Future of the Planning System in England

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution to the report, and she is absolutely right: we made this point in our recommendations. We welcome the Government’s proposals to digitise the system, which could bring in a better system with more community public access to it, but we should not then take steps that would exclude those who are not comfortable in the digital environment. Therefore we want to see the retention of statutory notices in physical form, in newspapers or on lamp posts, alongside digital arrangements.

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

I congratulate the Chairman and his Committee on producing a very comprehensive and constructive report on this all-encompassing subject. In the report, he says:

“We think the Government’s abandonment of its proposed formula for determining housing need is the correct decision.”

For many areas, such as the Cotswolds, the formula would have produced a staggering 144% increase in housing numbers, but it would not have addressed the affordability ratio. Can he suggest what his Committee’s recommendations to the Government would be on a revised approach, and, importantly, whether affordability and housing mix—the need for smaller properties or flats for first-time buyers and elderly people who are downsizing—should be considered?

[Mr Betts]

The housing needs formula is a desperately difficult one. and the Government have a difficult job. It is right that we should try to have a housing needs formula, because it can reduce the amount of time taken up with planning inquiries in the local plan. They nearly always devolve down to long arguments about housing numbers, which is not really helpful. If local areas have particular problems they should highlight them, because a one-size-fits-all needs assessment does not necessarily meet the requirements of every individual authority.

On the particulars on the sort of housing, local councils ought to be given an opportunity to be more granular in their approach. Indeed, we made a specific recommendation in a previous report that every local plan should not just have an assessment of housing numbers but, particularly in relation to elderly people’s housing, how many of those units should be built and where they should be built to ensure provision for elderly people going forward.