Draft National Planning Policy Framework

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council. I am on the board on One North East, a member of English Heritage and also of the National Trust. I agree absolutely with what my noble friend Lord Cormack has said about the nature of the document. I strongly welcome a document that is shorter than the existing 1,000 pages or more of planning policy and guidance. This draft has been easy to read and therefore to understand. However, it has also, as a consequence, been easy to misinterpret or to present difficulties in interpretation. Those difficulties need to be put right. Therefore, in redrafting, I hope that the document will be kept short and understandable so that it is not something, as we have now, that only planners and lawyers can understand. Crucially, the collation of national planning policy into a single document should increase the understanding of planning policy by everyone, including business groups, individual small businesses, residents, councillors and planning officers.

I have a number of concerns about the NPPF. The first relates to a lack of geographical differentiation in it, because not all regions of the same. The NPPF could offer an opportunity to help to rebalance the UK economy away from areas suffering from overdevelopment and too much congestion. I hope that we will avoid debate on the NPPF leading to greater stifling of development in regions where there is significant capacity for growth and job creation, and where regional economies are performing below their potential and can demonstrate greater capacity for growth. Having said that, I must add that the framework seems to be based too much on a drive for development. It must balance environmental and social issues with economic ones because this is a planning framework, not an economic one.

There has been discussion about the definition of “sustainable development” and I will not add to the debate this afternoon. However, I will refer to paragraph 14, which relates to a presumption in favour of sustainable development. The final sub-paragraph at least needs to be strengthened. The paragraph says that permission should be granted,

“where the local plan is absent, silent, indeterminate or where relevant policies are out of date”.

It goes on to say that the policies in paragraph 14,

“should apply unless the adverse impacts of allowing development would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits when assessed against the policies in the framework as a whole”.

This could prove a goldmine for lawyers. Just because the local plan is silent or may be deemed by some to be out of date, it should not be a requirement for the adverse impacts to significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits. That judgment should be left to those elected to take local decisions.

There are potential problems with paragraph 26 which covers up to date local plans, and this has been referred to by other Members. Many councils do not have local plans in place and it may take them two to four years to produce them. We need it made clear, very soon, that plans in progress will be deemed to have legal status. It is not right that the NPPF will take over if the local plan is not in place. On balance, I prefer three years for a transitional period. It is not reasonable that the presumption must be in favour of development if the plan is not up to date and approved.

I welcome the duty to co-operate in paragraph 46, but it should be stiffened to make it clear that the community infrastructure levy should be part of the duty to co-operate where development takes place wholly in one council area but impacts on another—for example, through increased congestion. I was struck by a submission by the Woodland Trust, which stated that the duty to co-operate great may prove ineffectual where partners refuse to progress a shared strategy. Strengthening the NPPF and the guidance in the Localism Bill would be desirable. Might we include local nature partnerships, as the Woodland Trust requests?

We should also be prepared to take a stronger line, notwithstanding the end of the regional planning tier, on regionally significant infrastructure that may not be addressed effectively by co-operation between planning authorities. I refer in particular to energy or waste plants. The expectations on local planning authorities to work together to plan effectively for such needs should be tightened, with a clear role for local enterprise partnerships. The Planning Inspectorate will need to ensure that local plans contain clear evidence that the duty has been properly delivered.

I have a concern about neighbourhood planning; here I refer to paragraphs 49 to 52 and the importance of the ballot box in neighbourhood planning. The NPPF and the Localism Bill both look at neighbourhood planning from the perspective of rural areas. That is a strength in terms of rural areas but a potential weakness in terms of urban areas. Parish and town councils tend to be in rural areas, so those decisions have a democratic legitimacy based on the particular parish or council. It is hard to see how urban areas will manage to deliver neighbourhood plans which have local consent if those who are constructing the plans are nominated and not elected. There has to be further discussion about how elections can take place for those in a leadership position with regard to neighbourhood plans, notwithstanding any referendums that might take place.

Paragraph 76 covers planning for town centres. Perhaps I can make the point that the framework needs to recognise that the limited availability of suitable sites will in some places be a constraint, which means that the aim may not be fully met even if town centres are expanded or sites are searched for on the edge of or outside centres. In this situation, we do not want unsuitable sites to be allocated because that could impact on the vitality and viability of town centres, when maintaining those centres and the diversity of their high streets should be a prime objective of the NPPF.

Paragraph 84 relates to the objectives of transport policy—that it should facilitate economic growth and support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Might we be more explicit in stating that it would help to achieve both objectives if people lived closer to where they work? In my own city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, some 90,000 people come into the city to work each day. Of course, our boundaries are tightly drawn, but nevertheless reducing the distances travelled and providing sustainable, high quality public transport to reduce car dependency remain extremely high priorities.

In terms of housing supply and deliverable housing sites, paragraph 109 on the supply of those sites sets supply at five years plus 20 per cent. We desperately need to increase our supply of housing. In 2009-10 only 113,670 homes were built in England, the lowest number in peacetime since 1923—and this at a time of increasing rates of household formation. It is estimated that some 250,000 homes are needed each year to meet demand in both the social and market sectors. We do not want a situation to arise in which all a developer has to do is prove that a council does not have five years’ worth of supply plus 20 per cent of deliverable sites, because if it does not have it the application will automatically be approved. That seems unwise, as it is to set targets that might cause brownfield land not to be developed. Developers prefer greenfield options that are faster to develop. I am not sure that we have the definitions of “deliverable” and “developable” correctly drafted and prioritised, nor that we have thought through the five years plus 20 per cent properly. Indeed, five years plus 20 per cent is six years, so why do not specify six years, and why six years rather than seven years? Perhaps we need to do a little more work there.

I strongly support paragraphs 133 to 170, which protect the green belt and the natural environment. It is vital to protect natural habitats against intrusive development that would impact negatively on biodiversity and threatened species, and which would reduce access to green lungs for recreational purposes. Paragraph 16 in particular should be taken as evidence of the Government’s clear intent to protect natural habitats, but there must be no attempt to tamper with our green spaces against the wishes of residents. It cannot be the case that a site must be named in a plan or it might be developed. There are a number of dangers around protecting green lungs, not just in the countryside but in our urban areas. It is very important that we maintain them carefully.

The NPPF is a very useful draft and, as other noble Lords have said, the consultation will lead to improvement and clarification so that we will end up with a document that will stand the test of time and command broad consensus on its approach.