Planning and Housing Supply

Lord Brady of Altrincham Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friends on securing this debate. We can tell by the attendance today, and from our postbags, that the subject is of great importance to Members and our constituents. It follows on from a 30-minute debate held in Westminster Hall some time ago, in which, because of sheer weight of numbers, the time limit was very restrictive. Today we have been given double that limit— six minutes.

I spent 12 years on the local council, and planning exercised my residents more than anything else, and as an MP, I find a similar situation. The creation of the NPPF has simplified the planning laws, which had become complicated and burdensome. Like many others here today, I supported sending the power to rule on applications down to local authorities. As a councillor on the planning committee, I felt many times that we were rubber-stamping central Government policies on development. That was frustrating to me and my residents, because they believed, as I did when first elected, that the local authority was the sole arbiter on applications.

As previous speakers have said, I look forward to a brave new world under the new NPPF and local plans, where locally elected representatives make the decisions that impact so much on local people, but I, too, am concerned about recent events. My constituency, High Peak, is the most beautiful in the country, though I am biased. I am sure that others will disagree. As I said in the previous debate, there has been a proliferation of significant applications for development on greenfield sites. They have been refused by the local authority’s planning committee on perfectly legitimate grounds. This is not a case of nimbyism at all. The decisions were met with great approval, and in some cases relief, by local residents, who felt that their views had been represented by the people for whom they had voted.

I want to be clear: the High Peak is a great place to live. I am lucky, as are my constituents. We know that many people would love to live in the High Peak. We are not of the mind that says, “We have our housing and we’re going to pull the ladder up. We’re all right, Jack.” We acknowledge that there is a need for some housing. My constituents have young children and teenagers. There are people in their early 20s who want to stay and live in the High Peak. There is a housing need, which I touched on in my Adjournment debate last week on the challenges facing rural businesses. We need houses for people to live in, so that they can work in the High Peak. No one I have spoken to disputes that there is a need for housing. My constituents would accept development, provided it was proportionate.

Recent decisions by local councillors, who, I remind everyone, are elected by local people, have been overturned by the Planning Inspectorate, which is not. That flies in the face of everything that we believe about localism. I have spoken to many residents, who are seeing more applications coming forward, with the threat of ever larger developments. In my previous speech on the subject, I highlighted the area of Harpur Hill and the concerns of its residents’ association. I will not repeat the statistics, because time is short and they are in Hansard, but as I said in my previous speech, the problems facing Harpur Hill are mirrored in other areas of my constituency. As the Minister knows, Chapel-en-le-Frith parish council now objects to every significant planning application, after several applications have already been given the nod. If all of them were built, the size of that small village, where I live, would increase significantly, beyond what many believe the infrastructure could cope with.

I could run through a list of applications in different parts of my constituency, but we are not at a planning meeting today. My constituents are asking questions about the applications and the method of approval. Are they powerless to prevent approvals? Can they at least ensure that there is some sense of proportion? Proportion is what they are asking for. I am sure that the Minister will respond that local plans should be drawn up, and planning policy should be defined in documents and properly evaluated. My local council has yet to product its local plan; indeed, it has delayed its anticipated completion. In 2011, the controlling Labour group rejected proposals from the Conservative group to use some underspend to bring forward brownfield sites. It has now belatedly allocated some extra resources to that. Delaying the local plan has created a window of opportunity for developers. I could easily turn my contribution into a tirade against the Labour group and its management of the local authority. I have met the executive member to discuss the situation; he has his views and I have mine.

I want to deal with the harsh realities of the here and now. No local plan has been completed, and developers are submitting speculative applications time after time—applications that may have been refused in the past. They see from previous examples, which I highlighted today, that the Planning Inspectorate appears to be unmoved by local representations. I repeat that this is not nimbyism; my constituents and I are not against development. It is about proportion. A well-constructed local plan should bring in proportion, but at the moment the Planning Inspectorate does not listen to our views.

I am pleased that the Minister has agreed to visit the High Peak. I promise him a warm welcome in the hillsides. We can have an interesting day. There has been a dearth of houses built in the past few years, and that has created the shortage facing us today, but I am concerned that in our eagerness to deal with that, we are being too hasty, and will be left to repent at leisure. I have asked the Minister this question previously, and I will repeat it today: will he not seek to give more weight to emerging plans? I know that that may amount to making up for the shortcomings of the council, but I am looking to assist my constituents.

I am looking at the clock; time is short, and I could go on to several other issues. A consultation on the latitude in permitted development rights for agricultural buildings closed recently. The Peak District national park covers a large chunk of my constituency. I value that national park greatly, as I know the Minister does—he has gone on record on this. People are concerned about that proposal. There was also a consultation on catching up on housing deficits, and having to reduce them in the first two or three years. That will cause huge problems to local authorities if we are not careful.

I plead with the Minister: listen to what we have all said today. We are all on a common theme: we need houses. We know that under the previous Government, the numbers were woefully low, but let us get some proportion. The essence of localism is local decisions made by local people. That is not happening in the High Peak, and, from what we have heard today, it does not appear to be happening in other areas of the country. I would therefore like some assurance from the Minister that something can be done for my constituents. Harold Wilson once said to Hugh Scanlon,

“get your tanks off my lawn”;

the people of High Peak are saying to developers, “Get your bulldozers off our fields.”

I look forward to welcoming the Minister to High Peak. My residents are eager to see him. I hope that he will come soon. It is very cold and high where I live, and we will get a lot of snow soon, so I recommend that he comes as soon as possible.

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Hon. Members have all been so disciplined in their time-keeping that we have lots of time for Front Benchers’ responses. However, I am keen to reserve at least a couple of minutes at the end for the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) to respond, if he wishes.

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[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. We know that a number of sites with planning permission never end up being developed. The point I am trying to make is that we must look seriously at the housing numbers that we need, particularly as we have a shortage, partly because we were not building enough in the past.

Private completions increased from 2003, with a steady improvement to 154,000 in 2007. However, they fell with the economic crash to 89,000 in 2012. In contrast, new affordable homes produced by local councils and housing associations, which averaged more than 130,000 per annum in the 1950s and ’60s, have seen a steep downward trend since the 1970s. Production has averaged fewer than 30,000 per annum since the mid-1980s, falling to 13,000 in 2003. There has been some improvement since then, with new completions at 27,000 in 2009 and a similar number in 2012, due to the housing stimulus put in place by the previous Labour Government following the crash. However, the numbers produced are too low.

There is an ever-growing gap between supply and demand, which means that millions of hard-working people are increasingly priced out of buying their own home. Home ownership has declined from its peak in 2001—69%—to 64% in 2011. The average house price is now nine times larger than the average wage. The average low-to-middle income household would now have to save for 22 years to accumulate a deposit for the typical first home, compared with just three years in 1997. So-called second steppers are also being affected, with the average age for a second purchase rising to 41, despite 40% of families saying that their first home is too small for a growing family.

More than 1.1 million families with children, and 8 million people in all, are now part of what we are calling generation rent. They are paying private rents that are rising faster than wages and contributing towards a cost of living crisis. They face rip-off letting agent fees, instability and uncertainty as a result of short-term tenures, and sometimes poor standards and service. Many want to buy their own home but have little hope of being able to do so.

We must address the housing shortage. I absolutely agree with all the Members who have contributed this afternoon that development sites need to be identified by local communities, with a stronger emphasis on neighbourhood planning and putting consent at the heart of the planning system. I think that can be helped in a number of ways. I have often paid tribute to the Minister and his predecessors for introducing neighbourhood planning. We think that is probably the key in the medium and longer term to delivering the sorts of neighbourhood that we all want.

The issue is not just about housing. I think we will partly get consent when we stop referring only to housing numbers when talking about the issue. People want to see employment, proper infrastructure and leisure, and they want to keep their open spaces. The issue is about building communities, and we have to talk more about that.

We also need to do something about quality. I know from my constituency that people often get upset about the houses proposed, because they simply look awful: they are too small, or have various features not in keeping with the local neighbourhood. We need to get better at improving the quality of our housing stock. That is especially important in rural areas, national parks, areas of special scientific interest and so on. I am a bit concerned that the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 reduced some of the existing protections in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. That is not a good thing; it is a step in the wrong direction. [Interruption.] I think that hon. Members might think that the clock is set for 4 o’clock, but we actually have until 4.30.

Will the Minister consider the Woodland Trust briefing sent to all of us about giving better protection to ancient woodlands and planting many more trees? Does he intend to monitor the relaxation of permitted development rights and use-class order changes to see what happens to the quality of buildings in rural areas as well as on our high streets? High streets are not part of this debate, but rural town centres would be relevant as well.

I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about the over-reliance on appeals that seems to have emerged as a result—probably a temporary one—of the national planning policy framework having been put in place before local plans were adopted. I am interested to know whether he has thought about that, or considered speeding up plan-making to reduce the reliance on decisions made by inspectors. Does he plan to strengthen the brownfield first policy, which the NPPF weakened, and does he intend to reform land acquisition and assembly in accordance with some of the helpful suggestions made in this debate about opening up the land supply market for competition by a larger number of people?

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

The shadow Minister is quite right: it is possible, though not mandatory, for the debate to continue until 4.30.

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[Martin Horwood]

My constituents in places such as Leckhampton and Hatherley do not understand this: the econometric model is based not so much on need as on demand, which in areas such as mine—and St Albans and many other constituencies—is practically insatiable, so we will still have high house prices that are unaffordable for many first-time buyers in places such as Cheltenham, because we have good schools and shops, as well as a good local environment and good employment levels. If such areas are simply consigned to endless development, we will lose something very precious to local people and to the environment.

The problem with the Minister’s scenario is that the issue is not about trying to stop all development—nobody has said that—but about wanting local people to be able to make some difference and have some say. The economic model for the assessed housing need or demand—

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that interventions should be short.

[Martin Horwood]

Sorry, Mr Brady. The model or whatever dictates that number should not be a be-all and end-all that nobody can influence.

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[Nick Herbert]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister and I will have a look at the specific provisions that he says address the concern that we raised last December, and that he committed to bring forward; I thank him for that. Can he assure me that the proposals in the guidance in relation to infrastructure will enable a local authority, in drawing up a plan, to adjust the housing number that it sets, such that the number may be lower than the strategic housing market assessment provides, because of infrastructure considerations?

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Before the Minister replies, I remind him that we only have three and a half minutes left, and I am keen to allow the Member responsible for securing the debate—the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson)—to reply as well.

[Nick Boles]

If you will forgive me a very scrappy finish, Mr Brady, I will answer the question, and then I will sit down to allow my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury to speak.

Very specifically, development must be sustainable, and sustainable in many ways. Infrastructure is one of the ways in which it needs to be sustainable. However—the however is quite important—to say that the current infrastructure is insufficient to support a level of development that otherwise would be “sustainable” in other senses of the word is not quite enough, because someone has to be able to say that it is incapable of being made sufficient to support that level of development; in other words, that the local authority either could not bring the financial resources together or could not physically and geographically make arrangements to make that development sustainable. Just to say, “The road is too narrow; we can’t do anything more there,” is not quite enough. To say, “The road is too narrow and can never be widened, because it’s between two ancient forests that have the highest status,” could be sufficient and that tends to be where the debates take place. However, as I say, I am very happy to invite my right hon. Friend to meet officials to explore this issue further.

I will conclude. I am sorry if I have not answered everybody’s questions.

[Mr Laurence Robertson]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Brady. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and to have served under that of Mr Havard earlier.

I thank all the Members who have attended Westminster Hall today and contributed to this very lively debate. I thank the Minister for his attendance and his answers. I am not completely satisfied, as he would imagine, by some of the answers he has given, particularly about this so-called “housing crisis”. He said that we are an ageing population. Of course we will age during the next 20 years, but we aged during the past 20 years as well, so I am not convinced that the projections should jump up so much because of that single factor. Of course, families go their own separate ways and people unfortunately have divorced, but again I am not aware that the projection will go up in the way that it would need to in order to justify the additional housing figures that are being talked about.

The Minister was perhaps talking about people being unable to buy houses, and ignoring the financial constraints. In my experience, it is not necessarily that the houses are not there. We went through a situation where some lenders were lending 125% of the house price, which had the effect of inflating those house prices. Now we have the opposite, where there is a very tight lending policy, and that is making it difficult for people to borrow. I accept the philosophy of price elasticity, of course—demand and supply—but there is more to it than that, so I am a little concerned that the Government are still clinging to the “housing crisis” phrase.

I will rattle through one or two final points. I am very much in favour of neighbourhood plans, of course, but they have to be in conformity with the local plan, so they are not actually that valuable.

My final point is the one raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) about infrastructure. Does that mean that numbers can be reduced? What about the green belt? What about flood risk areas? All these provide great difficulties, certainly in my constituency, to coming up with the sort of numbers that are being proposed by the Government—

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order.