Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Jim McMahon and Chris Philp

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Jim McMahon]

I have been brought off the subs bench to do this. I am quite excited about the debate we have had and the evidence we have heard, because I am a localist; I believe that communities should have a say and be able to direct their futures in the most appropriate way. Neighbourhood planning gives them the ability to do that, framed in the context of a national plan and the land supply. That means national Government can achieve what they want to achieve, local authorities can take a view of the wider area and, integral to that, the community has a strong voice. That is why I am slightly at odds with permitted development.

A number of representations have been made over the years that are at odds with the “community first” approach that we have been talking about. The Local Government Association’s evidence frames that quite well. In the survey it carried out of its members, to which 93 local authorities responded, 82% were making a loss on maintaining that process. It is important we get some comfort from the Minister today and accept that local authorities are taking on an additional burden that they should be compensated for.

Moreover, that flies in the face of what we might assume would happen. Let us take light industrial and office accommodation as an example. The view surely is, “Well, there’s all this accommodation that isn’t being taken because the market demand for it isn’t there, so it’s far better to put that to good use as residential accommodation.” However, that is not what we have seen. Areas often have low office demand and low residential demand going hand in hand. I could take Members to Oldham town centre and show them empty office blocks, and alongside those is an empty potential residential conversion that, because demand has not taken hold, is commercially unviable.

We have seen a displacement in areas where there is significant high demand. In some London boroughs, for example, we have not seen empty office blocks being converted into solely residential accommodation; we have seen profitable businesses and charities that are there for the community benefit and value being displaced by landlords, who recognise that it is more financially beneficial to get rid of a tenant who is not paying anywhere near enough. They convert the building for residential use and displace the local business or charity in favour of greater profits.

Don’t take my word for it. We have examples in Barnet, where 100 small businesses and charities were displaced with just four to six weeks’ notice. We have a situation in Islington where 71 office buildings have been converted to residential accommodation. More than 40,000 square feet of office accommodation has been taken in that one borough, where there is demand for that facility.

[Chris Philp]

Is not Islington, along with many other London boroughs, now subject to an article 4 direction, which will prevent the conversions that the hon. Gentleman describes from taking place in future?

[Jim McMahon]

That is a fair point about where things are today, but the damage has been done and we cannot change things back to what they were. The phrase “a sledgehammer to crack a nut” has been used probably once too often today, but article 4 is a good example of a very big sledgehammer being used to crack a very particular nut. Article 4 affects everybody in the vicinity or within the boundary and obliges them to comply with the directive. I am talking about a particular problem that has been brought about by the extension of permitted development.

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[Jim McMahon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A lot of people are of the view that permitted developments of this type mean that an empty office is simply converted—from the outside there is very little difference, but it is what happens inside that changes, and that is surely up to the person who owns the building—but the rules actually allow for a building to be completely demolished and then rebuilt to a similar scale. That can change the street scene significantly, so it does go further.

Let us also consider the location of some of the buildings. Take an everyday town centre. It is easy to imagine two restaurants or bars operating with an office block in between. If the office block is converted under permitted development, the tenants who move in are forced to live with the noise nuisance of a pre-existing use in an acceptable location. What is not taken into consideration is how to create a vibrant community that has the requisite facilities, amenities and, importantly, quality of life. For a lot of people, permitted development as it stands does not have that balance in place.

The LGA, which is the voice of local government, has said that. It consults its members, who have been clear in numbers that the problems with permitted development should be looked at. It is odd that a Government who say that they are all about community voice and control—about people being empowered, for once, to have some control over what their communities look and feel like—are not tackling permitted development in the right way.

If we take ourselves out of the town centre, we could go to an industrial estate where small industrial units can be converted for residential use. It is perhaps okay if a unit is converted, but what about the existing users who suddenly have a barrage of complaints from the local authority about the noise nuisance from their pre-existing use, which might have been going on for decades? There might be early-morning or late-night deliveries at what is a predominantly industrial location that has suddenly changed into a residential neighbourhood, without the required facilities or amenities. It is a really big issue.

We have talked a lot about bricks and how important their colour and texture are. We have discussed whether they are important in pre-commencement or could be dealt with later. At least we are talking about them. If someone goes for a change of use under permitted development, very little attention is given to the quality of finish, design and detail. An entire shopfront has been removed in my town. Imagine how a shopfront block looks: there is a hole on the ground floor where a full shopfront used to be, with a sign on top. I know of several examples where the shopfront has been taken away, leaving an exposed girder where the sign used to be, and a completely inappropriate insert has been added that has no relationship to the wider street scene. In a normal planning application, such issues would be negotiated with a developer to ensure that they were dealt with appropriately.

We must recognise that permitted development flies in the face of the community voice and empowerment that we have been talking about.

[Chris Philp]

On the question of shopfronts, class A1 retail use, to which the hon. Gentleman is referring, is not subject to permitted development rights, which apply only to class B1 office use.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Jim McMahon and Chris Philp

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I should draw colleagues’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a shareholder in a business that provides finance for construction projects.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

I am a councillor in Oldham.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Jim McMahon and Chris Philp

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Jim McMahon]

Q I am interested in the balance of the drive and ambition to build more homes with trying to protect the environmental standards, in particular around the green belt. I would welcome your views on that.

Matt Thomson: Shall I kick off, given that green belt is one of the key things that the Campaign to Protect Rural England is concerned with? It comes down to the general principle behind neighbourhood planning, that people and communities at the local level are best placed to make decisions about the impacts of development on their area, and about the type of development that takes place in their area. The more local the level at which decisions are made, the better the outcomes can be for those kinds of concerns.

Carole Reilly: I think it is really important that we listen to communities. We have seen a number of neighbourhood planning groups that are challenging local authorities that have not got a “brownfield first” policy. That is one the things that we see: a brownfield list that is going to be updated and reported on. That surely will be one of the ways, viability issues all being considered, of securing the green belt.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Q Welcome to Westminster. Do you think the way the local plan interacts with the neighbourhood plan could be improved in any way, particularly bearing in mind that the neighbourhood plan has been subject to local referendum? If you think that interaction could be improved, how would you suggest improving it?

Carole Reilly: I think we are going to see quite an interesting two years coming up, where local planning authorities are getting their local plans in place. I think neighbourhood plans and local plans can be produced in tandem. They depend on a lot of the same evidence. We are very heartened that this Bill shows a commitment for local authorities to explain what their support is going to be. There are a number of ways in which the development of the local plan would really help the development of a neighbourhood plan: giving maps, giving evidence, sharing diagrams—stuff that often does not happen at local authority level. So I think there is a way that they can be developed together. Without a local plan, obviously the latest plan takes precedence under the national planning policy framework—it is the neighbourhood plan. Where there is no five-year land supply, that leaves your neighbourhood plan terribly vulnerable. So I think the two have got to be intertwined. We also have to remember that, in practice, we are four years in, and there was a lot of scepticism from local authorities about neighbourhood plans. It feels like there is a far more open, partnership approach now.

But local planning authorities have been stripped of funding and they have reduced huge amounts of skills. Lots of people do not have a lot of experience with neighbourhood planning, and their focus will be on writing and producing the local plan. So I think they should be produced together, they should be meshed together, and that can be done by sharing that top-level evidence that is gathered by the local planning authority, but I think the resources are tight and the focus is going to be on the local plan.

Matt Thomson: I would agree with a lot of what Carole said. The question reflects one of the key problems that we have been facing with the operation of the planning system for decades. That is that where you have tiers of nested planning policy documents, there is always a question of which has precedence over the other. It should not necessarily be just a question of the one that is produced most recently holding the most weight in a planning application environment.

Another, bigger, question has vexed us with regard to the relationship between local plans, county structure plans and regional strategies. We tend to think of neighbourhood plans as somehow needing to be prepared in the context of an adopted local plan, despite the fact that, although we have lots of adopted local plans, we do not have enough adopted local plans. But we need a relationship whereby the work that goes on at the neighbourhood plan level informs the preparation of the local plan, rather than the local plan, when it is finally produced, somehow trumping a short-lived neighbourhood plan and forcing the neighbourhood to review that plan. We need somehow to protect the policies and proposals of the neighbourhood plan, and bring them into the local plan when it is being produced.

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[Jim McMahon]

Q In order to allow flexibility—so you would not argue for a blanket rule to allow demolition in all cases, because there might be an argument to say that what is there now could be better than the alternative, depending on the final scheme presented.

Tim Smith: Yes. It is the kind of thing that is susceptible to regulations and policy far better than it is to primary legislation, but that would be an example of where some welcome flexibility could be brought.

Richard Blyth: I think there is an issue around whether the condition needs to be pre-commencement or not—around leverage, I suppose. If construction is under way, there is less incentive for the developer to come forward and submit the relevant scheme because they are already getting on with it, whereas saying, “You must do all this before you start,” gives a very powerful incentive for the party to come to the table. That may be why local authorities have tended to do that. They are afraid that, if they try to implement and enforce a condition after the starting gun, they might find that that was very difficult to do in terms of ultimately getting the court to agree. There are lawyers here who would probably better interpret that than me, but that may be why this has arisen.

Under the Infrastructure Act 2015, if a condition is not discharged by a certain time, it will be discharged in a deemed fashion, so the issue of having to discharge them is not necessarily requiring further legislation—we have just had some legislation on that. The other question is that, if a condition is not really serving a useful planning purpose, welcome other aspects of the Bill would say that it should not actually be possible to impose it in any case.

I am just a little concerned that requiring every good developer and every good planning authority to go through a written sign-off procedure for the sake of the minority, perhaps, of planning authorities and developers who may be pursuing less good practice is kind of asking everyone to take on an extra burden for the benefit of some bad eggs. Maybe there is another way of dealing with the problem of poor practice than requiring everyone else to have to go through the process of signing off conditions and, ultimately, the risk of applications being refused as the only way of resolving the dispute.

[Chris Philp]

Q The draft legislation provides that the Secretary of State by regulations can prohibit the use of certain planning conditions entirely, should the Secretary of State see fit. First, do you think that is a reasonable provision? Secondly, assuming you do—or if you do—are there any particular kinds of planning condition that you, if you were advising the Secretary of State, would advise him or her to prohibit?

Tim Smith: We have some visibility about how this might play out, because the consultation has been issued for views on what sort of conditions might be prevented. What we have in those proposals are things that, as a matter of policy, ought not to be applied anyway. I recognise that putting them on a statutory footing places a different emphasis on them. It is not just a question of whether policy should be interpreted so as to prevent them. The starting point will be that they should not be applied.

Having seen the list of conditions that are proposed, I would have a concern that some of them are not capable of being drafted in a sufficiently precise way. One proposal, for example, is that conditions should not be imposed that place a disproportionate financial burden on developers. That is easy to state and easy to understand as a concept—