Housing: Permitted Development Rights
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(4 days, 6 hours ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. PDR tends to apply where there are brownfield sites to be developed because they are conversions, usually, from existing buildings. There has been a change to introduce that principle for agricultural buildings as well. I will try to get back to him with a specific answer on whether the department knows how much take-up there has been of that provision. We have made provision in the new national planning policy framework for ensuring that planning policies and decisions are responsive to local circumstances in rural areas and support housing developments that reflect local needs. That is a more general requirement. I will get back to him on whether the agricultural permitted development has had any traction.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
My Lords, I refer the Minister to the issue of rural businesses—shops, in many villages, that are a vital part of the vibrancy of those communities and services—which are being converted through PDR without permission and against the will of local communities. Shops are not protected beyond one within a kilometre.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
It is very important that we focus on the facilities in local areas, but this is a commercial market and where shops are not able to achieve the market they need, permitted development regulations will occur. In reviewing the PDRs, that is one of the issues we need to focus on—whether any further protections are necessary, particularly for assets such as rural assets.
Political Donations: Cap
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for making that point. I assure him that I will contact colleagues in the Northern Ireland team, and we will revert back to him.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
My Lords, I think the Minister accepts that there is an urgent need to tackle foreign donations, malign actors and donations funnelled through companies that may not, in reality, actually operate in the UK. This is an extremely serious issue, notwithstanding comments from the Conservative Party.
The secondary issue, however, is the one raised by my noble friend: the substantial donations made within the UK. Limiting donations in the UK to small figures would not just democratise the process but would get parties to focus again on membership, which has been in spectacular decline in the UK as parties focus their efforts on just a handful of seats and very major donors. That is not healthy for democracy. Incidentally, if we were to cap that, it might make an interesting change to the representative nature of this Chamber, too.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord makes a number of points. I reassure him that we want to ensure that the Government’s focus is on our manifesto commitment to strengthen integrity in our democratic process. Democracy is precious, and we want to make sure that no malign actors can contribute to it and that any foreign interference is stopped. However, it is for political parties themselves, under law, to ensure the nature of the donation and the background of the company or individual making it.
Building Homes
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for his comments and suggestions, which were helpful as ever, and I look forward to working with him as we go through this programme. I am passionate about council housing, having grown up in a council house—it was actually a development corporation house, to be clear—and I want to see that programme develop. I thank the noble Lord for his suggestions and look forward to moving the whole programme forward.
I will just make a correction on the affordable homes programme. Let me clarify that the Government have committed today to bring forward details of future government investment in social and affordable housing at the spending review, enabling providers to plan for the future as they help to deliver the biggest increase in affordable housing in a generation. I might have muddled my wording slightly on that, so that is just for clarification.
Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)
My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests, as I work in this field. I might add that I have advised successive Governments—the last Labour Government, the coalition Government and the Conservative Government—on fundamental planning reform, and in that time I think this is the most important and most welcome Statement since the original and much-lamented National Planning Policy Framework. I say “lamented” because it has expanded and become more complicated and more unhelpful in every iteration, and I hope the Government will succeed in unwinding much of that.
I will not touch on much that the Minister said in her new role—to which I welcome her—because I overwhelmingly agree with it. I will just highlight a couple of important points. The first is that there is no shortage of land in this country. About 9% is developed, and that includes parks, gardens, roads and railways, as well as houses, factories and workplaces. After delivering the kind of numbers that the Government have the ambition to deliver, it will still be just over 9%. Even in the most developed part of the south-east, it is 12.2% today and will still be under 12.5% with these kinds of numbers.
The issue has been making land available and planning intelligently with long-term sight of the evolution of place and the needs of the new generation who need homes. As our generation—looking around, I am afraid it is our generation—live longer and longer, we have not been freeing up the homes for our children and grandchildren, who desperately need them. The Statement says an awful lot about homes, but not once is “community” mentioned. In all my work, whether as a visiting professor of planning or working with local authorities and Governments, I always say that it is about delivering not the houses but the communities in which we live, of which houses are just a part. It is about the shops, pubs, schools, bakeries, transport infrastructure, parks and particularly gardens. There have been a couple of recent reports on the importance of children having access to private green space as well as public green space—a balcony will not do.
The building of communities is critical, as is the vision of the evolution of place not over one year—that is piecemeal development—but over 20 or 50 years through strategic planning of how we evolve places. All I do, particularly around new settlements and creating new places, is about building community. I welcome the fact that the Government are looking at compulsory purchase reform, because unlocking the value from development to create whole communities and all that is needed is an absolutely essential part of what we do; it is not just housing. I hope the Government will focus on that issue.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
As a new town girl, what the noble Lord has just said is music to my ears. When my new town was built, it was designed to provide all the infrastructure that families needed in a neighbourhood format, and I absolutely understand the points that he has made.
There is a “delivering community needs” section of the NPPF consultation document which should help communities in practice. The changes proposed would ensure that the planning system supports the increased provision and modernisation of key public services infrastructure such as hospitals, criminal justice facilities and all those aspects. They would also ensure the availability of a sufficient choice of post-16 education and early years places and enable a vision-led approach to be taken to transport planning where residents, local planning authorities and developers work together to set out the vision for how they want places to be, rather than simply projecting forward past trends. Further, they would enable the planning system to do more to support the creation of healthy places. We have had many a discussion in this Chamber about those aspects as well and I think that incorporates some of the points the noble Lord made about gardens and private and public open space to help communities to thrive. I hope that he will look at the consultation and respond to it; that would be really helpful.