Housing and Planning

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is right. Broadband is one of the benefits that people seek from new development. Mandates are one potential way to secure such benefits. The broader change that I would like to be made is the removal of all restrictions that depend on section 106 and for the system to be replaced with something that is more fit for purpose.

Beyond the need to create a better system for contributions, we need to give councils other tools to create better quality and more planned development. In my constituency, there is an old rubber factory that is two minutes’ walk from a mainline station, which is only an hour from London. It is the perfect site to build on, but despite the fact that the council gave planning permission in 2004, nothing has happened because there is nothing to disincentivise the owners from simply sitting on their hands. We need to learn from the USA and from other countries in Europe, and give councils the power to buy land, to grant themselves planning permission and to take more of a leading role in development. The current situation is a legal minefield, so I believe we should reform the Land Compensation Act 1961.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for making a fantastic speech. The planning system is so frustrating. Isle of Wight Council does not have a housing revenue account, so it does not have access to the billions of pounds of funding. On the Island we are desperate to build one and two-bedroom properties, rather than being deluged with endless planning applications for low density, greenfield houses for folks to retire to the Island. Does he agree that we need a more flexible system that caters for the needs of specific communities, especially isolated island communities?

[Neil O'Brien]

My hon. Friend is completely correct. People want a proper plan-led system. Other countries achieve that by allowing local government to play a stronger role in determining where things go.

We must reform the 1961 Act to make it clear that buyers can pay current market use values for land rather inflated hope values. We should stop land prices being bid up in the first place, by stopping sites going through the plan-making process on the assumption that developers are going to get away without paying for infrastructure. We should turn Homes England into a flying squad to help councils plan and deliver brownfield regeneration. We must make sure that council planning departments are well enough resourced to retain good staff. It is a difficult industry where the poachers, as it were, can pay people a lot of money, and local councils often struggle to hang on to good staff.

My final proposed reform to the planning system is to reboot neighbourhood planning so that it can fulfil its potential. Many places in my constituency have drawn up neighbourhood plans, and people have given a lot of time to them. In some cases they have been a force for good and shaped the way in which, and where, things get built. In other cases, however, they have taken so long to draw up that developers have front-run them. Too many are lengthy and lack the one thing that would give them real bite, which is a map of where development does and does not go.

We should radically simplify and speed up the process of making neighbourhood plans. They should all have a clear map of where development does and does not go. Where councils are planning sensibly, we must give them more legal weight. As I argued in a report for the think-tank Onward, we should reward outstanding councils by making them exempt from any appeal to the planning inspector.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

rose—

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

rose—

[Robert Jenrick]

If I could perhaps make some progress, I will come to the points around building safety in a moment and return to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell).

As I have said, getting this right will be a priority for the Government, for the Prime Minister and for myself. We will be introducing two Bills: one to deal with the immediate fire safety issues that we have identified, and another that will bring in the biggest change to building regulations in almost 40 years. Having met families of the bereaved and survivors, some of whom join us in the Gallery today, I remain acutely aware of our responsibility to ensure that they continue to receive the support they need and to see the change that they rightly demand. They have shown incredible resilience and acted not just with great dignity but with great courage. Their voices are being heard, and they must continue to be. On 30 October last year I stood in the House with the Prime Minister following the publication of the Grenfell inquiry’s phase 1 report, which covered the events of the night. Our immediate response was to accept in principle all the findings of the report that relate to the Government. Since then, we have worked at pace to deliver the Government’s response, which I am setting out today.

Sir Martin’s report provides a detailed, minute-by-minute account of what happened on the evening of 14 June 2017. It is built around the testimony of survivors and of the fire and rescue team involved in the response. The report made very important recommendations, including new duties for building owners; operational changes for the London Fire Brigade and, indeed, for fire and rescue services more widely, as well as for emergency services across the country; and addressing the continued presence of unsafe cladding on buildings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend makes a series of extremely important points. Those issues have been brought to the attention of all the emergency services; they are now working through them. The Home Office is helping to co-ordinate that work and, like her, I hope that those lessons are learned as quickly as possible so that if we are ever presented with a tragedy on this scale again all the emergency services can work together as one, in a co-ordinated way.

Fire and rescue services need urgently to address these issues and must set out their plans to do so. There have been some welcome developments, including, for example, that the London Fire Brigade now carries smoke hoods on its fire engines; that five pumps and a drone, rather than four pumps, are now deployed to fires in high-rise buildings; and that the London Fire Brigade has already taken steps to ensure that personnel understand the risk of fire taking hold in external wall systems. My hon. Friend the Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service will address the House at the end of the debate on the work he is doing with the sector.

The work I have outlined shows the urgency with which we are addressing Sir Martin’s recommendations. The Government did not wait for the phase 1 report to begin addressing the most pressing building safety issues. We took immediate action in the aftermath of the fire with a comprehensive and independent review of building safety, chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt.

[Bob Seely]

It seems to me that ACM cladding, which my right hon. Friend addressed earlier, goes to the heart of the matter. How many high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding have been identified and have had remedial treatment? How many others does he think still have to be identified, and what steps is he taking to do so?