Chris Philp
Main Page: Chris Philp (Conservative - Croydon South)Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Second sitting)
Chris Philp ExcerptsTuesday 18th October 2016
(7 years, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 View all Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 18 October 2016 - (18 Oct 2016)
Jim McMahon
Q I am interested in the balance of the drive and ambition to build more homes with trying to protect the environmental standards, in particular around the green belt. I would welcome your views on that.
Matt Thomson: Shall I kick off, given that green belt is one of the key things that the Campaign to Protect Rural England is concerned with? It comes down to the general principle behind neighbourhood planning, that people and communities at the local level are best placed to make decisions about the impacts of development on their area, and about the type of development that takes place in their area. The more local the level at which decisions are made, the better the outcomes can be for those kinds of concerns.
Carole Reilly: I think it is really important that we listen to communities. We have seen a number of neighbourhood planning groups that are challenging local authorities that have not got a “brownfield first” policy. That is one the things that we see: a brownfield list that is going to be updated and reported on. That surely will be one of the ways, viability issues all being considered, of securing the green belt.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Q Welcome to Westminster. Do you think the way the local plan interacts with the neighbourhood plan could be improved in any way, particularly bearing in mind that the neighbourhood plan has been subject to local referendum? If you think that interaction could be improved, how would you suggest improving it?
Carole Reilly: I think we are going to see quite an interesting two years coming up, where local planning authorities are getting their local plans in place. I think neighbourhood plans and local plans can be produced in tandem. They depend on a lot of the same evidence. We are very heartened that this Bill shows a commitment for local authorities to explain what their support is going to be. There are a number of ways in which the development of the local plan would really help the development of a neighbourhood plan: giving maps, giving evidence, sharing diagrams—stuff that often does not happen at local authority level. So I think there is a way that they can be developed together. Without a local plan, obviously the latest plan takes precedence under the national planning policy framework—it is the neighbourhood plan. Where there is no five-year land supply, that leaves your neighbourhood plan terribly vulnerable. So I think the two have got to be intertwined. We also have to remember that, in practice, we are four years in, and there was a lot of scepticism from local authorities about neighbourhood plans. It feels like there is a far more open, partnership approach now.
But local planning authorities have been stripped of funding and they have reduced huge amounts of skills. Lots of people do not have a lot of experience with neighbourhood planning, and their focus will be on writing and producing the local plan. So I think they should be produced together, they should be meshed together, and that can be done by sharing that top-level evidence that is gathered by the local planning authority, but I think the resources are tight and the focus is going to be on the local plan.
Matt Thomson: I would agree with a lot of what Carole said. The question reflects one of the key problems that we have been facing with the operation of the planning system for decades. That is that where you have tiers of nested planning policy documents, there is always a question of which has precedence over the other. It should not necessarily be just a question of the one that is produced most recently holding the most weight in a planning application environment.
Another, bigger, question has vexed us with regard to the relationship between local plans, county structure plans and regional strategies. We tend to think of neighbourhood plans as somehow needing to be prepared in the context of an adopted local plan, despite the fact that, although we have lots of adopted local plans, we do not have enough adopted local plans. But we need a relationship whereby the work that goes on at the neighbourhood plan level informs the preparation of the local plan, rather than the local plan, when it is finally produced, somehow trumping a short-lived neighbourhood plan and forcing the neighbourhood to review that plan. We need somehow to protect the policies and proposals of the neighbourhood plan, and bring them into the local plan when it is being produced.
Chris Philp
Q On that point, can you think of particular examples of the type of policies or measures that might appear in a neighbourhood plan and that you think could or should trump a local plan?
Matt Thomson: The existing NPPF says that detailed policies—non-strategic policies—in a neighbourhood plan, where they exist, can outweigh the policies in the local plan.
Chris Philp
Q What is the definition of “strategic” in that context?
Matt Thomson: I think, generally speaking, that that is interpreted as relating to the scale and location of mainly housing development. It is the big picture things. A lot of local plans have quite detailed policies on design, and on the kinds of development management policies and conditions that can be imposed on planning permissions and so on. A neighbourhood may feel that the design policies are not the right design policies for their particular area, and so produce their own design policies. It is that kind of thing.
Chris Philp
Q As an example, let us say that the local plan specifies the total number of housing units in a five-year period to be built in a particular area—in a village or a particular neighbourhood of a suburb. Would it be reasonable to say that a neighbourhood plan could allocate different sites—that would take precedence—provided that the total number of housing units was the same as specified in the local plan?
Matt Thomson: That, I think, is a tricky area. A good example of where this has worked well is Thame in Oxfordshire. The district council gave an overall housing requirement for the Thame neighbourhood plan to meet and identify its own sites. It is more difficult when the district council has already identified sites, because the owner of that site has a reasonable expectation that they will get planning permission for it. It would be difficult for a neighbourhood plan to de-allocate a local plan. It is not impossible, and it may be appropriate to do that.
One of the other pitfalls we would want to watch out for is this: we know that neighbourhood plans are allocating more housing sites than they were expected to—that is the 10% or 11% figure that the Government have been talking about—and that is great news. What I would be really concerned about is when a neighbourhood is expected to provide 100 houses, but plans for 110 houses, and the local plan then takes the extra 10 houses off its total. It should be putting those 10 houses somewhere else in the district and not just double-counting, because it might lead to a void and end up punishing that neighbourhood for being much more forthcoming with housing sites.
Carole Reilly: Also, where a local plan is allocating a large housing development, quite often what we have seen in practice is that, on designation of the area, the local authority has removed that strategic site from the neighbourhood planning designated area, against the wishes of the qualifying body. Quite often they are not even able to take those out, and there has been quite a lot of wrangling over designation for boundaries that are coterminous with parish boundaries, because strategic sites have been removed. Whether that is about not wanting to interfere with housing development or about protection of the community infrastructure levy, there are a lot of questions.
Matt Thomson: To clarify, if it is desirable for a neighbourhood plan to de-allocate one site and allocate a different site, then that is a good thing—it is something that the CPRE would often support, because, as I said before, it is better for local people to make the decision. I am just saying that it would be tricky to do that. It could be tricky and there could be legal ramifications if an investor has invested in that site as a result.
Chris Philp
I am not sure that any public body has ever been financially liable for changing planning permissions.
Helen Hayes
Q May I ask Carole Reilly how many neighbourhood plans Locality has supported to date?
Carole Reilly: To date? Under the current programme, we have supported 1,300 neighbourhood plans with grants for technical support. In outline, there are two ways in which you can get support. You can get cash—£9,000 for straightforward plans and, for those that are more complex, the grant can go up to £15,000—and, alongside that, we offer a number of technical support packages. Under the current programme, which we have been running since the beginning of 2015, we have worked with 1,200 or 1,300 groups.
Jim McMahon
Q In order to allow flexibility—so you would not argue for a blanket rule to allow demolition in all cases, because there might be an argument to say that what is there now could be better than the alternative, depending on the final scheme presented.
Tim Smith: Yes. It is the kind of thing that is susceptible to regulations and policy far better than it is to primary legislation, but that would be an example of where some welcome flexibility could be brought.
Richard Blyth: I think there is an issue around whether the condition needs to be pre-commencement or not—around leverage, I suppose. If construction is under way, there is less incentive for the developer to come forward and submit the relevant scheme because they are already getting on with it, whereas saying, “You must do all this before you start,” gives a very powerful incentive for the party to come to the table. That may be why local authorities have tended to do that. They are afraid that, if they try to implement and enforce a condition after the starting gun, they might find that that was very difficult to do in terms of ultimately getting the court to agree. There are lawyers here who would probably better interpret that than me, but that may be why this has arisen.
Under the Infrastructure Act 2015, if a condition is not discharged by a certain time, it will be discharged in a deemed fashion, so the issue of having to discharge them is not necessarily requiring further legislation—we have just had some legislation on that. The other question is that, if a condition is not really serving a useful planning purpose, welcome other aspects of the Bill would say that it should not actually be possible to impose it in any case.
I am just a little concerned that requiring every good developer and every good planning authority to go through a written sign-off procedure for the sake of the minority, perhaps, of planning authorities and developers who may be pursuing less good practice is kind of asking everyone to take on an extra burden for the benefit of some bad eggs. Maybe there is another way of dealing with the problem of poor practice than requiring everyone else to have to go through the process of signing off conditions and, ultimately, the risk of applications being refused as the only way of resolving the dispute.
Chris Philp
Q The draft legislation provides that the Secretary of State by regulations can prohibit the use of certain planning conditions entirely, should the Secretary of State see fit. First, do you think that is a reasonable provision? Secondly, assuming you do—or if you do—are there any particular kinds of planning condition that you, if you were advising the Secretary of State, would advise him or her to prohibit?
Tim Smith: We have some visibility about how this might play out, because the consultation has been issued for views on what sort of conditions might be prevented. What we have in those proposals are things that, as a matter of policy, ought not to be applied anyway. I recognise that putting them on a statutory footing places a different emphasis on them. It is not just a question of whether policy should be interpreted so as to prevent them. The starting point will be that they should not be applied.
Having seen the list of conditions that are proposed, I would have a concern that some of them are not capable of being drafted in a sufficiently precise way. One proposal, for example, is that conditions should not be imposed that place a disproportionate financial burden on developers. That is easy to state and easy to understand as a concept—
Chris Philp
Q So you think that is inappropriately broad.
Tim Smith: I think that, as the proposal stands, that would present difficulties both for developers and local authorities in deciding whether or not it were a permissible condition, and it is not the kind of thing that I can see is easily capable of being further defined so as to provide that certainty.
There are other things that I think are appropriate. One of the examples is—
The Chair
Order. Sorry to interrupt. The hon. Member is taking a sip from that cup. It looks remarkably like tea. I am sure that it has cooled down to a temperature that is no longer regarded as hot. In other words, we cannot have hot drinks in here, bizarrely. I am afraid that is one of the rules. I am sorry—do continue.
Tim Smith: I think that the proposals we have before us in the consultation are on the species of condition that it would be apt to prevent. I do not know whether this is an appropriate answer to this question, but I should perhaps flag that there is one type of condition that should be expressly permitted that currently is not. It would be a missed opportunity if the Bill did not allow for it. It is something that the Law Society has expressed a view on before. I am happy to elaborate on that now or, if you would prefer, I can come back to it.
Chris Philp
Q No, elaborate now, please.
Tim Smith: At the moment, one cannot use a condition for the payment of a financial contribution. In some cases of minor development, the planning obligations sought from a developer upon the granting of planning permission are those that would be minor financial contributions. As things stand, the developer and the local planning authority are forced to use the vehicle of a planning obligation under section 106, which is the negotiation of an agreement, and that takes time and incurs additional cost for both sides. The cost, however, will be borne by the developer in defraying the cost to the local authority in putting that agreement in place.
One of the things that the Law Society has recommended in response to previous consultations is that, so long as it be agreed between local authority and applicant—a proposal that forms part of the Bill, albeit for different reasons—it would speed up the system to prevent the developer from having to enter into a section 106 agreement because they will have consented to a condition requiring the payment of a financial contribution. That is the very reverse of what is being proposed at the moment. These are conditions that must not be opposed. We are saying, and we have recommended this previously in consultations, that it would add utility to the system to allow conditions that are expressly approved by the developer to require the payment of financial contributions.
Chris Philp
Q So are you in effect suggesting that what we currently refer to as a section 106 agreement should be integrated into the main planning consent to avoid having to then have a lengthy and uncertain subsequent negotiation?
Tim Smith: It will not be appropriate for all cases. This relates to a safeguard that would apply for the benefit of the developer. The concern had always been that, if you allowed conditions to be imposed about the payment of financial contributions, it could be done unilaterally by the planning authority, leaving the developer having either to appeal the permission or to submit another application to get rid of that condition.
A sufficient safeguard would be if the developer said, “I’m fine with the process here. I’m fine with the principle of paying this contribution, so let’s put it into a condition so that I do not then have to negotiate the planning obligation.” In a sense, you might be surprised that I am sitting here as a lawyer saying that there are some things that lawyers get involved in that are perhaps not necessary, but the view expressed fairly broadly in the committee is that it would be sensible to include the idea in a piece of legislation.
Chris Philp
Could I invite other witnesses to comment on that?
Richard Blyth: On the issue of whether it is necessary, the proposals to elevate a list of satisfactory kinds of conditions into law from policy have been around under successive Governments for a very long time, and the principle is well understood. It seems sensible to elevate that list into the status of law. I am not clear, however, on why the Government need to go further and empower the Secretary of State to add a whole series of secondary legislation to the list of what constitutes a reasonable condition. I do not see why that is necessary; we have not had that before. I would have thought that policy and guidance would be quite able to elaborate, if the Bill becomes law, on a satisfactory basis in principle for defining a reasonable condition.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q Can I move on to look at some of the compulsory purchase order provisions in the Bill? To what extent do you think the proposals in the Bill will free up more land for development and lead to the delivery of more homes in a speedier and more streamlined way?
Richard Asher: I think that any improvements to the compulsory purchase process are to be welcomed. The provisions in the Bill for resolving the long-standing issues about temporary possession are very important. It has long been an area of great difficulty for practitioners to try to interpret how temporary possession should be dealt with. That is a key advantage of the Bill. Some of the detail needs further work, as the wording could lead to further legal disputes or litigation. However, the principle of providing for temporary possession on broadly the same terms as permanent acquisition is very important.
There is one area of difficulty: the danger that authorities may use powers to acquire land compulsorily when it is only required on a temporary basis. That interferes with long-term prospects for development by landowners, whose development plans are quite often disrupted by compulsory purchase on a temporary basis. That needs to be considered to ensure that authorities only acquire land on a temporary basis when it is required temporarily.
Colin Cottage: I agree with that, and the Compulsory Purchase Association welcomes a more codified approach to temporary acquisition. At the moment, the large number of compulsory purchase orders do not allow for temporary possession at all. Where there is potential to introduce it through development consent orders, Transport and Works Act orders and so on, each of those particular instruments is drawn separately, so a codified approach is to be welcomed.
As Richard said, there are practical issues with temporary possession that need to be dealt with, including the interrelationships between different tenures in land, how to deal with an occupier of land when that land is taken temporarily, and what to do if buildings have to be demolished and so on. Those issues can be overcome, but they need to be looked at carefully if the Bill is to come into law and to not cause, rather than solve, problems.
Another issue that we are quite conscious of is the ability to take both temporary and permanent possession. We are of the view that a decision should be taken at the outset as to whether possession will be temporary or permanent. When a business or individual homeowner is faced with compulsory acquisition, and possession is initially taken temporarily but may ultimately become permanent, huge amounts of uncertainty are created. The person or business does not know how long the land will be taken for, and whether it will be for a temporary period or whether it will be permanent, and that makes planning difficult.
When temporary possession is taken initially, compensation is paid on the temporary basis. At the moment, because the system is not codified, there is no strict ruling about when compensation is paid, so the introduction in the Bill of advanced payments should be encouraged. But, of course, even if compensation is paid, it is on a temporary basis. If permanent possession is then taken, it may cause a problem for relocation or for funding a business move.
Richard Blyth: The concern for us, as we set out in our briefing, is that we do not think it is reasonable for the owners of private land to benefit from public investment in infrastructure. I am not a lawyer so I cannot tell whether that is in the provisions of the Bill but, from a lay point of view, that is an important point.
I was in another building in the Palace of Westminster yesterday talking about the issue of land hoarding before the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. The Royal Town Planning Institute is not really of the view that developers are necessarily guilty of as much land hoarding as is the case. There is a difficulty in situations where the most sustainable choice for the expansion of a town requires the conversion of greenfield land into housing land. That puts the owner of that land in an extremely powerful position. It would be regrettable in that situation if those owners were, as it were, to hold the city to ransom—to require very high prices for the sale of land for conversion to residential use—not only because of ideological concern but because finding money for schools, health centres, roads and other infrastructure is increasingly difficult.
What is vested in the increase in land value coming from the grant of planning permission is an extremely important possible source for trying to deal with the difficulties of the lack of infrastructure provision in relation to housing. It may assist with what Dr Blackman-Woods started with—the understandable resistance to large-scale housing development that communities feel when they find it means there is a longer queue for the doctor, it is harder to get a primary school place and there is more congestion on the roads and railways. In answer to that question, lower land prices would be useful. I would not advocate CPOs as a way of enforcing that, but they are a useful thing to have deep in the background.
John Mann
Yes.
Gavin Barwell: Okay; understood. A £22.5 million support programme is available and has so far made more than 1,500 payments. All groups can apply for a grant of up to £9,000, but, as I represent an urban constituency, I absolutely recognise that it is more difficult to do this kind of work in more deprived areas—sometimes in more transient parts of the country as well—so additional funding and technical support is available to people in such priority areas. There is a national network of 132 neighbourhood planning champions who provide advocacy and peer-to-peer support. We recently launched an advertising campaign to promote the take-up of neighbourhood planning. That targeted a number of urban areas. I know that both you and Helen Hayes have spoken about this before, and are keen to push it. I am keen to listen to you and to think about whatever else we can do to help. I do not want the policy just to work in rural parishes, although the contribution it makes in those areas is important. It should be something for the whole country.
Steve Evison: May I just add a further point? For instances where the individual local authority has not written its plan, the 2016 Act enabled us to invite a Mayor or the combined authority to write the plan in place of the individual local authority. At the moment, that power is not available to county councils. Through the change, we are ensuring that we have the same options in two-tier areas as we do in areas with Mayors and combined authorities.
Chris Philp
Q I am pleased by the comments you made earlier about the plans to consult on increasing planning fees to get resources into local authorities. Could you lay out, for the Committee’s benefit, the proposed timetable for replying to the consultation? How will you go about enacting that when you have considered the results?
Gavin Barwell: That is a fairly simple one. The consultation has happened and we are waiting to respond to it. The realistic likelihood is that the response will come in the White Paper.
Chris Philp
Q When is the White Paper due?
Gavin Barwell: Later this year, so you will not be waiting long for an answer.
Chris Philp
Q Is your decision implemented by regulations, by a circular or by primary legislation?
Gavin Barwell: By regulations, I am told. That is something that we should be able to make progress on quickly, should we decide to.
Chris Philp
Q Okay. In the first session, we talked about giving planning authorities the ability to charge extra fees, which would be refundable if they failed to meet a certain level of service, such as the delivery of a decision by a certain time. Would that mitigate, in part at least, the concern you raised in your answer to Mr McMahon about money not seeping out through the back door?
Gavin Barwell: Clearly, that provides some protection for applicants. If they are paying more money and do not get a better service, they get a refund, but we are thinking about a wider issue, which is how to come up with a mechanism to ensure that all the money goes through to extra spending in planning departments.
For example, there might be a council department where 60% of the budget is funded through fees, and 40% comes through council tax. The council could take the extra fee income and just remove the money that was funded through council tax. Not a penny more would be spent on planning, but they would have released some money somewhere else for the local authority. Now, I can well understand their desire to do that but, in my job, I want to ensure that if more money comes in, it leads to more money being spent in total.
Chris Philp
Q The Minister is quite right to say that any extra money raised by way of fees should fund incremental extra levels of resourcing, and not simply replace money from general subsidy. To that point, do you agree that we might learn some lessons from the way in which business improvement district funding works? Extra money comes in by way of the business rate supplement but the local authority has to agree the existing level of service provision in writing in advance, and it cannot reduce that. The extra bid funding provides for incremental service levels. Could a similar approach be adopted in this situation? You would agree with the council, before they levied extra fees, that there are 30 people working in the council’s planning department and that the extra fees must lead to incremental hires on a cost basis. Would that be a way of avoiding the problem?
Gavin Barwell: There are a number of mechanisms. I do not want to get into too much detail speculating about them now, but that would certainly be a possibility. A very good point was made in previous evidence sessions that we are partly interested in the speed with which decisions are made on applications, but that is by no means the sole arbiter of how effectively a planning department is doing its job. We also want section 106 agreements to be reached speedily, planning conditions to be discharged speedily and local plans in place. There are a number of strands of work.
Chris Philp
Q I am glad that the Minister mentioned section 106 agreements. As far as I can tell from the Bill, the pre-commencement conditions get folded into the planning application. If I have read correctly, section 106 agreements will still come after planning permission. Am I right about that?
Tony Thompson: They are normally negotiated as part of the process. The expectation is that they would be agreed before the final decision notice is issued.
Chris Philp
Q But sometimes you get section 106 agreements that are not agreed or signed until after planning is granted. Sometimes it can be sequential. It is better that it is simultaneous, as you described, but sometimes, currently, it does happen sequentially.
Tony Thompson: Sometimes we encourage completion of the section 106 before the final decision is issued.
Chris Philp
Q So in that case, might you go further than simply encouraging it, as you do now, and introduce a provision in this Bill to make it a requirement? Rather than simply encouraging, why not compel, if you think it is best practice?
Tony Thompson: The expectation is that you should complete them, but there are sometimes very exceptional circumstances—perhaps a very significant development—where it is exceptionally agreed that the section 106 can be done afterwards. But in those circumstances, the expectation is that when the committee takes the decision to approve and issues that decision, there is a clear understanding of precisely what the section 106 should comprise, even though it has not actually completed the process. As I said, those are the exceptions rather than the rule. We wanted that element of flexibility, rather than a clear point that could not be exceeded.
The Chair
Q Order. I am sorry to interrupt. Would it be possible for you to write to the Committee giving us the numbers of how many are exceptional and how many are not? That would be helpful to the Committee.
Gavin Barwell: I am sure we could do that, Mr Bone.
Chris Philp
Q The Bill provides for the Secretary of State or one of his or her Ministers to proscribe certain kinds of planning conditions—to ban them from being imposed. Can you explain for the Committee’s benefit, Mr Barwell, what kinds of planning condition used currently you have it in mind to proscribe or ban using the new powers?
Gavin Barwell: My hon. Friend is quite right. Clause 7 tries to deal with two different issues. One is what we see as overuse of pre-commencement conditions; the second is taking a fairly wide-ranging power to proscribe certain types of planning conditions. I will give a brief answer and refer him somewhere where there is a lot more detail. Essentially, one thing that we want to stop is the use of conditions that essentially just replicate things that are either in the building regulations or other statements that legally oblige developers already. There are things that do not need to be restated as planning conditions because there is already a legal obligation on the developer, for example, to do them.
We published a consultation paper when we introduced the Bill that sets out in more detail how we would choose to use the regulations. The main point of reassurance that I would give the Committee is that it is clear on the face of the Bill that the power cannot be used in any way contrary to the NPPF. It cannot be used to water down protections clearly set out in the NPPF.
Chris Philp
Q But are there any specific planning conditions currently used that you have it in mind to outlaw, for illustrative purposes?
Tony Thompson: The consultation paper talks, for example, about something that requires the completion of the development. That is an issue about the certainty that could be achieved with that condition. In that particular instance, the expectation is that such a condition should not be imposed.
Chris Philp
Q Thank you. Can Mr Barwell comment on neighbourhood plans versus local plans? Are there any areas where you think it may be possible to give slightly higher weighting to neighbourhood plans than to local plans, provided that the neighbourhood plan is consistent with the overall level of housing supply predicted or required by the local plan, given that they are more local and have a bigger democratic mandate?
Gavin Barwell: It is really important that we do not see it as local plans versus neighbourhood plans. Neighbourhood plans should be consistent with the overall planning policy framework set out in the local plan. I think the issue we have at the moment—as some of our witnesses say, the Bill goes some way toward addressing it, but we also need to consider policy changes that could help—is that you either do not have a local plan, or you have one that does not have a five-year land supply. At that point, the presumption in favour of development in the NPPF applies, and that can sometimes, although not always, lead to neighbourhood plans being overridden.
That is where the issue is. I do not think it is so much about the conflict between the local plan and the neighbourhood plan; it is about when you either do not have a local plan, or you have one that has not met the five-year land supply test. There are some things in the Bill that will help a bit with this, but I think the main thing we need to look at is how that five-year land supply test is working and whether we can provide some protection to local councils where perhaps there is suddenly a problem with one site and that therefore drops off. Overnight you thought you had a five-year land supply plan but you do not. Can we provide some protection where councils think about other options available to get things back up to the required level? Can we also ensure that, at least for a period of time after neighbourhood plans are approved, they afford stronger protection so that where a parish or a community in an urban area has worked really hard to produce its neighbourhood plan and, through no fault of its own, its local council does not have a five-year land supply, it does not find that its neighbourhood plan is immediately undermined by speculative development?
Chris Philp
Q Where there is a large local authority—we were just talking about having a local plan that covers the whole of Manchester, which is a gigantic conurbation—or indeed a large London borough like our own, Croydon, a local community might have a different view on where housing can be built in their neighbourhood from that of the local authority or, in the case of Manchester, the entire metropolis. There might be a conflict between where the local plan thinks housing should be built and the local neighbourhood—the parish or whatever it might be. Provided that the neighbourhood plan has enough houses in total, would you not want to give priority to the views of the local community, particularly given that that is backed by a referendum?
Gavin Barwell: Yes. As long as the neighbourhood plan is consistent with the overall strategic planning for the area in the local plan, the neighbourhood plan can absolutely fill in that level of detail. If a local plan says a particular town within the district will take a certain level of housing growth, the neighbourhood plan can fill in what the community feels are the right sites and the required mix of housing.
Chris Philp
Q I have a final question. One of the bugbears that people developing housing will have told you about are these wretched great crested newts, which apparently are endangered in Europe. The reason they are protected in the UK is due to European regulations, which of course will cease to apply relatively shortly. When the European regulations cease to apply to the United Kingdom, will you be minded as the UK or England and Wales planning Minister to remove or loosen the restrictions that the European Union has hitherto imposed on us?
Gavin Barwell: The first thing to say is that that moment is not yet upon us. We are still within the EU and at the moment all those European laws apply. Clearly, as the Prime Minister has set out, the decision we took as a country on 23 June will lead to some short-term challenges—it will change our role in the world and we are going to build a new future for the country around that—but it also offers some opportunities to look at the laws that we have and ask, “Are these the right laws for the UK?” I am sure that all Members of the House will want to ensure that we have proper environmental protections and proper protections for endangered species, but if we look at a law and say, “Actually the way that law is working in this country is disproportionate or leading to some perverse outcomes,” there will be an opportunity to review it.
The Chair
Order. I am sorry to interrupt you, Minister. I hate to say this, but we are talking a little bit too much about the European Union, which is slightly outside the scope of the Bill. We should not really be banging on about Europe.
Gavin Barwell: Having served as your Whip for nearly two years, Mr Bone, I know you have been waiting for the chance to say that to me.
Kit Malthouse
Q Minister, you will have gathered from my line of questioning that I am concerned about protection for neighbourhood plans. I am pleased to see what is in the Bill, but part of the genesis of the Bill with the previous Minister was, I think, a case in Oakley in my constituency where an appeal was allowed five or six days before the referendum on the neighbourhood plan, notwithstanding that even at that late stage, under existing planning regulations, the plan was meant to have been taken into account. Why will this be any better?
Gavin Barwell: The honest answer is that this will not solve the problem in that very specific case, because as I understand it that appeal was determined days before the examination—