Bob Blackman
Main Page: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)HOUSING, COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE
Bob Blackman Excerpts
Mr Betts
My hon. Friend is a very valued member of the Select Committee. He has contributed to this report, and he is absolutely right. The Housing Minister came to the Select Committee yesterday to talk about permitted development rights, and a point we made in our questions to him was that the overall reform of the planning system, and giving greater certainty to what developments will or will not happen in a local plan, must not be undermined by permitted development running contrary to the proposals in the local plan. Local authorities must have the right to shape the place for which they are responsible, and that is something we will be looking at further in the report we produce on permitted development.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]
It will come as no surprise to the Chairman of the Select Committee that I agree with every word of his statement and of the report that we have published. Does he agree, however, that one of the prime concerns is that if the Government come forward with zoning of particular areas within a local authority area, and if a growth area is to be used with planning permission not going through the normal process, it will be essential that those areas are subject to a full public consultation by the local planning authority, setting out clearly the boundaries for height, density and other aspects of development on the site before any developer is allowed to get on site and do as they choose?
Mr Betts
I thank the hon. Gentleman again for his role. He is a long-standing member of the Select Committee and was around in 2016 when we produced our previous report on the changes that we want to see to local plans.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that this level of detail is so uncertain at present, and if we are going to produce a zoning system, particularly in growth areas with major development proposals effectively being given the go-ahead without much more scrutiny at the local planning stage, there will have to be an awful lot of detail and consultation put into that local planning stage. This comes back to the question of whether that can realistically be done for every single site in a local plan within 30 months. The Committee simply does not believe so.