Housing and Planning Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I think we are all in agreement about the importance of housing, and particularly affordable housing, especially with the new predictions on even greater population growth. We all want to see houses that are secure and affordable homes in which people can thrive and which are provided in ways that foster mixed communities and are environmentally and financially sustainable for the future. I do not think that the Bill contributes much to that, and in fact it could make matters worse rather than better. Several of its provisions have also been introduced in haste at the last minute and have not been tested out in the other place, so we have a serious job of work in front of us.

I do not want to focus in my brief time on the dash for starter homes and home ownership; I simply agree with many noble Lords who have already talked about the concerns around it reducing the availability of social housing and supported housing, in particular affordable housing for rent. I also endorse the view that the Bill is a bit of a pig in a poke—in fact, it is such a large pig in such a large poke that you can hear it squeaking. As primary legislation it is very broad and arrogates wide powers to the Secretary of State. It is also highly dependent on secondary legislation, so I ask the Minister for assurances that we will be able to see the draft secondary legislation during the Committee stage, otherwise she is asking us to buy this pig in a poke sight unseen.

I want to focus on the Bill as a serious assault on the planning system. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is not now in his place because I am a great fan of the planning system. It has stood us in good stead and has been one of the jewels in the crown of British democracy; I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that it is bust. It enables elected local authority members to review evidence from a wide variety of sources and to balance competing economic, social and environmental needs in the interests of local communities. It has clear mechanisms for the involvement at all stages of local people and it is not as impenetrable as the noble Lord makes out. I find it difficult to believe that he finds the system impenetrable if he likes to read Bills on his weekends off.

The Bill assaults the planning system in a number of highly damaging ways. I believe that the obligations on planning authorities to deliver the Government’s starter homes policy mean that the planning system will become starter home-led rather than plan-led. We are already seeing challenges to the delivery of Section 106 agreements across a whole range of social and economic benefits by challenges under the viability system. I ask the Minister to show how Section 106 agreements and the valuable role they play in shaping local infrastructure, in providing local services and in delivering other social benefits, will not be gobbled up under the pressure for starter homes.

The second challenge that the Bill introduces is in the new planning process in the form of a new category of “permission in principle” for any sites that are identified by “qualifying documents”. The Bill itself is very general in its approach, although I understand that initially it would be for brownfield registers or any sites that are designated in local and neighbourhood plans. But it is not clear that there may not be other registers and qualifying documents that would allow for the permission in principle process to go ahead. For example, once a brownfield site is on a list or in a qualifying document, the intention seems to be that in order to give assurance to investors or developers it then cannot be removed. It will have permission in principle. So it is absolutely vital that there is clarity and consultation on the criteria for what are going to constitute qualifying documents, and that local people will be able to be consulted about and to comment on such documents before they are agreed and immutable. If we are talking about speeding up the planning system, I am not sure that we are not simply putting a requirement to consult very early on in the process rather than later. I am not clear that simply doing that will reduce the logjam.

The Minister kindly organised a meeting with Peers from across the House and I asked her then for clarification about the stage at which local people would be consulted. It seems that we need a flow chart showing what issues such as environmental issues, the importance of sites for wildlife, flood risk, sustainability standards, open space and design would be considered in this new process because after the site is on the register or in a document and has permission in principle, a local authority can only consider “technical details”. I have not yet had the promised clarification from the Minister but I am sure that she has not forgotten about it and I look forward to seeing it shortly. We need to understand what the process is going to consist of before we agree it in this Bill. I would be very unhappy if the process did not ensure proper consideration and consultation on environmental, sustainability and quality standards and did not involve local people throughout.

There are a number of other challenges to the planning system in the Bill and it is a shame that some of them do not actually tackle the issues at the heart of some of the concerns about housing going forward. In my view, the slowness in houses coming forward on sites is not necessarily about the availability of sites; it is often about the availability of finance for small builders for whom such small sites are best suited.

I hope that we can debate further during the passage of the Bill other challenges to the planning system. The Secretary of State will be able to grant consent for housing through the nationally significant infrastructure process. This gross centralisation is the most amazing assault. I do not understand how it works and I hope that I can get some illumination on what was a last-minute insertion of scope for alternative providers to process planning applications rather than local planning authorities, particularly as the alternative provider’s advice will be binding on planning authorities. I am seriously confused as to how that will work.

These fundamental changes to the planning system risk focusing too closely on speeding up the planning system, when in fact the problem is not planning approvals but build out, rather, on applications which have already been granted. Other factors such as the availability of skills, finance and measures to ensure that large developers do not hang on to sites to keep prices up all need to be tackled before we erode the planning system, which is a tribute to localism, democratic accountability and community involvement.