Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Thursday 23rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Cumberlege]

My Lords, the amendment is self-evident. It harks back to my opening remarks and seeks to clarify the respective responsibilities of the Secretary of State and local neighbourhood planners. It is all a matter of trust.

I was appalled by the figures that my noble friend gave in a previous debate on the number of appeals being made. Our planning is in danger of becoming rule by appeal inspectors who overrule democratically elected councillors. I trust the Minister will uphold democracy over the ruling of inspectors. The inspector’s role is to examine whether the decision of a local planning authority is clearly at variance with its own policies. However, inspectors are now venturing into making planning policy, overruling totally legitimate plans.

Unusually, I am delighted that my amendment is grouped with others. Amendment 6A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is eloquent, and I totally support what they are trying to do with it. As a farmer’s wife I know what it is like when you have a building on land that you want to reclaim and that it is very difficult to do. In our case it was only a couple of cottages. However, it is not practical to think that we can build on great swathes of open land and then reclaim it in time. That will not happen. Amendment 40, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, is comprehensive and well thought through. It goes into some depth and has true clarity and also has my full support.

In Committee, we debated the question of appeals, and in replying to the debate, my noble friend Lord Bourne said,

“we place great importance on local development plans. They provide the local community’s vison of how it sees its area developing. It is right that they should be given the weight they deserve within the planning appeals process”.

He went on to say:

“As I have said, where a development plan’s policies are material to an appeal, a decision must be taken in accordance with the development plan, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. This does not mean that a planning appeal that is not in accordance with the local development plan will always be dismissed. It means that the appeal should not normally be allowed and that the planning permission should not normally be granted”.—[Official Report, 31/1/2017; col. GC 203.]


There is leeway in this amendment and the ones proposed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. We have to be careful that we do not have planning by appeal, a phrase that is used around the country at the moment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register of interests as a councillor in the borough of Kirklees and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I support wholeheartedly Amendment 6, which has been moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege. My Amendment 6A simply adds detail to the broadness of her amendment in relation to planning appeals.

Noble Lords will recall that in Committee I raised the issue of the importance of enabling development on contaminated brownfield sites by the provision of a government fund for remediation. Since that time we have learned from the housing White Paper that action may be in progress on that. However, in the Minister’s response to my amendment in Committee, he reiterated the Government’s commitment—I am pleased about this—that brownfield sites should have development precedence over greenfield sites. I want to explore further that commitment because experience and evidence point in a different direction.

In the National Planning Policy Framework of 2012 the Government introduced the concept of a five-year housing land supply within any local authority area. Initially the concept was to be gradually introduced in order to give time for councils to develop new plans to take this requirement into account. But that transition did not really happen and from the start, green belt land, urban green space—which is the equivalent of the green belt within an urban conurbation—and even land in areas of outstanding natural beauty became vulnerable to developers seeking to build on attractive sites; that is, attractive to residents who wanted to retain them as green spaces, and also very attractive to developers who wanted to build on them.

The CPRE commissioned an analysis of the outcomes of planning appeals and the results were published in September 2014. It found that of around 270 planning appeals between 2012 and 2014 lodged in areas that did not have a five-year housing land supply, three-quarters were granted despite their allocation in the existing planning policy of the local council as green belt, urban green space or an area of outstanding natural beauty. I repeat, three-quarters of those appeals were granted, and that equates to rule by planning appeal, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, said earlier. It certainly seems to be the case. This demonstrates conclusively that a local planning authority which does not have a five-year housing land supply is vulnerable to developers who will cherry pick green belt or greenfield sites because the land is easier to develop and the value of the properties is thereby enhanced.

The Government have also commissioned their own report. The Local Plans Expert Group published its findings in March last year. The report states that Section 78 appeals, which are appeals against determinations by local planning authorities,

“by developers bringing forward new evidence”—

mainly the lack of a five-year housing land supply—

“leading to extensive dispute and the release of unplanned sites … brings the local plan process into disrepute”.

And so it does, because the third piece of evidence I have is from my own experience in my authority where, this year, planning consent for two sites that had been allocated as urban green space—which is precious to those living in built-up areas because such sites are their only green areas—has been granted on appeal because the report of the Planning Inspectorate deemed that a five-year housing land supply is more important than land being allocated as green belt or urban green space. As the Government’s report states, local people feel that they are powerless, have no say in local planning, and are wondering about the point of going through the long-drawn-out process of developing a local plan for the planning committee. The decision is taken out of their hands and sites are allocated without any reference to the need for infrastructure in the form of school places and so on.

I ask the Minister to give me confidence that, as the amendment seeks, equal weight will be given to the fundamental policies of either a five-year housing land supply or designation as green belt or urban green space. I would prefer the weighting to favour allocations as green belt, urban green space and areas of outstanding natural beauty. They should be paramount to other uses because in any local authority area there is plenty of land that is not designated, including in my own authority where reserve sites are still available. But no, developers go and cherry pick the green belt sites. As noble Lords can tell, I am extremely cross about what has happened. Again, I hope the Minister will be able to say that green belt and its equivalents will be given greater priority and that applications from developers will have to be refused when other sites are available. I look forward to his response.