Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Best

Wednesday 27th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord McKenzie’s inference from the responses to the consultation and welcome the direction of travel of the Minister’s amendment, but I shall argue for more specificity in the Bill. I speak to Amendment 10 in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who regrets that he cannot be here today. What I shall say has been drawn up with him, and I am grateful for his expert support and that of the Town and Country Planning Association. Perhaps I should also declare that I am an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Our amendment is tabled because of a gap in the concept of designation. Of all the evidence of poor performance by a planning authority, the one that has a particularly adverse effect on quality of life, as well as the local economy, is bad design, coupled with lack of sustainability, but that is not specified in the Bill. That power is open to wide discretion, whereas, at the other extreme, the consultation’s proposals for failing authorities are pretty mechanistic and relate to speed and appeal decisions—not tests of quality but, rather, tick-box exercises to check compliance. The impact of designation on local democracy is very powerful, and speed and compliance with the NPPF with regard to appeal decisions should not, I submit, be enough to prompt a designation decision. That should be taken in the round and take full account of the quality of outcomes. That is particularly important because the broad principles in the NPPF are themselves open to quite a degree of interpretation.

The two extremes of a vague, wide power in the Bill and narrow, mechanistic tests for failure omit the real point of good planning—to approve development that is durable and practical, acceptable to residents and capable of improving their total environment as well as, in the long term, saving public money. That cannot be done without an informed approach to design; but design capacity is still very patchy among planning authorities, and many succumb to the will or blandishments of developers who may well not have the long-term interest of the local community at heart.

Therefore, the amendment makes it necessary for the Secretary of State to consider what the authority has done by way of contributing to sustainable development and good design, which complements existing duties in planning legislation rather than enabling them to be overridden. He has also to consider, in addition, what the local views are so that, for instance, if a neighbourhood has developed design criteria but cannot get the planning authority either to accept them or to draw up its own, it is not short changed by the process. Finally, he must consider what any wider public interest might be. That latter obligation enables discretion to be used when necessary, so that it is not a matter of a fixed threshold being triggered. Finally, the Secretary of State must publish his or her reasons for designating according to the criteria in the amendment, which element of transparency I hope that the noble Baroness will also support.

In conclusion, the amendment would go a long way to protect residents from the kind of system failure in design and sustainability which poor planning authorities all too often let themselves in for. In that way, growth and infrastructure really could work properly. I commend the amendment.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 10 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. As this is my first intervention on Report, I note my relevant interests as president of the Local Government Association, chair of Hanover Housing Association and, in the context of the amendment, which concerns good design, vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In support of the intention behind this amendment, I would like to quote from an excellent speech delivered by the Minister for Planning, Nick Boles, to the Town and Country Planning Association shortly before Christmas. He said:

“People look at the new housing estates that have been bolted on to their towns and villages in recent decades and observe that few of them are beautiful. Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, many of them are pig ugly”.

He went on:

“Since new housing estates are all too often soulless and formulaic ... existing residents oppose any proposal to build new houses on green field sites, even when the land is of low environment quality”.

He continued:

“In a nutshell, because we don't build beautifully, people don't let us build much. And because we don't built much we can't afford to build beautifully”.

He later said:

“It is now for the planners, architects and developers, large and small, to seize the opportunity we have created and start designing beautiful places, which local people will welcome”.

Poor design not only affects the lives of the people who occupy the new buildings, it also affects those who live in the same neighbourhood. Because so much new development has been, as Nick Boles says, “pig ugly”, the great British public regularly turn out to stymie and oppose the creation of the new homes that are so essential to ending acute housing shortages.

This amendment would strengthen the emphasis on good design, which should always be a hallmark of projects obtaining planning consent. It would, thereby, make it easier to gain the consent of local communities to the building of the new homes this country needs so badly. I strongly commend it.

Localism Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Best

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

My Lords, this amendment concerns design review panels and is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. It goes some way to answering concerns expressed by noble Lords yesterday about giving prominence to design, which can seem a subjective concept—the argument that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The amendment gives local authorities permissive powers to submit applications for planning permission to a local design review panel and then to have regard to the views of this independent, cross-professional panel. It accords with my self-imposed ordinance to avoid amendments that extend central government’s powers over local authorities. It introduces not a duty but a permissive power.

An amendment proposed in the other place would have put an onus on developers to take their plans to such a panel. It was rejected by the Minister, Greg Clark, because it would have added to the regulatory burden on builders. My lighter-touch amendment avoids this hazard by putting the onus on local authorities, but without any compulsion on them—“may”, not “must”. Independent design review panels are working well in several areas and have proved their worth. Support is now available through a network of panels managed and facilitated by Design Council CABE, which advocates adoption of key principles, spreads good practice and works with the RIBA and the RTPI.

The amendment suggests that, with local authorities short-staffed and often struggling with their planning capacity, the time has come to extend the use of design review panels that so helpfully pull in expertise from outside the council to see that design is taken on board in local authority decisions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, before speaking to Amendment 170CD, perhaps I may express my extreme disappointment with the usual channels at their arrangements, which effectively prevented me from carrying out the job of scrutinising legislation here and speaking to Amendments 170B, 170C and 182, to which I added my name, because I was moving an amendment tabled in my name alone in the Education Bill Committee in the Moses Room. I hope that there will be no repetition of such a ridiculous arrangement in September so that noble Lords can carry out the work for which they were appointed.

I turn to Amendment 170CD. The noble Lord, Lord Best, explained clearly what it is about. I will add that the Housing Minister Greg Clark's awareness of the importance of good design is well known and appreciated. This new proposal is almost a tautologous requirement. One might say that there would not be much point in sending off an application to an independent panel and then paying no attention to its recommendations. This is the lightest of light touches. It is a gentle nudge in the direction of trying to make sure that, in the words of Greg Clark,

“the built environment is better than it otherwise would be, and that it is beautiful and functional for people to live in”.—[Official Report, Commons, Localism Bill Committee, 1/3/11; col.718.]

I hope the Minister will understand that. I am sure she will and that she will agree to accept the amendment.

Localism Bill

Debate between Baroness Whitaker and Lord Best

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 152ZA and 153ZA, which concern the design considerations in neighbourhood plans. This House contains many eminent champions of good design, including the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who have added their names to the amendment and are in their places today. I would only say, in declaring my interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, that my experience of looking after housing projects has proved to me that poor design not only alienates and depresses those who have to suffer it but is wastefully expensive because it does not last.

Contrast the disasters of now demolished council housing from the 1960s and 1970s with the enduring popularity of the homes built many decades earlier in the garden villages of Rowntree’s New Earswick, York, and Cadbury’s Bourneville, Birmingham. Last week the president of the RIBA, Ruth Read, launched an excellent report, Good Design: it all adds up, which the relevant Minister, John Penrose, highly commended. Design matters, so it seems entirely right that neighbourhood plans should be just as mindful of the requirements of good design as the local development plans of local authorities themselves. The first of these two amendments places a responsibility on neighbourhoods when engaging in neighbourhood planning to have,

“regard to the desirability of achieving good design”.

This replicates precisely the existing obligation on local authorities which resulted from an amendment in your Lordships’ House to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill in 2004.

Amendment 153ZA would mean that when neighbourhood plans are examined, as they will have to be under the Bill's provisions, the independent examiners would have special regard to the desirability of achieving good design. It may be argued that this issue can be addressed at one remove, through national or local government planning requirements. Publication of the national planning policy framework—when we finally see it—may shed light on the emphasis to be given nationally to issues of good design, and because the neighbourhood plan must be,

“in general conformity with the strategic”

priorities of the local development plan, good design could perhaps be implied through that route. However, the experts tell me that this is likely to be too weak a link.

Ministers in another place have helpfully accepted an amendment that requires the independent examiners to pay special regard to conservation areas and listed buildings. It seems equally important and worthy of an amendment to require the examiners to have special regard to design quality. I know that the decentralisation Minister, Greg Clarke, also favours good design and I hope that these amendments will appeal to the Government.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, in supporting Amendments 152ZA and 153ZA on the crucial aspect of the good design of the places that people live in, which has such wide support from professional and interest groups, I take comfort from the Minister’s undertaking in her letter to me of 20 June:

“We remain committed to promoting the highest standards of architecture and design”.

Indeed, this is what the Government did in also undertaking to honour the provisions relating to design in the previous housing and planning Acts. Those provisions, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, bound local authorities but not neighbourhoods because neighbourhoods did not come into being as the deciders of planning until the present Bill, so it is only consistent that the duty to have regard to good design should be extended to neighbourhoods, as Amendment 152ZA says.

Amendment 153ZA is consistent with the Government's undertaking and I need hardly repeat the evidence of the profound impact that design has on enjoyment, security, amenity, health and leisure. I am sure the Government would agree that communities should be enabled to make good design choices.