National Planning Policy Framework

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Robert Neill

Thursday 5th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[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.

Equitable Life

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Robert Neill

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend makes an entirely fair point. This should all have been sorted out before the Government came on to the scene. The question of who was to blame and why ultimately requires almost a Crichel Down sort of approach—we must all accept responsibility for what happens under regulators who were not politicians. We must accept that it was done and must now resolve it. Had it been resolved sooner, there might have been more money around to deal with the issue. However, given where we are now and that the economy is improving, we can certainly do justice to people through a sensible series of staged payments, starting with those who are in the greatest need and who are most vulnerable. It is reasonable to ensure in the course of the Parliament that proper justice is done.

Let me give a sense of the impact on individuals. I have one constituent who makes the point that having invested sensibly his income has effectively been cut by some £20,000 a year. To a pensioner, that is an awful lot of money and they have had to downsize from their long-established family home. Another constituent has an acknowledged loss of £61,000 and is some £47,000 adrift with the payments out. That is not fair for somebody who has worked hard and is now in no position to supplement their income for the future.

Another very elderly gentleman had to wait some 18 months—because, frankly, of ineptitude and lost correspondence—to even receive acknowledgement of his entitlement. He should not have to come to his Member of Parliament to escalate these matters. That is something that any sensible and well-run compensation scheme should deal with as a matter of course. I am sure we all hope eventually to overcome the difficulties for our constituents, but they should not be happening in the first place.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am sorry to reiterate the point I made in an earlier intervention, but one member of the group of people who came to see me was elderly and, if he dies, his widow will get only 50% of the 22% he is entitled to, which is already pretty measly. Is it not incumbent on the Government to make payments now, in full, so that at least people can have that small amount of money to pass on to their dependants?

[Robert Neill]

On that basis, it is particularly important that we deal with the pre-1992 people, who are generally the oldest, but it is also important to have a proper, staged programme in place to deal with everyone.

When I was a lawyer, I accepted, as I think anyone would, that it was not possible to deliver for a client everything in their legitimate claim, because money might not be available or there might be delays. A settlement would be reached and a sensible discount accepted as a resolution, but I do not think that anybody would regard 22% as being a fair settlement of a claim. The Minister is an honourable woman and she must tell us today that she recognises that we are obliged, as a matter of honour, to give the people affected a sum much closer to that of their undisputed loss. As has been said, the quantum is not in dispute—it is a proven fact. We now need to say that, because of the improvement in the economy, we can do better than we were originally able to, for whatever reason. That is the honourable and legitimate thing to do, and it would also restore faith in an important element of our financial sector.

I agree with the hon. Member for Coventry North West and I hope there is enough that we can all agree on. The wording of the motion itself gives the Government the flexibility, provided there is good will—I am sure there is—to achieve its aims in a fair way for the people who have lost out through no fault of their own.

Regional Spatial Strategies

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Robert Neill

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend has that assurance. I have been doing my best to make notes, which is probably terrifying for my officials because there have been too many medical men in my family and my handwriting has been influenced accordingly. None the less, I will certainly do as my hon. Friend suggests, and I will also do my best to get what I can on the record now.

Let me deal with the specific points that have been raised. We have made it clear that we will proceed to the full-scale abolition of the regional spatial strategies as soon as possible. Ultimately, there will be a need for primary legislation to sweep such matters away, which will be dealt with in a localism Bill that will be introduced to the House in this Session. However, despite the caveat raised by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), we will also explore the possibility of using secondary legislation to remove the most difficult part of the regional strategies in advance of that. We are actively discussing with officials the means by which this may be done.

The next step is to issue more detailed guidance. The Pickles letter—a letter issued by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—was intended very specifically to mark out to all concerned the Government’s intention to move swiftly to redeem the coalition pledge, which is part of the coalition agreement. In relation to its status, we are quite satisfied with the legal advice that has been given to us that it is a material consideration and should be regarded as such, both by local planning authorities, in considering applications, and by the inspectorate. That was why we communicated the letter both to local planning authorities and the inspectorate. I am aware that there has been some attempt to dispute that, but I will simply say that lawyers disagree. However eminent the opinion of Mr Village QC, it is at odds with the opinion of those who advise us. I hope that local authorities will not place any more weight on the view of one lawyer than that of many others and that of their communities and electors as to the appropriateness of planning applications. As a material consideration, the opinion must be put into the mix. Of course all applications must be decided on their facts, and that remains the case.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I can assure him that I do not want to cause him any difficulties, but will he do whatever he can to encourage planning inspectors to get on and hear cases rather than adjourning them, so that the emerging position becomes clear?

[Robert Neill]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, and I take his question in the spirit in which it was intended. The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) and I are in discussion with the Planning Inspectorate, and we will ensure that such a factor is taken on board. Everybody wants to move as swiftly as possible, but because the arrangements for planning regulations under the previous Government were so complex, we have something of a legal minefield to walk through to ensure that we get it right. If we make important changes, we are determined that we do not have any false starts. I hope that Members will understand our reasons for doing so.

There will be further guidance. I am sorry that I am not able to say to hon. Members that I have it here today, but when I say that my right hon. Friend will issue the guidance soon, I mean it. I hope that people understand that a good deal of work is being done at the moment, and that we intend to move very swiftly to set it out. I am conscious that such guidance should involve both the transitional arrangements and some of the implications that follow therefrom. We have already made it clear that the abolition of the regional strategies is emerging Government policy and, therefore, a material consideration and that local planning authorities should not feel intimidated from getting on with adopting those parts of their local plans that are appropriate.

Moreover, we will give local authorities the opportunity to revise partially those plans to reflect the abolition of the regional strategies and the imposed targets that went with them. Sometimes it is felt that the revision of a local plan is a long-winded process and rather daunting, but let me assure Members that a focused revision of the plan that concentrates on certain aspects, such as the housing aspects that are affected by the removal of the regional strategies, need not take that degree of time. I hope that hon. Members will take back that important message to their constituencies. The revision can be done swiftly and without great expense to the local authorities. Some local authorities are already taking that on board. Those are key steps that we are keen to take at an early stage.