Planning and Housing Supply

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Havard. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), and for St Albans (Mrs Main), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), on securing this important debate on a issue that affects everybody in every constituency.

I have long been interested in planning and there are many points that I could raise, but I want to keep my remarks brief and will restrict them to an aberration in the planning rules. I shall also make an observation about local development plans.

The problem is that planning authorities can give themselves planning permission to develop sites that they own. I was a city councillor in Oxford for 17 years, until 1997, and during that time, on many occasions, the council gave itself planning permission, sometimes in preference to other applicants. I am certainly not suggesting that my colleagues at the time did anything wrong or even anything questionable. However, if people own a site and are responsible for giving themselves permission to develop it, it is hard to ensure that there is no appearance of impropriety. We all know that appearances are important. We need to make sure that people have faith in the planning system. I know that this issue troubles people across the country; indeed, a number of people have raised it with me on the Isle of Wight.

I am not sure what alternative procedure we could or should follow. Perhaps it would be appropriate for neighbouring authorities—if there are neighbouring authorities—or a totally separate body to take decisions about council-owned land, or in cases where the local authority would benefit in some way. I should be grateful if the Minister shared his thoughts on this issue and said whether he believes it to be a problem that the Government should address that a council may give planning permission for land that it owns, where it would benefit from doing so.

Local development plans were introduced in 2004, so they postdate my experience as a councillor. I do not claim to have any particular knowledge of or expertise about them. However, I know that writing them and getting them approved can be a long-drawn-out process. Although they replaced a system that was seen to be inflexible, the intention being that they could more easily be amended, having spoken to Bill Murphy, head of planning services at Isle of Wight council, I am not convinced that changes to the core strategy document can be made as quickly and easily as was envisaged when the plans were brought in. It seems to me that a Minister can change the rules much quicker than a local authority.

To provide an example of certain problems, on the Isle of Wight the core strategy document sets out that we should have 520 new dwellings every year. It is not a secret that I think that is far too many, but it was not a decision for me to make; it was made, quite properly, by an elected council. However, it is now clear that the existence of that target may make it more difficult for the Isle of Wight council effectively to oppose inappropriate developments, such as Pennyfeathers, a proposal to develop a 55-hectare greenfield site just outside Ryde. There are many problems with that proposal. Not least of them is that Monktonmead brook already floods. Also, there are a number of brownfield sites available in and around Ryde that should be developed before greenfield farm land. Putting between 800 and 1,400 additional houses on Pennyfeathers farm land is quite wrong. I sincerely hope that the council will find the grounds to reject this development; if it does, I will be pleased.

It should be much easier to amend the core strategy document to take account of changes, particularly political change. A Conservative council may be replaced by a Liberal council the following day. [Interruption.] Well, not a Liberal, but an independent one, perhaps. The council should be able to change the rules, because the people have voted. That also applies to changes in economic circumstances, changes in local authority control, changes in demographic trends, or even changes in response to proposals that are clearly against the wishes of local people, because if localism means anything, it must take account of what local people want. I shall not detain the Chamber any longer. I should like the Minister to make his views clear.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Happy birthday, Mr Turner!