Localism in Planning

Debate between Lord Herbert of South Downs and Andrew Turner

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with every word my hon. Friend says; he describes the problem precisely.

The first mistake is to believe that sending a signal and using the inspectorate in that way to reward speculative applications will contribute to getting construction going. It will not, because what is happening frequently is that developers are simply land banking permissions. They are not necessarily building. When they choose to build, it will be when they think that they can make a return and when there is demand for the houses that they wish to sell. What they are doing at the moment in many cases, in my constituency and elsewhere, is taking an opportunity to obtain a permission where they have absolutely no intention to build immediately.

The system is rewarding those developers by having insufficient regard to permissions that have already been granted. That is the second key concern. Given how the rules are set up in relation to the five-year land supply, the calculations that local authorities are required to undertake mean that they cannot include swathes of existing permissions that they have allocated, which places completely unrealistic targets on them.

In one district council in my constituency—Horsham—a rate of house building is now being required that has never been achieved in the area, even in the boom years. It is good news for the developers, who will not be developing for years but will secure planning permissions on greenfield sites. By setting up a formula that fails to give weight to unbuilt planning permissions, many of which are on brownfield sites, we are effectively moving not to the brownfield-first site policy that we should have but to a greenfield-first policy. That is an environmental disaster.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

One problem on the Isle of Wight—and, I have no doubt, elsewhere—is that local people cannot afford housing because people from overseas come to the island.

[Nick Herbert]

More affordable housing is clearly needed, and there is strong support in local areas for that housing to be provided, to maintain the character of villages and ensure that communities remain strong. No one disagrees that more housing is needed, particularly more affordable housing, but as the policy is constructed with a five-year land supply requirement that pays insufficient attention to unbuilt planning permission and is effectively a greenfield-first policy, it will not deliver the affordable housing needed; it will simply enable developers to build their balance sheets.

There is disagreement about the number of unbuilt planning permissions nationally; the Minister has had an exchange about it. It would be helpful to have some up-to-date, reliable national figures. According to the four district councils covering my constituency and beyond, the total number of unbuilt planning permissions granted is well over 16,000 and the number of houses proposed to be built is 39,000. The number of unbuilt planning permissions granted is getting on for half the number of houses wanted, yet the councils are being told that those unbuilt permissions cannot really be taken into account when they set the number. That is the problem.

The practical effect of the policy is damaging to a principle that I know that the Minister adheres to strongly, as do I—neighbourhood planning underlying the publication of local plans. That was the most potent feature of the Localism Act 2011: neighbourhoods would be given the responsibility and incentives to plan for their own futures. In my constituency, some parish councils have stuck their necks out to prepare responsible neighbourhood plans, saying what amount of housing they can take. Some are taking an amount that they would not have dreamed of, and are now feeling considerably undermined. I cannot overstate how seriously I take that.

In my constituency, the parish councillors—good people—are all volunteers who have taken a considerable amount of local effort and, in some cases, risk to promote the plans, while speculative applications are coming in that are being granted either because the district council wants to grant them or, in many cases, because it fears that they will be upheld by the inspectorate. Such speculative applications are often completely contrary to what is wanted in the parishes under the neighbourhood plan. The consequence is that faith in the neighbourhood planning process, which could be so powerful and will deliver the local and affordable housing that we need, is in danger of draining away.

I have just forwarded to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, copying the Minister, a letter from three chairs of parish councils in my constituency. They specifically asked me to draw the letter to Ministers’ attention. It says:

“Neighbourhood planning should encourage partnership working between parishes and districts. In truth, it is damaging the very fabric of these important tiers of local government. We also run the risk of damaging the trust of local people who have been allowed by government, and encouraged by parish councils, to engage in the neighbourhood planning process. To have their contribution disregarded will be damaging at resident, parish and district levels.”

Those are not party political elected councillors; they are volunteers of no party who are committed to the neighbourhood planning process, and they feel that it is being chucked back at them by the actions of the planning inspector.

I will conclude by suggesting some remedies, so that I do not simply criticise what is happening and because I believe that the current situation is retrievable. It is not so radical a suggestion to abolish the Planning Inspectorate entirely. The Conservatives used to believe that we would not hand decisions to quangos—indeed, that we would get rid of quangos. I note that the Conservative party manifesto at the election, entitled “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”—an invitation that I have now declined—says:

“To give communities greater control over planning, we will abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans”.

There it is. We set it out in those terms. I accept that that did not find its way into the coalition agreement, but that is the promise that this party made to local people, yet we are now effectively allowing the inspectorate to do exactly that.

We could also extend the moratorium on speculative applications as plans emerge. That approach is not necessarily the right way to go, as it would mean that there would be no way to incentivise areas that are not planning responsibly to continue.

I have three suggestions that I believe the Minister could follow, even if we are to continue reneging on our manifesto promise. First, we must give proper weight to emerging plans, not just pay lip service to them or produce written answers and say publicly that weight is being given to them. In particular, where applications are not supported by parish and district councils, the inspectorate should be required to take notice of that, yet it is doing exactly the opposite at the moment. That could be done by executive decision, and a signal could be sent from the centre.