Planning

Debate between Bob Seely and Christopher Pincher

Thursday 15th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing the debate. He is a doughty campaigner for his constituents in the Isle of Wight, and I know that he thinks deeply and for a considerable length of time on these important, and sometimes intricate, planning matters.

I am very happy to look at the proposals that he has written to us about, because we all agree that we want to get our planning reforms right. We also all agree, including representatives from Shelter and KPMG, that we need more homes in our country. Both organisations will say that we need to build north of 250,000 new homes a year in our country to address our housing challenges. However, the present planning system, with all the plans calculated as a total, represents less than 180,000 new homes planned each year, so we do need to build more homes in the right places, and of the right quality, to serve our constituents. That is why we launched two consultations last year; that is sometimes, I think, forgotten. We launched the consultation on planning reform, because yes, we do want there to be more homes, but we also want a planning system that is more transparent, more predictable, easier to navigate and more speedy and that delivers good-quality, well designed homes. That is what we intend to achieve through our planning White Paper and the reforms that we will introduce later this year, and also a White Paper on local housing need in order to ensure that local authorities are planning for 300,000 homes each year. But the LHN—local housing need—number is not binding and is not an end to the process; it is a beginning point from which local authorities can then identify constraints, if they have them, or opportunities, if they want them, to build fewer or more homes than their target local housing need. The green belt is one example that local authorities can use as a constraint on building.

What is important is that local authorities keep their local plans up to date, because if they do not, they expose their constituents—all our constituents—to speculative development from applications that come forward, which the Planning Inspectorate will give great weight to if the local authorities do not have a plan, and do not have control of their local housing supply. I have to tell you, Mrs Cummins, that the local authorities in York, Gateshead, South Lakeland, and Bath and North East Somerset have plans that are out of date. They need to get them “in date” in order to protect their constituents from speculative developments. I say gently to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) that it is little use lecturing me about planning; what she should be doing is encouraging her local authority to get its plan in place and protect her constituents from speculative development.

We are keen to build a planning system that works for the 21st century and that moves faster than the present glacial pace of planning. It takes local plans seven years in many cases—on average—to be instituted. It then takes five years for many planning applications to see a spade in the ground. It is taking far too long. The process needs to be speeded up. But crucially, it needs to engage more people. That is a point that I know my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight has mentioned and that my hon. Friends for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) and for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) have also raised as an issue. Right now, sometimes as little as 1% of the local population in a planning authority area gets engaged in plan making. That rises to a whopping 2% or 3% when it comes to individual applications. And as we have heard, nine out of 10 planning applications—90%—are passed anyway. That is not particularly empowering; it is not particularly engaging. We want to do better.

[Bob Seely]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way in a moment to my hon. Friend, but I am conscious, if I may say so, that I have a lot of questions to answer that he and others have asked and he does get a second bite of the cherry later.

We do need to ensure that more people are engaged, and we believe that by digitising the planning process, by creating map-based plans of local areas, we can engage many more people in the planning process, and they can get more engaged up front, making real decisions about the sorts of buildings that they want in their local geographies—the densities and the designs—and about the infrastructure to support those homes. That is real power, given to people much earlier in the process, so that they can become much more engaged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I think that I am describing exactly that process. We want more people to be involved and we want them to have a say earlier on about specific matters that should concern them, including what areas may be sites for accelerated development in their areas and what the designs, the design codes and the infrastructure should be. I think that is deliberative democracy.

[Bob Seely]

I am not for one second trying to catch the Minister out, but at the beginning of the White Paper the Prime Minister said that he wanted to tear the system down and rebuild it. We are now evolving into a reform process rather than a scrapping process, as part of the very sensible evolution and listening process. Is that correct?

[Christopher Pincher]

As I said, we want to reform the system. If my hon. Friend listens to what I have said and to what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, he will know that we are keen to make sure that we have a process that reforms our planning system, which is outdated and needs change. However, we are not proposing to scrap it, to use the term that he used.

Land Banking

Debate between Bob Seely and Christopher Pincher

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

My message to all local authorities that do not have up-to-date local plans is: “Move as quickly as you can. If you do not, you do your constituents a disservice, because you leave them open to speculative development based on the presumption of sustainable development. It means you cannot protect your land, or support the communities that live on or around it, because you do not have a plan in place.”

Home building statistics show that in 2019 to 2020 there were nearly 244,000 net additional homes, including 220,000 new build homes. That is the highest annual increase for 30 years. The 2020 housing delivery test measurement, which we published in January, shows that around two thirds of local authorities have risen to the challenge and are supporting the delivery of the homes they need. The other third need to follow suit.

My hon. Friend referred to empty homes. I am pleased that the number of long-term empty homes has fallen by more than 30,000 since 2010. We have given councils powers and strong incentives to tackle long-term empty homes, including the power to increase council tax on them by up to 300% and to take over the management of them. Councils also receive the same new homes bonus for bringing an empty home back into use as for building a new one. It is probably worth mentioning that not all empty homes are habitable without some significant expenditure, or are in places where people need and want to live, but he raises an important point. I hope that I have demonstrated the Government’s commitment to getting appropriate empty homes back into use.

My hon. Friend also mentioned infrastructure. If we are to build new homes, we must have good infrastructure to support them. We recognise the crucial role that infrastructure plays in supporting new communities and improving neighbourhoods. Our manifesto committed to amending planning rules to ensure that the right infrastructure is in the right place before people take the step of moving into their homes. That is why we announced the national home building fund in the 2020 spending review.

The fund brings together existing housing, land and infrastructure funding streams into a single, flexible, more powerful pot, ensuring that roads, GP surgeries and schools are ready for people moving into new neighbourhoods, and driving an increase in supply in the areas of greatest need over the long term. At the next spending review, we will set out our proposals for the future of the national home building fund, to deliver on the Government’s commitment to invest £10 billion to unlock homes through the provision of infrastructure. That is on top of the £7.1 billion that we have already allocated, which we believe will unlock 860,000 new homes.

My hon. Friend mentioned the Government’s commitment to building back better after the pandemic and the importance of protecting the environment. Through the national planning policy framework, we have made it clear that planning policies and decisions should minimise the effects on biodiversity from development, protect our most sensitive habitats and provide net gains. That means that opportunities to incorporate biodiversity improvements in and around developments should be sought, especially where they can secure measurable net gains for biodiversity.

We intend to go further: 2021 will be a landmark year for environmental policy because in November we will host the UN climate change conference in Glasgow. Our Environment Bill will be a pivotal part of delivering the Government’s manifesto commitment to create the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on Earth. We will make provision for a mandatory 10% of biodiversity net gain improvements for a range of developments, including house building. That will ensure that future developments result in measurable enhancements to nature, strengthening the biodiversity of our environment overall. We will also give new powers to local authorities to tackle air pollution in their areas.

My hon. Friend made important reference to the green belt, and our priority as a Government is to continue to protect the status of our green-belt land. We stand by our manifesto commitment:

“In order to safeguard our green spaces, we will continue to prioritise brownfield development, particularly for the regeneration of our cities and towns.”

We are clear that green-belt land should be considered for release only if an authority can fully evidence that it has examined all other reasonable options for meeting its development needs.

In addition, the national planning policy framework makes it clear that there should be no approval of inappropriate development in the green belt, including most forms of new building, except in very exceptional circumstances, as determined by the local authority. That means that the authority should use as much brownfield land as possible, optimise development densities and co-ordinate with neighbouring authorities to accommodate development.

We are committed to working with local authorities to turn old, disused brownfield land back into use for vibrant, exciting new places, levelling up for communities across the country. We have announced a package of measures that sets a new and far-reaching cross-government strategy to build more homes, protect and enhance the environment and create growth opportunities across the country. It includes: our home building fund, providing £2 billion of funds to support often SMEs in the delivery of larger, mostly brownfield sites through loans for infrastructure and site preparation; and £2.9 billion to support small and medium-sized enterprises, custom builders and construction innovators to build housing, including on brownfield land.

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

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will not give way to my hon. Friend, because I have not got very long left and I appreciate he has only just arrived in the Chamber. If he will forgive me, I will continue.

Additionally, we have made available £400 million in brownfield housing funding, which has been allocated to seven mayoral combined authorities, including that of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South, enabling around 26,000 new homes across the region—brownfield site homes. He asked me what we can do to encourage Mayor Burnham to build the right homes in the right places in the right way. I point him to the investment we are making in the combined authority in Manchester to ensure we are unlocking the opportunity to build homes on brownfield sites and not greenfield or green-belt sites, which people understandably want to see preserved.

My hon. Friend has spoken passionately and eloquently in support of his constituents in this, his very first Adjournment debate. I congratulate him again on securing it and being such a champion for his constituents. I hope it is clear to him and to others that the Government are committed to delivering a planning system that is fit for purpose and that works for everyone.

The Gracious Speech announced that the Government will bring forward a planning Bill in the current Session of Parliament. We are working hard with our stakeholders, and with colleagues across the House and in the other place, to make sure that we get the Bill right. We want to hear people’s views. We want to ensure that we refine our proposals in such a way that we introduce legislation that works for everyone in our country and provides the right homes that the country needs. It will be a Bill that gets more infrastructure built, that will modernise the planning system and that will bring the entire system—more democratic, more engaging—into the 21st century. It will propose simpler and faster processes, giving communities and developers much more certainty over what development goes where, what it looks like and what the infrastructure should be, and ensuring that developers have to contribute their fair share to funding affordable homes.

Our reforms will empower local people to set standards for beauty and design in their area through design codes that put beauty at the heart of our system. We want to grow the supply, boost affordability and unlock opportunity, and to do so for every community in every region in our United Kingdom. I am very pleased to be able to say those words and to commend my hon. Friend for his debate.