Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Herbert of South Downs and Graham P Jones

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones]

I reject that argument. It does not stand up. As I said, I shall seek to divide the House on new clause 1. The nation wants action on FOBTs, betting shops and payday lenders, and this is the opportunity.

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to talk about neighbourhood planning, not betting shops. I shall speak to new clauses 7 and 8, which attempt to deal with the problem of undermining a very good policy that the Government have pioneered. The good policy is that of neighbourhood planning, which embodies the spirit of localism by giving local communities control over where development takes place. People are empowered to take responsible decisions about development. It changes the terms of the conversation from communities resisting the imposition of development to one where communities ask themselves what they want in their area. Where communities have taken neighbourhood plans forward, they have produced more housing than was anticipated in local plans. Neighbourhood plans are therefore not a means by which development can be resisted. Rather, they ensure that communities have a proper say in where development should go.

The basis on which communities have been encouraged to embark on neighbourhood plans is that for a period of 15 years they will be able to allocate sites where development will take place, and sites where development will definitely not take place and which will be protected green spaces. Many hon. Members, including me, appeared before our local parish or town councils and encouraged them to take forward neighbourhood plans on the basis that they would be protecting themselves from future development if they did so.

These neighbourhood plans are a very good thing, but they are immensely burdensome on local communities. It is volunteers who draw up the plans, and the process takes years. We are probably making it unnecessarily complex, with much inspection of the plans; they have to go through many hoops. The responsible volunteers who sit on the neighbourhood planning committees to draw up the plans often face a great deal of criticism from parts of their community that may not want development on sites whose suitability the committees have to assess. The individuals concerned put a great deal of time and effort into the plans.

West Sussex was one of the earliest counties to produce neighbourhood plans. When they were submitted to referendum, support for the plans was very high among the local communities. One of the thorniest questions in planning is what happens when communities are confronted with development that they really do not want. We embarked on the policy of neighbourhood plans with confidence that they may be a means of settling that question in a way that produced local housing in the area. One small village in my constituency, Kirdford, has only 120 houses at its centre. People there actually produced a neighbourhood plan for another 50 houses—a very big number of additional houses—because that was what they wanted, and they wanted that housing to be affordable and for local people.