Lord Barwell
Main Page: Lord Barwell (Conservative - Life peer)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
We have recently consulted on increasing planning fees, and we will be setting out our response in the forthcoming White Paper.
Steve McCabe
As the Minister might know, I have been pursuing the issue of protecting family homes. I am not against permitted development, but I am against rogue developers who are able to cause untold misery to ordinary homeowners through ruthless exploitation and breaches of permitted development because they are better resourced than local authorities to deal with enforcement. Will the Minister agree to look again at the issue of enforcement in that area?
Gavin Barwell
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern that local authorities should use their enforcement powers. The Housing and Planning Act 2016 has given local authorities substantial additional powers to tackle rogue landlords through the creation of a database, the use of banning orders, the extension of rent repayment orders and an increase in civil penalties. The powers are there, and I would be happy to meet him to discuss how they should be used.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
One of the best ways to ensure that local planning departments have sufficient resources to carry out their duties is to allow local authorities to charge the full cost of planning applications. This is something that the Government promised to introduce a long time ago, and I very much hope that this Minister will bring it in.
Gavin Barwell
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. As I have said, we are consulting on the issue of greater resourcing for local authority planning departments, and virtually everyone I have met in the four months since I became Housing Minister has said that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. If my hon. Friend bears with us, he will see a solution in the housing White Paper.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
The Minister will know that, due to Government cuts, spending on planning in local authorities has fallen by a massive £1 billion since 2010. We have heard warm words from the Government this afternoon about plugging the huge funding gap, particularly in relation to allowing fees to rise, but will he tell us what more he plans to do to resource planning departments properly, so that they can produce local plans and make plans for the new settlements, new towns and garden cities that we so desperately need if we are to solve our housing crisis?
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Lady is quite right to say that local authority planning departments have a crucial role to play in tackling the housing problems that this country faces, but she undersells their record of achievement under this Government. She talked about local plans. When Labour left office, 17% of councils had a local plan; today, the figure is 72%.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Will the Minister also bear in mind that there is great support for local flexibility on planning fees and that many respectable developers and builders would value that flexibility, provided that it was ring-fenced and reinvested in local planning authorities? That is particularly important in areas such as London, where the cost pressures are especially great.
Gavin Barwell
My hon. Friend makes an important point. If we increase the resources raised through planning fees, it is essential that that money is spent on extra resourcing in planning departments. He is quite right to say that both local authorities and developers are pressing the case to solve the issue.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
Our guidance is clear that decisions on planning applications, whether by local authorities or by planning inspectors, must be taken in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.
Steve Double
I thank the Minister for that answer. Housing developer Wainhomes recently submitted a planning application for 300 homes on a site in St Austell that was not allocated for development in the town framework. The local council consulted widely when producing the framework and found that 95% of local residents who responded did not want the site to be developed. I know that the Minister cannot comment on specific applications, but does he agree that if permissions are granted on sites that are not allocated for development, that does little to promote the public’s confidence in the planning system?
Gavin Barwell
I share my hon. Friend’s determination that we have a plan-led system. It is vital that local authorities get plans in place, so I was delighted that Cornwall voted to adopt its local plan on 22 November.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the Secretary of State’s actions last week completely undermined the neighbourhood plan of Newick in my constituency with the overturning of the decision on the Mitchelswood Farm site? Some 89% of people in Newick voted for their neighbourhood plan, which excluded that site. Does that not suggest that neighbourhood plans are not worth the paper they are written on?
Gavin Barwell
Neighbourhood plans are a vital part of an area’s development plan. Where a local authority does not have a five-year land supply in place, my hon. Friend is quite right that that is an alternative consideration. With the White Paper, we want to consider how we can change policy so that the people who work hard to produce such plans have more confidence that they will have an effect on all applications.
Mr Speaker
I gently remind right hon. and hon. Members that they should not leave the Chamber until all the exchanges on the question to which they have contributed have been concluded. One fellow has just beetled out of the Chamber having popped his question, taking precisely zilch interest in anybody else’s. I am sure that the discourtesy was inadvertent, but it is in breach of a long-standing convention of this House, of which all Members ought to be aware. Modesty and kindness forbid me to mention the name of the offending individual on this occasion.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
We want to see all areas with an up-to-date plan in place that meets housing need. We are doubling annual capital spending on housing over the course of this Parliament, and we will be announcing further measures, some specific to rural areas, in the forthcoming White Paper.
Huw Merriman
I thank the Minister for his response, and I am keen to see more local housing. With 75% of my constituency designated as areas of outstanding natural beauty, my district councils are in the midst of delivering a much-needed five-year land supply. Will he assure me that the Government will implement robust measures to prevent opportunist developers from applying to build anywhere in our AONB in the meantime?
Gavin Barwell
I am delighted to hear that my hon. Friend’s local councils are getting their five-year land supply in place, as that is crucial. In the meantime, I can reassure him that the national planning policy framework says that great weight should be given to conserving landscape and scenic beauty in AONBs, so the protection is there in national policy.
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
What will the Minister be doing to ensure that British-made ceramics—tiles and bricks—will be used for rural housing and, for that matter, for all housing?
Gavin Barwell
That is a good question and I am happy to meet the hon. Lady to explore what opportunities exist, as she is a doughty champion for her area and for her industry.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that under the national planning policy framework, unmet housing need does not constitute an exceptional circumstance necessary to warrant building in the green belt?
Gavin Barwell
That is a timely question. The answer is that the NPPF does not define what the exceptional circumstances are that should justify changing green belt boundaries. That is rightly a matter for local communities to decide on.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
My right hon. Friend is right to raise concerns about the quality of service provided by some managing agents. That is why we are introduced legislation to ensure that property management agents belong to an approved redress scheme.
Alistair Burt
I am working with constituents who, despite a number of complaints about management services on a relatively newly built estate, find that the management agents are not prepared to meet them as a group. They find that their local parish council has discontinued contact with the management agents, and the management agents have not held an annual general meeting, as they promised in their agreement. If this is in any way familiar to my hon. Friend, will he tell me what more my constituents can do to redress the balance of power between themselves and the people who seem to have them over a barrel?
Gavin Barwell
Sadly, the situation that my right hon. Friend describes is familiar, and something that he has raised before. The Government are looking to address it. Although there are existing legal powers, we are exploring whether further changes are required to address this problem.
Gavin Barwell
It certainly would be good to see longer tenancies in the private rented sector, but in terms of regulating to force all private landlords to let for longer periods and to introduce rent controls, we have only to look at the record in our own country and around the world to see what the result of such policies would be: a smaller private rented sector, which would make our housing problems worse.
Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)
My hon. Friend is right to underline the importance of local authorities having a five-year land supply and an up-to-date local plan, because that ensures that local communities can decide where development should go, what kinds of development should happen, and which sites should be protected. I am looking forward to visiting his constituency shortly, and I hope we can discuss these issues in more detail then.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
The amount of money that has been cut from social care since 2010 dwarfs what the Secretary of State’s Department is going to be putting in over the next five years. He might wish to deny it, but there is a crisis in our health and social care services, with too many people stuck in our hospitals because there is no care available to enable them to come out. Why did the Secretary of State fail to make adequate representations to the Chancellor to ensure that funding was allocated in last week’s autumn statement?
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Gavin Barwell
That was a great question from my hon. Friend. The Greater London Authority will be launching its affordable housing programme tomorrow. It is worth reiterating what the Mayor has said, which the Secretary of State quoted:
“This is the largest sum of money ever secured by City Hall to deliver affordable housing.”
That is just the beginning, because last week the Chancellor announced another £1.4 billion, and London will get a share of that budget. That is a clear sign of the Government’s commitment to tackling our housing problems.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
People who live close to recreational airfields such as Hibaldstow do not have the same protection from noise and nuisance as people who live near to similar recreational activities that involve staying on the ground. Will the Secretary of State have a look into this and see what can be done about it?
Gavin Barwell
The Minister for Housing and Planning is very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss those issues.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
Gavin Barwell
Provided that local plans have a five-year land supply, the expectation should be that planning applications are decided in accordance with those local plans, unless clear material considerations suggest otherwise. My message to my hon. Friend is to make sure that his local authority has a local plan in place with a five-year land supply.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
The housing waiting lists that apply to my constituency have been growing for a long time. Can the Secretary of State answer earlier questions and tell us what proportion of the much-vaunted new houses will be rented, and what proportion will be for social rent?
Gavin Barwell
What we have done with the affordable housing programme is to give complete flexibility, so I cannot give a specific answer, because it will depend on the bids that housing associations make from the programme. There is complete flexibility in relation to tenure. The Government have had a policy of focusing on affordable rent rather than social rent, because that allows us to deliver far more homes for a given level of public subsidy.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Will the new White Paper address the fact that under the Government’s flawed right-to-buy proposals, more socially rented houses are currently being sold than are being replaced?
Gavin Barwell
We are very proud of the right-to-buy policy, which gives ordinary working people the chance to buy their homes. Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman is that it is absolutely essential that we replace the affordable rented accommodation that is sold, and the Secretary of State and I are absolutely determined to make sure that that happens.
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
Will the Minister meet me and representatives from the Royal Marsden hospital, the Institute of Cancer Research at my local Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust and Sutton Council to see what more can be done to bring publicly owned land at the Sutton hospital site back into use to deliver a world-class London cancer hub providing 13,000 highly skilled jobs?
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
Over the years, planning has not taken enough notice of local and regional designs, so will Ministers get planning authorities to concentrate on that? A great garden village is being promoted at Cullompton—it has a water park and everything—which will be a very good design.
Gavin Barwell
My hon. Friend makes the very important point that getting good-quality design is key to the acceptability of building more housing. I had the great privilege recently of meeting him and some of his constituents to talk about the contribution that neighbourhood planning can make towards achieving that goal.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Our countryside is not littered with advertising hoardings, unlike in other countries in Europe, because of the action taken by a Labour Government through the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. However, lots of farmers and other landowners are now circumventing the rules by parking great big lorries with hoardings by roads. What are the Government going to do to stop this?
Gavin Barwell
We have made sure that local authorities have the powers to take enforcement action in such places. As I said in response to an earlier question, we are determined to ensure that local authorities are properly resourced to take that enforcement action.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
Further to the excellent question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), the right to manage is a safety valve for leaseholders, but this complex legal issue often thwarts residents, so what more can the Minister do to share best practice and to advise frustrated residents?
Gavin Barwell
Some excellent organisations already exist to provide advice to people dealing with these problems. I can, however, tell my hon. Friend that there is a clear sense on both sides of the House that this issue needs addressing. The Government intend to take action, and I am keen to discuss that with him.