National Planning Policy Framework

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Westminster Hall

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

I am delighted to be able to lead this debate. I thank you, Mr Turner, and the Backbench Business Committee for giving me and the House the opportunity to discuss the national planning policy framework. I am especially grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for being here. I believe that he was in his constituency this morning, and I am sure that he did not want to be dragged back here this afternoon. I believe, from today’s Order Paper, that a written statement will be made later today, and I would be grateful if my hon. Friend could refer to it in his winding-up speech if it has any relevance to this debate.

Planning is an important issue that the House has discussed a number of times. The Government have just published their response to the Communities and Local Government Committee’s good report on the operation of the national planning policy framework, so it is timely that we are able to discuss it today.

I welcomed the introduction of the national planning policy framework when the former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), introduced it in 2012. For far too long, our planning system was incredibly complicated and consisted of more than 1,000 pages of policy. The NPPF simplified that guidance into an easy-to-read, readily available, concise document. I also welcomed the Government’s publication of guidance, which streamlined 7,000 pages into a sensible online guide. All those steps to simplify the planning process were a welcome innovation.

I accept that the Government have to find a difficult balance. Most people recognise that we need more housing. There is a national need for additional housing, so every community will have to play its part. That is mainly because we are an ageing society with more single households and an increasing population. The CBI has said that Britain needs to build 240,000 houses to keep up with the population growth. It is welcome news that the Government are on track to build 700,000 new homes in this Parliament. However, although we recognise the need for more housing, we must ensure that houses are built in the most appropriate places and, as far as possible, in accordance with the wishes of local people and with good design.

The Government have rightly been driving a localism agenda over the past four and a half years. Unfortunately, in many areas of the country, including my constituency, localism is almost non-existent in the planning system. The purpose of this debate is not to criticise the existence of the NPPF, but to highlight to my hon. Friend the Minister where the NPPF is not working in the way it was intended. I will talk about local plans, which are critical to the NPPF, and the problems associated with councils whose plans have not yet been adopted. I will discuss the merits of neighbourhood plans, speculative planning applications, appeals, the protection of areas of outstanding natural beauty and other concerns about heritage and infrastructure requirements. I will try to be brief, because other hon. Members want to contribute.

Let me start with local plans, which are at the heart of the NPPF. The NPPF is a plan-led process, and local plans, where they are in place, are a useful planning tool. They provide a clear indication of how much development there will be, when it will happen, what else needs to occur alongside the new developments and other points that are of concern to local people when new housing is built. However, there is a gaping hole in the NPPF for planning authorities whose local plan has not yet been adopted, such as Cotswold and Stroud district councils, which are both covered by my constituency. It is frankly frustrating, but those councils are not on their own, because two fifths of local planning authorities are in the same position. It is worrying that a significant proportion of the planning authorities that are trying to operate within a plan-led system are without a plan. It is simple logic that for a plan-led system to work, a plan must be in place. Without a central document holding together all the different fragments of the planning process, the system will fall apart, as it has in my constituency and, I am sure, in other parts of the country.

I have had discussions with various organisations, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and it seems that, in general, high-growth urban areas tend to have plans in place, while sparse, rural areas with limited resources tend not to. Those areas are the most vulnerable to speculative planning applications, and they are also some of the most beautiful places in these isles. Perhaps I am biased, but the Cotswolds is a jewel in the UK’s crown. The levels of tourism that my constituents see suggest that people flock to it to see idyllic Britain, rather than a large construction site. I genuinely believe that there is a risk that inappropriate development will ruin such rural areas, and that the impact will be felt locally and nationally for generations to come.

Without a local plan in place, planning authorities are at the mercy of developers. My constituency has seen a significant number of speculative planning applications, which are often sizeable. There is currently a proposal for a development of 2,350 dwellings in Chesterton, on the edge of Cirencester. That is a large number of additional houses for any small to medium-sized town to take.

One of the biggest problems for authorities whose local plan has not been adopted is the sheer lack of clarity about the housing situation in the area. It means that everybody is working from either out-of-date or incomplete information, whether it is an old core strategy, or a local or regional plan. It allows an area to be subject to speculative applications, because developers know that they have a good chance of success at appeal. In the Cotswolds, we increasingly find that councils are not refusing applications that do not conform because they fear that the application will be allowed at appeal, which can lead to a huge financial loss for the council. Each appeal can cost councils upwards of £50,000, which is a significant amount of money for a small rural council with limited resources. I will address the lack of resources shortly.

If there is no local plan, it is up to each individual planning inspector to decide how many dwellings are needed over a five-year period. That figure can change significantly between inspectors, who have subjective views. That is caused in part by a lack of up-to-date information about local housing need. Decisions about an issue as complicated and controversial as planning, particularly in the Cotswolds, should not be based on the subjective views of different inspectors. There needs to be a clearly defined housing need assessment methodology, so that all planning authorities and applicants can work with the same system.

The ratcheting up of housing need is illustrated by the number of appeals in the Cotswolds that were upheld by different inspectors over an 18-month period. An appeal in Tetbury determined that the council had not met its five-year housing supply, and stated that, as a result of persistent under-delivery of housing in the Cotswolds, an additional 20% should be added, which brought the figure to 2,426 dwellings required over the next five years, or 485 annually. However, it was contradicted by an appeal in Kemble, which stated that it was not necessary to apply the 20% buffer. In a more recent decision on an appeal in Fairford, a different inspector claimed that the annual requirement needed to be between 500 and 580. The same report said that it could go up to as much as 650. It is simply ridiculous for planning inspectors to be unclear about what the housing need is in an area. We need a clear and robust methodology for assessing housing need, so that the number of dwellings necessary is clear and is not up to the subjective view of each planning inspector.

The Communities and Local Government Committee’s report says, and I totally agree, that all sites that have been granted planning permission should count toward the five-year land supply. Allowing planning permission for speculative applications on appeal and requiring the local authority to find a five-year land supply, let alone an additional 20% buffer, means that the amount of land set aside for development is excessive.

However, my constituents are concerned not just by the number of houses, but by the location of the new houses. They have to be put in the right place, particularly considering designations such as areas of outstanding natural beauty. It seems that those who are most logically placed to receive recommendations on where new developments should be sited are the current residents. They know their communities inside out and know where a new development would be best sited.

An example in my constituency is in the parish of Kingswood, which is under the authority of Stroud district council and was identified in the Communities and Local Government Committee report. It is currently facing an application at Chestnut Park, which is at one of the highest points of the village, with fantastic views over the AONB, which would be diminished by a housing development. The parish council has diligently produced a comprehensive village design statement, which identifies alternative sites for development. However, due to the fact that Stroud district council does not have an adopted local plan, it is unlikely that that speculative planning application will be refused for fear of an appeal. I say to the Minister that this is a classic example of local people doing all the right things, but not having their voice listened to.

Kingswood is one of the villages in my constituency that would like to produce a neighbourhood plan. Neighbourhood plans are a fantastic innovation and I welcome them—indeed, when the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), was the Planning Minister, he kindly visited the Cotswolds and spoke about the benefits of neighbourhood plans. Following that, I wrote to all my parish and town councils encouraging them to develop and adopt neighbourhood plans. The problem is that without an adopted local plan in place, neighbourhood plans have to be considered but can be overruled in the local planning process. That is a severe erosion of localism in the planning process, and I believe that it is why so few neighbourhood plans are emerging in my constituency. It renders all the incredibly hard and in-depth work required to produce a neighbourhood plan redundant if it can simply be ignored. Will the Minister issue guidelines that provide greater weight to emerging neighbourhood plans or village design statements, even in the absence of local plans?

I mentioned the limited resources that rural councils often have to deal with planning problems. It seems to me—and during discussions with others, they have agreed—that when local authorities come to reducing their expenditure, planning departments are often on the receiving end. As we all know, planning is complicated and requires much expertise. It is difficult for a small planning department to undertake its statutory development control function simultaneously with its forward planning function, and it is the forward planning function that usually suffers. What can the Government do to ensure that planning authorities have the resources that they need to produce local plans in a timely fashion?

I have a suggestion for the House and for the Minister, who I hope will consider it: the Government could create a mandatory scheme whereby each planning authority that does not have an adopted local plan is provided with a specific planning inspector who can mentor that council through the various stages of its development plan. That should hugely help authorities to present to the inspector a timely local plan, which is more likely to be judged sound. Critically, that would avoid further delay caused by the plan having to go back to the drawing board locally. The mentor inspector would always be different from the inspector who would eventually consider the plan, to ensure impartiality and avoid judicial reviews.

That process would work by an authority being allocated an inspector, and thereafter, a timetable for agreed actions to complete a plan being set by the mentor inspector and the authority. That inspector would then be obliged to report back to the Secretary of State if they felt that the timetable was seriously slipping. It would then be for the Secretary of State to take any action that he saw as necessary to ensure that good progress was made with the local plan. I would be grateful if the Minister considered that. It would be a carrot-and-stick approach, but after all, all authorities have had at least four years’ notice that they need to have plans adopted, yet some are still a long way from that objective.

Another resource issue faced by local planning authorities is that they need a number of professionally skilled people, such as landscape architects, town planners, heritage experts and so on, all of whom have specialist knowledge. I was pleased when the Cotswold, Forest of Dean and West Oxfordshire district councils and Cheltenham borough council struck a deal recently to pool their back-office functions, saving an estimated £5.5 million a year. Although not yet agreed, I believe that the arrangement will mean that between them, they can employ people with the necessary skills, so that they will not have to spend a lot of extra money on outside consultants when drawing up local plans.

Related to that point is the duty to co-operate, which is rightly stipulated in the NPPF. The Cotswolds is a district that shares its borders with 10 different local authorities, some highly rural, such as North Wiltshire, and some urban, such as Swindon borough council, therefore making planning matters even more complicated. I would be grateful if the Minister touched on how we can ensure that the duty to co-operate is more clearly defined.

I want to mention two additional factors, beginning with infrastructure requirements. I have already mentioned an application—or rather, an aspiration at this stage—for 2,350 houses proposed at Chesterton on the edge of Cirencester. However, the infrastructure there, particularly the roads and the sewerage network, is already at breaking point and simply cannot cope with such a large new development. We have already experienced dreadful water and sewerage problems during the flooding in 2007, 2012 and 2013. Building 2,350 new homes, without adequate additional infrastructure, would simply exacerbate that problem further. Indeed, Thames Water, at a recent meeting and in a follow-up letter from the chief executive, has explicitly stated to me that a new sewer would need to bypass the existing Cirencester sewerage network catchment if the development were to go ahead.

I would like to take this opportunity to put on record my strong belief that water and sewerage undertakers should always be statutory consultees in the planning process, alongside the Environment Agency and bodies that have that status. Water undertakers are critical for new developments, so they should be involved at the core of the process. Some might say that that would slow the process down, but I believe that the opposite would be the case; rather, it would concentrate minds on what infrastructure was actually needed.

There is the same problem throughout the rest of the Cotswolds, and I am sure, throughout the country. For example, in Moreton-in-Marsh, a town that has faced an increase of more than 30% in its housing stock since 2011, infrastructure improvements are desperately needed. The main road bridge into the town already cannot cope with two heavy goods vehicles crossing it at the same time from opposite directions; it certainly will not be able to deal with the additional traffic from new housing. The NPPF states that infrastructure provisions must be central to planning applications, but there is not enough evidence of that.

The problem will be compounded by the introduction of the new community infrastructure levy on 5 April 2015. That will limit the amount of pooling of section 106 agreements to pay for community infrastructure. No more than five section 106 agreements will be allowed to pay for the same project. That could prevent important services from being provided to towns and villages, such as new schools, doctors’ surgeries, libraries and so on, which are required as a result of new development. I know that the community infrastructure levy is intended to pay for those types of projects, but yet again, I understand that it will apply only when the local authority has an adopted local plan—another example of how not having a plan in place is really handcuffing local communities.

Will the Minister consider strengthening guidance to ensure that applications receive only permission if guarantees are put in place that the necessary infrastructure will also be delivered during the course of the development? If that does not happen, the indigenous population will suffer because of the new development, and that will create even more disquiet when further development is proposed.

Finally, I want to touch on protections for AONBs and conservation areas, which I appreciate the Government recognise as important, but which, I believe, are not being given sufficient weight by appeal inspectors. Roughly 80% of my constituency is located within the Cotswolds AONB, which is hugely important not just to me and my constituents but to the country as a whole. I have already referred to the Cotswolds as a jewel in the UK’s crown, and I would be grateful to receive reassurances from the Minister that due protection will be granted to AONBs.

I suggest that the Minister should ensure that NPPF guidance states that equal weight should be given to social and environmental issues as is currently given to economic development issues. That would have a positive impact in ensuring that the most important landscapes, which many enjoy, are not damaged beyond repair.

I will conclude now, because I know that others want to contribute. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about assistance for councils that have not adopted local plans, and about my suggestion of a mentoring-type scheme. I would also be grateful to hear from him about infrastructure concerns, the protection of AONBs and the other important matters that I have raised.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I refer to my relevant entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who is a good friend. He spoke with great knowledge and expertise.

I am glad to see the Minister here. I start by saying well done to him and his colleagues for the good work done overall on the national planning policy framework. It is worth remembering how complex and unwieldy the system had become before the NPPF was introduced. No one I speak to, whether they be officers, members of local authorities, developers or members of communities, really misses the plethora of regional strategies, supplementary planning guidance, planning policy statements and guidance and all that went with that. That change was profoundly important.

The sense I get from talking to people across the sector is that they want a period of stability while the NPPF beds in. Sensible changes and refinements can be made, but that is rather different from wholesale upheaval. I suspect that those who want to bring forward housing and business premises, and the infrastructure that goes with them—my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds was right to refer to the need for infrastructure to be linked in fully with development—will want a period of policy stability, during which they can invest. There were a few myths when the NPPF first came in, but by and large they have been proven to be just that. My hon. Friend made a fair point about the need for consistency in the inspectorate, but the Minister, his predecessors and others have worked hard to try to achieve that, and I am optimistic that quality control is improving significantly.

It is sometimes forgotten that although the NPPF was radical in many ways, it built on what we had before. As my hon. Friend said, it is a plan-led system, and we have reinforced that, with the plan central and fundamental to the construct. There has always been a presumption in favour of development in our planning policy, and the presumption in favour of sustainable development is a central part of the NPPF. Perhaps those of us who had a hand in its construction did that deliberately, but we built on what was already there in the 1948 legislation, which said that there was a presumption in favour of development unless rational considerations indicated otherwise. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 added a reference to sustainable development. We took that idea, built on it, and put it much more centre-stage in a simplified, slimmed-down document, so communities who have legitimate sustainability-related grounds on which to resist development should have no fear.

I want to raise a few issues that come up when I talk to people. The point about the importance of having a plan has been made, and I am sure that the Minister will update us with the latest figures on adoption of plans by local authorities. There is concern. In some cases that may be because local authorities have not invested, and in other cases that may be because they did not have capacity or—let us be frank—the political will to take the tough decisions involved.

The whole point of localism is that if power is handed down to local authorities, they must be prepared to take the responsibility that goes with it, which means reaching decisions on tough matters such as what development goes where in their area. Perhaps we at Westminster can ensure that the plan development process is as simple as possible. It is easier than it was, but many on both sides of the fence in industry think that further simplification might be possible. If that could be done while sustaining the adoption rate of plans, that would be helpful.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I fully understand that local authorities should face consequences if they do not have a local plan. The problem is that local people suffer when the planning system does not work, but on the whole they blame not the local authority, but the Government for the system. That is why the Government need to adopt a carrot-and-stick approach to ensure that all authorities have a local plan adopted as soon as possible.

[Robert Neill]

That is absolutely right. As someone who served on a local authority for 16 years, I know my hon. Friend is also right that often there is confusion about where responsibility lies. The Government have a legitimate role here, which is why I said that while we should have stability in the policy, it is possible to make tweaks and refinements that reflect our experience as we go along. I have an example: there seems to be broad agreement among people involved in this area that local plans should be more concise; they ought to give the strategic view. More prescriptive matters could be more sensibly handled in the neighbourhood plans now being brought forward.

I am glad to see that the Minister and his Department have made more resource available to assist in the development of neighbourhood plans, which should be given more emphasis. I do not expect him to reply to this now, but it might be worth his considering the fact that eminent practitioners have asked me, “Why, for a local plan, do we need much more than a proposals map, the five-year land supply statement and a short document setting out the strategic priorities for the area?” If we could slim the plans down to something like that, that would be a good means of speeding up the process.

The mentoring idea mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds is well worth consideration. Of course, that may cause resourcing issues in the Planning Inspectorate, but the Department has been keen to make more advice available to local authorities to speed up the adoption of plans. A similar issue sometimes arises when there is an inability to complete the local plan owing to dispute between neighbouring authorities on how to apply the duty to co-operate. That is particularly the case where one local authority has a tight boundary that reflects an urban area and virtually all the growth and expansion is taking place in neighbouring authorities’ areas. How can that be reconciled? One suggestion is to have a specialist team in the Planning Inspectorate that arbitrates in such disputes. That would fit quite neatly with the mentoring suggestion my hon. Friend made in relation to other matters. That is a practical measure we could take, which would not be terribly costly.

It is also worth considering whether we should have further carrot as well as further stick. A local authority can get the new homes bonus, which is significant, whether it approves the planning application in the first instance or not. It might concentrate minds if the bonus was not automatically paid, or paid at the same level, if permission was granted on appeal. That might not be popular with my friends in the local government world, and I do not think that that should be done until up-to-date plans are in place, but that might be an appropriate spur to rational and evidence-based decision making in cases where a local authority has refused permission despite having an up-to-date local plan that is consistent with the development proposal.

On the other hand, more positively, is there more that we can do to encourage local authorities to band together and pool the resources of their planning departments? I think that the answer has to be yes. Many of the district councils in this country have quite small-scale planning operations, and they often struggle when confronted with the scale of the resources that a major developer may be able to bring to bear. We should follow on from the joint working that we are doing in other areas of local government—my hon. Friend cited a good example involving his local authority and its neighbours—and consider more pooling of planning departments. Just as we talked about a means of resolving the disputes surrounding the duty to co-operate, perhaps we could also encourage more joint core strategies. We have seen some of those in Norfolk; Norwich and the surrounding hinterlands have signed off joint core strategies. There must be more scope for that. Perhaps we could give greater weight to authorities that have adopted such a sensible and collaborative approach.

Obviously, the housing supply remains a key issue. I am delighted with the commitment of the Government and my party to increasing the rate of building. We certainly need to be building at the rate of 200,000 homes per annum, and I am delighted that the Prime Minister has announced that we intend to bring forward the commencement of that work to 2017, and that the total figure will include 200,000 affordable homes.

At the moment, we talk about a five-year land supply, which is somewhat out of kilter with the land acquisition arrangements that the industry often makes; they fund their acquisitions over a longer period. Is there merit in considering a requirement for a broad 10-year housing supply that feeds the more specific five-year supply, without the need for annual updates? There might be scope for that. It happens to some degree, but the annual updating sometimes causes difficulty. Can we do more forward projection? That would be a refinement, rather than anything that required radical change in methodology. The robustness of the methodology is absolutely critical.

One area has disappointed many people. It is not easy to achieve, but we had hoped—I certainly hoped this when I was a Minister—that more use would be made of tax increment financing. Things have been a little slow in that regard. I appreciate that the Treasury has to be involved in such negotiations, and we have to look at the broader macro-economic position. If we are properly to join up infrastructure with housing, infrastructure and other development on the planning side, it is also important for the financing streams for that infrastructure to be properly in place, so that the delivery of the infrastructure can start in parallel with the development that creates the demand for it, rather than starting afterwards. That is not simply roads and transport infrastructure, but social infrastructure to meet the need for more schools, hospitals and other such facilities.

During the next Parliament, especially if my party is in government, I hope that we will see a restatement of the commitment to rolling out TIFs more widely. I am glad that the development of a municipal bond market may be helpful, but it is not a substitute for the development of TIFs, which are much more specific to development proposals. We should congratulate the Mayor of London on using, in effect, a TIF model with great success to fund the Northern line extension. That is clear enough proof that it can work.

I will say one final thing before I sit down, because I know that other hon. Members want to speak. We have made a good start, in my judgment, with the NPPF. The Minister has done excellent work to put in place practical measures to deliver housing and other planning supply measures. Hon. Members have heard me say this before, but one thing remains unfinished business: pretty much all the experts to whom I speak say that they do not want major change to the planning regime and the NPPF, but say that if there is an opportunity for a piece of legislation in the next Parliament, what they require is a comprehensive reform of land compensation and compulsory purchase law. That area lags well behind the curve in our planning reforms. It is the one area in which reform has not yet taken root, and that may be a significant block in a number of places. I hope that that will remain centre stage in the new Parliament, because it would be a logical and practical next step from the planning reforms that we have already made.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I could not agree more strongly. If we could reform the planning and compensation regime, I am sure that our major infrastructure projects—the biggest ones, such as High Speed 2, the extension of Heathrow and so on—could be completed in a much shorter time scale to the benefit of the nation.

[Robert Neill]

I am absolutely sure that that is right. There might also be more scope for the use of mediation in relation to projects such as HS2, instead of our rather cumbersome hybrid Bill process. Those are sensible things, which could work in parallel. On that note, having reached further agreement with my hon. Friend, I commend the Minister on the work that he has done, and leave him with those thoughts on possible further progress, building on what I believe is a good start.

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[Brandon Lewis]

I want to finish this point. I find it slightly ironic when I hear the hon. Lady talking about how we must link neighbourhood and local planning. In essence that is correct, and I believe in it. However, it comes from a party that was responsible for the top-down system I mentioned, in which there was little local involvement. It is a party whose shadow Secretary of State wrote to district council leaders last summer to outline some of the things he wanted to do; those who read on to the second page will have realised that he was talking about taking power away from district councils, in particular, and moving back to a more regionally based system. If they did not like it, they would just lose their planning power, effectively.

Of course, the leader of the Labour party has made clear his ideas about what will happen when there is an urban area that wants to build, but it neighbours a rural area without the capacity to take on that development. The duty to co-operate does not mean that it can take on that capacity; the development will be forced on the rural area. I struggle to see how any area will accept that as true localism. It simply is not. It is going back to a top-down system of control, under which Labour failed to deliver homes year after year for 13 years.

I have sympathy with what the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) said about ancient woodland. I talked to the Woodland Trust last week about the importance of environmental development. When I talk about good-quality development, I want it to be clear that we want trees and nature to be part of the environment. I was pleased to hear recently that Barratt Homes has worked out a deal for a secondment from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, to work with Barratt and make sure that it develops a good environment along with its homes. It is important to move away from the practice of many years of building big housing estates—nice as some are, with lovely homes in them—where there is one area of green in the middle, which, after six months, has a sign saying “No ball games, no children, no looking, no touching.” I say that tongue in cheek, but the reality on some estates is kind of like that. People never get to know their neighbours, because there is no community interaction. An important way to encourage such things is the development of communities where retail space is mixed with residential and commercial space, and with good, usable community space. I am keen for that to happen, as I said earlier this week, in the Ebbsfleet garden city, in Northstowe and in Bicester, which I visited last week to see the development. It is a great way to move forward, and neighbourhood planning can play a part in that.

Hon. Members will appreciate that as a Minister I have a quasi-judicial role in the planning system, so I cannot comment on specific proposals—a couple have been mentioned today—or individual plans. However, I will cover the issues touched on today in more general terms. We all agree, across the parties, on the importance of getting plans in place. They set the framework in which local decisions should and must be made. The Government have returned power in plan making to the local level wherever possible. As I have said and my hon. Friends have mentioned, we revoked the last Administration’s unpopular and undemocratic regional strategies. We have enabled communities to bring forward neighbourhood plans, the most important and exciting development in planning that has happened in this country in decades.

We have reformed local plan making so that inspectors may propose modifications to a plan only if invited to do so by the council. I must be clear about that, given some of the comments that have been made today. Furthermore, the NPPF strongly incentivises plan making, encouraging all councils to engage their communities and put plans in place as soon as possible, and to ensure that those plans are kept up to date. Some of my hon. Friends have given examples of frustrations that they have encountered in putting plans in place. It has been a pleasure to hear my hon. Friends talk about some of the issues in their areas. Cheshire East was mentioned, which I visited in a previous capacity, to attend a public meeting on planning. It was a wonderful experience, as it always is when I visit the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) with her. However, I have to say that Cheshire East is an example of somewhere local people are quite right to be frustrated and irritated at the behaviour of their council and its failure to deliver a local plan.

My hon. Friend touched on the fact that Cheshire East council had the support of a retired inspector whom we sent in to work with it. I wish that the council had listened to the advice so that the plan was in a better place. I understand the frustration of residents, bearing in mind that they can look only next door to another local authority that, in the same time frame, has delivered its plan sound and finished. There is no excuse for Cheshire East’s failure thus far.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am delighted to hear what the Minister is saying about neighbourhood plans. In Cheshire, as in the Cotswolds, a number of communities would love to produce neighbourhood plans, but they are deterred from doing so by the thought that when the local plan is complete their wishes could be overruled, and all that energy and expense that they went to in producing a neighbourhood plan will be wasted. Will he give any encouragement to such communities? I have been encouraging all of them to produce plans, because an adopted neighbourhood plan is a material consideration and can be overruled only for very good reasons.

[Brandon Lewis]

In short, yes. I will come on to that, but I can very much give my hon. Friend that assurance. Even decisions made in recent months back up the importance of neighbourhood plans and the weight that they carry in the planning system and in law, even if they are moving ahead of a local plan. I will come on to that in some detail.

My hon. Friends the Members for Congleton and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) made points that highlighted the fact that councillors need to remember that they are there to make decisions; officers are in place to advise and to implement. Councillors need to ensure that they are fully aware of what is being said. I have met a number of councillors and leaders involved in planning over the past year or so who have talked about their local plan or a decision, but when I have met them with their officers it has been clear that they have not read the legislation, the regulations or the report from the inspector. They have simply taken the word of their officers, who have interpreted things in their own way. I stress to councillors who are looking at the transcript of the debate, or listening to us today, that they should take the time to ensure that they understand what is going on and that they give direction to their officers. Councillors are the ones who are elected to make decisions.

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[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. A key consideration is that it should not be up to us in Westminster to decide what is important to the local area; it is up to the local council. We have put the protections in place—we have made it clear that development on green belt should be exceptional and the last resort, and even then should be carried out only with great care and consideration. If local authorities make a green belt area a developable piece of land, they should do so only as part of a full review and a local plan process. Indeed, there are examples of inspectors turning down such work if there is not a strong evidence base to show why the local authority wants it. So green belt should be redesignated only in exceptional circumstances and as a last resort. Furthermore, the NPPF notes green belt as one of the environmental constraints on development in the framework and local planning process.

A core principle of the framework is that planning authorities should recognise the intrinsic character and beauty of their countryside. The characteristics of different landscape and the importance of ensuring that development is suitable for the local context should be recognised. As my hon. Friends have mentioned this afternoon, much countryside is loved and cherished by local communities. I acknowledge such concerns, and I will write to the Planning Inspectorate setting out publicly how the existing policy should operate, to ensure that it is fully understood not only by the inspectorate, but—to go back to my earlier point—by councils and councillors as well.

I want to be clear that weight can be applied to emerging plans, particularly when they are at an advanced stage. However, it would be wrong to give draft or emerging plans the same status and weight as finished plans that have been examined. Otherwise, what will be the incentive to finish the local plan and get it examined before the community? Decisions based on untested draft plans could have lasting and potentially damaging impacts on communities and the environment.

Our policy strikes a careful balance between affording draft plans some weight and ensuring that local authorities continue to move forward and bring plans to examination and completion. However, given the concerns expressed today, I will write to the Planning Inspectorate to ensure that that position and the different weighting given to plans as they develop are fully understood.

I fully agree that planning departments should have the resources they need to plan effectively, a point made by Members including the hon. Member for City of Durham. Councils must give planning the priority it needs, as effective planning is vital for supporting sustainable growth in the right locations. A local authority should see its planning department as its economic regeneration department. Local authorities are now benefiting from the fact that we increased planning application fees by 15% in November 2012, which has provided an additional £32 million per annum for planning services—we often forget that. That comes on top of the fact that under this Government, local authorities have increased their reserves to some £21 billion, a record level.

Good councils and councillors will realise that planning is the heartbeat of economic regeneration on two levels. First, if they want to see growth in jobs, business and homes, they will need a good local plan that looks not just at residential planning but at commercial and retail planning—neighbourhood plans can also look at those types of planning—and works as part of a process that is well planned and well thought through. That is good for communities, as it means a growth in the number of homes, and also provides facilities for job growth. It is also good for the finances of local authorities, because of the new retained business rates scheme and the new homes bonus scheme, both of which reward councils financially. Planning should be at the heart of a local authority, and there is an onus on authorities to think more about how they ensure that they have those resources. Where possible, they should work together to share resources and specialists—that is particularly important for the small district councils we see in some parts of the country—as they have done on the shared management of other types of services.

I will now touch on neighbourhood planning in a little detail; it has been mentioned a few times today, and I said that I would do so in answer to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds. Neighbourhood planning is one of the most exciting innovations of this Government’s localism agenda. It was established to devolve power from central Government not just to local councils but directly to communities and the individuals living in them—a real devolution of power. For the first time, community groups can produce development plans that carry real weight in the planning system. That allows them to play a much more powerful role in shaping the future of the areas in which they live and work.

A neighbourhood plan can include policies on where new homes should go, what they should look like, what green spaces to protect and how high streets should be saved. Just today, I visited Milton Keynes, where there is a business neighbourhood plan. It is an exciting, adventurous and ambitious proposal that will go to a referendum on 7 May. I am not saying that will be the biggest ballot that people will be voting in that day in Milton Keynes, but I think it will probably have the biggest turnout of any referendum on a neighbourhood plan. Neighbourhood plans have been so well received that we are seeing turnouts in the referendums of about 33%. That is quite an achievement—many local councils would like that kind of turnout in elections—and highlights how people have really taken to neighbourhood planning. More than 6 million people are now covered by a neighbourhood planning process.

My hon. Friend commented that in his constituency, neither Cotswold district council nor Stroud district council has an adopted local plan. I recognise that it may be more challenging to produce a neighbourhood plan where there is no up-to-date local plan in place. Other Members have made that point. I will be clear: in those circumstances, a made neighbourhood plan can provide some certainty in areas where there is otherwise an absence of up-to-date policy. We have witnessed that in Arun, Chichester and Mid Sussex, where neighbourhood plans have come into force where there is no up-to-date local plan and the new local plan is still emerging.

Local authorities should be working with all communities that are developing neighbourhood plans to ensure that there is effective linking up between local and neighbourhood plans. Good councils are doing exactly that, with help from Government funding. Where a neighbourhood plan has been made, the local planning authority should take it into account when preparing the local plan strategy and policies, to avoid duplicating non-strategic policies set out in the neighbourhood plan.

More than 1,400 communities in England have already grasped the new power and begun preparing their own neighbourhood plan, including eight in my hon. Friend’s constituency. As I said, that means that the plans are covering 6.1 million people across the country, which is 11% of the population. I want to get to the other 89%, so that plans are rolled out and we share best practice. That is why I was delighted that this week I was able to host the first of our neighbourhood planning summits, to bring together people who have delivered a neighbourhood plan and seen its benefits, how rewarding it is and the power it gives. It is not just that the neighbourhood can then benefit from 25% of the community infrastructure levy to spend locally; neighbourhood planning gives communities power over planning in a way that we have never seen localised before.

Neighbourhood planning referendums have been successful partly because people are beginning to understand just how rewarding the plans can be and how powerful they are for developing their local area. As a result, the referendums are getting not only a 33% average turnout—although as I have said, the referendum at Milton Keynes on the day of the general election may see that figure go up a little bit—but an amazing average yes vote of 88%. I know that many Members would like that kind of recognition at the ballot box. Six referendums are taking place today.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The longer my hon. Friend’s speech goes on, the better I like it. In addition to his writing to the Planning Inspectorate, may I urge him to write to the leaders of all planning authorities about the importance of neighbourhood plans? I have a suspicion that some, including some fairly close to home, are not overly supportive of the plans. I would like to see my local authorities fully supporting neighbourhood plans.

[Brandon Lewis]

I am happy to do that. As ever, my hon. Friend makes a good point, and, if Members will indulge me for a moment, I will give a good example why. It concerns making sure that we spread best practice—something that we in this country could sometimes do better, particularly in local government. Sometimes we are too shy of talking about what we do and how well it is working. Some areas are doing some really ambitious and adventurous things with neighbourhood planning.

Neighbourhood planning is proving that we are not a country of nimbys, because it is delivering housing. The system of trusting local people to make good local decisions has just delivered an almost record level of housing planning application approvals. Some 240,000 applications were approved over the last 12-month period. That is testament to local people making good, well thought-out and well reasoned decisions for their local area.

When I spoke at the inaugural neighbourhood planning summit on Monday, celebrating the success of neighbourhood planning, I outlined and explained the following case. Last summer, I spoke to some parish councillors about the importance of neighbourhood planning and how to do it. Those parish councillors got very irate; they explained to me that as I was a Westminster politician, I did not understand that they had done all that locally and that, actually, neighbourhood planning had no weight in law. Someone, somewhere had told them that—in one case, it was a council officer. I had to explain to those people that what they had was a village plan. In one case, it was a nice 21-page document with half a page on housing, half of which was a photograph of a nice house in the village. That is not a neighbourhood plan. I also had to explain that neighbourhood plans have weight in law.

Neighbourhood planning is not the easiest thing a community will ever do, but it is rewarding. There has to be a robust process because it has weight in law. Communities that are making neighbourhood plans are seeing benefits—not only the 25% of the community infrastructure levy that they get, or the fact that they have power and involvement in decision making about planning. It is bringing people together and getting them involved in their communities in a way that, in many areas, they have never been involved before. All of us, including councillors across the country, know that a planning issue brings a community together in one way or another more quickly than anything else. We cannot put a price on the social value of getting people to come together in their community. It is one of the most powerful things to have come from neighbourhood planning.

On Monday, I was pleased to outline the Government’s ongoing commitment to supporting, simplifying and improving neighbourhood planning, which includes a new £22.5 million support programme. Neighbourhood planning is here to stay. Under a Conservative Government, it will not go away but will continue to develop. We will continue to build on it, and I want to make it as simple and robust as possible. I want to encourage local communities across the country to get involved. It is easy for them to find out more about it. Plenty of areas that have done it are keen to share their good experience.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister is aware of this, but I want to refer to something that my neighbour, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), mentioned. The very good Gloucestershire rural community council will give excellent advice to any parish or town council about how to formulate a neighbourhood plan. That sort of collective working in a county as big as Gloucestershire is a thoroughly good thing.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government have been working to roll out a series of workshops around the country to enable people to come together to hear about the benefit and value of neighbourhood planning from people who have done it. There was one not long ago in Norwich, in my county of Norfolk. Broadland district council has done some fantastic work in supporting the local community. I see examples of it everywhere. At the summit on Monday, Broadland district council offered to talk to other areas—even those outside Broadland—about the benefits of neighbourhood planning, and about how to do it and how to move it forward in a straightforward way.

The issue of speculative development has been raised a couple of times today. Members touched on the community right of appeal, which we went into in some detail in our debate a few weeks ago, so I would encourage Members to look at that transcript. Where local authorities do not have an up-to-date local plan or policies, the presumption in favour of sustainable development applies. However, that does not mean development at any cost. Speculative development is not acceptable if it is not sustainable development. Decision makers are required to consider all aspects of sustainable development, including the economic, social and environmental aspects, and inspectors do that.

I will give some examples of recent appeals that demonstrate that inspectors sometimes find that development is unacceptable even in the absence of an up-to-date local plan. That relates to my point about making councillors more aware of the decisions that are actually being made. It is important to remember that the proportion of decisions that are made on appeal by a planning inspector against a council’s decision has not changed in a long time—it is still about 1%—which shows that, in that sense, the system works.

We will not necessarily prevent developers from doing what they do, which is to try to get something developed, if they think it is profitable for them. However, if there is an up-to-date local plan in place, and especially if there is an up-to-date neighbourhood plan in place, and a developer wants to do something outside those plans, unless it has the support and agreement of the community that should be the hardest thing they ever try to do. It should be pretty much impossible to achieve.

For example, in Aylesbury Vale, appeals against applications for several thousand homes were recommended for refusal only last month, and the recommendations were upheld by the Secretary of State. Despite the lack of a five-year housing land supply, an inspector considered that the proposals would have had an adverse impact on the character and appearance of the landscape, and were not supported adequately by sustainable transport provision. In Chichester, an inspector concluded that a proposed development of 110 homes would be “mediocre” and “unimaginative”, and therefore contrary to the requirements of the framework. Those are just a couple of examples.

I will ensure that we do more to publicise recent cases more widely to reassure councils that unsustainable development can be resisted. I will also ask the Planning Advisory Service to work with local authorities to ensure that our message is clearly understood. The framework does not stand for development at any cost. It promotes positive planning and sustainable, good-quality development.

I am also aware of the many concerns of local authorities that consider that they have to waste considerable time and resources in defending challenges to their housing supply. We will therefore issue new guidance to clarify the operation of the five-year housing land supply, which will give local authorities greater confidence in resisting challenges to their evidence, if they have prepared it appropriately.

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friends that the provision of timely and robust infrastructure is vital to delivering sustainable development. National policy and guidance already set out clear expectations for securing infrastructure provision in the planning process. Local authorities already have a range of legislative tools to deliver that in a timely and transparent manner. Furthermore, the cumulative impact of development and the need for infrastructure to support development are material considerations in deciding whether individual applications should be approved. I hope councillors will make themselves aware of that.

My hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) raised issues about the section 106 changes, permitted development rights and the Government’s recent consultation, to which we will respond shortly. The vacant building credit applies to non-residential buildings, and the relief is intended to reflect the often high costs of conversion and refurbishment that are associated with bringing existing buildings back into use. One of the points that I would have made to Westminster council, if it had contacted us directly—I have said this elsewhere—is that the buildings were vacant, so the authority’s argument that it is losing money does not stack up. The buildings are not currently in use and are not proposed to be used for anything. Therefore, they are new, fresh opportunities for residential use. However, I will write to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster with full details about how the process works, and I am happy to meet him and/or the local authority to go thorough the issues. On the issue of permitted development rights, he is right that there have been exemptions for parts of London.

On the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park about section 106, I will say two things. First, I have a great deal of sympathy with the arguments. We looked at that issue as part of the consultation, and I will deal with it when we respond. I am sympathetic to why the exemptions were put in place, and I understand their importance for the strategic commercial work spaces that we have in London. That is why those protections were introduced. I appreciate that there is a strong argument that nothing has changed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

May I thank you, Sir David, and Mr Turner for so graciously chairing today’s superb debate? I wish the public saw more such debates on technical, difficult subjects. Ten colleagues participated in it, and if the public saw more of the working of Parliament, I think they would hold us in higher regard.

I thank all the Clerks and the Hansard Reporters, and I thank the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) for her gracious remarks to me. She said a very important thing in welcoming the introduction of the NPPF. That remark will be widely welcomed around the country, because that gives us certainty in the planning system, which is really important.

I repeat what I said about my hon. Friend the Minister. I am incredibly grateful to him for being here, because I know he has a busy schedule. Some of his remarks today were incredibly important, in particular those on neighbourhood plans. They will be heard widely around the county and will give a big fillip to communities, so that tomorrow more of them may consider whether they could introduce a neighbourhood plan. I warmly welcome the Minister’s offer to write to the Planning Inspectorate and leaders of local authorities to clarify certain matters relating to local plans, such as the weight to be given to them and to the five-year housing supply, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce).

I also pay warm tribute to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). As the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said, this might be my last opportunity to do that. His contribution to the House over the past 40 years has been immense. I have enjoyed working with him on the Liaison Committee, where I have seen at close hand the quality work that he does.

All in all, this has been a thoroughly good debate. I will say just one final thing to the Minister: he could not say this today, but I stress again that those authorities that do not have a local plan need to be given a bigger stick.

Question put and agreed to.