Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president or vice-president of a range of wildlife organisations, and chairman of the Woodland Trust. I should also declare that I am not a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I was also privileged to be a member of the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, which is due to have its report debated next week, so I understand very well why there is a government commitment to ensure that the planning process is as efficient as possible, particularly in respect of helping to get houses built to meet the current and future pressing need for quality, sustainable and affordable homes. I urge all Members here tonight to take part in the debate next week, because the report is fairly comprehensive and covers many of the issues that will also need to be dealt with if we are to see faster and better provision of homes—things that are not currently in the Bill, which is fairly modest in scope.

Some things in the Bill have already been raised that I would have preferred to see as provisions brought forward by the Government—a local authority’s ability to borrow to build homes is absolutely fundamental, as raised by previous speakers, and also, the pace of building out of extant planning permissions. We still have a huge range of planning permissions out there where progress on building has either been modest or non-existent. I do not think it is simply the fault of the planning system or local authority management of the planning system. The Government need to address provisions towards developers who are sitting on planning permissions in order to keep prices up.

I will raise three things, some of which are in the Bill and some of which are not. First, there is the resourcing of planning authorities, which has been touched on already. Local authorities have faced a 46% cut in funding over the past five years. That really has affected their ability to do an effective job fast. This under-resourcing is felt particularly in specialist areas such as conservation and ecological expertise. The Association of Local Government Ecologists has reported that only one-third of local authorities now have an in-house ecologist. This can lead to planning decisions that are flawed and to a loss of some of our most precious wildlife sites.

The reverse of that can mean that local authorities and developers do not see the opportunities for enhancement of the ecological and biodiversity richness that development can help foster. Will the Minister consider whether the Government will speedily review the planning fee system to go beyond the pilots currently in operation on local determination of fees, and allow local planning authorities generally to set their own fees and retain these to invest in planning work, including specialist expertise?

The second point is the issue of pre-commencement conditions. I am afraid that I cannot agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, in her belief that pre-commencement conditions are the work of the devil. I welcome the fact that the Minister will write round with his evidence base for pre-commencement conditions being a cause of delay. I am not sure whether there really is solid and independent evidence—not just evidence given by developers—that pre-commencement conditions slow down their delivery of housing development. It is not clear from the Bill how the pre-commencement conditions process is envisaged to operate. That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy.

I would be grateful if the Minister could give us more clarity on this. I thank him for the assurances already given both by him and his colleague in another place that if pre-commencement conditions are deemed necessary and local planning authorities cannot get written agreement from the applicant, the local planning authority would be quite right to refuse the application. I also thank the Minister for verbal assurances that all development must still comply with the National Planning Policy Framework and that environmental safeguards will remain in place. It would be useful to have formal confirmation of these verbal assurances from the Minister.

I am also concerned that the revised process for pre-commencement conditions will mean more refusals, will slow down the process, or encourage planners to avoid applying important conditions. Could the Minister consider amending the Bill to ensure that these unintended consequences are not built into the process?

The third and most important issue I want to raise is something that is not in the Bill—but I give notice of an intention to table an amendment. It is the issue of ancient woodland. This Bill offers an important opportunity to amend the way in which the planning system protects ancient woodland and reduce the controversy created by planning proposals involving ancient woodland—often much-loved woods in their locality—thereby reducing the delays that such controversy can cause. This would be of benefit to developers, planning authorities, local communities and, of course, ancient woodlands.

I probably owe the House an explanation of why ancient woodlands are so important. They are woods which have remained under continuous woodland cover for at least 400 years and, in some cases, for centuries or even tens of centuries longer. They are a kind of complex network of species, soils, history and culture, and each of them is unique, distinctive and irreplaceable. However, noble Lords may be surprised to hear that ancient woodland has a lot less protection under planning policy than ancient buildings.

Ancient woodland is increasingly threatened by planning decisions, particularly on housing development, where planners and developers see that the lesser level of protection given to ancient woodland compared with that given to ancient buildings by the planning guidance is a reason not to give ancient woodland any protection at all. There are currently 600 ancient woodlands under threat from planning proposals. A recent survey of planners has shown that, although 96% of planners are aware of the term “ancient woodland”, 70% of them ignore the current advice, which does not have much strength due to the weakness of the NPPF in this respect. Some 85% of planners say that it is legitimate to build on ancient woodland sites—so clearly the protection level is not working.

Many of the planners interviewed cited the weakness of the National Planning Policy Framework and gave reasons such as housing pressures and infrastructure provision for their belief that ancient woodland was expendable. It would be a great disservice to this country if, in a dash for housing given the very clear need to create good-quality housing fast, we cut corners on environmental measures and damaged our ancient woodland further. We are already at a point where so much ancient woodland has been destroyed that it covers just over 2% of the Great Britain land surface.

I am grateful to the Minister for having met me on my proposed amendments, which aim to give the same level of protection to this irreplaceable ancient woodland as is currently given to ancient buildings. Ancient woodlands are the cathedrals of the natural world; each one is distinctive, and grubbing up even part of one is the equivalent of demolishing the chancel of York Minster for development or building houses in the cathedral close at Salisbury. Yet, as I said, 600 of these are threatened in just such a way.

We have opportunities to do a better job. In the garden towns initiative, which I greatly applaud, of the 14 proposals currently put forward, four have ancient woodland within their curtilage. That could be buffered and cherished and be a very important part of the garden city environment—or we could build on it. There is an alternative way in which to make sure that we protect our ancient woodland. I know that the Minister is very unkeen on having a provision in the Bill to give better protection, and there are other ways of doing it—we could do it by an amendment to the National Policy Planning Framework. The Government have been reluctant in the recent past to amend the NPPF, so I propose to table amendments to the Bill. But if the Government were to come forward and offer an amendment to the NPPF, I would be delighted. The one thing that I do not want is to back off on an amendment to the Bill then not get an amendment to the NPPF, either.

Ensuring an effective planning system and getting the right houses built in the right place is vital, but none of this must be at the expense of ancient woodlands’ irreplaceable treasures—and pace and efficiency will not be helped if there are local fist fights when a developer plans to destroy or damage ancient woodland in the locality. So it would be in the interests of farmers and developers if the Government were clearer about stressing the importance of avoiding damage to ancient woodland—it would help to prevent further delay. So I hope that the Minister can be positive and say that he will give me one or the other.