Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Bob Seely Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

As I mentioned just now, the Bill is not just about building; it is also about protecting the environment. A number of measures in the Bill will ensure that we protect our natural spaces—30% of our nature—and our local nature recovery strategies, which are due to begin across England as soon as possible, were committed to in the Environment Act 2021.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, following the talks between Ministers, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and me, we should have reached a compromise on a much more community-led, environmentally friendly and regenerative housing policy? As the Minister can hear, however, there is still considerable concern about making sure that we deliver the substance of these things as well as simply the words around them. Will that be reflected in the NPPF?

[Lucy Frazer]

I reiterate my thanks to my hon. Friend, who has worked so hard with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet to make sure that we get our planning system right, on behalf of and with so many colleagues on our Benches. I assure him that we in the Department for Levelling Up—me and the Secretary of State—believe that we have come to a better solution. We are committed to delivering it, as I am sure my hon. Friend and others across this House will see in the policy that we will propose in the NPPF and bring forward before Christmas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

I want to make some progress, so I will not give way.

We take issue with the Government making local housing targets unenforceable in the absence of a viable alternative to try to maintain supply.

We believe it is essential not only that the process by which the Secretary of State must designate and review an NDMP involves minimum public consultation requirements and an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny, but that the scope of an NDMP to override local plans is suitably constrained. On that basis, I commend amendments 78 and 79 to the House.

Part 4 addresses the new infrastructure levy, which is the Government’s proposed replacement for the present arrangement by which local planning authorities secure developer contributions. We believe the new levy is one of the most consequential aspects of the Bill and has potentially far-reaching implications not only for the provision of core infrastructure but for the supply of affordable housing. Although we fully appreciate that schedule 11 merely provides the basic framework for the levy, with a detailed design to follow, and that the levy’s implementation will take a test-and-learn approach, we are convinced that, as a proposition, it is fundamentally flawed.

As we argued in great detail in Committee, the deficiencies inherent in a rigid fixed-rate mechanism for securing both infrastructure and affordable housing, based on the metric of gross development value, almost certainly means the levy will prove onerously complicated to operate in practice and that, overall, it will deliver less infrastructure and less affordable housing in the future, while putting the development of less viable sites at risk.

For that reason, we remain of the view that if the infrastructure levy is taken forward, it should be optional rather than mandatory, with local authorities that believe that the needs of their areas are best served by the existing developer contributions system able to continue to utilise it. Taken together, amendments 81 to 83 and 91 would ensure that local authorities retain that discretion, and I hope the new Minister, whom I welcome to her place, will consider them carefully, along with amendment 86, which seeks to address a specific concern about how viability testing will inform the levy rate-setting process.

Amendment 84 seeks to ensure that if the Government insist it is made mandatory, the new infrastructure levy must deliver sufficient levels of affordable housing. Since the publication of the Bill, Ministers have repeated ad nauseam that the new levy will secure at least as much affordable housing as developer contributions do now, yet the Government have so far been unable to provide any evidence or analysis to substantiate why they believe it can fulfil that objective. More importantly, there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that the commitment made by successive Ministers with regard to affordable housing will be honoured. At present, proposed new section 204G(2) of the Planning Act 2008—in schedule 11, on page 291 of the Bill—only requires charging authorities to have regard to the desirability of ensuring that levels of affordable housing are

“maintained at a level which, over a specified period, is equal to or exceeds the level of such housing and funding provided over an earlier specified period of the same length.”

Put simply, the Bill as drafted would enable—one might even say encourage—inadequate levels of affordable housing supply to remain the norm by making them the minimum requirement.

If we want to ensure that the new levy secures at least as much affordable housing as is being delivered through the existing developer contributions system—and ideally more—we believe the Bill needs to be revised. That is not a view confined only to this side of the House. In the foreword to a report published only yesterday by the Centre for Social Justice, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes)—himself a former Minister in the Department—argues in relation to the levy that

“it would be good to see stronger safeguards in primary legislation, rather than in regulations, for protecting and increasing the existing levels of affordable housing supply funded in this way”.

Not for the first time, I find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman.

[Bob Seely]

One of the specific things that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and I requested in our agreement with Ministers was to make it easier for councils to increase the percentage of affordable housing. Clearly there is the economics of how that can happen, but we absolutely encouraged them to allow us to have that wording, so that in a place such as the Isle of Wight we could dramatically increase affordable housing as a percentage of housing. We actually put this at the centre of our plans.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Increasing the supply of affordable housing, which is at pitifully low levels, is a laudable aim. I agree with the hon. Member on that, and I therefore hope he can support our amendment 84, because it would achieve the objective in relation to the infrastructure levy by requiring charging authorities to ensure that levels of affordable housing are maintained at a level that, over a specified period, enables any given authority to meet the housing need identified in its local development plan, and I commend it to the House.

Turning to part 5 of the Bill, this concerns the Government’s proposed new approach to assessing the potential environmental effects of relevant plans and major projects—namely, environmental outcomes reports. Chief among several concerns we have about the proposed EOR system are the deficiencies of clause 122 in relation to non-regression safeguards. While we welcome the inclusion of this clause in the Bill as a means of constraining the use of the wider regulation-making powers in part 5, we are concerned that the clause as drafted contains a series of loopholes. First, use of the relevant non-regression provisions is entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State. Secondly, the Bill stipulates that the principle of non-regression will only apply to the

“overall level of environmental protection”,

rather than specific aspects of it. Thirdly, the definition of environmental law used in the relevant subsection will limit the extent to which it can provide protection against potential future regression.

The Minister who responded to the debate on this issue in Committee provided some measure of reassurance as to why the clause is drafted in the way it is, but our concerns have not been entirely assuaged. We have tabled amendment 88 to ensure that the new system of environmental assessment would not reduce existing environmental protections in any way, and I look forward to hearing how the Minister responds to it in due course.

We want to see many other changes to the Bill. Among other things, we have tabled amendments and new clauses to ensure that the Government undertake a comprehensive review of the extension of permitted development rights since 2013; to allow local authorities to hold planning meetings virtually or in hybrid form; and to place a duty on local planning authorities to appoint suitably qualified chief planning officers.

Of particular importance to us is the need to ensure that the Bill fully aligns the planning system with the UK’s climate mitigation and adaptation goals. In Committee, Ministers argued repeatedly that existing local and national duties, requirements and powers are sufficient to ensure that the planning system responds as required to the climate emergency, yet that is demonstrably not the case, given that the system regularly throws up decisions that are seemingly incompatible with the need to make rapid progress towards net zero emissions by mid-century and to prepare the country for the changes that are already under way. That is likely to remain the case until the Government produce clear and unambiguous national policy guidance, in the form of a revised NPPF, and legislate for a purposeful statutory framework to ensure genuine coherence between our country’s planning system and its climate commitments. New clause 98 would deliver the latter, and I urge Members to support it.

Before I turn to a number of the substantial Government amendments that have been tabled since the Bill left Committee, I will speak briefly to new clause 114. As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, despite a notional majority of more than 80, the Government are developing an alarming habit of allowing national policy to be dictated by the demands of amorphous groups of their own Back Benchers. In the case of onshore wind deployment, the Government’s weakness in the face of such demands is all ostensibly to the good, because Ministers are now seemingly committed to amending the NPPF to finally end the harmful effective moratorium imposed on onshore wind since 2015.

However, the written ministerial statement published last Tuesday provoked more questions than it answered. For example, what criteria will Ministers specify to determine what qualifies as a demonstration of local support for onshore wind projects, given that there is certainly no clear indication that the Government are minded to bring consenting for onshore wind in line with other forms of infrastructure, as it should be?

To take another, there is the assertion in that statement that we need

“to move away from the overly rigid requirement for onshore wind sites to be designated in a local plan.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2022; Vol. 724, c. 9WS.]

What is meant by that? The Minister will know that sites do not have to be identified in local plans to receive consent for onshore wind deployment, but there is a strong presumption that they should be, and rightly so. If we are to strengthen our energy security, cut bills and reduce emissions, we need local authorities to proactively consider the opportunities within their boundaries for the deployment of all forms of renewable energy, including onshore wind generation.

Given the degree of ambiguity that now surrounds the Government’s position, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Secretary of State has simply sought to buy himself the time he needs to get this legislation passed by alighting on a form of words nebulous enough to temporarily appease the warring factions within his party.

New clause 114, in contrast, is clear and unambiguous. It would require the Government to remove the onerous restrictions that the NPPF places on the development of onshore wind projects, and it would ensure that local communities have their say via the planning process, without imposing a uniquely restrictive consenting regime upon only this form of renewable energy generation. It would ensure that local authorities must at least explore the desirability of renewable energy deployment, including onshore wind, as part of the local plan preparation process, and I commend the new clause to the House.

Turning finally to a number of the Government amendments that have been tabled in recent weeks, Government new clauses 49 to 59 insert an entirely new part into the Bill, as the Minister said, that enables community land auction pilots to take place. As many Members will be aware, such auctions are not a novel concept, having been first proposed as far back as 2005. On paper, the premise appears entirely sensible. Landowners would have the freedom to voluntarily come together to grant options over land in the area of a participating local planning authority, with a view to it being allocated for development in the local plan. On the assumption that the option value would be significantly less than the market value for housing development, and that landlords will release said land at the lower price to realise the guaranteed short-term return, the authority in question will be able to exercise or sell the option, capturing some of the increased value uplift and using it to support local development.

In practice, the idea is riven with flaws. First, the circumstances for which this theoretical arrangement is designed—namely, a collection of small and completely substitutable land parcels with multiple landowners—bears little relation to the characteristics of the actual land market across the country.

Secondly, the idea that auctions will drive down land prices in the absence of any element of compulsion is frankly for the birds. One need only look at Transport for London’s disappointing experience with the development rights auction model to see how the proposed arrangement will fall short in that regard.