Planning Guidance (Children's Homes)

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Over the past couple of years, there has been an increase in public awareness and understanding of the myriad problems facing children and young people who live in children’s homes. I welcome the Government’s recent initiatives to improve the quality of care in children’s homes and the clampdown on the high number of children placed miles away from home, as well as the improved collection of data on missing children. I am also pleased that the suitability of an area is to be taken into account before a children’s home is allowed to register because that will stop clusters of children’s homes springing up in run-down hot spots where there might be drugs problems or a bail hostel housing released sexual offenders.

A joint parliamentary inquiry by the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, and the all-party group on looked-after children and care leavers, which I chaired last year, revealed that a significant minority of vulnerable young people living in children’s homes are targeted for sexual exploitation. Recent high-profile court cases, such as the Oxford case, have also highlighted that problem.

I shall focus on planning legislation in my speech because it is the final piece of the jigsaw on children’s homes and tackling child sexual exploitation. I also want to explore how we can marry the Department for Education’s new and admirable proposals to stop children’s homes springing up in the wrong areas with the fact that existing planning laws do not specify that that is a material planning consideration.

The national minimum care standards for children’s homes, on which Ofsted bases its inspections, state that children’s homes should be located in safe areas. The inspection should assess whether the

“home’s location and design promotes children’s health, safety and wellbeing and avoids factors such as excessive isolation and areas that present significant risks to children”.

The Department for Education’s new proposals, which are currently subject to consultation, take that further by including a requirement for the providers of children’s homes to carry out a risk assessment of the area in partnership with the police and the local authority. Registration will be refused or suspended if the area is deemed unsafe. In the light of those new proposals, I argue that we need fresh planning guidance to reflect the fact that a home deemed by the police and Ofsted to be in an unsafe area will not get registration and to state that that needs to be a material consideration at the planning stage.

It is crucial that planning guidance is re-examined; otherwise we will have a crazy situation similar to that recently brought to my attention in Birmingham, where the planning committee is considering a planning application to open a children’s home in an area renowned for prostitution, drug dealing and serious crime—a red light area. I find this staggering. The papers for the planning committee reveal that there has been a history of young girls in this area being groomed for prostitution, and that it even led to the closure of another children’s home on a nearby road. The concern is that opening a new children’s home in the same area would result in the same risks of vulnerable children in care being targeted by sexual predators. There have been an enormous number of objections, including from the police and the cabinet member for families and children, yet the council officers recommended that permission be granted because there are no planning grounds to refuse consent.

The decision clearly flies in the face of the Department for Education’s new proposals and illustrates my point exactly that the planning guidance from the Government needs changing. Of course, I accept that the planning system is separate from the child protection system, but it is hard for the public to understand how planning permission can be granted for a children’s home when there are so many objections on child protection grounds. I also understand that planning authorities have a lot of discretion and are able to turn down planning applications on any grounds that they think are appropriate and that are linked to local and regional planning policy.

I have been aware of planning problems for a number of years. On 1 February 2010, I held an Adjournment debate on planning applications for children’s homes. When I first worked as a social worker in Stockport in the 1980s, small, family-type care homes provided a family environment for quite young children, and the carers were often a resident couple. Now, younger children are placed with foster families and the young people placed in children’s homes are older with difficult and challenging behaviour. They often come into care with multiple problems and complex needs.

Stockport has 34 privately owned children’s homes—one of the highest numbers in the country. There are 241 children living in children’s homes in Stockport, but only 26 of them actually come from Stockport.

Stockport council recently held a scrutiny review of the relationship between its agencies, private children’s homes and the police. The review highlights concerns about current planning regulations and the proliferation of children’s homes in residential areas. It recommends changes to planning policy so that the number of existing homes in an area can be a material consideration at the planning stage of a new application for a children’s home. That arises out of concerns for the implications on local resources of children with complex needs being placed in the area from out of the borough.

When I first raised the matter of planning guidance for children’s homes in 2010, I was primarily concerned that certificates of lawful development were being issued for children’s homes opening in family homes where I felt if would have been more appropriate for planning permission to have been sought as a class C2 use rather than class C3.

The current rules relating to when a change of use for a building does and does not require planning permission are set out in The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987. Use class 3 is a dwelling house occupied by a single person or people living together as a family. It can also include not more than six residents living together as a single household, including a household where care is provided for residents. Use class 2 is for residential institutions and applies when there are more than six occupants, or when the occupants are not considered to be living together as a single household. The issue of when planning permission is required for a children’s home is still a matter to be determined depending on the circumstances of each individual case, which will turn on whether a “material change of use” has occurred from class C3 use to class C2.

In 2010, an appeal was made to the Planning Inspectorate because of a failure to secure a certificate of lawful use for a children’s home in Stockport. The planning inspector refused the appeal and concluded that the residents could not be said to be living together as a single household. It said that there was a lockable office and other rooms and that this was more akin to institutional, rather than normal family home life. He also said that the residential use of the property by troubled children could bring more disturbance than most family homes. That, among other factors, led him to conclude that there had been a material change of use.

A paper issued by the planning services department at Leeds city council in December 2012 entitled, “Guidance Note—Planning Permission for Children’s Homes C2 or C3”, said that the problem of whether a children’s home would fall into category C3 could turn on the definition of a single household. It quoted a North Devon judgment on the definition of a single household. Justice Collins said that it was unrealistic to expect children to look after themselves in a single household. It clarified that carers who provided 24-hour care but were not resident could not be regarded as living together in a household. The paper concluded:

“A children’s home run on shift patterns could not be considered to fall within Class C3…because clearly, this is not occupation of a dwelling house by a single person or people living together as a family.”

The judge said, however:

“Although it may sound somewhat illogical, it is accepted…that, notwithstanding that this may fall within Class C2, rather than Class C3, nonetheless planning permission may not be required if the change of use was not a material change of use.”

The courts have held that whether a change of use is material or not is a matter of fact and degree for the local planning authority to determine, having considered the individual facts of the case.

On children’s homes, the present use categories, C3 and C2, create confusion, and as the judge said, it seems illogical that having established that a proposed children’s home is in use class 2, which one would think would require a planning application for a change of use from class 3, it would then have to be established that the change of use was material and therefore needed a planning application. This adds further confusion. I accept that planning is a judicial procedure based on case law, but I think there is a lack of clarity from Parliament. I think the Minister will appreciate that my constituents also find it extremely confusing.

The confusion about material change of use could be sorted out by having a different use category for children’s homes, spelling out how a children’s home is defined, including, for example, rotating shift workers, visits by therapeutic staff and lockable offices. I understand, however, that the Government are reluctant to introduce new use classes, so my other suggestion would be the issuing of new planning guidance saying what constitutes a children’s home. However, the other issue is about when planning permission for a children’s home should be refused. I hope he agrees that it cannot be right that a children’s home can be recommended for planning permission in an area that is clearly unsuitable for vulnerable young people.

I would like to see planning guidance on when it would be appropriate to refuse planning permission—for example, when there are concerns about the safety of children because of activities in the area, such as prostitution or drugs, or where there is already a proliferation of children’s homes, which has implications for local resources. As I said, Stockport has one of the highest numbers of private children’s homes in the country. There is concern that the geographic distribution of children’s homes—more than 25% of all such homes are located in the north-west—means that children are being placed many hundreds of miles from their own areas. A change in planning guidance would also help to ensure a better distribution of children’s home to meet children’s needs.

Guidance would be extremely useful, because as the Minister knows, Government planning guidance is regarded as a material consideration in planning decisions. It is right, in the interests of the welfare of young people in children’s homes, as well as the wider community, that the suitability of the location be considered. In effect, I am calling for the kind of planning guidance issued for development on green-belt land, where the Government state what they would consider to be an inappropriate development, which is used as a material consideration in planning applications. If it can be done to protect our countryside, it can be done to protect our children.

That would also mean that the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government would be singing from the same hymn sheet. Under the new Department for Education proposals, which say that children’s homes should not be allowed to open in an unsafe area, it seems unlikely that the children’s home I mentioned would get registration. We therefore have the ludicrous situation where planning permission is recommended for a children’s home near roads that have been closed by the council to stop kerb crawling. New Government planning guidance that spelt out that the safety of an area to vulnerable children is a material factor to be considered would ensure that such a situation does not arise.

I hope the Minister will agree that it is time to clear up the confusion and issue new planning guidance on children’s homes to bring clarity to this unsatisfactory situation. The Government have—quite rightly—given priority to tackling child sexual exploitation and improving protection for children in our care, and I hope the Minister will respond positively to my suggestions, which are aimed at engaging his Department in achieving that admirable objective.