George Hollingbery
Main Page: George Hollingbery (Conservative - Meon Valley)
Greg Clark
I will explain, although I will shortly draw my remarks to a conclusion, as I know that other Members want to speak. As my hon. Friend and all other members of the Committee know, my view is that we should move away from a system of planning by development control, where recourse is made to the Planning Inspectorate rather than local decision makers, which is how the future of our communities has been developed. I want fewer appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and more decided locally. Doing that means plan-making becoming a much more prominent part of the process. Neighbourhood plans and pre-application scrutiny—and, incidentally, neighbourhood plans becoming part of the development plan, even if the local authority disapproves —along with the abolition of regional imposition and the prevention of the inspector from simply rewriting plans are all geared towards making the plan prominent and, indeed, sovereign. When we are dealing with the legitimate concerns of communities that feel that developments that they do not want have been imposed on them, my concern is to strengthen their ability to control the process by participating in plan-making.
Greg Clark
I know that my hon. Friend withdrew an amendment proposing to deprive developers or property owners of their right to appeal. He will know, as a robust free-marketeer, that when planning consent was nationalised, it took away people’s opportunity to do what they wanted with their property, and that that became subject to the right of appeal. I think that that is a reasonable safeguard. I want to make the local plan clear and sovereign, so that it becomes the determinant of planning applications, so that they do not need to go to appeal.
George Hollingbery
In my little local town of Bishop’s Waltham, a supermarket is being built outside the local plan. Is the Minister saying that the sovereignty of local plans will be such that there will be no out-of-plan developments at all, even for supermarkets in small market towns?
Greg Clark
The combination of neighbourhood plans and local plans in the new system will be much more robust than at present. My hon. Friend can reasonably expect that they will govern the decisions that are taken. Too often at the moment, an appearance before the planning committee is merely the first step on the way to an appeal, and that is the wrong way to do planning.
I want briefly to refer to the amendments on betting shops tabled by the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). I know from our conversations that he is very concerned about the proliferation of betting shops in his community and elsewhere. We announced in the Budget a review of how use class orders, relating to a change in use, are handled in the planning system. I will ensure that a specific part of that review deals with the very real issue in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and we will look at what can be done to make progress in that regard.