Planning (Community Right of Appeal) Debate

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Planning (Community Right of Appeal)

Gary Streeter Excerpts
Tuesday 20th January 2015

(9 years, 9 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Gary Streeter Portrait Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
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Before the hon. Lady gives way again, I must say that interventions are becoming rather long, and we want to give the Minister plenty of time to respond to the debate.

I call Jim Shannon to speak—very briefly.

Jim Shannon Portrait Jim Shannon
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I will be very quick. The hon. Lady mentioned the figure—the number of people—that would trigger an appeal. In every case, the number of people living in an area who are impacted by a development might vary. There would be occasions when the impact of a development would be great, but the number of people living in the area impacted would be small. So I just wondered what the trigger figure would be.

--- Later in debate ---
Brandon Lewis Portrait Brandon Lewis
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I see that my hon. Friend wants to intervene again.

Gary Streeter Portrait Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)
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Order. I would prefer him not to intervene again. I think the Minister should respond to the person who has actually secured the debate.

Brandon Lewis Portrait Brandon Lewis
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Absolutely—that is a fair point, Mr Streeter. I will happily liaise with my hon. Friend after this debate.

I return to the point that I made at the outset. Inherently, the idea behind the planning reforms is to make sure that there is community involvement through local plans and neighbourhood plans—I cannot stress enough that those are a key way for people to be involved—by getting public involvement where development should be: what it should look and feel like, what it should be built like and how it should be supported at the beginning of the process, not at the back end.