National Planning Policy Framework

Debate between Duncan Hames and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee, because he is one of the more knowledgeable Opposition Members on these matters, and he made some very pertinent points.

We may trade figures, as the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) started to do, but his Government inherited a golden legacy, and although the planning system can bring forward permissions, it cannot ensure that houses are built. His Government inherited a golden legacy, but they managed to ruin it, and we are now are in a very difficult situation in which we need to build more houses. The planning system has a part, but only a part, to play in that; the market has a big part to play, too.

I welcome the actions of my right hon. Friend the Minister in getting rid of regional spatial strategies, which the previous Government introduced. I have opposed them very strongly, simply because they have not worked. They have not produced the number of local plans required, and they have alienated many local people from the planning system, so my right hon. Friend has done the right thing in bringing forward this new national planning framework. I wish him every possible success.

I declare an interest, which is in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I have property that could benefit from these planning changes, and I, like the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich declared, have a non-pecuniary interest, too, because I am a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and used to practise in the planning field.

One issue that is not in the NPPF is the costs in the planning appeal process. In my experience, small local authorities often have to weigh up the correct planning decision while bearing in mind the cost of appeal. My local authority has a development budget of about £2 million, and, if it has to take on board four appeals in any one year at £50,000 each, that is 10% of its entire development budget.

I have a proposal to deal with that. The default setting should be that the developer, who after all gets the benefit, will be expected to pay the local authority’s reasonable costs on an appeal. The issue of costs could then be varied by either the planning inspector or the Secretary of State in a particular place where the local planning authority has acted blatantly and without good reason against its own local plan or has ignored relevant national guidance.

Turning now to the issues that are governed by the draft NPPF, my first concern is about the guidance relating to the increased supply of housing. I am particularly concerned about the requirement in paragraph 109 for local authorities to provide an additional 20% of the existing five-year land bank. The five-year land bank is a rolling programme. Every time one permission is built on, it has to be replaced with a new permission. In my area, that is bringing about a substantial amount of new building land. If we impose this extra land on top of the existing five-year land bank, it will become unsustainable, it will sterilise more land through planning permission than is necessary, and it will give rise to the wrong assumptions on infrastructure planning. I hope that the Government will think very carefully about introducing this additional 20%; otherwise, many people in our areas will become very disillusioned with the planning system.

[Duncan Hames]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I will give way once.

[Duncan Hames]

In response to my earlier question, the Minister said that he did not want to require local authorities to build for more than the five-year housing supply. That being the case, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important that the housing that is derived from windfall developments should be taken into consideration against the need that the local authority needs to meet?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He must have my notes, so I shall continue.

The Government should reconsider what counts towards housing numbers in a local authority area. First, they should allow for windfall sites; after all, these are real gains, and they should be encouraged.