Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

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

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend just expand on that point? Why is he no longer in favour of abolishing the Planning Inspectorate? In my experience in Sutton Coldfield, it adds precisely nothing to the process.

[Nick Herbert]

I am very glad to be pushed into a more moderate and Conservative position on this issue than the one I previously took. What I am focused on is ensuring that the Planning Inspectorate takes the right decisions should such developments be called in, and, more particularly, that local authorities take the right decisions in the first place. We should be minimising the number of appeals that have to go to the Planning Inspectorate because a wrong decision is made or because a decision appears to be in breach of national policy, and that means getting the national policy right. My contention is that national policy should give primacy to made neighbourhood plans, because these have been approved in local referendums.

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[Nick Herbert]

My right hon. and learned Friend puts the point incredibly well. That is exactly how developers are able to game the system and why the way in which we calculate the five-year land supply is fundamentally flawed and is giving rise to this injustice. The loophole has to be closed, and I very much hope that the Government will do so.

[Mr Mitchell]

I apologise for troubling the House twice in one day, not least since I only very rarely intervene in this area of public policy, but in Sutton Coldfield we are absolutely astonished and mystified by the Secretary of State’s unwise and illogical decision to lift the stop imposed by his predecessor on the plans from Labour-controlled Birmingham City Council to build 6,000 new houses on Sutton Coldfield’s green belt. I should make it clear that we are strongly in favour of building more homes in Sutton Coldfield. My excellent local councillors—11 out of 12 of them are Conservative—have consistently sought to ensure that, where appropriate, we build new homes, because we are conscious that we want our children and grandchildren to benefit in the same way as my generation has, but those homes have to be built in the right places.

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[Mr Jackson]

I am fully supportive of, and sympathetic to, my right hon. Friend’s concerns about the 2016 Birmingham local plan. Nevertheless, as of March 2016, 216,000 homes have already been allocated in emerging and existing approved local plans.

[Mr Mitchell]

I am coming directly to that point, but let me go back to parsing, for the benefit of the House, what the Secretary of State said at the developers’ lunch. First, he said that this was a local decision. It is not a local decision; it is made by Birmingham City Council, which is one of the largest authorities in Europe, and the views of my constituents—100,000 residents of the royal town of Sutton Coldfield—have been completely blocked out. Our 2015 manifesto stated that we would

“ensure local people have more control over planning and protect the Green Belt”.

The action that the Secretary of State has allowed flies absolutely and categorically in the face of that. Entirely ignored are the 100,000 citizens of the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, virtually all of whom are totally opposed to the development. They have marched in their hundreds and protested in their thousands, and 11 out of 12 Conservative councillors have opposed the process.

We have the largest town council in the country. It is totally and unanimously opposed to the development, but it has not even been consulted. Will the junior Minister commit to going back to Birmingham City Council and suggesting—I do not think he has the power to force the council to do this—that common decency expects it to go back to the 24 elected members of the largest town council in the country, formally consult them and listen to what they have to say?

Labour has been trying to build around and emasculate the royal town of Sutton Coldfield for 30 years—it refers to us as “North Birmingham”—and, thanks to the Secretary of State, it now might well succeed. My 100,000 constituents have been totally and completely disfranchised. That is the very definition of the tyranny of the majority over the minority, and the Department and the Secretary of State have now made themselves complicit in this.

On the second point that the Secretary of State raised, neither the council nor the Department, and certainly not the inspector, has looked at the patently obvious alternatives. There could be a much more comprehensive regional approach, which the excellent Conservative mayoral candidate for the west midlands, Andy Street, has spoken up for. There are superb plans to build a Wolverhampton garden city, almost all of which would be on brownfield land, to provide 45,000 houses. There are small brownfield sites in Birmingham that have specifically not been included for consideration. We in Sutton Coldfield came up with the very reasonable proposal that there should be an eight-year moratorium on building 6,000 homes on the green belt while the other 45,000-plus were built on brownfield sites. That approach would enable the Government and the council to review the extent to which building on the green belt might be needed or acceptable. However, the proposal was rejected, without even any consideration by the inspector.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England made an excellent submission in February, which I sent to the Minister on 16 August. It made many excellent points that have not been addressed. I point out that when Birmingham was controlled by a coalition of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, Tory councillors had plans to build the same number of houses as are now proposed by Labour-controlled Birmingham City Council, but without needing to encroach on the green belt. By definition, there are not even exceptional circumstances for building on the green belt, let alone “very exceptional circumstances”, which were the words used by the Secretary of State.

I accept of course that these are Labour plans, but Sutton Coldfield has been grievously let down. I believe that we were and are entitled to expect the protection of the Government, based on their manifesto commitment, and I am deeply disappointed that we have not been able to rely on that. The transport problems on our side of the Birmingham conurbation that will be caused by the development will be acute and horrific. There is no guarantee that the Labour council will spend the necessary money on infrastructure for these new builds. There was no proper consultation with the relevant health services and authorities, although the council was obliged to carry that out.

The Government have got themselves into a mess on the green belt by trying to face both ways at the same time. With this decision, they have massively shot themselves in the foot. My right hon. and hon. Friends will not trust the Department on issues involving the green belt, about which many of them are extremely sensitive, because of the ludicrous nature of this decision. Building more homes, which we all want, will therefore be much more difficult for the Department.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on making a very cogent case. Does he accept that the reason the green belt has a high designation is that such areas are very special—they are green lungs in and around our great cities? Once they are built over, they are very difficult to recreate.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend puts the argument eloquently. That is exactly what my constituents feel. The west midlands has less green-belt land than many parts of the country, which is another reason why there should have been a much more holistic and imaginative approach, rather than this appalling scheme.

Amendments 28 and 29 offer the Government a chance to show good faith with regard to our 2015 election manifesto. I do not propose to trouble the House by pressing them to a Division, but I warn the Government that if they do not accept the principle behind what I am saying, if not the amendments, not only will they have great difficulty on house building, because they will not be trusted on the green belt, but I have no doubt that the other place, which has a strong history of looking at these matters, will oblige this House to think again.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I rise with three purposes, the first of which is to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), whose new clauses I have put my name to. The purport of what he said is clearly right. Those of us who were in on the birth of neighbourhood planning and believe in it are troubled by things that have happened more recently, among which are those that he described. Clearly some remedy is needed.

The only thing that I want to add to what my right hon. Friend said so clearly and well is that the written ministerial statement that we have now seen is an admirable way to deal with those issues. Clearly we will want to ensure that the statement is observed in the observance and not in the breach.

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[Rob Marris]

I know you have kindly expressed an interest in my occupational history previously, Mr Speaker. At one point very briefly many years ago, I practised planning law. I remember two things about it. First, it is incredibly technical. Secondly, as adverted to by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), it seems to change. Like criminal law, we seem to have an annual Bill on planning or matters relating thereto before Parliament. This year we have had a bumper year and two Bills, one of which is now the Housing and Planning Act 2016.

I hope we can have a brief discussion at least on amendments 24 and 25, which are part of this group, and which urge planners to take into account the needs of older people and people with disabilities. That is important anyway in terms of equalities, but it is relevant to planning matters when we have a changing population. The population is getting older. With that, but not just because of it, it also has a higher rate of disabilities, some of which are susceptible to being accommodated, in both senses of the word, within the planning system.

I cannot resist making some brief remarks about the speech of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). I remember, as he might or might not, that before 1974, when I was a lad, Sutton Coldfield was not part of Birmingham. It was subsumed within Birmingham—against its wishes, I suspect, but I was not that old, so I do not recall—in 1974 and now has the town council. I was not clear—I might have nodded during his speech when he referred to the 6,000 houses—whether Sutton Coldfield has a local neighbourhood plan. He rightly referred to the concerns of Sutton Coldfield residents—concerns shared by residents elsewhere, I am sure, including in my natal city, Wolverhampton, which I represent and where I live—that there should be sufficient housing for coming generations.

The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned the 45,000 houses and Wolverhampton garden city. Wolverhampton is already a garden city, of course, having as it does more trees than almost any city in Europe, relative to its size, but we welcome more gardens and more people, and we are trying to build. As he might know, however, and as I know from visiting relatives in Sutton Coldfield, it is an awfully long journey, temporally, from Wolverhampton to Sutton Coldfield, so it cannot be a Sutton Coldfield overspill. On a more serious note, however, I find it strange that he berates Birmingham City Council for its spending on transport infrastructure, when Governments of which he was a member and which he continues to support—broadly—have cut its total income in the last six years by over 40%. He is right that there are transport infrastructure problems in the urban west midlands and within the city of Birmingham, as administratively constituted, including in Sutton Coldfield, but some of those problems—not all of them, but some of them—come from the huge Government cuts that he broadly supported.

[Mr Mitchell]

None of what the hon. Gentleman says detracts from my central argument. The important point about Wolverhampton garden city, which the Conservative mayoral candidate in the west midlands, Andy Street, makes so eloquently, is that we need a much more holistic, regional approach to ensure that the needs of his constituents and mine are met in a sensible way.

[Rob Marris]

I agree. I suspect that all candidates, including the Labour candidate, for the West Midlands Combined Authority mayoralty agree with the holistic approach and devolution, but we always have problems, in the House and in our constituencies, when trying to agree on what local means, as the right hon. Gentleman has eloquently set out. Someone from Bromsgrove, for example, might see Birmingham as all one place, whereas those of us who grew up in the region know that there are districts within Birmingham, and then there is the royal town, which is now part of the administrative sub-region of Birmingham City Council, many of whose 100,000 residents would not I suspect—he can correct me if I am wrong—consider themselves as Brummies, just as those of us from the black country would not consider ourselves Brummies, although we are in administratively different areas.

On the speech by the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), I have sympathy with new clauses 7 and 8, and I hope that if the Government want to take them forward, they will address the issue—one that I do not think they currently address but which I suspect he would support—that I raised when he kindly allowed me to intervene. Tettenhall district, in my constituency, was a separate entity until 1966, when it was folded into Wolverhampton, which in the millennium itself became a city but which before had been a metropolitan district borough. Tettenhall district, which I have the honour to represent, had a local neighbourhood plan. People, including close friends of mine, worked incredibly hard on it and knocked on an awful lot of doors, and in July 2014, the turnout—from memory—was over 50% in the referendum on whether to adopt that plan, and it was overwhelmingly adopted.

I do not expect the Minister to comment on a particular application, but I use this as an example. I have raised it in the House before, because I and the residents of Tettenhall have a real beef about it. The local neighbourhood plan set out certain parameters for how housing might be incorporated. The good people of Tettenhall are not opposed to new housing, just as the good people of Sutton Coldfield are not opposed to new housing—it just depends on where it is. Labour-controlled Wolverhampton City Council acceded to the demands of the local neighbourhood plan and the two wards in Tettenhall, which have between them six Conservative councillors, and to the surprise of some agreed that the planning application for the site known as the Clock House should not be given planning permission. It was refused by the city council. The developers, McCarthy & Stone—many Members will have come across them, with their retirement home juggernaut—then put in an appeal to Bristol. I am speaking now as a lay person, because I have not practised planning law for a very long time, but the planning inspector in Bristol totally ignored the local neighbourhood plan. He did not say, “We disagree with the local neighbourhood plan” or that “other factors override what is in the local neighbourhood plan.” The long written decision, which overturned the city council’s decision to reject and allowed the application to proceed, made almost no reference to the local neighbourhood plan.

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[Mr Jackson]

I pay tribute to the neighbourhood plans being produced by volunteers in my right hon. Friend’s constituency and throughout our country. They do an excellent job and I support the policy four-square. My point is about opportunity cost: is this approach going to have a detrimental effect on the Government’s strategic housing objective, which is to deliver large-scale housing for people who need it? When we look at the age of people buying their first house and at the availability or otherwise of affordable housing across the country, we see that this proposal has the potential to undermine the authority of the local planning authority to meet wider, long-term strategic housing and planning objectives. These things are already in place via the emerging or adopted local plan. The proposal will inevitably give rise to conflict between the local planning authority and the neighbourhood planning bodies, with the possible perverse consequence that we will see the establishment of neighbourhood planning bodies merely in order to thwart development.

Let me move on to deal quickly with new clause 8. I used the correct word “moratorium” in respect of the use by the Minister of development orders. On the specific issue of five-year land supply, again, this proposal seeks to put a draconian policy in the Bill, rather than, as I suggested in my intervention—my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs was generous in accepting interventions—waiting for a response from Government, by means other than primary legislation, to do as the LGA has suggested, which is to review the policy and look for a more consistent and better understood methodology for both developers and local authorities in respect of the policy under the current auspices of the national planning policy framework.

At the moment, we still have a robust system that tests the efficacy of five-year land supply through planning appeals and local plans. We should encourage greater incentives from local planning authorities. It is as well to make the point that, in some parts of the country, they lack the appropriate resources to carry out the proper work in that respect.

My final point is about amendment 28, which was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield. I can understand the anger, passion and resentment that he articulated in his usual powerful way, but this is probably the most inappropriate amendment, because preventing payment of the new homes bonus when we already have strong protections in place for the green belt and other designated areas to prevent inappropriate development will have consequences.

[Mr Mitchell]

This may be my lack of understanding of planning matters, but can my hon. Friend explain how a Government who say they are committed to protecting the green belt then pay people a subsidy to build on the green belt, rather than paying them a bigger subsidy to build on brownfield sites, while protecting the green belt? Perhaps he can explain that conundrum.

[Mr Jackson]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, but I am saying that we have less than benign financial circumstances and, were his policy to be followed, the city of Birmingham might lose £54 million in income through the new homes bonus. There are other ways in which we can toughen protections for the green belt, while allowing discretion for some exceptional sites. I made the point in my intervention that 216,000 homes had already been placed in emerging and completed local plans in the green belt by March. I accept that there is a problem, but I am not convinced that this amendment will sort the issue out.

In reducing the income stream and funding to local planning authorities, the perverse ramification may well be that those hard-pressed authorities cannot therefore put in the effort to properly manage well-funded speculative developers with their land grabs. There might also be an impact on rural housing schemes, which are very important and necessary for many of my hon. Friends.

For those reasons, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends—I think they have already acceded to my request—not to push these matters to a vote. Ministers will have heard the points that have been raised on both sides of the House and will correctly identify methods to ameliorate the problems that have been raised.

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[Gavin Barwell]

I will not take an intervention now, as I am conscious of the time. What I will say to the hon. Gentleman, who clearly has a real passion for this issue, is that I am prepared to talk to colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and see, as part of its wider review of these issues, whether it would be helpful to issue guidance to local authorities so that they are aware of the powers that they have and how the NPPF works in this area.

Let me move on now to the main issue of the debate, which was in relation to neighbourhood planning. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who put their names to new clause 7 for the opportunity to debate an issue in which so many people in this House have a strong interest. I am talking about the role of neighbourhood planning groups in our planning system.

There are many champions of neighbourhood planning in all parts of the House. As the planning Minister, I am very grateful for that support. The encouragement and support of a trusted local MP can undoubtedly help with many aspects of the neighbourhood planning process.

It is worth taking a quick moment to say why neighbourhood planning is so important. Research tells us that 42% of people say that they would be more supportive of proposed developments if local people had a say in them. There is strong evidence that those plans that have included housing allocations have increased, on average, the allocation above what their local planning authority was putting in place. To put that simply, where we give people control of the planning system, they plan for more housing. It is therefore crucial that the plans that people have worked so hard to produce are given proper consideration when local planning decisions are made.

In responding to new clause 7, I want to reassure my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) that measures in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 that were commenced only on 1 October, the measures in this Bill, and in particular the written ministerial statement, which he referred to in his remarks, that I made yesterday, will address the concerns that he has raised. The national planning policy framework already says clearly that, where a planning application conflicts with a neighbourhood plan that has been brought into force, planning permission should not normally be granted. As my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton pointed out, the issue here is that, where a local planning authority does not have a five-year land supply, that is not a normal circumstance and the presumption in favour of development in some cases—not all—overrides neighbourhood plans.

In the written ministerial statement, I made it clear that from yesterday, where communities plan for housing in their area in a neighbourhood plan, those plans should not be deemed out of date unless there is a significant lack of land supply—that is, under three years. That applies to all plans for the next two years, and for the first two years of any plan that is put into place. That will give a degree of protection that has not been available. The message needs to go out clearly from this House that local authorities must get up-to-date plans in place to provide that protection for neighbourhood plans. I hope that that reassures people. As I said, I have written both to the Planning Inspectorate and to local councils on that issue.

I hope that my right hon. Friend feels that what I have said is part of the solution. I was attracted to part of his new clause 7. It refers to the idea that parish councils and neighbourhood forums should be told if there is a planning application in their area. At present, they have a right to request information, but they are not necessarily told. If he does not press new clause 7 and with his permission, I will take that proposal away and seek to insert it into the Bill in the Lords.

On new clause 8, which deals with the five-year land supply, the written ministerial statement partly addresses that concern, but the other issue that my right hon. Friend touched on was whether, once a five-year land supply has been established, there should be a period that it holds for. The local plans expert group made some very interesting recommendations in that area. We will look at them as part of the White Paper, so I can reassure him that the Government are actively considering that issue and will return to it. I hope that he feels that with the changes in the 2016 Act that have just been brought into force, the changes that we are making in this Bill, the written ministerial statement, the fact that I will accept part of his amendment and what is going to come in the White Paper, there is a package that underlines this Government’s commitment to neighbourhood planning. I thank him on a personal level for the priority that he has given to the issue. I found my discussions with him very useful.

On amendments 28 and 29 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), I should say that I am always grateful for his advice and suggestions. He is a champion for his constituency and the whole House understands how passionately he feels about the green belt in his constituency. As someone with green belt in my constituency, I both understand and share that passion. The green belt has been a feature of planning policy throughout the post-war period, and although its boundaries have changed over time, the underlying objective of preventing urban sprawl remains as relevant as ever.

I make it clear to the House that the Government’s policy on protecting the green belt and national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest remains unchanged. The national planning policy framework is very clear that it is for local authorities to decide whether to review green-belt boundaries but that they should do so only in exceptional circumstances. There needs to be public consultation and independent examination of their proposals. In relation to applications to build homes on green-belt land, again there is very strong protection. The NPPF says that inappropriate development is by definition harmful to the green belt and should not be approved except in very special circumstances.

[Mr Mitchell]

Given the Minister’s eloquent defence of the green belt from the Dispatch Box, can he explain to the House how on earth he reached such a ludicrous position in respect of the decision to lift the delay on Birmingham City Council?

[Gavin Barwell]

As I said, there is independent examination whenever a local authority seeks to review green-belt boundaries. The inspector looked at whether Birmingham City Council’s decision passed the test of exceptional circumstances, and his judgment was that the council’s proposals on density and its work with neighbouring local authorities under the duty to co-operate passed that test. As my right hon. Friend is aware, the previous Secretary of State issued the holding direction, and we looked at the inspector’s decision to see whether there was any reason we might feel he had misdirected himself, and we decided there were no grounds for us to overturn the decision. I understand that my right hon. Friend does not agree with that decision and feels very angry about it, but that is a factual account of what happened.

[Mr Mitchell]

Nevertheless, there was no consultation of the 100,000 people in Sutton Coldfield—at least, the consultation was completely ignored. We are the largest town council in the country, and every single town councillor is opposed to this plan. Will my hon. Friend at least suggest to Birmingham City Council that, before it proceeds to ratify the plan, it should consult the largest town council in the country and listen to its views?

[Gavin Barwell]

I was going to come to that issue when I came to my right hon. Friend’s second new clause. Since he has raised it with me directly, I am happy to say that I would expect local authorities to consult their parish and town councils. I have no power to direct them to do so, as he alluded to in his speech, but there should clearly be consultation with large town councils and local communities should be consulted as part of the local plan process. I suspect that part of his frustration with this decision is about the fact that he does not necessarily accept the legitimacy of Birmingham imposing it on Sutton Coldfield and that perhaps speaks to his views about local governance in the area. However, the whole House will have heard his passion for this issue.

I am conscious of the time, Mr Speaker, so let me briefly reassure the House on the Government’s efforts to ensure that we have a policy of brownfield first. We are introducing statutory brownfield registers. Our estate regeneration strategy, which has just been published, is looking at how we can redevelop our estates. Permitted development is about bringing old buildings back into use. There is the release of surplus public land. The £3 billion home building fund is aimed at getting brownfield sites back into use. There are also the £1.2 billion starter home land fund and the changes to the NPPF that we are consulting on to put an even stronger emphasis on brownfield. I just want to reassure the House on that issue.

Let me turn to my right hon. Friend’s second amendment, on the relationship between neighbourhood plans and local plans and on the roles of parish and town councils. He referred to Sutton Coldfield Town Council, which was recently set up under the reforms the Government brought in to allow new town and parish councils to be established. The Government have a lot of sympathy with the argument he is advancing in this amendment. There are already powers in legislation in relation to the statements of community involvement that local authorities have to produce, but I think he has found an issue where we can strengthen the statutory protections. With his leave, and if he were not to press his amendment, I would like to discuss the issue with him and come back in the Lords to see whether we can make the kind of changes he suggests.

Let me turn briefly to new clause 5 from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), which is about the resourcing of the neighbourhood planning process. The neighbourhood share of the community infrastructure levy was introduced by this Government in 2013—I suspect that he had a hand in that—to give local people a real say over infrastructure priorities in their area. Communities without a neighbourhood plan already benefit from using 15% of CIL receipts. The money is passed directly to parish and town councils, and Government guidance makes it clear that it can be used to develop a neighbourhood plan.

New clause 5 sets out that a local planning authority may make available funds where a parish agrees to forgo some of the CIL levy it expects to get over time. If communities wish to do that, they are already able to do so, because regulation 59A of the CIL regulations allows them to. However, I think that the wider point my right hon. Friend was trying to probe was about the resourcing for neighbourhood planning. We have a budget of £22.5 million for 2015 to 2018. Nearly £10 million of that has been spent so far. Clearly, if we get an acceleration in the number of neighbourhood plans, we will need to find additional resources, and I am happy to discuss further with him how we might go about doing so.

In new clause 2, my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) seeks to encourage developers to comply with existing local and, particularly, neighbourhood plans. At appeal, an award of costs may be made if there has been unreasonable behaviour by a party that has caused another party to incur unnecessary or wasted expenses. It is worth pointing out that Government guidance includes as an example of unreasonable behaviour a development that is clearly not in accordance with the development plan and where no other material considerations indicate that a decision should be made against the development plan. So this ability is already there. An award of costs does not determine the actual amount but states the broad extent of the expense that can be recovered, and the matter then has to be settled between the parties or in the courts.

My hon. Friend’s new clause raises issues that it may be of interest to explore further. We need to think about whether we can do more to ensure that the collective vision of a community as set out in its neighbourhood plan is not regularly overridden. I cannot agree with the part of the new clause that refers to initial applications to the local authority. However, in relation to award of costs in the appeals system, we can look at what more we can do to ensure that only appeals that have a legitimate chance of success go forward to the inspectorate. If she is happy not to press her new clause, I am happy to look further at that matter.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) for her two amendments raising the important issue of homes for older and disabled people. The Government want to see new homes and places that stand the test of time. We therefore want to ensure that buildings and spaces work well for everyone and will adapt to the needs of future generations. Her proposal tackles a very important issue. Older and disabled people have a wide range of housing needs. As she implied, we are already seeking to address that in the NPPF. I fully understand why she wanted to further emphasise the importance of this issue by putting it into primary legislation. We need to guard against attempts to put all national planning policy into primary legislation, but she has alighted on a particularly important issue. Given that we support the spirit of her amendments, if she is happy not to press them, I am minded to accept their thrust and work with her to come back in the Lords with amendments approved by parliamentary counsel that take forward the principle of what she has been trying to achieve. I thank her for her interest in this issue.

I turn finally to the amendments tabled by the official Opposition. I will deal with just the two proposed by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods). On amendment 7, the Secretary of State and I have been clear that the resourcing of local authority planning departments is an issue very close to our hearts. As I set out in Committee, in the specific case of funding for neighbourhood planning duties, we believe that adequate funding is already available. Planning authorities can claim £5,000 for each of the first five neighbourhood areas they designate and, where there is no parish council, a further £5,000 for each of the first five neighbourhood forums. They can claim an additional £20,000 once they have set the date for a referendum. In addition, where a second referendum must be held, a further £10,000 is available. I know that the House is very interested in second referendums at the moment. I should stress that this relates to areas where there are businesses and local residents; it is not an attempt to rerun the argument. In total, £13 million has been paid out since 2012 to help local planning authorities to meet their responsibilities. We are committed to continuing to review the costs incurred by councils delivering neighbourhood planning as take-up increases, and we will continue to fund them. This should not be conflated with the wider issue of the funding of local planning departments. As the hon. Lady knows, we will include proposals in the White Paper to try to address that issue.

Amendment 8 raises the important issue of neighbourhood planning in deprived communities. As I said in Committee, we recognise the issues that those communities face. Neighbourhood planning groups in these areas can apply for a grant of up to £15,000—£6,000 more than the usual limit—and, in addition, get significant technical support. I am reluctant to put specific spending requirements into primary legislation because we cannot predict the balance of schemes that will come forward, and it could mean that we could not then fund some neighbourhood planning groups in other areas. However, I assure the hon. Lady that we are committed to making sure that deprived communities get the funding they need. This should not just be a policy for wealthy rural areas. We are putting specific effort into encouraging groups in deprived urban areas to apply for neighbourhood planning.

The House has been very patient with me as I have had to deal with a large number of new clauses and amendments in a short period. I hope that Members will not press their new clauses and amendments and are happy with what I have said.

Question put and negatived.

New Clause 9

Permitted development: use clauses and demolition of drinking establishments

“(1) The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 (SI/1987/764) is amended as follows.

(2) At the end of section 3(6) insert—

“(p) drinking establishment.”

(3) In the Schedule, leave out the paragraph starting “Class A4. Drinking Establishments”

(4) The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995 (SI1995/418) is amended as follows.

(5) In Part 3 of Schedule 2—

(a) in Class A: Permitted development, leave out “A4 (drinking establishments)”.

(b) In Class AA: Permitted development, leave out “Class A4 (drinking establishments)”.

(c) in Class C: Permitted development, leave out “Class A4 (drinking establishments)”.

(6) In Part 31 of Schedule 2 under A.1 at end insert—

“() the building subject to demolition is classed as a drinking establishment”.”—(Dr Blackman-Woods.)

The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that any proposed demolition of or change of use to public houses and other drinking establishments would be subject to planning permission. Currently such buildings, unless they have been listed as Assets of Community Value with the local authority, can be demolished or have their use changed without such permission being granted.

Brought up, and read the First time.