Planning

Baroness Hanham Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government on what basis they consider that the current planning system needs substantial change.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)]

My Lords, the planning system that we inherited is very bureaucratic and does too little to encourage sustainable development or community involvement. Rather than imposing targets or blueprints from above, this Government are changing things so that local people and their councils can decide what they need and how they accommodate it. Our reforms will create sustainable growth by working with people, not against them, and not at the expense of the environment.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Minister for her reply. Of course we need more affordable homes, but I am not interested so much in the arguments as in the basis, or evidence, on which the Government are putting forward their proposals. Can she give the House the evidence for their proposals or perhaps put them in the Library? Can she for example confirm that 80 per cent of all planning applications are approved and that there are extant planning permissions, right now, for 330,000 houses, which have just not been built?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I think it is probably correct to say that 80 per cent of planning applications are approved. It depends how long it takes for them to be approved. I believe that over 3,000 applications have been outstanding for well over a year. It is also true to say, I think, that as far as democracy is concerned, over 80 per cent of planning applications are considered by officers, something that was dictated by the previous Government. They do not have the democratic input that one would like. Somewhere along the line the local community is getting left out on this, and we need to put that right. It has been said that the land for those houses—I think the number is 240,000 rather than 300,000—amounts to about one year’s need in this country at the moment.

[Lord Waddington]

Does my noble friend accept that some of us on this side of the House are finding it incredibly difficult to accept that it is right to turn the planning system on its head and create a presumption in favour of development?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the presumption in favour of development is set against the background of local plans. Those are being created, although some have not been completed. However, the presumption is there to ensure that decisions are taken with reference to the local plan, where there is one; if there is no local plan and there are no sizeable objections to the application, it goes ahead. That saves time, it gets things for the community developed more quickly and does not, I think, prejudice anybody’s interest.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, will the noble Baroness the Minister advise members of the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England actually to read the draft national planning policy framework before they allow themselves to be co-opted in a hysterical campaign of denunciation? Will she also take this opportunity to reaffirm a national commitment, which is lacking in the draft, to prioritise development on brownfield land? Will she undertake that the Government will allow reasonable time for local planning authorities to complete or to update their local development frameworks before the new policy is brought into operation?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, for raising this issue about the campaign that has been waged by both the National Trust and one of our major national newspapers. It has been both over the top and extremely personalised, which makes it very difficult for people to answer their attacks. That, I think, is well off the line. Nor do I understand it, because English Heritage itself—in the form of my noble friend Lady Andrews, who is not here at the moment—has already confirmed that the planning policy as it stands does not affect heritage at all but simply confirms the previous Government’s position on this as well as our own: that all aspects of our heritage are extremely important and that they will be protected through this new system. We expect brownfield sites to be developed, largely in town centres. Town centre planning, and development in town centres, is important, but we will not rule out, and the plan does not rule out, the fact that in some circumstances, particularly in the countryside, there may be a reason why some green land—not green belt land but greenfield land—may be appropriate to build on.

[The Lord Bishop of Exeter]

My Lords, I noticed that, in her reply, the noble Baroness referred to local councils, but is she aware that in many rural areas the issue is not the planning powers of local councils but the not infrequent disjunction between the outcomes of local community planning processes and the constraints of wider spatial strategies? I can think of examples in my own diocese where coherent and cohesive community plans for local regeneration and redevelopment have been turned down on grounds that appear from a local perspective to be remote, abstract and incomprehensible. Is she aware of just what a negative and depressing impact this can have on local initiative and community well-being, and could she give an assurance that the Government do intend to address this aspect of planning law reform?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I think this aspect will be much encouraged and much improved by the Government’s proposals for neighbourhood forums, orders and areas. The right reverend Prelate has said that this does not conform with—or that there have been difficulties with—strategic plans, but of course the neighbourhood plans, which have been made in conjunction with local people, parish councils and neighbourhood forums, will lay out precisely what local people feel and what they want. They will have to conform with the national policies, but far more account will be taken of what local people want than in the current situation. I think that the reforms in the Government’s proposals to the planning process will in fact ensure that we have far more community engagement and far more success for the community than is currently the case.