Planning Policy (Housing Targets)

Andrew Bingham Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again this morning, Mr Bone. I hope that the sitting, which has been a little Hampshire-centric so far, does not make you think that all southern MPs are focused only on planning and flooding, although those issues are critical to our local communities and, arguably, the biggest challenges to face our towns and villages.

The Minister will not be surprised that I requested this debate specifically about housing land supply and local authorities’ difficulties in seeking to uphold robust and well-considered planning policies in the face of repeated and determined speculative applications by developers, who are consistently using the requirement for a five-year housing land supply to their own advantage, rather than to the advantage of local residents and would-be home owners.

We all know that figures can be massaged and distorted. In Test Valley, the abolition of spatial strategies was widely welcomed, but the reality of local planning and localism has not been as we all might have hoped. It makes no difference whether sites are on the edge of Romsey or in the strategic and local gaps between smaller settlements and the major city of Southampton. To the layman, developers appear to be using the national planning policy framework to their own advantage and riding roughshod over local opinion and the local decisions made by democratically elected councillors.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

What my hon. Friend has said echoes what is happening in my constituency. Only last week, I went to a meeting about the neighbourhood plan for Chapel-en-le-Frith—a fantastic piece of work that is seemingly not being considered. The issue is all to do with the land supply. Residents are getting incensed, thinking, “Are we in a situation of planning by appeal?” Does my hon. Friend think that a valid point?

[Caroline Nokes]

I agree with my hon. Friend. That is exactly the experience that we are facing in Test Valley.

The onus of the NPPF is very much on delivery—I do not need to remind the Minister to refer specifically to paragraphs 47 and 48. Local councils in general and, as the Minister knows from his own correspondence, Test Valley council in particular, are calling for greater clarity and for a focus on planning issues, where the authority has the ability to have a role.

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[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to identify that cause of planning blight. Residents see a greenfield site with planning permission, but with nothing happening, which causes huge frustration. Decisions not to bring forward sites that are not under the local authority’s control—for commercial reasons, for example—should not have the effect of penalising the land supply figure.

At this point, I remind the Minister that Hampshire has no green belt, save for a small corner in the far south-west designed to prevent the spread of the Bournemouth conurbation, which I must remark lies in a totally different county. Hampshire does not benefit from green belt and, as a result, the coalescence of settlements and the loss of the distinctive gaps between them is a serious problem.

The Minister’s response to me, of Monday’s date, helpfully points out paragraph 82 of the NPPF and identifies exactly why my local authority cannot designate new green belt. The NPPF states that the general extent of the green belt is already established—we do not have any and we are unlikely to get any—and that new green belt should be established only in exceptional circumstances. Let me tell him that unfortunately the circumstances in Test Valley are not exceptional, and it would be incredibly difficult for us to designate a new area of green belt, because we are not planning a large new settlement or major urban extension. Even if we could designate a green belt, the current criteria do not allow us to. I urge him to revisit those criteria.

I return to the point in hand. Over the past four years, all the speculative developments in southern Test Valley have been justified on the grounds of a lack of a deliverable five-year supply and the supposed ability of yet another site to make up the shortfall. Yet, as the deputy leader of the council said earlier this year, if we were to tot up all the permissions granted across southern Test Valley, there would be over seven years’ worth of supply. Developers are building deliberately slowly, for either strategic or commercial reasons.

The housing land supply figures are too easily influenced by developers simply either changing their forecasts on permitted sites or not bringing sites forward at all, or else not as quickly as was forecast. The case of the Romsey brewery is well documented. That development has been brought forward at a painfully slow rate since the final brew was started on my 11th birthday.

[Andrew Bingham]

A long time ago.

[Caroline Nokes]

Yes—a very long time ago, as my hon. Friend says. For 30 years, the landowner and developer have dragged their feet, and have set a pattern that others seem very happy to follow. Of course, we all understand that there may be solid planning reasons for sites not coming forward as quickly as was hoped—both I and the Minister understand that—but those reasons should not include the whims of developers. Test Valley borough council is seeking an amendment to national guidance that would enable local planning authorities to factor in forecasted delivery rates in the housing land supply calculated when permission was originally granted. The review of delivery rates should be permitted only if there are sound planning reasons to do so.

I note the Minister’s response—dated yesterday—to the leader of the council, which focused on the steps local authorities can take to bring forward development. Yes, of course he is right that time scales for the start of development can be shortened, but that does not help where development has started but then progresses very slowly indeed. The fund for self-builders is, of course, welcome, but it simply will not deliver the scale of development needed to address the disputed land supply figures.

I turn now to some specific Test Valley examples. I have mentioned Parkers Farm in Rownhams, a greenfield site, which has not been included in the revised local plan but is now the subject of an appeal for 320 houses and a 60 bed extra-care facility. That site would have been considered as part of the borough local plan process but clearly was not deemed as sustainable as other potential sites. It is adjacent to another site that it is thought will imminently be subject to a planning application.

Were the two applications to be granted, they would effectively close the gap between the village of Rownhams and the Southampton city boundary. For generations Test Valley councillors have sought to maintain gaps between settlements and enable villages to retain their own identity and sense of community, but that looks to be under very real threat.

On the edge of Romsey, a site at Halterworth—again, a greenfield site and part of an important local gap between Romsey and the village of North Baddesley—is subject to a proposal by Foreman Homes for in excess of 100 dwellings and a leisure centre. Again, that site would have been considered by the borough local plan process and, again, for good planning reasons it has been excluded.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) on securing this timely debate. I know that she is committed to making sure that housing in her constituency is developed in the right locations, and I welcome the opportunity to discuss the role of the Government’s national planning policy in achieving that, as well as the issues other hon. Friends have raised today. I know that Members across the House, as well as my hon. Friends here today, have made similar points about making sure development happens; we know we need to build more houses, but we all want to see them in the appropriate places, and designed and built in an appropriate way.

My hon. Friend has outlined the importance of getting local plans in place, and I will respond on that point in more detail in a moment. Most of the areas where there are issues do not have a local plan in place. Once a plan is in place, it gives the level of protection that people want. As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) said, nothing will ever stop a developer trying something, but with a local plan in place residents have protection and therefore the expectation—rightly—that the planning process and any appeal will back up the approved and adopted local plan.

Several of my hon. Friends have mentioned the green belt and brownfield land. I know that the green belt is not directly relevant to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North, which does not have much green belt, but it is worth noting that the green belt has remained constant in England over the past few years. If we disregard land reclassified as national parks, the green belt is larger now than in 1997. We are focusing on developing brownfield land as a priority. That is why we launched a new fund specifically aimed at brownfield development during the summer.

I am pleased to hear that Test Valley council is giving strong leadership and recognises the importance of providing the housing necessary to suit the needs of local people. That the rate of construction in the local authority area is at its highest for 15 years is testament to that and to the work done there by councillors and by my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend noted that as a Minister in DCLG I have a quasi-judicial role in the planning system and therefore cannot comment on specific proposals, or on the emerging local plan in Test Valley, which, as she said, is currently at examination stage. However, she has raised some important issues relating to the Government’s approach and reforms and I will touch on those.

The Government are committed to increasing housing supply and helping more people achieve the aspiration of having a home of their own. I am pleased to hear of my hon. Friend’s support for our changes to get rid of the top-down regional strategies that, as many of us know, built up nothing but resentment, while in the meantime, of course, nothing was getting built. I welcome the enthusiasm of local communities in her area for exploring neighbourhood plans. When we came into power, we wanted local communities to play a much stronger role in shaping the areas in which they live and supporting new development proposals that would deliver the houses we need. That is why we introduced the neighbourhood planning system in the Localism Act, which my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester mentioned. That important and popular legislation means that local people in communities get a real say in planning in their area. For the first time, communities can come together to produce plans that have real statutory weight in the planning system.

[Andrew Bingham]

I agree with what the Minister says about neighbourhood plans, but it seems that the plan written in Chapel-en-le-Frith is being completely ignored by the planning authority—the borough council—which has led to great dissatisfaction in the village. People got together to put the plan together, but they now feel it is being ignored, so they are wondering what the point is.

[Brandon Lewis]

Without going into the specifics of my hon. Friend’s case, if a neighbourhood plan has been drawn up—particularly if it has gone through a referendum and been approved—it is right that the local authority should give it weight. Neighbourhood plans have statutory weight. If residents in my hon. Friend’s area look at casework from just the last month or two, they will see that the Government and planning inspectors have backed neighbourhood plans and turned down planning applications that go against them. If a local authority is not taking account of neighbourhood plans, residents should be very firm with it about what it is doing. Authorities are ultimately elected by their communities and they should be listening to them.

Neighbourhood plans can include policies on where development should go, what it should look like, what should be protected and what facilities should be provided. I therefore encourage all constituents, whether in rural or urban parts of any of our constituencies, who want to support house building while protecting the historic, environmental and aesthetic value of our communities, to get involved with neighbourhood planning.