sustainable growth by working with people, not against them, and not at the expense of the environment.
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Minister for her reply. Of course we need more affordable homes, but I am not interested so much in the arguments as in the basis, or evidence, on which the Government are putting forward their proposals. Can she give the House the evidence for their proposals or perhaps put them in the Library? Can she for example confirm that 80 per cent of all planning applications are approved and that there are extant planning permissions, right now, for 330,000 houses, which have just not been built?
My Lords, I think it is probably correct to say that 80 per cent of planning applications are approved. It depends how long it takes for them to be approved. I believe that over 3,000 applications have been outstanding for well over a year. It is also true to say, I think, that as far as democracy is concerned, over 80 per cent of planning applications are considered by officers, something that was dictated by the previous Government. They do not have the democratic input that one would like. Somewhere along the line the local community is getting left out on this, and we need to put that right. It has been said that the land for those houses—I think the number is 240,000 rather than 300,000—amounts to about one year’s need in this country at the moment.