Planning

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of planning policy.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I will not talk for too long, but I want to raise some issues relating to planning policy, especially after the productive and fruitful discussions that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and I had with the Government.

For years, we have needed a planning system that is community-led and environment-led, and that drives regeneration. For years, we have not quite had the opposite, but we have certainly not had a policy that is as focused as it should have been on community, the environment or, frankly, levelling up and spreading wealth around our wonderful country. Indeed, in many ways the definition of “sustainability” has been the opposite of what it is in reality. Much development has been truly unsustainable, as many communities involved in bitter battles against distant developers know. There are residents’ groups on the Isle of Wight, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend and across Britain that have despaired at the top-down, developer-led process, which seems so often to have ridden roughshod over the wishes of local people and the genuine needs of communities.

That is why last year we built an alliance of a hundred likeminded Conservative colleagues and tabled 21 amendments to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, as well as negotiating with Ministers and officials over a one or two-week period to secure what I hope is a workable change, and indeed what I think will improve planning considerably in this country. These are some of the things that I would like to touch on for the Minister today.

I will just say what we are against, because it seems to me that, unless people want a free market in housing, which in reality we have not had since world war two, they are described as nimbies. I find that level of argument pretty depressing, shallow and empty. I think what we were against—certainly, what I was against—was a couple of things.

First, there is the planning or development industry’s addiction to greenfield, soulless, low-density, car-dependent, out-of-town development. Those sorts of developments —we see them a bit on the Island, but we see them especially in the home counties and counties such as Cambridgeshire—are socially bad, as they are not designed around communities. Effectively, they are soulless housing estates, plonked down in the middle of nowhere, or where the developers can get planning permission. They are also environmentally bad from a transport point of view, because they are almost entirely car-dependent. These isolated, car-dependent developments are truly unsustainable, because we know that detached houses are the most un-climate friendly form of housing. They are land-banked by large developers and are often built against the wishes of local communities.

The second thing that we found really difficult was the structure of the industry. There is sometimes a more sustained approach in the industry towards keeping share prices high than there is towards actual development. That is one of the problems. Because we have become over-dependent on private developers, we have effectively become hostages to their agenda. Yes, they build houses—that is their business model—but it is also their business model to keep prices high, to keep the value of land high and to limit the supply of land, because that is how they keep their share prices high, their profits high and, frankly, their bonuses high.

We have not had enough in the way of council-led affordable housing. I am a big fan of affordable housing and council housing, and I very much want the Isle of Wight Council to get on and develop its own council house company again. But because we have been dependent on private developers, we have something like 1 million outstanding planning permissions, including over 400,000 planning permissions on brownfield sites, which are just land-banked by the big companies, because then they can plan for profits for years to come. If we want to build more, we need a slightly different system from the one we had, or at least one where councils and housing associations can build more and have access to more land. I will come to that in relation to Camp Hill on my patch.

As a result of so much of the pressure for housing moving down to the south-east—in places such as the Isle of Wight, but it is perhaps even worse in the home counties—we have skewed infrastructure spending away from the north and towards the south and the south-east. Again, because the infrastructure is there, that drives jobs and growth. We have a never-ending funnel—a never-ending hoover—of people from not only city centres to the suburbs but from north to south. That is bad for our country.

To give a snapshot of the £866 million allocated by the housing infrastructure fund up to 2018, half of it was directed to London, the east and the south-east, while the combined authorities of Liverpool, Manchester, Tees Valley, the West Midlands and the West of England received only £124 million. That is about a quarter of what was given to London and the south-east. At that time, over three quarters of the £2 billion allocated went to projects in London and the south-east. Up to April 2020, it was estimated that the same fund spent up to £700 million on roads for garden communities.

There is a problem in that, because so many of the planning permissions are given in the south-east on greenfield sites, that skews investment and the infrastructure spend. The reality is that that makes levelling up and investing in the great cities of the north and the midlands much more difficult. I will come on to that, because there are some fascinating pictures of declining populations.

After intensive negotiation with the Secretary of State and the Minister—it is a pleasure to see her here—we now have a much better deal that puts planning in a much better place. Before I turn to the wider issues of what I think we achieved with that, I will raise three issues with the Minister in relation to the Island. First, we would love more compulsory purchase powers. I know that the Minister will tell us that there is a compulsory purchase review out with the Law Society, which is looking at how we can make compulsory purchase more efficient.

In coastal communities, and maybe in levelling-up communities—if I dare describe them as such—we need that compulsory purchase power. It is way too difficult for us and our councillors, whether they are Conservative, Labour or independent, to do the right thing. There are too many buildings on the Isle of Wight that stand empty for years, especially those that have an impact on our communities, for example in Sandown—funnily enough, I was talking to the Mayor of Sandown less than an hour ago about post offices.

The Grand Hotel in Sandown has been empty for years. It is a gorgeous art deco building next to what used to be Sandown zoo—it is opposite the beach and next to the dinosaur museum. It should be a really important site for us. That building has stood empty for years. The Royal York Hotel in Ryde is owned by the same guy. Those buildings stand empty, and there are many others. With the Ocean Hotel I will be careful what I say; I do not think there are proceedings live at the moment, but at the very least there has been extraordinarily unethical behaviour in relation to that building—it may indeed be criminal. It is empty and, because of the legal disputes surrounding it, it may well lie empty for years. It is slap-bang in the middle of what should be Sandown’s tourism high street.

The more help that Government can give us, the better. They should give compulsory purchase powers to councils such as the Isle of Wight, so that it can force the sale of the Grand Hotel, the Royal York Hotel in Ryde or the Ocean Hotel—so that it can say to the owners of those hotels: “You have six months to a year maximum to develop, otherwise we force a sale.” We would use those powers to put those properties on the market, to be bought by people on the condition that they put forward planning within a specific timeframe and start realistically developing and completing within a specific amount of time. That problem is replicated across coastal communities and in some of our most deprived communities, up and down the country.

Secondly, I know the Minister will say that this is not her responsibility anymore, but I plead for quicker decision-making powers by Government. I give the example of Camp Hill—the third of our prisons on the Isle of Wight. The Minister was formerly Justice Minister, so she is probably bored of hearing about Camp Hill. I am bored of raising it. It has been nine years without a decision. The Americans put a man on the moon in less time than it has taken the Government to decide what to do with Camp Hill. I was thinking, half in jest, that if I set up as a squatter in Camp Hill, I would probably have ownership rights before the Government decided what to do with it, and if I could claim ownership of it, I could give it to the council. Can we please have a decision on Camp Hill?

We do not have many brownfield sites on the Isle of Wight—I think we have about half a dozen. Hopefully, the Minister will have some news about the greenfield funds, which I think she may have announced or will announce, but we will certainly be putting in for more money to clean up brownfield sites, because we have so few. Camp Hill is a really big potential brownfield site for us, and we would love to get access to it. I know the Minister is the Minister for housing and not a Justice Minister, but if the Government can sell that site to the Isle of Wight Council at a price that we can afford—in much the same way as they did for the Columbine Building, which is the hub of our shipbuilding industry in East Cowes—we can do good things with it. It is a brownfield site near Newport, and we can use the land to build decent, affordable housing for Islanders young and old, rather than having to rely on speculative greenfield sites outside our towns and villages. I urge the Government collectively to have better and quicker decision making.

Thirdly, and specifically for the Island, the Secretary of State and his adviser kindly suggested that they would write to me to confirm two things as part of our negotiations last year. The first is that, from now on, there is an expectation that exceptional circumstance is assumed for islands. My understanding from the negotiations is that exceptional circumstance for islands would be specifically mentioned in the footnotes of the national planning policy framework, or NPPF, and that that would be almost the expectation. We do not have a bridge—we are not Anglesey; we are separated by sea—and it costs 30% more to build a home on the Isle of Wight than elsewhere, because of the cost of getting material over by ferry. We have a restricted industry on the Island that builds between 200 and 300 homes a year. A target of 500, 600, 700 or 800 would be crazy and unachievable, because we have only ever built that sort of number on two occasions in the last 50 years, so it would be incredibly helpful if we could see the letter on exceptional circumstance.

That was my understanding—it was very accurate, I hasten to add—of the conversation that we had. The letter was also going set out what emergency powers the Government have to deal with unscrupulous caravan park owners and the planning lawyers who advise them, who game the system to build caravan parks and concrete over sites of special scientific interest on coastal islands, in very special areas of the Island or the country, and in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. I think there was going to be some suggestion about what the Government could do on that.

Those are three very specific issues, which I hope the Government should feel positive about. First, we want the Government to be ambitious on compulsory purchase, because it is so important to so many parts of the country that when property developers do not do the right thing, we can force the sale of sites, especially high-value sites that have a significant impact on our communities and our economy. Secondly, can we please have quicker decision making, specifically on Camp Hill? The council and I really want to build affordable homes on that site for folks on the Isle of Wight. Thirdly, I remind the Government of the letter they promised me on exceptional circumstance and caravan parks.

More generally, I thought we had some great discussions at the end of last year, and we still have targets. I am just so fed up of hearing that Back-Bench MPs are docile sheep who trot through and vote for anything, or that we are an ungovernable rabble. Actually, the planning debate that we had showed this place working at its best. We respected the Government’s agenda, the Government listened to Back Benchers, we had a negotiation, and we reached a better state afterwards than we had before. We were vocal about what we believed was right, the Government were vocal about what they believed was right, and we negotiated our way through. The Government avoided an unnecessary rebellion; we respected the Government’s position, and the Government listened to us. That is neither MPs being docile sheep nor MPs behaving like some rebellious rabble; it is Back-Bench MPs, especially, doing their job, and Government Ministers doing theirs. I actually thought it was a pretty good process.

Anyway, the housing targets remain, but they will be advisory, which I think is where they should be. We need to take a pragmatic, reasonable approach to examining the true housing numbers, and where there are genuine environmental constraints, councils will be able to propose a reduced housing number. Again, I point to the Isle of Wight as a really good example of that, because we have finite space. By way of example, I remind the Minister that in many areas of the south and south-east, the population has increased dramatically—I know that is happening in her patch. Over the past 60 years on the Island, we have increased our population by nearly 50%; it is about 50% in 50 years.

At the same time, there has been a decline—not a relative decline, but an absolute decline—in the populations of Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Stoke. We have had two great trends over the past 50 years: a move from city centres to suburbs, and a move from north to south. A lot of the pressure in constituencies such as mine is due to the decades-long lack of investment, or lack of an attempt to drive prosperity, in many of those great cities. Newcastle is a fantastic and exciting city, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool likewise, yet they have all had declining populations since the late 1950s and 1960s. If we could reverse that trend and make those cities hubs that people will want to go to, because that is where the jobs and prosperity are, that would take pressure off communities such as ours, as the Minister knows.

The more we can get levelling up right, the better it will be for all of us, and the less pressure it will put on our communities. That means that more infrastructure money then goes back to northern communities and midlands city centres, which is where it should be in the first place. It seems entirely obvious to me that if one is developing a brownfield site in an existing community, the infrastructure spend is probably going to be lower. Widening single-track Victorian lanes in the east and north-east of the Isle of Wight—which is what is having to be done in my patch—costs a lot more than if it were happening in Liverpool and Manchester, because the infrastructure is there already. The more we invest in inner-city centres that have high-density populations, the better it is for those city centres, for Government services, and for communities such as mine.

The Government are also going to modify the existing five-year land supply rule to pretty much get rid of it. They are going to kill off the tilted balance, thank God—I think that is an incredibly pernicious thing. Again, rebalancing the economies of greenfield and brownfield use to regenerate empty buildings, disused sites and town centres seems to me economically, socially and environmentally important; it just seems to be an incredibly sensible thing to do. If there is more money for brownfield site clean-up, Isle of Wight Council will be very excited to hear it, so if the Minister has anything to say about that today, she is very welcome to say it.

I have gone on for a little bit longer than I thought I would, so I will wrap up.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

More!

[Bob Seely]

More or less?

[Mr Mohindra]

More.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely)—my good friend—on bringing forward this really important debate. I commend him and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) for the excellent work that they have done on the issue for a significant time. Most of that work was done behind closed doors, as critical friends of the Government. It allowed me, as a Government loyalist, the space to contribute positively, in a small way, to making sure that the legislation was exactly as we wanted, without been seen as disruptive or disloyal.

As I have said many times in this Chamber, I come from a local government background. I was a councillor for 17 years before being elected to this place. Actually, there was a bit of overlap because of the pandemic. In that time, I spent many years on planning committees. Most recently, I was chairman of a planning committee in Epping Forest. I was a dual-hatter: I was also a county councillor in Essex. During my tenure as county councillor, I was responsible for strategic planning. In all those years in local government, I thought that local plans were better than what preceded them: the regional development agencies, which were part of a clunky, top- down model imposed on our communities from Whitehall. Although the local plan process remains emotive and, I would argue, quite difficult, it is part of a journey, and part of the future legislation, which will improve the process.

I commend the Government for listening to the constructive criticism and feedback that people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight have put forward. Top-down numbers are helpful, but they should not be a stick with which to beat local authorities. I am happy for provisions on the five-year land supply to be removed. I always thought that they were a tool that unscrupulous developers or applicants could use to put development in the wrong place. I think I speak on behalf of the whole House when I say that politicians are always conscious of unintended consequence. No politician, whatever their party, wants to put forward bad laws or policies. When it comes to encouraging councils to ensure a pipeline of future development, a hard five- year deadline would open up a massive can of worms; unscrupulous developers from around the country would get involved. Both my authorities’ planning departments were a bit under-resourced, through no fault of their own, which meant that they were in some ways swimming against the tide, and finding that increasingly difficult.

My constituency of South West Hertfordshire is a beautiful part of the world. The Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty is to our west, and we have the border with London to the south. We have the best of all worlds: we have very good transport links with London, but we retain that village feel. We are about 80% green belt, so pretty much wherever we look, we see prime green belt, farmland and trees. Part of the joy of representing South West Hertfordshire is that, waking up in the morning, I am more likely to hear a bird than cars. That is not to say we do not need further investment in transport—and I will continue to bang on about the train network and the tube in the south—but it is a nice place to live. As a conservative with a small C, part of my role as the elected Member of Parliament is to retain what we love about the community. Pressures that we experience in the home counties and London, particularly pre pandemic because of the draw for better-paid jobs, mean that we will continue to have these debates on local planning issues.

It is great to see the Minister in her place. My plea to her is to try to future-proof the local planning process. With the way people live their lives post pandemic, the south-east is less of a draw, because they can have a well-paid, good job with future career prospects without moving down to South West Hertfordshire or London. My generation, including a lot of my friends from the midlands, was drawn down to London. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for regeneration and development, I had a meeting with Birmingham City Council yesterday. After hearing about the exciting plans in that part of the world, I think that if I were an 18 or 20-year-old from there now, I would not necessarily see the bright lights of London as the real draw. People can still have a good quality of life, with reasonable house prices and a good work-life balance, and live in a vibrant community with lots of future plans.

I represent half of the area covered by Dacorum Borough Council and most of the area covered by Three Rivers District Council. The two councils did a poll back in 2020, asking residents to name their favourite thing about living in South West Hertfordshire. Over three quarters of respondents across both council areas said it was the parks and open spaces. The silver lining of the pandemic is that people have really appreciated what is on their doorstep.

As someone who still commutes into London every day, I may be a rare breed. A lot of people are still getting back to working full time in their office space, after being perfectly set up over the last couple of years to work from home. Avoiding a two-hour commute there and back, which I have to do most days, is a draw. However, as well as saving on the commute time and transport costs, the quality of life aspect is important. Planning, by its very nature, should be focused on the health and wellbeing of communities. As a Conservative councillor, my view was that when planning is done badly, not only does it create an eyesore, but the negative aspects of poor development lead to unhealthy outcomes, which mean an additional burden on the state in future years. As a Conservative, one of my values is offering value for money. Where we can reduce the cost burden for future generations, we should be proactively doing that. The way we do planning is very much part of that mix.

Apparently, 1.2 million homes are lying dormant on brownfield sites. I referred earlier to the significant green-belt aspect of my community. Although there is always a draw to do what is easy—that is, if there is a piece of grassland, build on it—that does not mean it is the right thing to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight spoke about renewed emphasis on getting brownfield sites back into use. That is absolutely the right theme, which I hope my Government will continue to push.

Some of the regeneration in our communities is to do with not necessarily new homes, but the quality of what people see outside their windows. For someone driving to the local shops, being next to a derelict site where nothing looks to have happened for five or 10 years has a subconscious bearing on how they feel for the day. Although new development is a pain in the short term, people feel the benefit of those brand new hospitals or schools, or additional classroom space. That is what the planning process is meant to do. It is meant to make the next generation living in that area have an easier life than the previous one.

Strategic planning is absolutely required. We have had piecemeal planning, which we see occasionally from planning application appeals. Inevitably, those have led to a can of worms, with developments in the wrong place. They might make a lot of money for the developer at the time, but they have a significant impact on local authorities, especially when trying to offer a support network such as social services or NHS nurses, which have to go to out-of-the-way places that can be the wrong sites for such developments.

From January last year to September, across all the Hertfordshire councils, about 12,000 applications were received, with about 11,500 decisions taken and, of those, 85% granted. The planning application process therefore does not seem to be the issue or a bottleneck. Planning remains complex, which it needs to be, with a lot of expertise required—I applaud the Government’s drive for digitisation, because more people will engage in the process—but there should be more motivation to do the right thing, although I do not yet know how to do that. Putting in an application just to increase the property value, without developing it—I know loved ones who have done the same—might be helpful in the short term, but it is a false economy as regards what is available or in the pipeline to be developed.

In the south of my constituency, Three Rivers District Council is Liberal Democrat-controlled. For many years, since I was elected, I have pushed it to continue the momentum to get a local plan in place. As the constituency Member of Parliament, I would argue that the council is probably using the change in the forms in planning legislation that we are looking to make as an excuse not to get on and do it. In the north of my constituency, Dacorum District Council is Conservative-controlled, and it is just getting on with its plan, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) said at Prime Minister’s questions. While that is difficult, it is absolutely the right thing to do.

My plea to the Minister is that where we think councils are using the situation to do the wrong thing, we need, whether by a quiet word, threats of sanctions or whatever—I do not know what tools she has in her armoury—to encourage such councils to get on and do their plan, because sitting one’s head in the sand is not the solution for planning. We need to have those mature, if typically emotive, conversations and for decisions to be made. Politicians are elected to make decisions, even when they are sometimes difficult to make.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is in a good place. There is more to do, but I would not expect that to happen in this piece of legislation. I am sure future legislation will be coming down the pipeline through the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The demand for housing in this country cannot and should not be ignored. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight spoke about start times, and that is a big issue in my part of the world. While people will remain emotive about new development, typically such new homes are for the local community. When people move out of mum and dad’s home, where will they live? In my part of the world, it means they have to move significant distances away.

Brownfield land is very much there, and we need proactively to get it back into use, even more so than now. The counterpart to that is some green-belt land. The Government should encourage regular reviews of green belt, because it has various spectrums—if it is prime arable land, absolutely we should retain it in the green belt, but if a site is on the edge of settlement, has been dilapidated for 20 years and is of no help or environmental benefit, we should identify it and make better use of it. With the right plan and policies in place, we can maximise the benefits of planning and keep our green spaces safe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I do think that, as a generic point, it is important that people feel involved in the process and, therefore, can comment on it and understand the views of the local community.

[Mr Mohindra]

The Minister is being generous with her time. In terms of the drive towards digital viewing, can she reassure me that, for those constituents who are not digitally enabled, there is still alternative provision for them to look at plans and offer their feedback?

[Lucy Frazer]

Of course. This issue always crops up when we talk about digitalisation. Of course we need to ensure that access is available for anyone when we digitalise. This morning I was in Buckinghamshire looking at a programme to digitalise its planning processes. It is very concerning that some statistics show that 50% of planning applications are invalid. This is a significant waste of councils’ time and of people’s time. It is blocking up our system and making sure that local planning officers cannot concentrate on getting things through the system.

I would like to turn to the question of the character of an area, because that is something that we have set out in the NPPF and that needs to be carefully considered. I did not know and was very interested to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley was an architect. I am sure that his skills will come to the fore as we introduce our design codes around the country. We are bringing them in to ensure that development is appropriate for the community, is well designed and looks good, so that people welcome the development that comes into their area.

Many Members, but particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley, also mentioned infrastructure. It is absolutely critical that we get infrastructure into communities, so that they see that development is not just about housing; it is about schools and GP surgeries and might be about other infrastructure as well. Some of the measures in the Bill will ensure that we get infra- structure faster. People might have an ability—will have an ability—to borrow up front. They might have an ability to ask for instalments—I am talking about funds from the developer up front. They might—they will—have the ability to ensure that they get an uplift. What happens is that the land value is x and, once planning permission has been given, the land value increases significantly, to x plus y. Why should the local council not get the benefit of the uplift as well?

Many Members talked about brownfield. Brownfield is extremely important. The Government encourage the reuse of brownfield land. National policy sets out that planning policies and decisions should make efficient use of land and give substantial weight to the value of using suitable brownfield land within settlements. We have taken a number of measures to support the redevelopment of brownfield land. For example, we require every local authority to publish a register of local brownfield land suitable for housing; we have introduced permission in principle to speed up housing-led development; we have revised permitted development and use class rules, to make the best use of existing buildings; and we have uplifted housing need in our most populated cities and urban areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight talked about brownfield land funding money. We have introduced a number of funding initiatives, including the £550 million brownfield housing fund, the £180 million brownfield land release fund 2 and the £4.3 billion housing infra- structure fund.

I am also pleased to say—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight knows this—that three sites in the Isle of Wight were successful in their bids to the brownfield land release fund in October 2021. They were awarded nearly £950,000 to release local-authority-owned brownfield land for 71 homes.

I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley talk about the brownfield land that should be developed in his constituency. As someone who grew up in Leeds, I am familiar with many of the areas that he mentioned. Of course, local authorities must think carefully about the land that they are proposing for development, with a particular view to, and eye on, brownfield land.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight mentioned compulsory purchase orders. He will know that we have already taken some steps in that area, with the Government’s high street strategy, which was published in July 2021, and through further measures in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. He rightly mentioned the Law Commission report and foreshadowed my reference to it. The Law Commission is undertaking an exercise to consolidate compulsory purchase law, to make it easier to understand, and to review CPO powers.

The shadow Minister talked about land banking. That is something that we are absolutely tackling in the Bill. He will know that we have set out measures so that developers have to set out trajectories of when they are going to build. He will know that we are taking steps to enable local authorities to take into account further planning permissions that are put forward on the same site. They can take into account, as a matter of discretion, whether the first set has been built out or not, and we have also already said that we will be going further.

I will touch on the discrete measures that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight mentioned. He raised some specific planning decisions in his constituency. In view of the quasi-judicial role that the planning Minister has, I will not comment on any particular applications, but I completely understand his general point about the importance of Government acting speedily.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the NPPF consultation. He asked what stage we were at, and asked about exceptional circumstances. I would just reassure him that we launched the consultation on 22 December, and, within that, there is reference to the Island in the exceptional circumstances test. We will make it clearer that the outcome of the standard method is set out as an advisory starting point. However, we will also give more explicit indications on planning guidance and the type of local characteristics that may justify the use of an alternative method, such as islands with a high percentage of elderly residents or university towns with above-average numbers of students. Those are part and parcel of the consultation, which we will be considering in due course.

On the issue of caravans, I know that officials are looking into the points that my hon. Friend raised, but I think there are some particular issues relating to the planning permissions under which they were originally granted. However, I am very happy to discuss that matter further with him.

       I will reiterate the overarching point about the planning measures that we have taken, which I touched on at the beginning of my speech. We still have a commitment to building homes and are still working towards a target of 300,000 homes a year. It is absolutely essential that young people get on to the housing ladder. However, we are trying to change the nature of planning to ensure that people get homes where they want them, that they are beautifully designed so that people want them, and that they are surrounded by the infrastructure that communities want and need. If we change that culture in our planning system, people will start to welcome development and we will not have this constant resistance to new housing.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight again for securing the debate, for using it to press home his individual and national concerns, and for his constant engagement over the last few months. Building homes is central to how we level up the country, and we need to build them in the right places—in the south, but absolutely in the north. It is how we create economic growth, and we need to do this in the right way. I and my Department, together with the Secretary of State and hon. Members across this House, are continuing to work towards a planning system that we can all be proud of.