Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Baroness Cumberlege Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, I gave notice of my intention to oppose Clause 12 and I support the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. Indeed, the response from the Minister to what I thought was a reasonable proposal to bring forward an exemption for conditions that are clearly reasonable has strengthened my resolve to support any move to delete the whole clause.

The reasons for that are twofold. I do not want to repeat what I said earlier, but one thing pre-commencement conditions do is overcome the situation at the moment whereby developers are paying the cost when it comes to pre-commencement conditions but the benefits are borne by other people—normally the local community or the environment, or through biodiversity benefits. Without pre-commencement conditions, of course the developer will say, “We don’t want to bear these costs”. Pre-commencement conditions account for those benefits—those externalities—and allow local planning authorities to ensure that those benefits that accrue to others can be accounted for.

In the Minister’s letter on what the unreasonable pre-commencement conditions are, will he also include a list of what are, in his mind, reasonable conditions? It seems to me that drainage is very much a reasonable condition, given that the benefits are accrued by home owners and the community but the costs are borne by the developer.

The second reason I am now more minded to support the opposition to Clause 12 builds on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord True. The Minister says that we will want local authorities, if they have the gumption, to turn these applications down. But let us consider a housing application for, say, 20 homes in a rural area. Let us say that a fairly reasonable, as I would see it, pre-commencement condition is attached for sustainable draining solutions but the developer does not agree. Those houses have agreement in the local plan and the neighbourhood plan. Is the Minister saying that this Government want local authorities to turn down applications that have the support of the local plan and the neighbourhood plan because they cannot get agreement on a perfectly reasonable proposal —in this case for drainage—that is part of a pre-commencement condition? That is what the Minister said. This is the nuclear option. If the local authority does not get agreement from the developer for sustainable drainage systems, the only option it has is to turn it down. That will increase delays and conflict in the system, which the Bill is rightly trying to stop. If we want to build homes, it seems to me that this nuclear option will not deliver what the Government want. Therefore, I support the proposal that Clause 12 should not stand part of the Bill.

[Baroness Cumberlege (Con)]

My Lords, I too oppose the question that Clause 12 stand part of the Bill. I have been tedious beyond endurance and I thank the Committee for its patience. At each stage I have tried very hard to ensure that there is a separation between the powers of the Secretary of State and the responsibilities of local authorities, working with their local communities. I share the deep concern of the Delegated Powers Committee, which the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned. It has deep reservations. We must be careful not to brush away the work of that committee and the recommendations it makes, because it is the watchdog for our legislative processes and thoughts and what we bring forward. I was interested that my noble friend the Minister said that he will take real cognisance of what it has been saying and will try to meet those concerns.

One of the things that surprises me in all of this is that the legislation that the Neighbourhood Planning Bill is based on is the Localism Act. We know that this concept has been warmly welcomed by so many who have embraced neighbourhood plans, and we know that there are many more in the pipeline. In reply to an amendment last Tuesday, the Minister told the Committee that the Secretary of State’s,

“current policies for intervention strike the right balance between the national interest and local autonomy”.—[Official Report, 31/1/17; col. GC 176.]

I have to say that in my area the experience was to the contrary. There was no planning issue of national importance and yet the Secretary of State intervened, with devastating results.

However, I am encouraged by my noble friend’s reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, when the Committee met last Thursday. He quoted his honourable friend Gavin Barwell as having said that,

“as long as authorities have policies to address their strategic housing and other priorities, we want them to have more freedom in the type of plan that is most appropriate for their area. The Government have put local and neighbourhood plans at the heart of the planning system. We put local authorities and communities at the forefront of shaping a vision for their areas and deciding how to meet their development needs. The existing regime reflects the understanding that local planning authorities, together with local communities, are best placed to set out future development for their local area”.—[Official Report, 2/2/17; col. GC 261.]

I say amen to that. That is absolutely what we want. That is what we are trying to achieve through this Bill.

I have referred almost exclusively to the Secretary of State and sometimes the ministerial team. But this is not personal and I want to get on the record how much I appreciate my noble friend Lord Bourne’s approach to the handling of the Bill. He has said he will listen and—I have to say, with great patience—he has. He has said time and again, “We will work with noble Lords in an inclusive way”, and he has and is doing so. He has asked for positive engagement. We are willing. Like Barkis, we are more than willing. I sense my noble friend is also willing to negotiate worthwhile amendments to improve the Bill. I welcome that and I look forward to his useful amendments when we come to Report.

I turn to Clause 12 specifically. As I have previously said, seeking that a whole clause should not stand part of the Bill gives noble Lords an opportunity to see the clause as a whole. My concern with the totality of this clause is that, contrary to what I am trying to achieve and what my honourable friend Gavin Barwell has said in another place, it does nothing to separate the powers of the Secretary of State from the responsibilities of the local planning authorities. My noble friend Lord True, whom I thank for his kind comments, and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said that the clause does not mention neighbourhood planning at all. In addition, the whole clause is about the Secretary of State’s determination to control the work of local planners. The tenor of this clause is therefore that the Secretary of State does not trust the people. He does not trust local planners, who know the area best.

New subsection (1) gives the Secretary of State unlimited powers to waive conditions that may be very inappropriate to particular areas and populations. Again, therefore, we see the heavy hand that continues through nine new subsections, and the point of the Bill is quietly buried; it has nothing to do with neighbourhood planning. Surely the imperative is for local planning authorities to deliver the strategic policies of the Secretary of State, but apparently that is not enough.

I very much respect people who are on local authorities at the moment. When I read about them and look at what they are doing, it seems that they are working their socks off to deliver what is needed. But apparently, this is not enough, and the Secretary of State says that he must come in and tell them what to do and how. Therefore, as the Minister is fully aware, in our area there is total disillusionment with the neighbourhood planning process and fury at the intervention—the interference—in the minutiae of local planning from above.

The Minister went through all the new subsections in Clause 12, and I thank him for his full explanation. However, he did not address the issue: why is this clause necessary? Why does the Secretary of State risk antagonising local planners on a whim, removing planning conditions? Why does this require intervention by the Secretary of State? Planning pre-commencement conditions are important. They ensure the quality of development and its empathy with the local area. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, put it so well, saying that this is the essence of planning.

I was involved in a case years ago, in which 171 identical houses were to be built along a snake-like road. We turned that down, fought appeals and won them. We now have a development that has open spaces and all sorts of different housing: bungalows, terraced housing, and detached four-bedroom houses. It is a lovely area, and so different to what it would have been like if we had agreed to the original application. Conditions are important, because those are the ones we put in and which we eventually managed to get.

It is therefore about the quality of development. I pay tribute to the forensic way the Minister took us through the different new subsections. However, it is not good enough. We are losing the whole principle of neighbourhood planning and localism. I very much look forward to the letter that my noble friend will send, and I sense that there is already some rethinking on how this clause and the new subsections need to be amended. However, I urge him to go further. Can he be brave, and in his letter give us some hope that this clause may be deleted altogether? It is irrelevant in the Bill.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I have come to the conclusion that Clause 12 should be deleted from the Bill. I now see no grounds for it being continued with, because the evidence has not been satisfactorily produced. It comes down to this: developers want to build and sell houses, and residents want to enjoy living in them. Sometimes those two objectives are not compatible because builders can often not do what residents expected of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, the purpose of Amendment 49B in my name is to draw attention to and, if possible, seek a remedy for the significant delays and difficulties in getting some brownfield sites developed.

Brownfield or previously used land is well defined in the National Planning Policy Framework. The definition includes a wide range of previous uses. Some of these sites pose no particular problems or costs for developers. The sites I am concerned with are those that have suffered considerable contamination as a result of an earlier industrial use in a less-regulated age. Remediation of these sites can be very costly and a big disincentive to developers. There are a great number of brownfield sites. The CPRE research in 2016 estimated that these cover an area sufficient for 1.1 million homes. Those figures may be disputed but that is not my point. My point is that there are demonstrably large areas of previously used land available for development, many of them with current planning permissions, but the sites remain undeveloped.

Using brownfield land has a double benefit. It saves greenfield sites from development and uses existing derelict land in urban areas. This derelict land often attracts problems other than the visual depression it can bring to an area. I am probably one of the few people in this Room who actually lives near some derelict land. I can tell you, it is something we have been trying to resolve for years but cannot because it is heavily contaminated. When the Bill was debated in the other place, Andrew Mitchell MP raised this very issue and hoped that it could be addressed before the Bill’s passage was concluded.

The question is: how can brownfield sites be effectively prioritised? The Royal Town Planning Institute report of last year said:

“Previously-developed brownfield land in built-up areas must continue to play a vital role for a range of purposes including housing. But a ‘brownfield first’ policy will fail to deliver its full potential if there is insufficient available funding for the treatment and assembly of land. New proactive remedial programmes are needed to remove constraints on development and to make places where people want to live which are accessible by sustainable modes of transport”.


Unfortunately, the Government are currently providing disincentives for brownfield development. Not only is there a lack of support for remediation but there are incentives for developers to use greenfield sites, such as the five-year housing supply rule, which enables developers to cherry pick greenfield and green belt sites while ignoring brownfield sites.

The further consequence of the costs of land remediation is that when the land is developed, obviously the costs are greater and so developers are able to argue that any planning gain for the local community is not financially viable. Therefore, affordable housing is lost on those sorts of sites—the very sites where, often, affordable housing is needed. I ask the Minister to respond positively to this plea on behalf of areas across the country, including my own, where land values are lower than in the south-east and where, therefore, the costs of remediation can be prohibitive to development.

[Baroness Cumberlege]

My Lords, I have not put my name to this amendment but I strongly support what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has said. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether he can think of ways in which we could introduce for developers—which I absolutely understand see that brownfield sites are more expensive for various reasons—some sort of incentive to make sure it is worth their while to develop these sites. I say to my noble friend that this makes such sense given that we have a problem finding sites for development. These are the obvious ones to use, except for the cost. I wonder whether we could build in incentives for developers to come in and use these sites.