National Policy for the Built Environment

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, first, I declare my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. I congratulate the committee on its wide-ranging report and on the depth of its analysis. It demonstrates the need for the ad hoc committee to have been established. As a number of speakers made clear, it has been a long time—11 months—since the report was published and it took until November for the Government to reply. I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate why the delay occurred.

One benefit is the content of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, which has clearly drawn on some of the committee’s conclusions, not least in strengthening the status of neighbourhood plans. I hope that the work of the committee will also be reflected in the forthcoming housing White Paper, which I understand is due next week, and which I hope will address issues of housing supply, type, tenure and genuine affordability. A number of the issues that we hope will be in the housing White Paper were clearly identified by the committee.

As someone who was not a member of the committee, I found the report particularly strong on drawing together all the elements and responsibilities needed for our built environment to be genuinely better. It has done it, for example, in its recommendations on design standards, lifetime homes, sustainable urban drainage, zero-carbon homes, our historic and cultural environment, and the future of town centres, among many others. It is particularly strong in its identification of the need to join up departmental thinking across Whitehall. The noble Lord, Lord Best, gave a very good explanation of the problems that can arise when you have the Department for Work and Pensions managing welfare policies and the Department for Communities and Local Government in charge of housing policies. The two need to be complementary.

The report challenged government policy in a number of areas. One example is the charging of VAT on repairs and maintenance but not on materials used in new buildings. I find that very hard to explain to people. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, identified very clearly how it can be a disincentive to maintaining buildings when costs are higher than they need be. A number of noble Lords spoke about the problems caused by short-term decision-making. This has bedevilled planning and development for a long time. Decisions tend to be driven by short-term political need, and when that happens, the problems tend to be solved on the cheap or more cheaply than they otherwise would be. This can lead to poorer-quality materials and design, negative impacts on public health, and buildings which are not sufficiently resilient. I hope that the Government will take on board the committee’s view that they need to think longer term because it is a huge problem when they do not. I was particularly concerned to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Best, about the report into the recent deterioration in quality standards in housing.

A big strategic problem that the committee identified is the confusion about the role of planning in terms of both place-based planning and the nature of the planning profession. Just over 40 years ago, I was first elected to Newcastle City Council. In those days, we had a chief planning officer and large number of professional planners whose job was to plan an area—a place—not simply to operate as gatekeepers for the appropriateness of planning applications. In the past decade or more, that concept of planning being about shaping a place seems to have been reduced in standing. I hope very much that we can get back to the concept of planning being a shaper of place. Given a number of the Government’s policies, one of which is the new industrial strategy based on places, I hope that the importance of planning will be well understood in delivering those new policies.

A few years ago, I chaired a commission on urban living on behalf of the University of Birmingham. There were a number of conclusions to our report, but one related to the role of planners as a profession. We said that:

“There should be a radical upgrade in the role of planners to promote creative, long-term, thinking on urban sustainability and resilience, and to enable more organic growth within that strategic framework. In this role planners should act as integrators of urban practitioners and other urban stakeholders”.


We added:

“To do this effectively, city planning departments will need greater skills and capacity, and the creative talent once prevalent in city planning departments needs to be attracted back”.


There is a whole range of proposals and recommendations in the committee’s report around bursaries to attract good planners, and so on. I was very struck by the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, that planning is an art, and when one goes back to medieval Europe, one can see the origins of that statement. I hope very much that the Minister may feel able to look more carefully at the future of the planning system.

We heard about the reductions in staffing levels. I am particularly concerned that those reductions, of around one-third of professional staff, are impacting on the ability of local planning authorities to do their work as well as they would wish. It is therefore very good to read the committee’s conclusion that there should be a localised planning fees regime to make up the underfunding of local planning authorities in respect of assessing planning applications—never mind the broader place-making role that local planning authorities should have.

The Planning Advisory Service and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, working with the Local Government Association, have together estimated the deficit to be around £150 million a year. I think the Minister for Housing and Planning has indicated that the White Paper may address that funding gap, as the Minister here may do, but clearly, in the context of the cuts that are taking place to local government funding, finding alternative sources of income matters. If the planning service is to be done properly, in line with the recommendations of this report, the ability to raise additional fees seems very important.

Local areas want to do more for themselves. In this respect, the Local Government Finance Bill will lead to greater self-sufficiency and extra incentives to grow business rate income, since 100% of business rates will be kept locally, as opposed to 50% now. In addition, that Bill, which is now in the other place, will give some authorities, notably the Greater London Authority and mayoral combined authorities, the ability to raise a levy on business rates to help deliver infrastructure. There are important further measures to allow business improvement districts, after a vote, to levy property owners—not just occupiers—for the purposes of regeneration and growth. Business improvement districts across the country have demonstrated their worth, and as a system of voluntary taxation it is particularly commendable that so many have been a success. They enable investment in the public realm, in sustainability and design, in public access for all, and in a whole range of measures that would not otherwise have happened because of the financial problems of local authorities. Because there is a direct connection between the payment of the tax—after a vote—and the work undertaken, people feel much more inclined to contribute their money.

Finally, reference has been made to the briefing from the Royal Institute of British Architects, which I read this morning. I thought it was extremely helpful, partly because it confirmed some of my concerns. I agree entirely with what it said about CABE, which I recall being established. It was the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment—those words matter. There clearly has been a downgrading of CABE, which is a bad mistake. It gave excellent value for money. When I led Newcastle City Council for a number of years, I valued the support and advice it gave us in development policy.

RIBA has given the Government recommendations on a chief built environment adviser, a design review, standards and ensuring that we do not have, as it says, a,

“fractured nature and inconsistent quality of design review across the country”,

which is what we seem to have. It has also raised the issue of viability assessments. I hope the Minister might pay particular attention to this. RIBA says that planning practice guidance encourages transparency but,

“developers may opt not to disclose their viability assessments to the public on grounds of commercial confidentiality”.

That is when they are required to build affordable housing and they claim it would make a new development financially unviable. RIBA’s recommendation that,

“the Government should legislate that viability assessments should be treated transparently, except where doing so would cause harm to the public interest to an extent that is not outweighed by the benefits of disclosure”,

should be taken very seriously.

I agree with a number of speakers who have said that the Government’s response is not enough. My noble friend Lady Parminter talked about this being about spaces for people to grow. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, talked about the report being a resource of clear thinking. It is indeed that.