Local Plans (Public Consent)

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing this important debate on public consent for local plans. As ever, his take on it was challenging, original and stimulating.

I think that we all accept—we know—that we need more housing in this country, and we need it urgently. The Office for National Statistics projection is that 232,000 net additional homes are needed per year to satisfy demand, although now it is a bit more than that because the target has been missed for a number of years, so a backlog has built up.

Contrary to what a lot of people believe, demand is not all driven by immigration. Without any net migration, the net additional demand would be 149,000 per annum. There are various reasons for that—smaller households; no one has a lodger; students going away to university; divorce, and so on—but, of course, the biggest single factor is that people are living longer, which is positive. We need to get that message out more often.

I should like housing demand to be more re-balanced across the country. The recent regional growth figures are encouraging: over the medium term what has happened in Leeds, Manchester and elsewhere has been strong and, in the fullness of time, High Speed 2, and perhaps even HS3, will contribute to that further. However, these things cannot be decreed and they do not happen immediately. We cannot escape the fact that the south-east will continue to over-index on housing demand for quite some time.

It is for those reasons that, in my constituency of East Hampshire, the average first-time buyer is almost as old as I am; the average home costs over £320,000, and the median house price is 10 times median earnings. We know that to maintain the vibrancy of our towns and villages we need to have a mix of age groups and we need new people coming in.

We certainly need to promote the primacy of brownfield land, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said. It is also true—we need to get this message out more often, too—that both nationally and in East Hampshire there is not nearly enough brownfield land to satisfy demand. I received an answer to a written question from the Minister yesterday, which, with my rough maths, suggests that brownfield sites could satisfy 4% or 5% of demand for housing over a 15-year period.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point on brownfield sites. I welcome the Government’s announcement this week on the local enterprise partnership funding, which will unlock a key brownfield site in York, on the edge of my constituency.

Is not the key point that we have to ensure that brownfield sites come forward more quickly? Actually, that is what green belt does. We always talk about green belt as protecting the character and setting of communities, which it does, but it is also important for driving urban regeneration. We must not forget that.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend puts the point about prioritising brownfield land well, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North. I cannot really talk about green belt, because we do not have any in East Hampshire, so, unfortunately, green belt protection does not really help us.

In general, people accept the need for more housing and for places for their children and grandchildren to live, but I rarely meet anybody who wants large-scale residential development to happen next to them. Often, people who use the term “nimbys” do so because it has not yet happened in their back yard. It is just part of human nature that people do not want large-scale developments to be built next to them.

In that context, I support local plans and neighbourhood plans. We can never make everybody happy, but the local plan plus neighbourhood plan process gets about as close as possible. However, plans alone are not enough; do-ability also has to be demonstrated, which is why the five-year land supply is logical. Once a process is set there must be insistence that it is followed; otherwise there is a risk of legal challenge from developers saying that there is restraint of their trade.

There is a big issue around public consent for local plans while they are still in process. In East Hampshire, our local plan is not finished and the five-year land supply is not in place, but applications have been proceeding apace and East Hampshire district council has been approving apace. Neighbourhood plans are in progress in a number of places, including in Petersfield, which is getting quite close to having a referendum, and in Alton, Four Marks and Medstead. I pay tribute to the volunteers who are doing an outstanding job on those neighbourhood plans, although I will not name individuals, because there are many of them.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I am a keen supporter of neighbourhood plans. How much involvement have the plans in my hon. Friend’s constituency attracted and how much interest in them there has been, more widely, in his constituency?

[Damian Hinds]

They have attracted a huge amount of interest in Petersfield and Alton. I have attended public sessions where masses of people have come along and taken part. That has been an interesting and exciting confidence-building process.

A particular issue in my constituency has divided people. Part of my constituency is in the South Downs national park and part is outside. People in a town or village that is deemed sustainable, to use the terminology, and is just outside the national park may consider themselves to be at risk of development. That happens in Alton and Liphook and is a particular problem in Four Marks and Medstead. To hit the local plan target for a settlement in Four Marks and part of the parish of Medstead, 175 homes need to be built by 2028. The council has already permitted 151; there are applications pending for a further 322 and applications for a further 181 are waiting to be submitted. Of course, not all those applications may be approved, but multiples of the requirement for that settlement could be in place in, say, the first third of the plan period, rather than over the full 15 years. In that context, there is a danger of confidence in the plan process being eroded.

My big ask to the Minister is for more recognition of in-progress plans. There should be guidance on plans that are well progressed. Where per settlement plans—in our case it is called the interim housing statement—measure up to the overall local plan requirements, where local authorities are approving housing comfortably ahead of the pace required to meet the 15-year target and where numbers are already fast being approached in individual settlements, it should be possible for those settlements to defer applications for a reasonable period, to complete plans and carry public consent with them.

There are two further aspects. First, in respect of clarity on infrastructure, I realise that statutory requirements are involved and sometimes the process takes time, but authorities ought to be allowed to take time to pace applications. Secondly, with regard to incentive moneys, it should be made clear that at least some of that should be ultra-local, to maintain public support.