Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab) [V]]

If the Government’s contention is that the current planning system is flawed and needs reform, I can only agree. One problem is political interference. Last week, the right hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) persuaded the Secretary of State to call in a much needed development of 133 social and affordable homes that would benefit my constituents as much as his. Far too little social housing is being built. As Shelter points out, in the last five years, on average, there have been 6,500 social homes a year—a 10th of what is needed.

It is not just the number of homes that is lacking; good design, energy efficiency and space standards do not get much of a look in either. There is an inequality of arms between short-staffed planning departments and local residents, on the one hand, and well-resourced developers on the other.

If the proposed reforms addressed these and other inequities, they would be welcome, but they do not; in fact, they make them worse. Developers will dominate a system of decision making that sidelines or eliminates public consultation and the role of local councils. In place of section 106 agreements, there will be an infrastructure levy that aims, at best, to fund the current pitiful number of social homes, but there is no explanation of how it will do even that. The free-for-all allowed by permitted development means that we are building the slums of the future—badly designed, cramped, ugly and not fit for habitation. Neighbourhood planning is to go; so too are planning committees. Objections will not be heard in “growth” or “renewal” areas. These proposals are not about challenging NIMBYs or helping young people with families on to the housing ladder but about an increasingly corrupt relationship between the Conservative party and the major developers and builders: cash for profits; donations for deregulation.

I asked my local planning experts at the Hammersmith Society what they would like to see from reform. They pointed out that, on the one hand, public input without rights of appeal is already often brushed aside, while on the other, allowing third-party appeals could see development grind to a halt. A compromise might be for local planners to develop specific briefs for sites in consultation with design panels, setting out what is and is not acceptable, discouraging both the forlorn objection and the speculative application.

With the right approach from Government, both residents and developers may be willing to compromise, but the current proposals are a developers’ charter surrendering both town and countryside to those who, for their own gain, will ruin our collective past without benefiting our individual futures.