Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Baroness Pinnock

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a councillor in the borough of Kirklees. I added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, because I thought that the iron fist might be more effective in this regard than my noble friend’s velvet glove. Those of us suffering as a result of appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State have become as angry as the noble Baroness has with the situation that her village has faced.

The amendment highlights that the power of local people to determine the impact of planning on their area is constantly undermined, despite the Government’s commitment to localism and neighbourhood planning. Many of the parameters surrounding new development are set by government: planning legislation and the National Planning Policy Framework. All that is already in hand, and it is within that context that the local planning authority makes and determines through consultation decisions about its local plan.

It is interesting to remember how a local plan begins. It begins not with local people making decisions through their neighbourhood plan but with a call for sites, which means developers indicating which sites they would like to use and local landowners wanting to see the value of their land enhanced by putting it forward for development. I have no problem with either of those things; the problem I have is that they are the starting point. The whole purpose of the Bill seems to be to reverse that process and have neighbourhood plans as the foundation of a local plan. It puts local people in charge rather than developers and landowners.

When local councils come to determine the local plan, it includes not only land allocation but planning policies. In that is the formal consultation, which takes place several times, and then it is finally agreed. You would think that then, if the Government were sincere in their approach to localism, that would be the end of it: a huge document is produced which includes hundreds of detailed policies about what can be developed and where, and detailed maps of where land is allocated for business use, for housing, for flood prevention or whatever—and that would be it. After many years of consultation and consideration, one would think there would finally be an agreement, but no, that is not the end of it. Local people do not have a final say. There is then the examination by a planning inspector to test the development; for instance, on grounds of soundness. At that stage the developers have another go. Their site has been rejected so they bring it forward again. They obviously have a great advantage at that stage as they have expensive barristers at their side whereas local people just make their voices heard. Having gone through the earlier process, residents have a right to expect that their case should not be challenged any more.

Then we come to the question of appeals. Two points have already come up in our discussions today. The Minister said that a three-year housing supply is now the basis on which appeals can be made in regard to a lack of housing in a local plan. I seek clarification on whether that occurs only in relation to a neighbourhood plan or would cover the whole area of a local plan. That is very important, certainly in my district, where a number of appeals are going forward to enable developers to build on urban green space—the equivalent of greenbelt within an urban area—on the basis only of an alleged lack of a five-year supply, and despite the fact that a local plan has been agreed by the council and is awaiting examination. I hope that the Minister will clarify that critical issue because, as others have said, developers see a loophole enabling them to put forward plans on land that has in this case been set aside as urban green space for 40 years, and will continue to be so set aside in the next local plan, following its examination. However, a developer can put forward a planning application for that land and it is going to appeal—we await the result of that—on the basis only of this five-year supply issue. That is obviously due to the length of time that a local plan takes to go through the examination process.

As has been described, residents then feel thoroughly disenchanted with the whole process. Local residents who have been consulted through a local district plan, a neighbourhood forum or a neighbourhood plan have a right to expect that, having gone through all that and having made the compromises which inevitably and rightly take place so that development can occur, they should have their wishes upheld and not be undermined by what I regard as spurious claims by developers to override fundamental policies that have been agreed and contained in a local plan. That is why I support wholeheartedly the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify the situation as regards a three-year or five-year land supply.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I hope your Lordships will forgive me but I have not spoken in this Room before. It is my first time and if what I say is right, it is right, but if it is wrong, it is wrong. I declare my interests as the chairman of the Local Government Association until June—I hope—and as leader of South Holland District Council. In terms of what we are dealing with today, I am one of the four people who drafted the National Planning Policy Framework, so I know a little bit about what is in it and I certainly know what the intention was. It was to deliver sustainable development in places in the country where it is needed in a way that the people living in the local area could accept, to ensure that we get the homes we badly need in the most timely fashion.

I have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that neighbourhood plans were not seen by all of us as the route for making that happen. I personally objected to putting neighbourhood plans in, but that was not because I did not want development, it was because I wanted to see more development and I thought that neighbourhood plans would be a route to slowing it down. But the Government pursued them, so it is incredibly bizarre that if a neighbourhood plan or a local plan has been drawn up in compliance with the NPPF, the Planning Inspectorate is allowed—and some would say sometimes encouraged—to overturn it. The inspectorate should not be able to do that.

There are people outside this Room who think that the Planning Inspectorate has gone feral. It is not working to direction from the Government because it has individual planning inspectors working to their own direction for their own aims. It is important that the Government should insist on the supremacy of the public’s ownership of the planning system. If someone has gone through the pain of making a neighbourhood plan, even though I disagree with such plans in principle, if that is what the Government are intent on using as a way of encouraging development at the local level, once those plans have been tested in public by an inspector and are found to be sound and in compliance with the local plan, if one is in place, or at the very least in compliance with the NPPF, the Planning Inspectorate should never be allowed to overturn one of those decisions except on pain of some form of proper cross-examination by the Government.

We all know that even though the Secretary of State has signed off a planning appeal, it is very rare for the Secretary of State to be personally blamed for that appeal, because generally it does not get anywhere near them. If a neighbourhood plan or a local plan is in place and the inspectorate feels that for good strategic reasons it has to overturn it, there should be some insistence that the Secretary of State should actually take personal ownership of it so that people can be sure that there is political oversight of the bureaucrats working in the planning department. On that basis, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Baroness Pinnock

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

I largely agree with the noble Baroness: it is not right that local authorities are funding inefficient RSLs to make the discount up. The money should come first and foremost from the RSLs, but again, nobody on the other Benches is making that case. The case should be made that RSLs should be forced to sweat their assets properly. They are sitting on more than £2.5 billion on their balance sheets in cash, plus the unsecured money that they have that they could take out against those properties. That is where we should be coming from. If we do not stick to taking just them on, then we could come back to the Government and say, “Actually, the state’s sitting on a lot of land that is redundant and not used for the purpose that it was originally bought for. It is sitting there undervalued”. We should then purchase it or give it to local authorities to increase its value and then use that money. Again, nobody is making that point. Noble Lords are challenging the right to buy itself; that is not where the fire should be. The country voted to extend right to buy. We should be challenging the Government to find a way to fund it that is more appropriate and sustainable.

[Baroness Pinnock]

The noble Lord, Lord Porter, has not listened to what I said. Not one word did I say in opposition to right to buy. I did say that there was not the opportunity, once you have released that equity, necessarily to house a family. What happens, certainly under right to buy, which is the experience we have for council housing, is that councils are fearful—in fact, they would be foolish—to build houses subject to future right to buy because they will be constantly losing the equity value of it. It would be under right to buy constantly. Certainly in my experience of councils in West Yorkshire what is happening once a house is sold is those councils are either building properties that are not subject to right to buy or putting the equity into a community housing group so that they cannot be subject to right to buy. That is one of the problems that I have urged the Government to look at.