Neighbourhood Plans: Planning Decisions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Evans]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. For someone who is not speaking, he articulates his point very well. He makes a really important point: different parts of the UK have a different approach, and there should be shared learning. Joining up community hubs is really important, especially in rural areas, where there are limited numbers of sports fields, doctors, shops and schools. The ability to bring businesses and the community together is good not only for the Government, so that they can deliver the housing, but for the local populace, to better understand and buy into what is being delivered. That is the whole point of neighbourhood plans.

At the end of March 2025, the Government were aware of 1,800 neighbourhood plans being in place. The Locality website states that over 2,400 communities have initiated neighbourhood plans and over 1,000 plans have been successful at referendum. CPRE says that 5,800 local green spaces have been designated in neighbourhood plans, showing that local communities are deciding what is best for them. That is all well and good, but why are these plans important and are they making any tangible difference? An assessment of the impact of neighbourhood plans in England for the University of Reading in May 2020 showed that

“Neighbourhood planning’s contribution to housing supply can be significant. Neighbourhood plans which are allocating housing sites are providing sites for an average additional to local plan allocation 39 units per neighbourhood plan.”

I like to think of this in terms of percentage gains, as the Sky cycling team did. These are huge percentage gains in local communities, which go on to choose to have this housing. We know that these plans will deliver about 11% more houses, and they have community buy-in, which is fundamental to getting people on board to say they will take more housing. That is why we need these plans. However, the Government announced last month that the funding is stopping.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The village of London Colney in my constituency is under siege from top-down housing targets, with a huge development being dumped on the border by the neighbouring local authority and an enormous rail freight terminal the size of 480 football pitches. My local residents in London Colney want their voice to be heard on the location and type of homes, but after three years of having access to the locality budget in developing a neighbourhood plan, the parish council has been told that there is no funding left to finish that plan. Does the hon. Member agree that where local parishes have made significant progress, funding should be reinstated so that they can complete those plans?

[Dr Evans]

The hon. Lady makes a vociferous defence of her area; actually, she could have been speaking about my constituency in Leicestershire, which suffers all those things. The only thing I would say is that in my constituency we fought the national rail freight hub, won and pushed it back. The population was very pleased about that, but that speaks to people’s engagement and what they can do. The concern that we have to raise with the Government is about what happens when the funding stops. As I will say later, we need to understand where the Government stand on neighbourhood plans. Do they support them? Do they want them to be taken away? Do they want to see them wither? Will they strengthen them? The Opposition’s argument is that strengthening them would deliver the housing that people want in the way they want it.

On the funding that is stopping, Locality—the membership organisation that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government commissioned to deliver support services to neighbourhood forums to prepare their neighbourhood plans—has announced that it cannot proceed with new neighbourhood planning support services from 2025, and it has until the end of March 2026 to complete all existing technical support packages agreed with MHCLG. It believes that

“it will be difficult for some groups to progress their plans…we are not able to support the Champions Network and other learning and development opportunities”.

The National Association of Local Councils said:

“We are bitterly disappointed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) decision to stop funding for the neighbourhood planning support programme…This decision is a significant setback for localism and the highly successful neighbourhood planning initiative”.

CPRE nationally says that that it is

“concerned about the government’s decision to end support for preparing and updating neighbourhood plans, as this is likely to lead to planning decisions becoming less responsive to the needs and aspirations of local communities.”

That is the rub: it feels like a slap in the face for local communities that want to take on the responsibility of making change. That is often done by volunteers who do not have technical experience but aspire to change their area for the better. That is why it hurts.

This is not just some nebulous concept that we discuss down here in Whitehall and Westminster. My constituency is a primary example that is living this out. We do not have an up-to-date local plan under the Liberal Democrat borough council—this has been ongoing for six years—or an up-to-date five-year land supply. The Liberal Democrats’ local campaign says, “Stop building,” but the national campaign says, “We need to go even further than the Labour and Conservative pledges.”

[Daisy Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the housing debate is about not just the number of homes but who determines where they should be built. He continues to point to the Liberal Democrats, but I gently remind him that our policy is not just about numbers, but about having a bottom-up approach whereby local authorities work out the homes they need in their local area, in contrast to the top-down approach pursued by his former Government and the current Labour Government.

[Dr Evans]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out; I hope she will get in contact with her colleagues in the Liberal Democrat-run Hinckley and Bosworth borough council to make that exact point. They could take more control if they had an up-to-date local plan and learned from their neighbours in North West Leicestershire—part of which is now in my constituency—which does have a five-year land supply and an up-to-date local plan, and is making the best of that because it is able to take in business rates and turn that into a positive. The community chooses where development goes and has control over it. The mechanism is there, and I have been raising this issue with the last Government and this Government.

I am keen to ensure that the Government are able to kick local decision making in the right direction to prevent failings. Neighbourhood plans are the protective mechanism that can deal with that. I argued with the last Government, and will argue with this Government, that neighbourhood plans should have more weight, especially where there is no up-to-date local plan, because that would do exactly what the hon. Lady is asking for. They allow communities to have infrastructure and amenities, in keeping with the their heritage and environment, without top-down speculative developments that place 100, 200, 300, 500 or 1,000 houses on top of them. Communities just will not swallow that. That is the key and why I secured this debate.

Let me continue with the example of my constituency. We now have the prospect of devolution, with 21 councils getting a legal invite to change the way in which they structure themselves. I am not sure about other Members, but if I got a “legal invite” from the court, I would not ignore it. This is being imposed on local governments. In my area, we have at least three different versions of what devolution will look like. This will have a drastic impact on planning, yet we have no idea of what the neighbourhood plans or planning authorities will look like, especially if we are divided into one, two or three different unitaries.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

On behalf of my party, may I associate myself with the Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks about the Air India crash? In a week that we remember the murder of Jo Cox and David Amess, our party’s thoughts are with their friends and families and all those in this House who lost their beloved friends. We also remember those who died in the Grenfell tragedy.

In 2003, we Liberal Democrats were incredibly proud to lead the campaign against the Iraq war—a war in which the UK blindly followed the US in a move that was not backed by the United Nations. In light of reports that President Trump is seriously considering joining the war between Israel and Iran, launching a US strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, can the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that if President Trump does take such action, today’s Labour Government will not blindly follow the US into war again?

[Angela Rayner]

The one thing I will say is that we agree with President Trump that Iran must never have nuclear weapons. But we have been consistent in urging Iran to engage with the diplomatic process and work with the United States and we continue to support that diplomatic approach.

[Daisy Cooper]

I am grateful to the Deputy Prime Minister. We support those efforts.

Today, the Government are set to unveil their plans to cut personal independence payments and carer’s allowance, a prospect that one of my constituents described as “terrifying”. Liberal Democrat analysis of the Government’s own data suggests that 1.3 million disabled people are at risk of losing some support. Can the Deputy Prime Minister honestly say, hand on heart, that that is the change that 1 million disabled people and their carers were promised?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Labour is the party of work and the party of fairness and social justice. We have announced a plan to get Britain working again, and we are clear on the principles—I want to be clear on that—that those who want to work should be able to work and those who can never work should be protected.

The current system, which we have inherited, does not support those who need that support and does not allow people opportunities for employment. I have personal experience of it. I know what the hon. Lady is saying, and I know how some people are fearful of the changes, but this Labour Government have put their values into place and will ensure that people are supported into work where they can work, and those who cannot will be supported. We are the party of the welfare state—we set it up after the second world war—and believe it should be there for people who need it, but we should also help people into work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

Local authorities use the standard method to assess housing needs, but they can show evidence of any hard constraints in their areas, including protected landscapes. Those will be assessed by the Planning Inspectorate to judge whether the plan is sound. We are clear that local authorities should explore all options to deliver the homes that their communities need, including maximising the use of brownfield land, working with neighbouring authorities and, where appropriate, reviewing their green belt.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

16. What steps she is taking to help people impacted by EWS1 fire safety certificates issued by Tri Fire.

[Dr Al Pinkerton (Surrey Heath) (LD)]

19. If she will take steps to support residents impacted by market disruption due to incorrect building safety documentation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)]

The external wall system 1 form is a tool developed by mortgage lenders to inform valuation, and is not a fire safety certificate. We are working very closely with the industry to encourage them to take a proportional approach to forms issued by Tri Fire. Lenders who have signed the industry planning statement should accept alternative evidence as part of mortgage applications, but if an individual has concerns about the fire safety of their building, they should contact the person responsible for it.

[Daisy Cooper]

I am grateful for that answer, but in an answer to a written parliamentary question last week the Minister suggested that if a leaseholder cannot use an EWS1 fire safety certificate to progress the sale and purchase of their home, they should use the fire risk assessment. However, in many cases, including in my constituency, both the EWS1 form and the fire risk assessment are most likely invalid, if not fraudulent. In those circumstances, what measures can be taken to prioritise fire risk assessments for those leaseholders? What can be done to protect leaseholders from the additional costs of conducting another fire safety assessment after the one that they conducted in good faith?

[Alex Norris]

If the building is in one of the Government-backed schemes, such as the cladding safety scheme, the fire risk assessment will have been quality assured by the Government, which will provide assurance. If it is covered by the developer contract, it will have been audited by the Department, so that ought to give cover as well. If neither of those things is the case, I am more than happy to talk to the hon. Lady about how to give residents surety so that they can evidence to lenders that their building is safe.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very important question, and I am sorry about the situation that her constituents find themselves in. I understand that the relevant professional body is investigating that case, and it would be wrong of me to comment on the specifics, but we are working to encourage mortgage lenders to act proportionately, in order to provide support to leaseholders and buyers in buildings with EWS1 certificates that mortgage lenders are not accepting. Where a building is in a remediation scheme or the leaseholder is protected by the Building Safety Act 2022, we expect the 10 lenders that have signed the industry cladding statement to honour that statement and not require the EWS1. If my hon. Friend wants to speak to the safety Minister about that case, I am sure he would be happy to meet her.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s statement. I particularly welcome the Government’s acceptance of the recommendation on professionalising and regulating fire engineers and assessors, not least because five years ago, in the Committee on the Fire Safety Act 2021, I tabled new clause 2, which would have created a public register of fire risk assessors. Had my new clause been accepted, we might have been able to avoid the developing scandal of the issuance of potentially fraudulent EWS1 certificates by Tri Fire, which could have a devastating impact on thousands of leaseholders, including some in my constituency. In the light of those concerns, which have been raised both in the media and in the Chamber today by Members from all sides of the House, can I urge the Deputy Prime Minister to convene a meeting for all MPs whose constituents are affected, and does she agree that it is time that the police investigated those reports?

[Angela Rayner]

Let me expand my invitation: I am sure that the safety Minister would be happy to meet the hon. Lady. We will legislate to make it a mandatory requirement that fire risk assessors are competent to perform their critical role, and are certified against approved standards by a certification body accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service. The Government are supporting an industry-led British standard for fire risk assessors; that standard is currently being drafted, and once it is completed, that will create a single, clear definition of competence against which certification and qualification should be mapped.

Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Vikki Slade]

I agree that this is a difficult time for small businesses, with so many things changing at the same time—not least the increasing national insurance rates.

To return to the role of the high street, the most successful high streets are moving quickly to reinvent themselves. Since my election, I have been trying to find a high street location for my constituency office. I had decided to base myself in the historic market town of Wimborne, where my mum lived and my children went to school. It is the fastest-growing community in Mid Dorset and North Poole—Ministers have heard me talk about its housing problems many times—and it has great bus routes. I thought it would be a great place to find a small unit easily.

I was wrong, however. The strength of the sense of place, the innovation of its businesses and the hard work of its business improvement district and its town council are such that when a business closes down, others are waiting to move in. I have finally found my new home, which will open by the end of the month when we have fitted it out, but the experience proved what I already knew: the high street can survive, but only when the business community is prepared to give people what they want. Retailers such as Tickles and Co. trade alongside the hospice shop, and old businesses such as Bartletts, which has for 120 years sold smart clothes for all seasons, are able to sustain themselves despite changes in the market.

The Lib Dems welcome the proposal to permanently reduce business rates for retail, hospitality and leisure, and we acknowledge that the financial situation the Government were left by the previous Government makes the 75% discount difficult to maintain, but any discount is worthless if businesses that are trying to stabilise following the covid pandemic, the energy crisis and the shift to online cashless purchasing do not even make it through the next year. As I have said before, that is not the reform that business needs. The Minister has already said that this is just phase 1, but we are incredibly frustrated that he has not taken the opportunity to take things further.

New clause 3, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), focuses our proposals further on the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, and raises valid points about the risk to individual businesses compared with those that have multiple branches. There must be an assessment of that risk alongside a broader impact assessment.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is giving an impassioned speech about the importance of business rates reform. Does she agree that there is a risk of unintended consequences in what the Government are proposing? At the moment, the 75% relief is capped at £110,000, but when the relief goes to zero in two years’ time, that cap will not exist. House of Commons Library research shows that the net effect could be that small businesses end up being 80% worse off, while big chains such as Starbucks could be 40% better off. Although it is important that we get a review of the impact of business rates, it is also important that we get the differential assessment set out in new clause 3.

[Vikki Slade]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. One problem is the same law of unintended consequences that we have seen with things like the national insurance increase—which, as we repeat over and over again, is impacting small businesses, hospices, doctors’ surgeries and things like that—when quite understandably, an attempt is made to raise funds from elsewhere.

I want to share the views of Anthony Woodhouse, the chair of Hall and Woodhouse brewery and pub chain, founded and based in Dorset but with a branch just across the way from this place—unfortunately, I am not able to be at its event in Portcullis House because of the timing of today’s debate. Anthony told me that the revaluing of property when a huge amount of money has just been invested to make it fit for a changing market, and before you have even had a chance to benefit from that market, is completely crazy and discourages business investment. As such, it is important that as we look to reform business rates, we examine that issue as well.

Despite our failure to do that, businesses such as Anthony’s are responding to the market. Pubs such as the Olive Branch in Wimborne and the Old Granary on Wareham quay are now places where muddy boots, children and dogs are welcome, and where they sell as many cups of coffee as pints of local beer. The high street needs to morph as businesses have—to be ready and willing to change—but while business rate reform rightly starts with the high street, it is important that it does not end there.

As such, I turn to our amendments 1 to 6, which would add manufacturing businesses to the lower multiplier. The UK has a rich history of manufacturing excellence, and Barclays’ “Made in Britain” report found that a product being made in Britain held an important influence over consumers’ decision to purchase it, with customers perceiving such products to be high quality, reliable and internationally respected. The “made in Britain” tag was found to be worth an addition £3.5 billion a year to our UK exporters, which is why we believe that the lower multiplier should also apply to manufacturing businesses. We need to give those businesses a shot in the arm to ensure they can compete on the world stage. The threats by incoming President Trump to put tariffs on UK products, our continued isolation from our neighbours through an inadequate Brexit deal, and the rapid growth of economies such as China and India represent a real threat to local manufacturing.

Poole Bay Holdings, based in my constituency, stands ready to produce its innovative Koolpak here in the UK. Anybody who has children will know the brand Koolpak—it is that ice pack that is not even ice—and that business has been modifying its equipment so that it can make the product here, in Dorset, to compete with China. It stands ready to drive up those sales. Recognition of such businesses through a lower multiplier, or at least the potential to include them in a lower multiplier if the market becomes more tricky, is the intent behind our amendments.

Turning to amendments 7 and 8, which stand in the name of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), the Liberal Democrats simply do not believe in the taxation of education. Alongside the changes to VAT, the removal of the special status for schools is really disappointing. Therefore, those amendments—which seek to recognise the value of schools for children whose needs are difficult to meet elsewhere, whether those are special educational needs and disabilities or whether people are choosing to educate in a faith school—seem reasonable.

In summary, this Bill is a fair start, and some businesses will feel it is better than the abyss that might otherwise have been. However, the Government could and should have taken different decisions to protect businesses that will face additional costs in just a few weeks’ time. We are often asked how we would pay for it; I welcome that discussion, as there were many proposals in our manifesto, from taxing big banks to asking gambling companies to pay their fair share. On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I recognise that the Government have worked quickly to bring this Bill forward, but the risks of losing businesses en route to something better are just too great. We need proper reform, so that the businesses of the mid-21st century can weather the storms ahead.

[Adam Thompson (Erewash) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again on this Bill, having been part of the scrutiny process in Committee.

The Committee heard representations from a wide variety of experts in related fields, and I was heartened by the news that many experts felt that this Bill would have a positive impact on 98% of the retail stores that make up our communities. In particular, small convenience stores such as the local Co-op or the great British corner shop will see great benefits to their capacity to support staffing, security and other operational functions. Our incredible independent shopkeepers, such as those who populate the high streets of Ilkeston and Long Eaton in my constituency, will have more funds to take on additional staff, improve their security set-ups and gain long-term confidence in their ability to serve our community. These measures represent a simple, common-sense approach to rebalancing the scales in favour of local retailers and away from the online giants, and increasing taxes on the biggest players while relieving the burden on local retailers.

[Daisy Cooper]

The hon. Member may have heard my earlier intervention. He is absolutely right, and I agree with him wholeheartedly, that we have to shift the burden away from small businesses on to big online retailers. However, that could be undermined if all we do is shift the burden on to the big chains. House of Commons Library research says that small independent businesses are going to end up subsidising the big chains. Does he share my concern that this could be an unintended consequence and that the Government must look at it?

[Adam Thompson]

I refer to Hansard for the discussions we had in Committee, but that did not come through in the evidence we heard. However, I respect the fact that the hon. Member has made that point, and I thank her for doing so.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade), another sector to benefit significantly from these measures is our local pubs. The fine folk frequenting the Sawley Junction in Long Eaton or the Bulls Head in Breaston in my constituency can rest easy that their locals are in safe hands. More generally, the measures we are bringing forward will reduce the tax burden on the hospitality sector, which is considered by many to be overtaxed. I am very glad that the Government have been able to offer something positive to the sector, which has been broadly forgotten for many years.

Some of the Bill’s opponents have suggested that the removal of charitable relief from non-domestic rates for private schools will have a negative impact on the parents of privately educated children, so I was strongly heartened to hear from one of our experts during the scrutiny process in Committee. Professor Francis Greene, professor of work and education economics at the University College London institute of education, noted that this Bill will have a “marginal” effect on the education sector, and that the policy was fair and would generally not have a great deal of impact on the proportion of children in private schools, which has remained broadly constant over the past 20 years, despite a cash-terms doubling in fees.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman is giving an impassioned speech about the case for an overhaul of the business rates system. Why did the previous Conservative Government never get around to doing that?

[Damian Hinds]

Well, I did refer at the start of my speech to the calls over the years for reform. I also said that there are problems with all taxes we levy on individuals or on business and that is why we end up with a blend. What I am talking about now is the fact that this Government are hiking up the total amount that will be taken in business rates, which will fall on major employers and then be felt in our unemployment rate. The Government are trying to do this thing of saying, “We are cutting stuff,” but they are not, because for all of the companies we have heard name-checked, reducing the relief will outweigh the effect of the multiplier. On top of that, we have a revaluation coming up in the near future. That is probably going to mean an increase in rateable values that will compound those higher multiples.

For all those reasons, new clause 2 is both important and a reasonable ask. It says that after a period of time, we should review the real-life effect of these changes and give the Government an opportunity to change course and get back to something that looks a bit like a growth agenda.

I turn briefly to the effect of these changes on independent schools. We have debated in the Chamber on a number of occasions the Government’s overall approach to independent schools. Let me say again that we object in principle to taxing education. It makes us almost unique in the world that we would do such a thing and it will be the first time in our national history that we have done so—it has never been done before by any Labour Government, or any other Government. The tax change we are debating today on rates is not the only tax change or transfer of money from independent schools to the Treasury. They were already facing a big increase—5%, I think—in employer contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme. Like all organisations—public sector, private sector, charitable and voluntary sector—they also have employer national insurance contributions to deal with. And then there is the enormous VAT change.

Specifically on this tax change, it is a fixed cost, as I mentioned at the start of my speech, at a time when there is all this uncertainty around the independent education sector and children will be moving. I will let Members into a secret: no one knows what the ultimate effect will be. We can line up as many experts as we like, but no one knows how many children will be moving, but we know it will be a non-trivial number greater than zero—there will be children moving out of that sector and there is a lot of uncertainty. It therefore seems to be a very unwise time to add, on top of all those other tax changes, a significant change to a fixed-cost tax. The amendments put forward by the official Opposition are therefore very well worth supporting; my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) made that case very strongly.

On faith schools, we know that whatever the impact assessment says, people of faith, and particularly of smaller faiths, will be disproportionately impacted by this Government’s changes to education. We also know that children with SEND feature particularly prominently in the independent sector. Many of those schools have an awful lot of children who have special needs, but not necessarily—or not yet—an education, health and care plan. Special consideration should be given to both those types of schools: faith schools—if we wanted to narrow it down further, we could say smaller faiths charging low fees to parents—and those catering to children with special educational needs and disabilities.

On amendment 10, with all else that is going on in the independent sector, it is at the very least an exceptionally reasonable ask of the Government that we delay these changes by a year to give the sector a chance to be able to cope and plan.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sewards]

I return to the point I made earlier. We know that we have to support these smaller businesses—these bricks-an-mortar businesses, as the right hon. Gentleman calls them—and the only way we are going to pay for this is by finding the money from elsewhere. We have chosen to cut business rates for smaller businesses, and we are choosing to raise the revenue from the larger businesses and corporations that have been getting away without paying their fair share for far too long.

[Daisy Cooper]

The hon. Member will recognise that it is the Government’s intention to reduce business rates for the smallest businesses, but as I have mentioned a couple of times in this debate, House of Commons Library research shows that if we compare this year to two years’ time, small businesses will end up 80% worse off, whereas the big chains will end up 40% better off. I believe that this is an unintended consequence. Will he urge the Minister, as I am doing, to address that point in his wind-up?

[Mr Sewards]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that contribution. Of course I have read the House of Commons Library research into this. I also took time to listen to all the witnesses who came forward in the Bill Committee, and they made it clear that the changes in this Bill will benefit small businesses in the long term. I am quite happy with the evidence that they provided to support the changes that the Bill makes.

[Daisy Cooper]

rose—

[Mr Sewards]

I will move on to the next part of my speech, but I am happy to take any further interventions that might be relevant to that point. I am going to talk about the amendments now.

I think new clauses 1 to 3 are unnecessary. The Government will monitor the effects of the new multipliers and, as we know, they will show what those effects have been in Budget 2025. They will do the same in all future fiscal statements, so the monitoring is already going to take place. The hon. Member refers to the impact these changes might have in two years’ time, and the Government will comment on that in all future fiscal statements.

Amendments 1 to 6 are noble, but they would significantly affect and reduce the support that the Bill is able to provide to retail, hospitality and leisure businesses.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Local Government and English Devolution (Jim McMahon)]

Before I speak to the amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade), for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), I thank Members from across the Chamber for their contributions and for the constructive spirit, by and large, in which they have engaged with the Bill since its introduction. Although they are not always seen, with evidence sessions and Committee stages not always being prime-time TV viewing—it is a curse, but that is the way it is—those deliberations are nevertheless essential. The contributions that were made by Members from all parts of the House in probing and scrutinising the Bill were valuable, and I hope that all Members found them interesting.

I will begin by speaking to the amendments concerning the impact of the new multipliers. New clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, would require the Secretary of State to review the impact of clauses 1 to 4 on businesses, high streets and economic growth within six months of those clauses coming into effect. The hon. Members for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner and for St Albans have proposed two other new clauses. New clauses 2 and 3 would seek to impose in legislation a requirement for an analysis of the impact of the new business rate multipliers at varying points ahead of, or following, implementation of the Bill. New clause 3 also seeks to require an assessment of how the application of the new multipliers would differ between retail, hospitality and leisure businesses occupying different numbers of properties, and to compare that assessment with the impact of retail, hospitality and leisure relief from the 2020-21 financial year to the 2025-26 financial year.

We agree in principle with the points that hon. Members have raised through their new clauses. It is right that the Government consider the effects of their policies on businesses, on the high street and on economic growth, and indeed within different sectors. It is the policy of the Government that those businesses should feel a material benefit as a direct result of these measures, so let me set out how we propose to do that.

It states in the Bill that the two new retail, hospitality and leisure multipliers may not be set at more than 20p in the pound lower than the small business multiplier. The Bill also places appropriate restrictions on the higher multiplier: when it is set, it cannot be more than 10p in the pound above the standard multiplier, and cannot be applied to properties with a rateable value of less than £500,000. It is important to state that those are not the intended tax rates, but the maximum parameters to be introduced through the new business rate multipliers. As we explained during the Bill’s passage through the House, the actual tax rates will be set at the 2025 Budget, taking into account the effects of the 2026 business rate revaluation, as well as the broader economic and fiscal context at that time.

[Daisy Cooper]

The Minister has been here throughout the debate, and he will have heard a number of my interventions. I accept his point that those figures will not be published until Budget 2025. May I ask if he is in a position to give a cast-iron guarantee that small independents, with a small number of hereditaments, will not be subsidising organisations that have many, such as the big chains?

[Jim McMahon]

I did hear the hon. Lady, and I think we all accept the principle of needing to target or get support to those important small businesses, which we can all identify in our constituencies. With respect, I think there was a degree of conflation with the temporary reliefs brought in during covid, which the previous Government did not account for, that were always going to come to an end.

Our challenge was how to reconcile ongoing support for the high street with a permanent relief in law so that businesses know exactly where they are and can plan ahead with certainty. The choice we made was far fairer: to target higher-value properties of more than £500,000, which are generally—but, I accept, not entirely—the large-footprint warehouse and distribution premises used by the big online retailers.

The shadow Minister used the example of the stationery provider in my constituency. It is an online retailer, so it ought to be paying more. Why? Because for a long time—and we have all heard this from our constituents and industry—we have needed a rebalancing from online to on-street and from out-of-town to in-town, and that is exactly what this targeting does. It was never intended to be a continuation of the relief that was only temporary during covid. It is about rebuilding the foundations, and that is exactly what we have set out to do.

[Daisy Cooper]

I completely accept that point, and I am very sympathetic to the fact that the Minister inherited a sticking-plaster system from the previous Government. If during the course of this year his Government’s own analysis proves what I have discovered from the House of Commons Library research, will he ensure that the Government at least do not rule out introducing a new small business relief in a targeted way to support such small independent businesses?

[Jim McMahon]

As with all tax policies, we will keep this under review, and I say that in a very general sense. We absolutely believe that the businesses that are the backbone of our high streets, town centres and communities would, were it not for these measures, go bust. They would not be viable and they would feel the heat very quickly. However, because of the measures we are taking, businesses will be able to plan with certainty for the future, knowing that they have a Government acting in partnership with them in that enterprise.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

May I echo the Minister’s comments, and extend my thanks to him and his team, the other Members who served on the Committee, and the many witnesses who came in to share their views? It is clear that a lot of the discussion has been on the real-world impact that the legislation will have, rather than on political points, and in that spirit, I will set out my responses, and the rationale behind a number of the amendments that we have tabled, which will be the subject of debate and votes this afternoon.

Clearly, legislation is about striking the right balance. This afternoon, we will recognise—as we have done in our contributions to debate on this issue—the impact that the Bill will have on tenants, landlords and the stakeholders whom our amendments seek to protect. I highlight in particular the impact on students; on financially vulnerable tenants, such as those with low credit scores; on tenants who have pets; on small landlords, who are themselves vulnerable to financial shocks; and of course on other groups, such as agricultural workers and those with work-related accommodation, including NHS workers, military families and school staff, all of whom were mentioned in Committee and will, I am sure, be covered again later. All our amendments have sought to address practical issues, such as ensuring that when work is required on a property and a tenant is reluctant to allow the landlord in to carry out that work for whatever reason, there is sufficient freedom and flexibility in the legislation to ensure that the work can take place.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The shadow Minister talks about situations in which tenants must leave a property. A constituent of mine had a terrible ordeal. She moved into a new rental property, but after three months it became uninhabitable, and she spent a further 11 weeks going in and out of eight Airbnbs. She was left thousands of pounds out of pocket because the landlord’s insurance covered his loss of rent but did not cover the accommodation costs that she incurred as a tenant. Will the shadow Minister support my new clause 22, which would require landlords to hold appropriate insurance for the purposes of paying any costs related to alternative accommodation in such situations?

[David Simmonds]

There are a number of ways to address that issue. The Minister has talked compensation, and we have tabled amendments on insurance, but clearly there needs to be an effective dispute resolution mechanism in place, so that such situations can be resolved when they arise. We were focused in particular on ensuring that there is sufficient flexibility when, for example, work must be carried out to improve energy efficiency or to address health and safety concerns such as mould, and a tenant needs to leave because the work will render the property uninhabitable.

Although there have been substantial areas of agreement on the Bill, much of which takes forward work that started under the previous Government in their Renters (Reform) Bill, we have concerns that it creates significant new problems for the availability and affordability of accommodation in the private rented sector. That sector, we must not forget, enjoys the highest tenant satisfaction of any private tenure: 82% of private renters say that they are satisfied with their accommodation.

The backdrop is challenging, and has become a lot more so recently. The Chancellor’s Budget has set inflation rising, and borrowing costs are soaring. Markets are responding to the chaos in No. 11, and that is causing a great deal of uncertainty for tenants and landlords alike. Her decisions are stoking inflation, and that is pushing up rent and housing costs of all kinds. The black hole in local government funding, which was unveiled just before Christmas, means that councils facing the twin existential threats of wholesale reorganisation and growing funding shortfalls lack certainty from the Government about the funding to deliver this enormous increase in workload.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South and South Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and express my full support for the Bill. I welcome the swift action of the ministerial team in bringing forward this vital legislation, which is the most significant package of reforms to the private rented sector in over 40 years.

As the Member of Parliament for Luton South and South Bedfordshire, I am most frequently contacted about the issue of housing. Given that just under 35% of homes in my constituency are privately rented, the issues that tenants are facing in this sector are very familiar to me. Everyone deserves the dignity of a safe, secure and affordable home, but a lack of regulation and protections for tenants in the private rented sector means that this is currently not the reality for many.

Rental discrimination against tenants who are in receipt of benefits or have children is common practice, so I am pleased that this Bill will make it illegal for landlords and letting agents to discriminate on that basis, and give local councils strong enforcement powers to tackle this unlawful practice. Mortgage lenders and insurers will also no longer be able to impose restrictive, discriminatory terms.

A significant rise in section 21 no-fault eviction notices over the past year has further highlighted the precarious situation in which many renters find themselves. Data from the Ministry of Justice indicates that as of June this year there had been 176 repossessions in Luton due to section 21 notices, compared with 112 in 2023. Across the country we see a similar pattern unfolding, with over 32,000 no-fault eviction claims submitted to courts in 2023-24—the highest figure since 2015-16. Those figures highlight just how stark the situation is, so I am pleased that Labour is committed to abolishing section 21 notices once and for all. This legislation will also empower private rented sector tenants to challenge unreasonable rent increases, preventing unscrupulous landlords from using rent increases as a back-door means of eviction.

I am pleased to see many of the other measures set out in the Bill, including ensuring that there is a legal standard for property conditions. As it currently stands, 45% of private renters in England are experiencing damp, mould or excessive cold in their homes. This is completely unacceptable, and I am glad that the extension of Awaab’s law will set clear legal expectations about the timeframes within which landlords in the private rented sector must take action to make homes safe where they contain serious hazards. That goes hand in hand with the creation of a new private rented sector database that private landlords will be required to join, giving tenants, landlords and local authorities access to key information, and giving councils the power to target enforcement where it is most needed.

I know that many councils across the country have faced significant budget cuts, with my own council in Luton having £170 million of funding stripped since 2010. That can constrain its ability to check properties proactively for non-compliance, and places greater reliance on tenants being aware of their rights and reporting problems. Although I am pleased to see plans to tackle these issues, I would encourage Ministers to work in collaboration with local government to ensure that the necessary resources are available for councils to carry out this enforcement and to effectively protect tenants.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech, and I am delighted to see that no-fault evictions will finally be banned. On the point about local government, does she agree with my party that it is imperative that local authorities are given the powers to regulate the numbers and locations of Airbnbs? We know that too many properties that are available for rent are taken out of the market for long-term renters and used for Airbnbs, because landlords can raise more money that way, and I think it is important that local authorities should have those powers.

[Rachel Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Member for that important point. I am sure that when the whole package of measures around housing is taken forward by this Government, that point will be well considered.

This Bill is designed not to villainise good and responsible landlords but to give renters much greater security and stability, so they can stay in their homes for longer, build lives in their communities and avoid the risk of homelessness. I look forward to working with Ministers to deliver this and make the private rented sector safer and more secure for my constituents across Luton South and South Bedfordshire, and indeed across the country.

Building Homes

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I can confirm that we are getting rid of the urban uplift. The new method of establishing housing targets is better than the previous one, which we believed was outdated. The urban uplift figures were plucked from thin air, but we believe that our new method will give councils the stability and certainty that will enable them to plan for the homes and local services that they need. As for land value capture, there is a little bit about it in the consultation document, but there will be more in the forthcoming planning and infrastructure Bill.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I welcome you to your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also thank the Deputy Prime Minister for giving me advance sight of her statement, and associate myself and my party with her remarks about the devastating and senseless attacks in Southport. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected.

For too long under the Conservatives, we had a planning system that put developer greed above community need—a system that did not deliver the homes that we needed to tackle the crisis, but did destroy swathes of our green belt. However, the statement raises a great many questions, so here we go.

Will local authorities that are at an advanced stage of their draft local plans need to start again with the new standard method, or will they be able to continue? Will authorities that have recently conducted a green belt assessment need to do it again under the new system, or will the current assessment stand? There seems to be a conspicuous absence of a specific target for social homes—not affordable homes, but social homes. Will the Deputy Prime Minister take up the Liberal Democrat target of building 150,000 social homes every single year? We welcome the Government’s proposal to review the compulsory purchase compensation, but will she take up the Liberal Democrat plan to put an end to land banking by reforming the Land Compensation Act 1961 so that local authorities can acquire land at fair values? We welcome the review of the right to buy, but will the Government allow local authorities to use that money to replace lost stock?

The Government indicated that they would be reviewing borrowing rules so that local authorities could borrow to invest. Will they allow authorities to borrow to invest on a scale that will allow them to put an end to homelessness, overcrowding and housing register waiting lists? What powers and resources will they give to planning authorities so that they can enforce the requirement to put infrastructure first? Will they scrap the cap on developer planning fees?

Finally, some local authorities in the London metropolitan green-belt area, even when they have accounted for all their brownfield sites and all their grey-belt sites, still have to build thousands of homes on the green belt, land which is supposed to have been designed specifically to stop urban sprawl. Will the Government put anything in the national planning policy framework that will give any protection at all to the concept of the green belt?

[Angela Rayner]

The answer to the hon. Lady’s direct question about local plans is that it depends on how far they have got. There will be a transition, as we explained in the consultation document, because we recognise that some areas are quite far on. As for where that is up to, it depends very much on what the difference is between what the local plan says and what we have asked. We have explained that in the consultation document as well. We have to be fair to those that have already done the work: when the work has been done, it is just a question of updating it and not disregarding those that already have local plans. A third of areas have up-to-date local plans, so I urge all Members to speak to their local authorities to ensure that they have their local plans, because that is how we ensure that people feel engaged and part of the process—which is critical—and how we protect green belt and other areas by ending the speculative developments that we have been seeing.

The hon. Lady asked about the number of social homes. I talked about the flexibility in the affordable homes grant. There is some stuff in the consultation document about the right to buy, which I recognise, and about how councils and housing associations can borrow to bring up their stock. I also recognise the problem we have faced as a result of the homelessness crisis, and I am particularly keen to tackle it. We have talked about compulsory purchase orders as well, and we are consulting on that because we think that it needs to be dealt with. We will deal with some of the other issues in the planning infrastructure Bill.

Planning will be strengthened—we have already announced 300 extra local planners—and we will strengthen section 106. There will be an accelerator taskforce to deal with stalled sites. When grey belt land is released, the golden rules that I outlined will apply, and we will expect a great deal from developers when they are using that land. We are consulting on fees as well. There is a lot in this consultation, which I believe will make a significant difference to engagement with local areas and ensuring that we meet the housing target that we need and the country desperately deserves.

Planning Reform

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I totally agree. The hon. Gentleman is exactly right: councils need to have the planning departments to process the applications, and too often, as we know, good planners are poached by consultancies when they are needed in our local government system. The answer is to allow local authorities to capture more of the upside financially from new homes being built so that they can fund the requisite staff and expertise— I see the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) nodding—to do exactly what the hon. Gentleman refers to.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The right hon. Member will be aware that there is a Government-imposed cap on how much money local councils can charge big developers when they put in applications. That led to a situation in St Albans where the constituents of a district were subsidising big developers to the tune of £3 million a year. The Government have increased but not scrapped the cap, and councils can still not recoup the full cost of processing an application. Would he support a measure to scrap the cap altogether?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

That is a very reasonable question. I would need to look at the detail of the policy to see whether simply raising the cap further or scrapping it would be the best solution to the problem. Do I accept entirely that we need to make sure that councils are not cross-subsidising the cost of development, but are incentivised to welcome good development? Yes, I do.

Another important piece of the puzzle is leasehold reform, and I thought that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety spoke brilliantly on that issue in the House last week. Although nominally owners, the relationship between leaseholders and freeholders often resembles that of a landlord and tenant. There is too little protection against drastically increased service charges and few incentives for freeholders to properly maintain a building.

Secure and fair property rights are a core Conservative principle. The Government are making great strides with the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. It is absolutely right that we fix the balance and ensure that once people get on the property ladder, their home is truly theirs. I encourage the Government to go further, and I welcome the commonhold system whereby leaseholders all own a share of the common development, but we must address the fact that leasehold reform is vital.

We should also address the fact that new homes in Britain are too often of low quality. Poor-quality designs leave new and existing residents feeling that new homes are too often nothing more than ugly boxes, and we should look seriously at how design codes can ameliorate that. For example, we could allow individual streets or areas to vote on a design code for new housing. Establishing pre-set and pre-approved design rules ahead of time would allow everyone on the street to see a large share of the potential uplift, while significantly increasing the number of homes built. Design codes could also increase housing through densification, rather than relying on outward suburban sprawl, which would also reduce the potential dependence on cars and would allow more green space to be preserved.

As we have discussed, even if the public are on board, local authorities need to be as well. Councils are vulnerable to particularly vocal activism, even if it is a minority opinion among residents. Any reform will need to empower councils to take long-term decisions in the interests of their area, giving them the tools to get the right outcome from new development and incentivising them to say yes where appropriate, while ensuring that a few bad apples cannot shirk their responsibility to allow more homes. As you know, Mr Betts, our councils really matter.

I recently had reason to feel considerable frustration at my own planning authority in Redcar and Cleveland, when the chair of that authority made the baffling decision to delay the consideration of the proposed new British Steel electric arc furnace at Redcar. That reflects the power that councils can have for good or for ill, and we certainly want to ensure that their natural incentives are to welcome investment.

To do that, we need to ensure that development plans are brought up to date everywhere. These plans allow builders a measure of certainty when deciding where to construct new homes, but they are often not up to date. Unfortunately, the consequences under current law if an authority does not have an up-to-date plan are often trivial.

One possible remedy comes from California—the so-called “builder’s remedy”. Under that policy, if an area fails to plan for enough homes, it must approve any housing project that contains at least 20% low-income or 100% middle-income housing. That solution can be extremely effective. A few weeks of the builder’s remedy in Santa Monica resulted in more affordable housing being approved than there had been in the previous seven years. I certainly favour restoring a presumption in favour of development wherever an up-to-date local plan is not in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I confess that I think the issues surrounding phosphate and nutrient neutrality need to be addressed—indeed, I commented on this with my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) this morning—by looking at the underlying causes of the problems and allowing mitigation measures to be put in place and counted forward so that homes can still be built where appropriate. That would mean that we do not end up in the situation where authorities either commission homes where they are not appropriate or do not commission homes at all. We need to resolve the Gordian knot of nutrient neutrality, because it is an irrational obstacle to building new homes. It is something that we have created through policy, and we need to resolve it through policy.

The Government have rightly said that development plans ought to prioritise building in cities. I welcome the exciting plans set out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for major new developments in east London and Cambridge. That is precisely the kind of visionary development that we need and should welcome, and I think it will command broad support. Demand is obviously highest for homes close to city centres, where jobs are located, so those new homes often contribute disproportionately to economic growth. Building in cities also means that less money is required to support the infrastructure needs of new residents, and it is environmentally friendlier. Urban, dense communities inherently encourage lower usage of energy, because living in a smaller space means there is less to heat, and living in an apartment building means that there is natural insulation from other units, and so on.

Estate regeneration is also a win-win way to add more housing in cities and to deliver social justice. Too often, our post-war council estates are impractical and prohibitively expensive to rehabilitate. However, redeveloping an estate with new private housing that helps to cross-subsidise a wider improvement and redevelopment of social housing can result in a plan to deliver a really good outcome for all residents. Allowing tenants to vote on these plans would ensure that their rights were protected while providing new and renovated homes of a kind that is desperately needed.

However, although the brownfield-first policy is sensible, a brownfield-only policy cannot be, and no debate on planning would be complete without my referring to the completely uncontroversial subject of the green belt. The green belt was intended to prevent sprawl, but I would submit that it has done the opposite. Today’s green belt, which is three times larger than London itself, causes a leapfrog effect, whereby individuals wanting to live in London end up settling in distant commuter towns instead, which increases transportation and climate costs. Parts of the green belt—the disused car parks, the petrol stations and the dreary wastelands that make up what the right hon. and learned Leader of the Opposition rightly calls “the grey belt”—are far from the natural paradise that some would have us believe.

The green belt, in truth, has the best spin doctors around, encouraging a widespread misapprehension that it is all beautiful green land, when in fact 11% of the UK’s total brownfield land lies within the green belt.

[Daisy Cooper]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Sir Simon Clarke]

I will give way, but then I should make progress.

[Daisy Cooper]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that some of us do not give or accept that portrayal of the green belt? Some of us are very clear that there are brownfield sites and there are developed sites within the green belt, and most of our concern is about the undeveloped green-belt sites that have natural habitats.

[Sir Simon Clarke]

In response to the hon. Lady’s point, I am strongly in favour of making sure that we can better enshrine the protections for the areas of genuine natural beauty and community amenity, rather than having a reductive debate that simply suggests that the entirety of the green belt is an untouchable verdant paradise, because it is not all like the front of a box of Yorkshire Tea; we all know that it is a mixed area of land. It was a crude line on a map drawn in the late 1940s, with good intention but adverse consequences today, and I would argue that we need to have a much more sophisticated debate about what is and is not tradeable in that context.

My own party needs to stop pretending that all of the green belt is valuable, which is bad policy and bad politics, and it is time that we started to look at releasing some grey-belt land to provide us with the housing that we desperately need. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), who is a fellow PricedOut parliamentary champion and a friend, has done excellent work in pointing out that some of the worst areas of blight in her constituency are characterised as being green belt.

Of course, even where the planning system does allow developers to bring forward new homes, regulations that are too strict can still strangle supply and push up prices. Year after year, conditions and requirements are added at every level, driving up costs without necessarily delivering high quality. Perhaps the most egregious example of this comes from the Mayor of London’s London plan, where the dual aspect rules require every flat to have external windows on multiple walls. Clearly, indeed inherently, that is desirable, but it comes with a cost, and if it restricts the number of homes built, that intervention needs to be balanced against the wider social imperative of creating homes where they are most needed.

Minimum space standards are another example. While young people in other countries live on their own in flats of between 20 and 25 square metres, in the UK they are forced to live with strangers in overcrowded houses in multiple occupation because we have banned new flats of that size. Politicians need to be honest with the public and with ourselves about the options that exist in this area. In the middle of a generation-defining supply crunch, we cannot afford these rules. People would be much better off in small, modern and affordable flats of their own than in ageing, chopped-up homes built over a hundred years ago. We need to nuance this debate.

We also need to talk about tax. Our main real estate taxes often feel to those priced out of home ownership as though they add insult to injury. Stamp duty land tax and council tax both need fundamental reform. Stamp duty, as it is currently constituted, penalises people every time they move house, meaning that some households remain in homes that are too small for them when others remain in homes that are too large for them—in both cases for too long.

Council tax is regressive and unfair, and fails to compensate local councils properly for increases in land or property value, undermining the incentive to add more housing. Given that all parties are, frankly, terrified of the effects of a revaluation politically, and given that there has not been a revaluation since I was a child of seven, we need to look at fundamental reform of local government taxation. That is a major issue—I do not deny it—but at the moment it is worsening the planning system as well as acting irrationally in terms of the tax system. I submit that both those taxes should be replaced with a proportional property tax, which would save households an average of more than £500 a year and result in up to 600,000 extra new homes over the next five years.

I hope that this morning I have highlighted some easy, sometimes controversial but generally win-win solutions that we could use to help soothe our housing crisis. In the long run, there is no substitute for real root and branch reform of our planning system. Ultimately, I favour a rules-based system along the lines set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark when he was Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. It was unfortunate that the Opposition misrepresented those plans as a “developers’ charter”. If only they had been allowed to do anything of the kind!

Housing has an impact on every facet of our lives. Rising housing costs suppress productivity, increase wealth inequality, worsen climate change and increase homelessness. People need to be together. Bringing people physically together is a social good, but people need homes to do so. This is not an abstract debate; fixing the issue is a moral priority and it also ought to be a top political priority for my own party, as it always was under Prime Ministers as different as Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher. I do not know how we can make the case for popular Conservatism when in too many areas of England people cannot accumulate capital in their own lives. I certainly feel that is why major political change may be brewing in parts of the country that we have long called our heartlands.

One need only contrast the recent success of the Canadian Conservatives to see the amazing difference that embracing pro-home-ownership policies can deliver, even among the youngest voters. The UK is falling behind in the quest for higher productivity and better wages, and at the moment we are only making ourselves poorer by refusing to meet one of our most basic human needs—a place to live. The UK needs innovation, we need infrastructure and most of all we need housing. We will not get enough of it under the current system. That is why the time for talking is over.

We have made too little progress on effective planning reform over the last 14 years and it has become clear to me that politicians are not holding ourselves sufficiently accountable on the issue. That is why I am delighted to announce that PricedOut, Britain’s largest campaign for affordable news homes, will publish an index of Members of Parliament in England running for re-election, ranking their performance on housing, planning and infrastructure issues. That will serve as a guide to voters up and down the country at the next election, showing just for whom the issue is a priority. PricedOut has my support in bringing all of us in this House to account. The country deserves a more serious debate than the one we have had, and we need it soon, before lasting harm is done to another generation by our collective unwillingness to deliver the serious planning reform the country needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) for securing this debate. If I am perfectly honest, we have more in common that I thought we might. That gives me great hope, and I hope that we might continue to work together on the reforms about which we do agree.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to overhauling this broken top-down planning system. I supported amendments tabled to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act that would have given councils the powers to force land bankers to build or sell. Unfortunately, they did not go through. We also supported amendments that would have given local councils the power to regulate Airbnbs, something that is so important to my St Albans constituency. I have also been running a campaign to get the Government to scrap the cap on planning fees, as my constituents are subsidising big developers, and our planning department has been left woefully underfunded. It is really disappointing that those amendments were not accepted for the levelling-up Act.

Today, I want to focus on the failed top-down approach to setting housing targets. The Liberal Democrats have an ambition to build 380,000 homes a year, but by adopting a bottom-up approach we would ensure that they were built in the right places and were the right homes. We would require councils to start by addressing their local housing need and identifying any local constraints. The approach would include ensuring that 150,000 homes each year would be truly affordable for social rent, and I am delighted that that is supported by research from the National Housing Federation, Crisis and Heriot-Watt University.

I want to interrogate recent reforms to the national planning policy framework. I intend to challenge the Minister to clarify whether the reforms her Government announced in December have in fact been incorporated into the NPPF at all. I am sure it will come as no surprise to Members or the Minister that I take a keen interest in the proposals to update the NPPF. The Minister will know that I have tabled scores of parliamentary questions, secured debates, responded to various consultations and tabled amendments to the levelling-up Act. I have been clear that the current Government policy and the NPPF itself do nothing to solve the housing crisis. What they do is incentivise developers to destroy great swathes of precious agricultural land, natural habitat and green open spaces on the metropolitan green belt.

The root of the problem is the Government’s top-down housing targets, which are based on out-of-date population data and which councils are required to meet irrespective of any local constraints. There is no clear guidance in the new NPPF at all about whether those top-down targets or preserving undeveloped green belt space for future generations should take precedence, and that is quite confusing.

Let us look at the history of this issue. In 2015, the then Minister of State for Housing and Planning took steps to address it in a written ministerial statement. On permitting development on the green belt, he said that unmet need is

“unlikely to clearly outweigh harm to the green belt and any other harm so as to establish very special circumstances.”—[Official Report, 17 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 95WS.]

There was a very clear instruction in that statement to local planning authorities and to the planning inspector that the protection of undeveloped green belt should be given more weight than meeting housing targets.

However, that ministerial statement was made nine years ago. There have been 12 Conservative Housing Ministers since then, and unfortunately not one of them has seen fit to incorporate that statement and that principle into the NPPF. That remarkable state of affairs has meant that the Planning Inspectorate has never been able to give that statement any weight at all when deciding on planning appeals. Nor has the Planning Inspectorate had the ability to apply that principle to its examination of local plans—in fact, the planning inspector said as much in a planning appeal heard for an application in Colney Heath in my constituency that has resulted in the wrong homes being built in the wrong place. As a consequence, many councils are not able to meet the top-down housing targets without surrendering undeveloped green belt land for development.

The Minister will know that in St Albans, we unfortunately have the oldest adopted local plan in England. Two previous drafts developed under Conservative administrations were rejected by the Planning Inspectorate. Since 2019, the Liberal Democrat administration has prioritised the local plan process. It has been put under the auspices of the leader of the council, and in recent months the district council has made significant progress by completing a call for sites, producing a draft local plan and completing a regulation 18 consultation.

The Government’s top-down approach has a real impact in St Albans, and that is the situation our district council now faces. The Government’s standard method produces a top-down target of approximately 14,000 homes that need to be built within the St Albans district. The Government’s approach does not allow for any reduction in that top-down target, even though we have been given a Government-imposed strategic rail freight interchange the size of 3.5 million square metres of green belt, equivalent to 490 football pitches, which could instead have potentially accommodated between 2,500 and 3,000 homes. Following the district council’s call for sites and the regulation 18 consultation, it is thought that only around 5,000 homes can be accommodated on brownfield or grey belt sites. Around 9,000 homes will need to be built on previously undeveloped green belt.

The district council is working at pace to put a plan in place, but the combined failure of the Government to embed that written ministerial statement into the NPPF and of previous administrations in St Albans to develop a local plan now means that the council is currently unable to defend itself and its communities from inappropriate, speculative development. As a result, developers have mostly won their cases by appealing to the Planning Inspectorate.

St Albans City and District Council remains unable to prevent the wrong houses from being built in the wrong place. For example, just in the last year 2022-23, most of the housing built in our district was four, five or six-bedroom executive housing, not the three-bedroom homes that we desperately need. After months of delay, hopes were raised that an updated national planning policy framework would finally address the scandal of local plans being required to meet those centrally produced, top-down housing targets, as produced by the so-called standard method. In St Albans, our council leader took the Secretary of State’s promises at face value, saying that that if the new national planning policy framework is changed, such that the protection of underdeveloped metropolitan green belt takes precedence over top-down targets, our draft local plan will change as well. But it seems to me that the changes to the NPPF actually make the situation worse.

The Secretary of State said on 19 December 2023 that the changes provide

“clearer protection for the green belt…In summary, the new NPPF will: facilitate flexibility for local authorities in relation to local housing need; clarify a local lock on any changes to green-belt boundaries…the Government are ensuring it is clear there is generally no requirement on local authorities to review or alter green-belt boundaries if this would be the only way to meet housing need.”—[Official Report, 19 December 2023; Vol. 742, c. 97-99WS.]

The Secretary of State said all of that, but I have read the new national planning policy framework and I am afraid that it says absolutely no such thing. Rather than softening the need to meet those top-down targets, the changes to the NPPF actually strengthen and reinforce the requirement of councils and their communities to meet them.

There are at least five examples that I can find. Paragraph 15 changes the requirement from “addressing” the targets to “meeting” them, which is a significant change in firming up the requirement. Paragraph 60 adds a new requirement that the overall aim of any local plan

“should be to meet as much of an area’s identified housing need as possible”.

Again, that is a significant firming up of meeting that top-down target. Paragraph 61 codifies the Government’s previous position that

“the standard method is an advisory starting-point”,

but the meaning of “advisory” is not clarified. It is widely understood in the planning sector that “advisory” does not mean that it is merely a suggestion, but it is actually a warning. It is a warning that, if that target is not met, the planning inspector will almost certainly throw out and fail any local plan that does not meet that target.

In paragraph 61, the accompanying footnote 25 restricts the circumstances that might permit deviation from the standard method to extreme examples, such as

“islands with no land bridge”.

It appears to deliberately stay silent on undeveloped green belt constraints. Paragraph 145 had, in the version that the Government put out for consultation, the strongest and clearest indication that

“Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and altered, if this would be the only means of meeting the objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period”.

Inexplicably to those who expected that revision to strengthen green belt protection, that change was scrapped altogether in the final version of the NPPF. Indeed, there is not one single statement anywhere in the NPPF—none at all—that indicates to the planning authorities or the planning inspector that more weight can or should be given to protect undeveloped green belt over top-down housing targets.

Planning professionals agree that, at best, the new NPPF brings nothing to green belt communities. It was reported that one very senior and respected planning barrister, who attended a Hertfordshire Infrastructure & Development Board meeting on 29 February, described the Government’s changes as nothing more than “window dressing”. St Albans City and District Council has proceeded with its local plan-making, in compliance with the previous version of the NPPF, in the expectation that the Government would honour their promise to give councils more power and the ability to protect parts of undeveloped green-belt land. It is clear that those promises have now been broken.

I am told that the Liberal Democrat administration has followed the advice of the Local Government Association, the Planning Advisory Service, the Planning Inspectorate, its own KC and external experts acting as critical friends. In effect, they have all told the council the same thing: “You must meet this top-down target or you are at risk of your local plan being failed.”

Without a local plan, communities in St Albans will continue to end up with our natural environment bulldozed over for inappropriate and oversized executive homes, with no way for the council to require developers to provide the three-bed family homes that our district so desperately needs. Indeed, the draft local plan that the district council has prepared has identified that more than 50% of the new homes in the area have to be three-bedroomed homes. Yet at the moment we have no way of ensuring that developers build them. There is now a limited window of opportunity for the Government to intervene and clarify whether St Albans District Council can move forward with the draft local plan that revises the top-down housing targets downwards, in recognition of local constraints.

To sum up, I have three questions for the Minister. Will the Minister confirm today whether the Government-imposed strategic rail-freight interchange, the size of 490 football pitches, which prevents the building of 2,500 to 3,000 homes, can be taken into account? Secondly, on 9 January, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), responded to my written question on the issue of the green belt to say that the Government would consider whether updates were needed to planning practice guidance in due course. Can the Minister today confirm whether that consideration has been completed and, if not, when it will be? My third and final question is will the Government urgently provide updated guidance for local authorities and the planning inspector, making it clear that the protection of undeveloped green-belt sites—not the grey belt—can be considered an exceptional circumstance, which justifies an alternative approach to assessing housing need?

Since the new year, I have tabled 12 written questions asking for clarity on these issues. So far, not one of them has received a satisfactory response. Instead, I have been redirected back to the very statements on which I am trying to seek clarification. My constituents deserve straightforward answers on the Government’s intentions. I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to provide substantive responses today.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

We now move on to the Front Benchers. For Labour, Matthew Pennycook.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

It is a great pleasure to respond to this debate and serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) for securing today’s important debate and for his very eloquent presentation. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for his impassioned pleas on behalf of his constituency, and the hon. Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper).

Let me make it very clear that this Government are absolutely committed to modernising our planning system and building more homes. In our manifesto, we had a commitment to build 1 million more houses, and we are on track to do that during this Parliament. We have an advisory target of 300,000. We have not achieved that, but—let me make this very clear—the highest four years of house building in the past 30 years have been since 2018, so our performance is strong.

[Daisy Cooper]

The Minister indicated that the new NPPF uses the word “advisory”—the Government have always used that word. The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) said that is a softening of the targets, but the advice that my local council has received from the Local Government Association, the Planning Advisory Service, the Planning Inspectorate and its own KC is that “advisory” is a warning that, if that number is not met, the local plan will likely get failed. Will the Minister please commit to provide further guidance on what the Government intend by the word “advisory”?

[Felicity Buchan]

We are very clear that we want 300,000 more homes to be built in England every year. What we have said is that we have an advisory starting point for each local authority. To answer the question that the hon. Lady posed earlier, the framework sets out clearly that, although changes to green belt boundaries may be made where exceptional circumstances are evidenced and justified, there is no firm requirement to do so. If there are exceptional circumstances, there can be development on the green belt.

[Daisy Cooper]

Will the Minister give way?

[Felicity Buchan]

I really want to make some progress.

We are absolutely committed to modernising our planning system. We introduced the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act to enable radical improvements in the way planning works. There are numerous measures in the Act, and future support in policy and regulation, that will modernise the system, making it more efficient, effective and accessible. Local leaders will have greater powers and the necessary tools to regenerate town centres and bring land and property into productive use. That will support growth, the delivery of quality homes and environmental improvements.

Underpinning that, the Government believe decisions about development should be driven by sensible local decision making, supported by digital tools to make engagement easier and bring the current system into the 21st century. More local plans must be in place—I agree with the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich on that point—to deliver the homes and infrastructure that people need, in the places where they want to live and work. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has set out his ambition for planning performance. It is now up to those who make the planning system work—local authorities, the Planning Inspectorate and statutory consultees—to expedite delivery. We are committed to building more homes, more quickly, more beautifully and more sustainably, and we must build homes in the places where people want to live and work.

The Opposition parties talk a very good game, but the proof is all in the delivery. I am a London MP, and it really saddens me that under the Labour Mayor of London, in 2022, London had the worst delivery of new houses of any area in the country. We can compare that with the west midlands under the Conservative Andy Street: he actually exceeded his targets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Felicity Buchan]

I will take this as a final intervention, because I do need to get quite a few things on the record.

[Daisy Cooper]

I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for giving way again. Recent interventions have shown that there is a huge amount of confusion and contradiction about what the changes to the NPPF actually mean. A cynic could say that the Government are saying one thing and doing another, but I think that it is really important for communities around the country that we have clarity. Will the Minister please commit to the Government actually producing further guidance on what they mean by “exceptional circumstances” in relation to the standard method, and will she please commit— I ask again—to providing further guidance on the definition of the word “advisory”?

[Felicity Buchan]

I think I have been very clear in what I have said about the green belt. The green belt should be protected except for in exceptional circumstances, as has been set out.

Let me make some progress. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 will speed up the planning process, delivering a faster and more efficient system, and cut out unnecessary and costly delays. It will ensure that local plans are shorter, more visual and map-based, and built on open and standardised data. They will be concise and focused on locally important matters, with repetition of policies across plans eliminated. New mandatory gateway assessments will reduce the time spent examining plans. To ensure that plans are prepared more quickly and kept up to date on matters including housing supply, there will be a 13-month preparation timeframe and a requirement for councils to commence plan updates every five years.

To respond to the hon. Member for St Albans, I must put it on the record that St Albans has one of the oldest plans in the country. It has been designated. To be honest, I do not know how the Liberal Democrats can stand up and say they have a housing target of 380,000 a year when they object to every single development on the ground. I just do not get it.

Let me move on. We have had quite a lot of talk about nutrient neutrality. I must say that I was hugely disappointed that the Opposition in the House of Lords blocked the Government amendments in the 2023 Act that would have made a targeted and specific change to the law, so that there was absolute clarity that housing development could proceed in areas currently affected by nutrient neutrality. That was done at a cost of 100,000 new homes. It is unacceptable to talk the talk and not to deliver, and the Opposition did not deliver in the House of Lords.

Long-term Plan for Housing

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: a balance must be struck. We will review the situation in London. We do not think that it is acceptable; we do not think that the Mayor has done his job in this regard and we will be reviewing that. We also recognise—I hope my comments earlier indicated this—that there are places in urban areas where character is very important, and we need to make sure that there is an appropriate balance in that regard.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Liberal Democrat-led St Albans City and District Council is rightly pressing ahead with the development of its local plan, after the previous Conservative administration had its plan thrown out by the inspector. Two years ago, I wrote to the Government requesting additional funding so that we could accelerate our plan-making process, but the Government said no. I then requested that they allow us to charge developers the full cost of processing applications, but, even with all the tinkering, we are still not able to do that, and taxpayers in St Albans are still subsidising developers to the tune of £3 million a year to process their applications. Today the Government have asked our local council to publish a timetable in the next 12 weeks, but if Ministers and their officials used Google, they would find it on the website.

Apparently, Ministers have announced that the new protections apply to areas with local plans, but not to areas with draft local plans. That means that in St Albans, villages such as Colney Heath, which are besieged by inappropriate development, will not benefit from the protections. Will the Minister confirm whether our local district council and planning inspectors can firmly say no to inappropriate, speculative development, or is this just another empty promise from this Government?

[Lee Rowley]

I believe that the Liberal Democrats have been in charge of St Albans City and District Council since 2019. That is four and a half years of opportunity to put a local plan in place. It is on the Liberal Democrats for failing to do so. Perhaps the Liberal Democrats could explain whether, as part of that local plan, they will take their share of the 380,000 homes that their conference said they needed to build in the future.