Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Lansley and Lord Greaves
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, the amendment to Clause 136 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, enables us to consider some of the principles of permission in principle. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests as the chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. When we discussed the principles of the Bill at Second Reading, and in other debates in Committee, I said that we have to keep our eye on the purpose: our capacity to build more homes. If we are successful, through the mechanism of the Bill, in enabling and encouraging more homes to be built, many of the issues we have discussed in Committee will be expedited as a consequence.
Permission in principle is a measure which stands a good chance of enabling us to deliver more homes more quickly. I refer to the example which I gave at Second Reading from my own constituency, which continues to be current and interesting. When it was first proposed, Northstowe, to the north-west of Cambridge, would have been the largest new town built in this country for some 30 years. In 2003, as the local Member of Parliament, I participated in the public examination before the inspector as part of a detailed structure plan inquiry. The purpose of the inquiry was to identify the best location for the establishment of a large new town with some 10,000 homes. The structure plan identified Northstowe as the best location for such a development. It was intended, and subsequently incorporated into local planning, that there would be 6,000 new homes built there by 2016. It is now 2016 and no homes have yet been built. Governments of all political colours always included Northstowe as an example of development potential: the coalition, this Government, the previous Labour Government—Gordon Brown mentioned it when he announced eco-towns. Indeed, Simon Stevens from NHS England included Northstowe as one of the new healthy towns when he talked about them three weeks ago. It is no kind of a town unless we build it: we have to make it happen.
I draw attention to this because the structure plan inquiry went into detail—often exhaustive detail—about the suitability of the location for a development of that size. It looked with great care at the questions which permission in principle is intended to treat as the particulars. What was the location? It was a housing-led development, but what other associated uses were in the master plan? What was the amount of development? What were the density issues? The particulars were all there but, under our existing planning system, the fact that so much had been, as we understood it, agreed in the structure plan did not make any difference to the amount of cost, complexity and time that needed to be absorbed by the lead developers to bring this through to even an outline planning application. As noble Lords will understand, that is before the point at which they go on to the full planning application which follows.
What is intended here is very straightforward. Under such a set of circumstances, where major sites for housing development are contemplated and there is a local or neighbourhood planning process or an appropriate register as a qualifying document, we should go from three processes to two. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is right that the balance and the boundary between those two things is important. However, the implication of what he was saying was that, because the Government identify three particulars as the basis on which the development order will be granted, those particulars therefore exclude, by definition, some of the issues which enable the particulars to be determined.
Lord Greaves
My understanding, having read the technical consultation, is that that is exactly the position. One thing we have to tease out is the exact stage at which the detailed investigations into and the related decisions about particular sites take place under the new system. We all agree that while they should not take place three times, they should take still place. However, there does not seem to be anything in the new system that says they will unless they are carried out and paid for by the local planning authority. That is unacceptable.