Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Cumberlege]

My Lords, I also have amendments in this group. The first states:

“The Secretary of State must, by regulations made within one month of the coming into force of Part 1, define ‘modification’ for the purposes of this Act.”


The Whips’ Office decided to amalgamate this amendment with those of my noble friend the Minister because it is about definitions, as are some of his.

Legislation is very taxing—I suspect that we might feel a little older at the end of this Bill—but it is taxing because of the terminology. As a latecomer, I am only just learning planning speak and that is because of some of the weasel words—I referred to them earlier—that creep into it. It was Voltaire who urged, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms”. I therefore ask my noble friend to define “modification”. Please can we have some examples? For instance, five houses in a hamlet on the wrong site could be devastating; five houses in a large town could easily be fitted in. So where is the line drawn on modification? What does that word mean?

My second amendment in this group, Amendment 8A, also concerns modification and depends a little on my noble friend’s answer to my Amendment 8. In Amendment 8A, I plead that every modification made need not be treated as significant or substantial, requiring a full-scale rewrite followed by a referendum—I hope that that will not be the case. Paragraph (b) states that any modification must allow scrutiny by the residents of the neighbourhood plan. Paragraph (c) states that only if the parish and town councillors deem it necessary and want confirmation again that what they are planning is acceptable to the local community should they have the opportunity to hold another referendum. I am therefore seeking to give authority back to parish and town councillors and ensure that they still have a locus when either the local authority or the examiner makes decisions which might negate the plan.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, my Amendment 64 is in this group. I think that is because part of it fits with the Government’s amendments, although mine in its entirety is somewhat broader about creating the conditions to encourage more local communities to prepare neighbourhood plans and to shape and build sustainable communities. I think everyone in the Committee can support that, whether we believe in the political ideology of taking decisions at the lowest possible level or, as the Minister rightly reminded us a few moment ago, because of the Secretary of State’s stated desire to build more homes, because we all know that neighbourhood plans deliver more homes.

Of course, this issue was raised in the Housing and Planning Bill, and the Bill before us is the Government’s response to it. I very much welcome Clause 1 and the government amendments that the Minister has just introduced, which are in part a response to the debate on this matter in the other place. But I contend that they still do not go far enough in giving neighbourhood councils and parish councils that are drawing up neighbourhood development plans the reassurance that the time and effort they are putting in are worth while.

Clause 1 says that local authorities “must have regard” to neighbourhood development plans, but there are no sanctions. Furthermore, this applies only to post-examined plans, whereas case law says that draft plans should be taken into account. As I say, I welcome the government amendments made in response to the matter being raised in the House of Commons, which make it a requirement of local authorities to consult with neighbourhood planning bodies, but they are not clear about ensuring meaningful consultation; for example, by specifying how long it should take or, critically, what duty the local authority has to take any comments into account.

My amendment would make clear what the consultation with neighbourhood plans on a planning application would actually mean, as well as the duty placed on a local authority to take those views into account. If a local authority then ignores those views, the decision can be called in. That is a very limited right. It is a right not for individuals, but only for parish councils and neighbourhood forums whose neighbourhood plans have progressed to at least the point of formal submission to the local authority for examination.

To date 268 neighbourhood plans have been made, out of a potential 9,000. If we are going to secure more neighbourhood plans, the Bill has to strengthen the weight of communities’ views, expressed in neighbourhood plans, such that they should not be ignored by local planning authorities or the Planning Inspectorate. In the Housing and Planning Bill, the Minister kept saying that there had not been any examples of this. I am delighted to inform this Minister that after a bit of skimming on my part of some past applications, I found at least one in the space of one afternoon. In August 2014 South Oxfordshire District Council approved the planning application for the development of two new industrial units in Cotmore Wells Farm in Thame, despite the proposed development encompassing 50% more land for employment than had been allocated in the neighbourhood plan. But frankly, whether or not there have been cases is not the point. The point is that neighbourhood plans can be overridden if there is no sanction.

As my noble friend Lord Greaves and others have pointed out, we are asking volunteers to give their time and energy, over years, to pull these plans together. I welcome the commitment in the Bill to improve the level of resources at their disposal but some volunteers are working 20 or 30 hours a week, with extremely limited resources, particularly if they are not a parish council and do not have parish council resources and a parish council secretary to push the matter forward. Why should they do it if there is no redress when a planning application contrary to a neighbourhood plan is approved by a local authority—driving, as I have often said in this Room, a coach and horses through everything that has been agreed?

I ask the Minister: why do the Government feel that they should give a duty to local authorities to have regard to neighbourhood plans, as they have stated quite explicitly in Clause 1, if there is absolutely no sanction if they do not? Do they really feel that that provides sufficient encouragement for more neighbourhood plans to be brought into being, which we all know we need and which will ensure that the houses we want to be built are built?

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of my noble friend’s Amendment 64. As this is the first time I have spoken in Committee, I should declare my interests. Probably most relevant is that I am the president of the National Association of Local Councils, representing parish and town councils across the country. I have a number of interests around development, including my own consultancy. I am also a visiting professor of planning at Plymouth University and a visiting lecturer at Cambridge in the school of planning. So I have a range of interests in this area—some commercial, some unpaid. Perhaps even more significant is that I chair a neighbourhood plan process for Roche local council. That neighbourhood plan has now been examined successfully and we await a date for a referendum—yet another frustrating wait to get it addressed. That introduction is probably longer than anything I need to say.

I support the amendment, or at least its principles, because there is an issue where neighbourhoods have taken through a neighbourhood plan process and the local authority then approves something contrary to the wishes of that community. It does not happen with every application—it is only where the parish council itself opposes it. It then asks the Secretary of State to review it in a formal way. Of course, the Secretary of State has the power to intervene in any event, but it formalises a process. This is important for confidence.

I did not support Amendment 1. It did not recognise that there may be many reasons why a district authority might choose to support an application that is outside a neighbourhood plan. There may be wider strategic issues. The two processes of local plan-making and the evolution of the local planning authority’s policies may not align with the neighbourhood plan process. The neighbourhood plan may be out of date for that particular application. It may not have anticipated a particular issue leading to a planning application. Most significantly, a neighbourhood plan is done in the context of that parish’s needs, not in a wider strategic context, so neighbourhood plans do not always need to override these wider issues. This is not the point nor the understanding of neighbourhood planning where communities properly engage in the process. However, they have the right to expect that it is taken seriously. Sometimes there is a sense that the local planning authority does not take the neighbourhood plan seriously in the way that it should—when it suits it to do so, at least.

This formalisation of the process—the sense that there is someone that they can go to and have it looked at again—is a broad principle, although perhaps not quite the right mechanism, that the Government should be willing to accept. It would give some confidence to communities and answer those who feel that they are simply ignored and that there is nothing they can do. Whether or not this is true, a sense of injustice can arise. Lord knows, I have done the process and it is an awful lot of effort to get a neighbourhood plan in place. There is a need for some sense that there is a proper system for review if a neighbourhood plan is not followed.

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I will comment briefly on Amendment 64 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. We all understand and sympathise with her point about the time and effort put in by volunteers. In cases of which I am aware, it is very often a very small number of volunteers who really drive it. They find it difficult to pull in people from the wider community. They have to work very hard to get any real response. This is my problem with the wording of the noble Baroness’s amendment. She talks about plans within an area,

“covered by a made or emerging neighbourhood development plan”.

“Emerging” is the crucial word. She then defines an emerging neighbourhood development plan as one,

“that has been examined, is being examined, or is due to be examined, having met the public consultation requirements necessary to proceed to this stage”.

In other words, it is very embryonic. We do not know what the final view may be.

To give an example, I know of a neighbourhood plan in the north-west of England where two or three people in the parish have got together some but not a lot of information about housing and development plans in their area—as much as they can find without much help. They then decided to hold a public meeting. They leafleted their entire parish and brought people together. Inevitably, although people said that they were interested and declared their concern, usually about the housing aspect, the people who turned up to the meeting were few in number, despite a large amount of effort. The people I am talking to became worried and said that they must broaden the consultation to community groups, which would take some time to get around to all the people they felt they should see. They thought they should make another effort at consultation, which might be attended by more people. They reckon that all this will take a year before they have a clear idea of what residents in their area want.

What is the amendment talking about? What stage of the planning and gathering of information is the noble Baroness talking about? It sounded to me as if it was early in the stage. What worries me about that is we do not necessarily know whether the initial ideas will be the same as the final ideas that come out of that prolonged process. Will she explain that to me?

[Baroness Parminter]

If I answer that question, perhaps the noble Lord might say, if I were to change my amendment to “post-examined”, whether he would be prepared to accept it. There is a debate about what is the appropriate time to give due weight to the emerging plans. The Government have moved back. We obviously have a different Minister now, but during the consideration of the Housing and Planning Bill the Government were not talking about post-examined plans. They realised that we need to add protection from an earlier point in the process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke strongly in favour of neighbourhood plans at Second Reading. It is great that there are so many champions of neighbourhood planning in all parts of the Committee. The plans embody the spirit of localism by allowing local communities to have control over their new developments and where they take place. While I therefore totally commend the spirit of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, I do not support its substance for the simple reason that I do not think it is necessary.

The Government have already acted to address substantively the concerns that the amendment seeks to address. I would argue that the measures in the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, together with previous reforms introduced in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, deliver much of what the amendment seeks to achieve. Clause 1 places a clear requirement on planning decision-makers to have regard to neighbourhood plans that are post-examination. That is clearly the right place and time to look at these as that is when plans will be sufficiently advanced. While decision-makers can take pre-examination neighbourhood plans into account, insisting that they should have similar regard to plans that might not yet take account of all material factors such as planning for necessary local growth and so on does not seem an entirely sensible way forward.

Again, the National Planning Policy Framework already clearly says:

“Where a planning application conflicts with a neighbourhood plan … planning permission should not normally be granted”.


The Written Statement in December further made clear that,

“where communities plan for housing in their area in a neighbourhood plan, those plans should not be deemed to be out-of-date unless there is a significant lack of land supply”.

That is under three years. This gives a degree of protection not previously available. I also welcome all the government amendments that require local planning authorities to notify automatically neighbourhood planning groups of future planning applications in their area. At present, they have a right only to request information but are not necessarily told. This amendment would greatly improve what is there.

Briefly, I will also address the proposal in the amendment to consult the Secretary of State if the local authority intends to grant planning permission that goes against an agreed neighbourhood plan. I would also argue that this is unnecessary. I understand the concern of the noble Baroness about the calling in but any neighbourhood planning group can currently request the Secretary of State to consider calling in a planning application to determine the outcome.

[Baroness Parminter]

My understanding is that they cannot do that unless it is a major application. Of course, in rural areas the majority of applications are not major ones because they are for fewer than 10 houses. That puts rural areas at a significant disadvantage because they cannot undertake that.

[Baroness Finn]

I concede ignorance but my understanding is that a number of planning applications have been called in. Perhaps that can be clarified. Basically, there has been significant movement on this and taken together all the current measures give sufficient protection to neighbourhood plans. The amendment proposed is simply not required.