Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

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

[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.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 2 tabled in my name and to support new clauses 7 and 8 tabled in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert).

The aim of new clause 2 is to permit the Secretary of State to impose what would in effect be penalty costs on appeal. My constituency of Eddisbury has a wealth of picturesque villages, located in the most beautiful settings and with excellent schools. These villages are now finding that they are the target of a large number of planning applications, which are often totally against the emerging or adopted neighbourhood plan.

In Cheshire West and Chester, which has a five-year land supply, the council has rightly turned down those applications as being against the neighbourhood plan, yet developers persist in appealing. Local councils and the Planning Inspectorate have to spend valuable resources dealing with appeals that fall squarely against the ambitions and the principles of the neighbourhood plan.

My local parish councils, just like those in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs, have embraced neighbourhood planning. They have committed months of work—sometimes even years of work—to this and have relished the fact that they can bring forward a mix of housing that includes, for example, first-time starter homes as well as executive homes. They want to see starter homes, so that people can get on to the housing ladder and live in the community in which they have grown up, and they want to see smaller homes—bungalow-style homes—for the older people in my constituency who want to downsize. Given the part of Cheshire in which we live, developers invariably build five-bedroom executive homes. My local parish councils have relished the fact that they can plan for a mix of homes that allows for a varied community and enables people to remain in the community in which they have lived and grown up.

Like Arundel and South Downs, we have seen an increased offer and an increased acceptance of housing coming forward. None the less, we still see attempts by developers to drive a coach and horses through those neighbourhood plans. The aim of the new clause is to ensure that there is a financial disincentive in respect of appeals. It raises the prospect of a serious financial penalty for those developers seeking to have a go, as it was described in earlier contributions.

Constituents feel that their rural villages are under siege and that, at every point, their wishes as expressed and adopted in neighbourhood plan are being ignored. The new clause seeks to allow the full recovery of costs, with an additional punitive element, where it is clear that the refusal has been on the basis of the application being against the local neighbourhood plan. These speculative appeals impact on local council resources, and developers constantly feel that they can effectively try to push and break the plan, and it is deeply frustrating.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

I shall refer to most of the amendments. I reiterate my concerns about the amendment relating to neighbourhood planning. It would establish a dangerous precedent that would potentially end the neighbourhood right of appeal against conservatories and small-scale extensions. It would very much reduce the speed at which residential development could progress. There would also be an opportunity for sleight of hand by the more unscrupulous planning authorities that do not want any development in their area: they might move residential development on to a neighbourhood planning regime, in lieu of a local structure plan or district plan. With a third-party appeal, that development would be held up for months and years. People who desperately need homes in high-cost, high-value areas would suffer as a result, so the Government are absolutely right to resist the amendment, although clearly I recognise the sincerity with which my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) represents his constituents’ very legitimate concerns.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jackson]

Not at the moment, if my hon. Friend will allow. I am getting looks of admonition from the Whips, so I had better proceed. The amendment on the carbon compliance standard is precisely the wrong measure at this time. One of the endemic issues resulting from not delivering the appropriate number of homes is the attrition of small and medium-sized builders. Nothing could be designed to knock out even more of them, or to not allow them back into the market alongside very-sizeable-volume builders, than adding extra cost, so the Government are right to resist that amendment.

I now come to starter homes. This is an issue of social equity and fairness as much as anything else. I made the point when we debated this last week that a significant number of people are accessing finance for their new home through the bank of mum and dad—family money. That cannot be right if we want social fairness and equity. We want new owner-occupied properties to be available to young families in particular, and to working people, who do not have recourse to capital that is passed from generation to generation in a way that is inherently very unfair. Through the vehicle of shared equity and Help to Buy in particular, we are achieving that. As the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) will know, the Labour party made the same arguments about the affordable rent tenure in 2010 that it now makes about starter homes.

There is also the issue of constitutional propriety. I am afraid that I was rather rough on the House of Lords, but the fact of the matter is that we have a manifesto commitment to deliver starter homes. The Opposition would have a stronger point were every local planning authority run in an enormously efficient way, delivering residential development in a timely fashion, but they know—it is a cross-party issue—that very many local planning authorities have not even got round to producing structure plans or local district plans. They had the opportunity over many months or years to prepare varied tenure residential developments in their area and they have failed to do so. The Opposition can hardly then complain that the Government, who all of us agree are facing a significant housing crisis, should use primary legislation passed unequivocally by this elected House in order to ameliorate the effects of that housing crisis by saying that we should have a certain amount of starter homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jackson]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point but local planning authorities like his in Sheffield have not been circumscribed by section 106 in the recent past or at all in developing the tenure that they choose. He will know, because the centre of his city has undergone significant regeneration over many years, that the capacity for section 106 payments to go back into social housing has been an issue in his city and others.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. On section 106 agreements, one of the big concerns of my constituents is the impact on health and education infrastructure. That needs to be examined in future, particularly in the light of recent judgments by the planning inspectorate, which are being challenged through the courts.

[Mr Jackson]

I like to think I am an hon. Friend.

Some of us remember four or five years ago fighting the battles over the national planning policy framework. Some of us put our heads on the block and said that it was probably a good thing, and we were right to do so. I fear that sometimes discussion of infrastructure is a way of saying, “No residential development in our area.”

There is a housing crisis. Those who hold housing and capital have a duty to release some of it to those who do not have that power and influence. That is a difficult balance. We have to think of quality of life, but that is one of the things that the Bill has addressed. That is why I stand four-square behind the starter homes policy, which has an election mandate, and I urge Members to support the Government policy and to remind the House of Lords politely that only one of our Houses is elected by the people, and that the other can oversee, scrutinise and improve, but not veto.