Earl of Lytton
Main Page: Earl of Lytton (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)Housing and Planning Bill
Earl of Lytton Excerpts
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 87A in this group. Since I have been silent a great deal throughout this Committee—I must say that such silence, unlike at a wedding, does not always indicate assent, but it certainly does indicate consent—I should remind the Committee that I am leader of a London borough council which is a planning authority. It wishes to remain a planning authority and it maintains vigorously that local authorities, as the arbiters of local communities, should be respected fully at every level as legitimate public authorities. One does not always hear that language, sadly, from whatever Government are in power.
I well remember the lengthy debates that we had on the Localism Act, in which my then noble friend Lord Greaves was a very active participant. I also played a part. I am a very strong believer in localism and I did play a part in that Act. One of the points that I made repeatedly at that time, often unavailingly, I fear, was that localism can be delivered in many forms. My own council was a pioneer in 2010 in inviting local people to define their own communities—a process in which about 13,000 people took part—rather than simply following ward or parish boundaries. Since then we have established with local people 14 village and town areas within our borough, with very active community engagement in discussing and setting local priorities. It so happens that only one neighbourhood forum has been set up because that has been the will of local people. They appear to have been satisfied with the process that we have taken forward.
We have now begun incorporating and adopting detailed supplementary planning documents—we call them village plans—within our local plan, which reflect that dialogue with the local community following question times, walkabouts, open meetings, post-its, as well as formal consultations. It has been a successful and popular process in which thousands of people have been involved. Indeed, I had to leave your Lordships’ Committee last Thursday early to go to a public meeting in one part of my borough, which was launching the latest village plan. Some 150 to 200 people attended the meeting in a public hall; that is unusual, as I think anybody involved in local politics would say. So, there is enthusiasm.
I was very grateful to have the opportunity to discuss my amendment with my noble friend Lady Williams on the Front Bench. I entirely except her from the many strictures that I may have made at the start of my speech about Ministers over the last 20 to 30 years, since I have been involved in local politics. My main concern and reason for tabling the amendment is that the Bill, and specifically the intervention powers of the Secretary of State, are locked in to this existing single body of statute which is about a neighbourhood forum and a neighbourhood plan, as enacted under the Localism Act. That is one method of getting people involved—a very good and successful method, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly said—which is what we want to do. However, it is not necessarily the only method or in every circumstance the best method.
I freely admit that my amendment is not necessarily the best way. It may not be in the right form or in the right place. However, before statute and practice totally ossify and case law proliferates, establishing that there is just this one way of doing it—as laid down by departmental officials and enforced by the Secretary of State from above—and that everything else is inferior, I would like to see some protection for local authorities, and there are many. I do not claim any exceptional skill on behalf of my own, although I think it is been a principle applied by both Liberal Democrat and Conservative Administrations in my authority. Where local authorities have local planning documents in full, after full consultation, they should not find themselves snagged up on artificial challenge as a result of not complying with the specifics of statute in relation to neighbourhood planning envisaged in this single way.
All I am really asking for is some reassurance. Ideally, I would like to have it in law because ultimately, these things will be tested and challenged in law—I suspect by people who perhaps want to make mischief and do not have the overall interests of local people in mind. If it cannot be made clear in law, we need some assurance that this Government, at least—we cannot bind future Governments—recognise that there may be under heaven ways of doing good local planning and involving the public other than as laid out in the Bill before your Lordships’ House.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity raised by this group of amendments to discuss this business of neighbourhood plans. Perhaps I should declare an immediate past interest as the previous president of the National Association of Local Councils, now occupied very ably by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor.
The noble Lord, Lord True, rightly pointed to the primacy of what I, as a private sector operator, know as the principal authority for planning purposes. We should never forget that, fundamentally, that principal authority is the one that ultimately has to make the decision. It is informed by a series of neighbourhood plans where those have been prepared.
Localism is a great thing, but it has come in with something of a great rush into a world in which the neighbourhood construct—by that I particularly mean parish, town and community councils—has for a very long time been neglected in terms of resources, powers, authority and ability to do things. Here, we come to the issue of neighbourhood plans. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, pointed out, their administration is quite complex, as are the philosophical constructs behind them. Too often, I still meet people who say, “We have tried to do this neighbourhood plan but really what everybody’s concentrating on is making sure that we don’t get too many housing developments in our area”, so it is seen as a defensive strategy, which is perhaps regrettable. Because it comes with so much of the baggage of what is known as development control, which is essentially a rather negative turn of phrase, that is the inherent direction of travel and it is seen as the received wisdom.
It is not a quick process to turn this round so that people see this as an opportunity to take things forward and to generate a resource they could not otherwise have. This question of resources is one that troubles both the neighbourhood sector—if I can call it that—and the principal authorities. One thing that the noble Lord, Lord True, did not mention is that as soon as you try to step in and make good efficiencies at neighbourhood level, that has resource implications. It also requires officers’ time, which would otherwise be devoted to other things, and almost certainly requires cash outlay on things like mailing, drawing up and making documents available and so on.
The test that needs to be applied was in a question I put to one of the heads of our rural community council. I asked what he thought the main ingredient of a good local plan was. He said that first, people must be properly canvassed: rather than teasing out what they do not want, we must ask what really turns them on and gives them a buzz about their area. At that stage, you can start to peel back the skin of the onion in order to get at the truth. Unfortunately, because of what might be called the inherited philosophical direction of travel, that question is often not asked properly. As a result, we do not candidly canvass the views of the old, young, shopkeepers and businesspeople, and—maybe—the farmers, mums with children and all who would otherwise remain silent. One of the main problems with neighbourhood plans being declared unsound is that it cannot be demonstrated that that process has been gone through with rigour and care. This is an important set of amendments enabling us to discuss this principle.
I am in favour of communities determining their own situation, but if in a particular area they say the equivalent of what I believe is the current acronym— BANANA: ban anything near anyone anywhere—then the principal authority’s executive is going to have to come with a red pen and make themselves deeply unpopular, because there are certain Government imperatives. While these are particularly to do with housebuilding, they also concern the associated infrastructure such as schools, clinics, road improvements —never mind fire services and things like that.
These things are complicated and a community often does not have the voluntary resources. How many would have a private sector town planner, for instance, who had time to attend meetings and guide that process? How many would have people available to deal with the financial mechanics, so that the community can clearly state what benefits it expects and set this out in a constructive manner? These are highly complicated issues, which often require expensive professionals—I stand guilty as charged in that respect. Parishes and town councils do not have those sorts of resources.
It is all very well having a provision whereby the principal authority steps in, but there are still the issues of covering resource implications and achieving a candid representation of the community’s views to take the process forward. Those seem to be sticking points whatever is done. I hope the Minister will be able to throw some light on that.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, neighbourhood planning has been a success since its introduction in 2011. For the first time, communities have been able to prepare plans that have real statutory weight: neighbourhood plans have the same weight in law as the local authority’s local plan, and must be the starting point for decisions on planning applications. As the noble Lord also said, more than 1,800 communities have started neighbourhood planning, representing more than 9 million people, and planning applications are being approved and refused according to neighbourhood plans. The Government made a manifesto commitment to support communities who have embarked on the process and to encourage more to start.
Under Clause 125, the Secretary of State would be able to use regulations to prescribe the circumstances in which local planning authorities must designate the neighbourhood area applied for. In the prescribed circumstances, the authority would no longer need to advertise, and consult on, the proposed neighbourhood planning areas. This will allow communities to start planning more quickly and will significantly reduce the burdens on local authorities.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, it is appropriate to speak after the noble Lord, Lord True, because earlier on in our previous Committee discussions I referred to the point to which the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred earlier, namely the deliberations of the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment. I say again what I said previously: one of the great things that really stuck out for me is the deficit in housebuilding and the concurrent fall-off in local government building on its own account.
There are all sorts of reasons for that, but I would definitely side with the noble Lord, Lord True, on the point that he made about there being a clear case for local authorities to take a hand in the development process. I really do not think that the Government’s objectives will be met unless that can be harnessed in some shape or form.
I give the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, great credit for his consistency and persistence. Earlier in Committee he made clear his view on the problem of excessive house prices linked to excessive land price. He is probably aware that I have a somewhat different take on this, and I hope that he will forgive me for that, but I realise that there is an issue here.
In introducing his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, made reference to agricultural land, but the amendment itself does not seem to necessarily make it clear that it is referring to acquisitions of agricultural land as opposed to acquisitions of land generally at an agricultural value. My next point follows from that because the land may well have been used previously for some other purpose that may have no relationship to its agricultural heritage of 100 or so years previously in either physical or valuation terms. I just flag that up. So it depends on the origins of the land, and it also depends on whether it is serviced or unserviced, because of course there can be an awful lot of infrastructure, particularly if it is land that was previously developed, which adds a lot to its value.
The noble Lord’s proposal is, on the face of it, expropriatory, although he outlined a provision for a way in which there could be a clawback from that. But as it stands, it would require the effective rewriting of current compulsory purchase and land compensation legislation. I fear that it will be seen as departing from a principle of fair compensation, particularly where land is acquired for a purpose for which there is an obvious general market value—unlike, say, a piece of infrastructure such as a road or a school or something which is only ever going to be produced for a public purpose, and, in the case of a road, probably only by a public authority or in pursuit of a public authority’s powers.
But I remind your Lordships that this has been tried before. During my university years, we still had the Land Commission Act, which had something called the betterment levy attached to it. It was scrapped either the year before or during the year in which I took my finals. It was replaced in due course by something called development land tax. This was levied at about 80% of the uplift and it simply caused the land supply to dry up. So little land came forward that one of the first things that the Thatcher Government did when they came in was to scrap it to try to free the thing up. So if you are not careful, you can completely reverse the process where land is voluntarily brought forward and you will have to predict and provide as a public authority and acquire the land, presumably by compulsory means at a low value.
At the moment, the development gains generate some pretty large funds for landowners. However, earlier I sent the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, an email based on the experience of one of my colleagues, who found that the profit made by a developer was substantially—by a matter of 50%—over and above what the landowner got for the land. We should bear in mind that what he got for the land presumably included its current-use value—for example, as agricultural land—plus any increment that he was paid for the development. But the process funds an awful lot of things under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act, the community infrastructure levy and other community and societal benefits. We already have a tax regime that taxes its share of those things, through capital gains tax, corporation tax or whatever.
Unless the noble Lord’s proposal resulted in a wholesale fall in property values—which, as I said earlier, would be a brave new world of an entirely different scale and nature and might have some very undesirable consequences—it would not reduce values. New homes are typically less in any given year—probably substantially less—than 1% of the existing total housing stock. It is a bit of a scratch on the surface, I fear.
That said, I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord. There is no question that housing is very expensive. But it would pay to look at a number of other things. The noble Lord, Lord True, mentioned one of them: vacant land that is suitable and is not being used. I remember—and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, will know what I am talking about—a site in the middle of Horsham which the landowner refused to sell or allow to be brought forward for development. It became a sort of island of industrial activity in the middle of the town. I can well relate to local authority concern about that sort of situation.
I also point to some of the restrictive practices operated by a number of the major housebuilders and the way they achieve their profit margins. I certainly think that would warrant looking at. Then there are the costs, risks, drawn-out timeframes—if you like, the costs of democratic input into the planning situation, but I do not complain about that—and the uncertainty of bringing land forward for development and getting consent, as well as the necessary sustainability studies that have to go in beforehand. They have to go in before the local authority will even consider that the thing is relevant. That might be for known, important ecological reasons but might also be without there being any shred of evidence that there is any ecological value of any sort. That hugely adds to the up-front costs.
I now point to the manner in which some utility companies exercise their powers to try and get an additional share of the action—if I can term it thus—notwithstanding their obligation to connect and supply. I am afraid that it arises because, to a large extent, they are monopoly suppliers. They really do not have to do anything other than say, “Well, if you want a connection it is going to involve such and such and by the way we need a 50% increase in the size of the sewage treatment works” or whatever. I have come across situations where the local sewerage utility company said it would not put anything in its advance plan until it was included in the local plan produced by the local planning authority and the local planning authority saying that it would not put it in unless it knew it was in the forward plan for the utility company—so complete gridlock. This game is being played up and down the country. For all the development sites that actually come to fruition, there are others where there have been significant expenses but it has all been left on the cutting-room floor and does not happen.
Then I point to the inability of small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly builders and developers, to get finance, other than on the security of the land itself —and even that can be extremely difficult. I know of situations like that professionally and through other sources.
The tax advantages of home ownership make it a most desirable form of financial security. There are good reasons for this, but it does not help exit prices if it has that sort of advantage. This Bill is all about fundamentally making more land available for development in total, which means everybody realising that their year-on-year incremental increase in home value comes at a cost to society—at the same time, of course, as benefiting the economy. We need to be quite ruthless in our analysis of that.