Planning Committees: Reform

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I have to say, it is quite rich hearing the hon. Gentleman crow about planning permissions in the system. We are experiencing the lowest number of planning permissions and completions for a decade, as a result of the Conservatives’ changes to the national planning policy framework, made in December 2023, which torpedoed supply and hit growth across this country.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the NPPF. We fully intend to bring forward a revised NPPF before the end of the year. These changes do not relate to the NPPF, as I made clear in my initial response. We are consulting, in an initial sense, on the changes before bringing forward formal proposals for consultation alongside the planning and infrastructure Bill—another part of the Government’s reform agenda.

The hon. Gentleman rightly made it clear that 96% of decisions are already made by planning officers. The other 4% of decisions, though, are incredibly important; they represent a substantial portion of total units in the planning process, because many major applications go to a planning committee for consideration. While we know that there is good practice out there, the number and type of applications that committees consider still varies widely between local planning authorities. Some committee decisions are not made in accordance with material planning considerations, and some committees repeatedly revisit or relitigate developments that have already been considered by elected members through the local plan process. We need to streamline the local planning system in order to provide the homes and places that we need, and to empower trained planning professionals to get the best use out of the system.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about neighbourhood plans. I have been very clear on several occasions in the House that the protections for neighbourhood plans in the NPPF will remain. As well as firm proposals on this proposition around modernising planning committees, we will bring forward further details about changes to the national planning policy framework in due course.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will know that I am passionately committed to local councils and local democracy, but does he understand the frustration that many of us feel when a planning authority democratically approves a local plan after consulting the community, but then, when an application is made to build homes, the same councillors turn down the application, despite it being consistent with the local plan? Is the Minister’s main objective to try to remove that sort of decision making, which holds up the whole process, and to ensure, in consultation with the Local Government Association and others in local government, that we can find a better way forward, so that we can get the permissions to build the homes that the country badly needs?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. He has huge expertise in this area from his time as Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, and he is absolutely right. We have been clear that the best way for local communities to shape the decisions about what to build, where, is through local plans. It is appalling that we have inherited a situation in which less than a third of places are covered by up-to-date local plans. We need to boost that, and—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) will allow me, what we are looking at, in the changes that we are consulting on, in a soft form, through the working paper, is how we can ensure that planning committees make decisions on the most significant and controversial applications, including those that are not in line with local plans, rather than spending their time poring over decisions that have been made in an allocation framework through the local plan process. Hon. Members will see in the working paper that one of our proposals, for a national scheme for delegation, would require all applications that are in accordance with the development plan to be determined by officers. That will free up committees to focus on controversial development that is out of step with the local plan that elected members and officers put forward after consultation with their communities.