Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

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

[Nick Herbert]

Yes, my right hon. Friend makes the point very well.

The first way in which neighbourhood plans can be vulnerable to speculative development—even when it was thought that they would protect areas—is when there is not a sufficient five-year land supply in the local authority. The problem with that is that the five-year supply is not always properly in the hands of the local authority, but depends on the ability and willingness of local developers to build. Developers are undoubtedly gaming the system so as to secure speculative development applications and planning permissions, in a way that is deeply cynical and that is undermining the principles of localism and community control.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is very good to give way on this matter. Does he agree that in mid-Sussex, which he and I both represent, we have seen some extraordinarily unscrupulous behaviour by the house builders, who have been gaming the situation and abusing the plans, and thus have done something very bad for Government policy by undermining the credibility of a really good idea?

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. The actions and behaviour of developers in mid-Sussex have also caused a delay of the plan, which has delayed the building of essential new housing as well as undermining neighbourhood plans.

There is a problem with the measure of the five-year land supply, which should be assessed in an accurate and honest way and not in a way that is capable of being gamed by the developers.

The second way in which neighbourhood plans can be overridden is when local authorities do not have a plan. Clearly, that is not a satisfactory situation, and the Government are seeking to address it. The problem is that this allows for a free-for-all in the area. Apparently that free-for-all can include neighbourhood plans, in the sense that when the local authority is drawing up its plan, it can override the neighbourhood plans not just with the allocation of strategic levels of housing, as was always envisaged, but with the requirement that neighbourhood plans wholesale are rewritten, as has been suggested to some communities in my area. Neighbourhood plans can also be overridden because the needs of a local plan, which often now have to provide far more housing than was originally intended, are said to come first. Those are problems for the principle of responsible neighbourhood plan making and local democracy.

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[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 2 tabled in my name and to support new clauses 7 and 8 tabled in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert).

The aim of new clause 2 is to permit the Secretary of State to impose what would in effect be penalty costs on appeal. My constituency of Eddisbury has a wealth of picturesque villages, located in the most beautiful settings and with excellent schools. These villages are now finding that they are the target of a large number of planning applications, which are often totally against the emerging or adopted neighbourhood plan.

In Cheshire West and Chester, which has a five-year land supply, the council has rightly turned down those applications as being against the neighbourhood plan, yet developers persist in appealing. Local councils and the Planning Inspectorate have to spend valuable resources dealing with appeals that fall squarely against the ambitions and the principles of the neighbourhood plan.

My local parish councils, just like those in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, have embraced neighbourhood planning. They have committed months of work—sometimes even years of work—to this and have relished the fact that they can bring forward a mix of housing that includes, for example, first-time starter homes as well as executive homes. They want to see starter homes, so that people can get on to the housing ladder and live in the community in which they have grown up, and they want to see smaller homes—bungalow-style homes—for the older people in my constituency who want to downsize. Given the part of Cheshire in which we live, developers invariably build five-bedroom executive homes. My local parish councils have relished the fact that they can plan for a mix of homes that allows for a varied community and enables people to remain in the community in which they have lived and grown up.

Like Arundel and South Downs, we have seen an increased offer and an increased acceptance of housing coming forward. None the less, we still see attempts by developers to drive a coach and horses through those neighbourhood plans. The aim of the new clause is to ensure that there is a financial disincentive in respect of appeals. It raises the prospect of a serious financial penalty for those developers seeking to have a go, as it was described in earlier contributions.

Constituents feel that their rural villages are under siege and that, at every point, their wishes as expressed and adopted in neighbourhood plan are being ignored. The new clause seeks to allow the full recovery of costs, with an additional punitive element, where it is clear that the refusal has been on the basis of the application being against the local neighbourhood plan. These speculative appeals impact on local council resources, and developers constantly feel that they can effectively try to push and break the plan, and it is deeply frustrating.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

My hon. Friend is speaking for many of us whose councils are constantly abused by the disgraceful behaviour of house builders. In my constituency—I intend to deal with the matter at some length—they have spent a very great deal of time and money trying to undermine the local plan.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

It becomes almost a war of attrition. The behaviour of developers appears to be designed to break local neighbourhood plans, so that they can drive through their ambitions, which ignore the wishes of local people and go against the commitment shown by local communities in producing those plans.

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[Heidi Allen]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. This is all about thinking about things before we have to fit them retrospectively. It is vital that we have warm and efficient homes that save money for elderly people.

Some might argue that if central Government agreed to legislate through my amendments, that would take power away from local authorities. However, the amendments would not remove any local power at all; if anything, they would bolster it.

National demographic changes are happening now. We need more accessible housing and I believe that we have an opportunity to act now. This is about how we make this country one that truly works for everyone.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

I have been bullied by the Whips into making only a very short intervention, so I am not able to expand on the extensive views that I wished to favour the House with. However, I thought that I should not let the moment pass without my thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for his immensely touching description of betting shops, which, as we all know, are havens of peace, tranquillity, excitement and—

[Philip Davies]

Virtue.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

Yes, virtue. They are great places to be, and they make a tremendous and important contribution to the money-lending business. I say to my hon. Friend that he was extremely patronising about my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) who, like myself, has probably spent many, many happy hours in gambling shops, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley knows I have. I have nothing but the very highest opinion of them. My hon. Friend gave us a particularly touching exposition and I hope the House will pay no attention to it.

I thank my hon. Friend the Housing and Planning Minister for his courtesy, kindness and consideration, and for the immense efforts he makes on behalf of all of us to try to ensure that we have a fair planning system in this country.

I, of course, support amendment 28, which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for the imperial town of Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). I am delighted that he will not pressing it to a Division, but I am completely on his side and thought he made a powerful case. The decision that his constituents have had to cope with is certainly very unpleasant.

I am really speaking to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who is my close friend and parliamentary neighbour. He and I are currently struggling as Mid Sussex District Council is undergoing an examination in public. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, Mid Sussex has made 14 parish and town council plans, which is something of a record. That is an extraordinary achievement. The local communities have worked immensely hard, with great credibility and integrity, only to find that all their efforts are constantly undermined and challenged by the most unscrupulous building lobby it has ever been my pleasure to have to deal with.

At the examination in public, at which my right hon. Friend and I appeared on the second day, I was astonished to see the range of what the builders produced. They had bogus development forums that had been rushed together to try to present them as reputable. Their lobbying is aggressive and, in my view, totally unacceptable. Even our local enterprise partnership is chaired by a builder. They seek to interfere, very unhelpfully, in the work of the planning authorities.

My hon. Friend the Minister knows of the infamous application by Mayfield Market Towns to build a completely unwanted new settlement to the south of my constituency and partially in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs. It has been turned down time after time. No one wants it and it is not in any plan, yet the builders continue to chip away at the fabric, integrity and credibility of the plans.

In supporting the very sound and sensible new clauses tabled by my right hon. Friend, all I wish to say to the Minister is that I hope he understands that councils such as Mid Sussex are fighting a losing battle. There need to be clear rules and a clear understanding that there is a spirit that is entered into, because at the moment the house builders act quite outside the spirit and intention of the law. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) said in her excellent speech, it is quite unacceptable that all this hard work is undone by some completely unacceptable lobbying.

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[Richard Drax]

It is a pleasure to participate in the debate, and, with a mainly rural constituency, I felt I must. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) on their contributions. I entirely concur with them and share their concerns on this important issue.

Let me touch briefly—I, too, have been got at by the Whips, which is unusual for me; I have not been got at in six years, but I have been today, so I shall not be long—on regionalism, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield brought up, and localism. As I am addressing my remarks to the planning Minister, for whom I have a huge amount of respect and who is doing a wonderful job, I would also like to touch briefly on housing density.

To look at this from a more macro point of view, my concern is that we will be here for many years to come, because planning has always been a complicated issue. With the pressures on immigration—no one should get me wrong; I am all for controlled immigration—and with a net immigration of 340,000, that means that something comparable to the population of the city of Leeds, with a population of 750,000, is settling in the country about every two years.

There are pressures on us all in this House, and they are going to increase—not just in our urban areas, but in our beautiful rural areas such as South Dorset. I entirely concur with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield that we must look at planning, and housing in particular, in a far more regional and holistic way. Local people entirely support the neighbourhood plans, which I think are a very good idea—as long as they are going to work, of course. Local plans must be respected and must have some statutory weight, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton said. A reasonable holistic approach is going to be far more pragmatic and sensible if, for example, a region with an urban and a rural area can decide where the jobs, the hospitals, the roads and all the different parts of infrastructure are. All too often, these do not come with proposals by developers because, of course, that costs money. Moving on briefly to localism, the opinion of local people must, of course, be sought, because that is going to be crucial.

Conservative Members must be very careful. I remember cursing Labour’s regional spatial strategy until I was blue in the face, but I think we are in danger of not listening to local people who have genuine concerns. This is nowhere more appropriate than in my part of the world in Purbeck. As I hinted to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), I think we need more clarity on the rules and regulations governing where houses should be built. Quite apart from all the local people, who are consulted, we have the officers, who in many cases do not seem to understand what the planning regulations mean or interpret them wrongly. There are the over-enthusiastic officers who get it completely wrong, and vice versa. Then of course there are our dear councillors on all sides of the political divide, who are doing their best, but they are human beings and often make mistakes. They may make decisions for political reasons. There are all kinds of factors that we in this House know lead councillors to make decisions, and they might not always be the right ones.

Local people in Langton Matravers in my constituency know exactly who needs to have a house: it must be affordable—and I mean affordable—and they know best where to place it. They do not need to be told by planning inspectors, whom everyone is terrified of, that they must have hundreds of homes on the edge of their beautiful village, which in effect almost turns it into a sort of ghetto and ruins the reason millions of people come to our beautiful constituencies. This clearly is absolute madness.

I know other Members wish to speak and the Government want to move on, but finally I wish to make a plea on density and style of housing. I have a friend in north Yorkshire who is a landowner and who has developed truly affordable proper homes—affordable homes for rent, which is equally important as homes to buy. The following point is crucial. In too many housing developments, particularly in rural areas, there is no area for children: the cars are parked on the street, the dustbins are at the front doors, there are no green fields to run out and have fun on.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point. One of the things I have been horrified by in following this examination in public is that here are these builders proposing building hundreds of houses over what is already a very substantial target, which the council has agreed to, and they have made no mention at all of infrastructure. How can anyone accept that?

[Richard Drax]

My right hon. Friend represents a beautiful constituency like mine and speaks eloquently, and I entirely concur with him, as I am sure we all do. I make a plea to the Government to look at some form of legislation to ensure that developers have a duty to develop responsibly and in ways whereby they treat people and families as human beings, not animals trapped in a cage where they cannot go outside and children cannot roam without annoying the neighbours. This will lead to social breakdown, as we have seen across the country in many areas, and the worst examples lead to more social incohesion, which is the last thing we need.