Housing Targets: Planning System

Gordon Henderson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I will call Gordon Henderson to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered housing targets and the planning system.

This is not the first time I have raised the subject of overdevelopment in my constituency. In the last 12 years, I have done so on a number of occasions, so I will not repeat what I have said before, except to emphasise the problems that excessive housebuilding has caused my constituents. Our local roads are congested and cannot cope with the level of traffic generated by the new housing. My constituents struggle to get a GP appointment, because there are not enough doctors to service the thousands of extra people who have moved to the area. Many of our local schools are over-subscribed, and new arrivals struggle to get school places for their children.

The huge increase in housing development in my area has been driven by my local authority, Swale Borough Council, attempting to meet the top-down housing targets imposed by the Government. In past debates, successive Housing Ministers have insisted that the Government do not impose targets, and that it is up to local authorities to determine housing growth after consultation with the Planning Inspectorate, which of course is a Government quango. An example of the outcome of such consultation is that Swale Borough Council submitted its most recent local plan, which had a housing land allocation for 776 homes per year, only for the Planning Inspectorate to reject the proposal and insist that the figure should be increased to 1,048 per year.

The irony is that, despite the massive increases in housing in Swale over the past 30 years—17,000 new homes have been built in that time—developers have not once matched even the 776 figure in the past 10 years. The problem with nationally imposed mandatory housing targets is that they are arbitrary and lack supportable evidence of need. Officers and members of Swale Borough Council believe that targets should be set at local and sub-regional levels, and should take into account an area’s ability to deliver them. They believe that the housing delivery test, buffers, housing action plans and housing targets have served only to increase pressure on local authorities, rather than to deliver more housing.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate; he is making some important points. Does he agree that unless local housing targets are set according to local need, it is difficult to adequately provide the necessary infrastructure he referred to earlier—education, health and transport in particular? Will he join me in urging the Minister to consider that there should be a right of appeal for local communities against inappropriate housing applications? There is a right for the developer; there is not currently a right for communities.

[Gordon Henderson]

I could not agree more, and I will touch on one or two of those issues.

Ministers have recently made a number of encouraging remarks about scrapping mandatory top-down targets, but there is little concrete evidence to suggest that that will ever happen. The lack of clarity is causing uncertainty, which is crippling the ability of Swale—and, I am sure, other local authorities—to put together meaningful local plans. In addition to the uncertainty over targets, producing local plans is becoming much slower, because the overall process is getting more complicated. Swale Borough Council believes that the difficulties will increase with the burden of the Environment Act 2021, other emerging legislation, including the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, and revised national planning guidance.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his excellent speech. Does he agree that the Government also need to take into account the post-pandemic world? Local plans have historically been more backward-looking, but people are now working more from home, so there is less draw to come to London or the south-east more generally for good, well-paid jobs. Does he agree that the Government should look to evolve local planning processes off the back of that?

[Gordon Henderson]

Yes, I do agree. The Government should also take into account the amount of housing that has already been built in an area. There is no point expecting a local authority to deliver higher housing targets if it has already delivered 17,000 additional homes over a number of years, as is the case in my area. All we are doing is putting extra strain on the infrastructure.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this issue. Although it is the responsibility of the Minister, I want to express my support for the hon. Gentleman, as I always do in these debates, because we have a similar problem in Northern Ireland, where some 44,000 people are waiting for a home and 31,000 are in housing distress. The issue is massive for our constituencies. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is not just about houses, but about the right type of housing—housing that has no mould or damp, and that families can live in? Does he agree that when it comes to building houses, homes must be healthy and suitable to live in, to ease the pressure on housing associations, which do their very best to help?

[Gordon Henderson]

Yes, and I am pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman make his contribution. If he were not present for my Westminster Hall debate, I would fear that the world had come to an end; Parliament certainly would have.

It is noticeable that nothing has been done to address the problems faced by so many local authority planning departments. They face onerous new burdens with no increase or improvement in the resources available to them, partly because of a shortage of qualified planning officers. Planning resources are also inadequate at many of the statutory consultee organisations, such as the Environment Agency, Natural England, Historic England and National Highways, and that is leading to delays in providing the necessary input into local plans.

On the subject of National Highways, the agency is blocking housing developments in my patch for which planning permission has already been granted, by submitting objections on the grounds that the local road infrastructure is inadequate. However, it is inadequate because National Highways has delayed making the necessary improvements, and those planning objections are forcing Swale Borough Council to allow planning applications for other sites, because National Highways’ blocking action is suppressing delivery numbers. It is a typical Catch-22 situation. Ultimately, our local infrastructure, which includes roads, needs to keep pace with the delivery of housing, but statutory undertakers are simply failing to ensure that that happens.

The Government have also failed to prevent developers from land banking. I know of several housing developments in Swale where permission has been granted but no work has been started, and developers often sit on allocated land and then try to get permission for other sites based on the delay in housing delivery, for which they are responsible. The scandal needs urgently to be addressed, with a time limit placed on the implementation of approved schemes. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, too many loopholes allow developers to avoid delivering sufficient affordable housing because of supposed unviability.

Swale Borough Council believes that regional or sub-regional planning, such as at county level, would address cross-boundary issues, including reaching agreement on strategic planning matters such as infrastructure and housing, which the legal duty to co-operate, introduced in the Localism Act 2011, has simply not delivered. The council also believes that the way to solve the country’s housing needs is by building a new generation of large new towns across the country. The current policy is to deliver garden communities at a local level on a small or medium scale, but they are simply not large enough to deliver the major infrastructure improvements needed to sustain those communities, such as new roads, hospitals, schools, town centres and low-carbon transport systems, such as trams.

In the council’s view, eight or so major new towns across England would not only support the Government’s levelling-up agenda, but would address housing shortages, including affordable and social housing, deliver genuine place making and see developments take place at a level that benefits the whole country, without degrading locally important assets and landscapes, or placing additional burdens on already creaking local infrastructure.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing forward this debate. In Aldridge-Brownhills, we are faced with a huge number of houses being built across the constituency. He makes a powerful argument why we should abolish housing targets. Local councils know best; they know what is needed and the pressure on the infrastructure. Does my hon. Friend agree that one challenge is that the construction companies that start to develop often withhold the section 106 money and the planning gain money right until the end, so local communities feel a lot of the pain before they see any gain?

[Gordon Henderson]

My right hon. Friend is right. Whoever sets the targets, whether at national or local level, when it comes to planning permission for development, there should be an insistence that the infrastructure is put in place before the housing is started. That can be done, but too often is not. I can give an example: we had a major development on the Isle of Sheppey many years ago, which subsequently led to 2,000 houses. At the time, permission was granted for only a couple of hundred, until such time as a new bridge and other new infrastructure was put in place. That has to be done far more often.

I have raised a number of issues today that are of concern to Swale Borough Council. However, the biggest collective grievance is the imposition of mandatory housing targets and the five-year land supply rule.

[Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing forward the debate. My constituency neighbours his, and we in Rochester and Strood have seen the stresses and strains on local services and the planning department in order to meet unrealistic housing targets, which are particularly imposed on the south-east, where we are based. Does my hon. Friend agree that the targets should be designed at a local level, and that communities should be empowered to object to unrealistic developments that do not deliver the services that the people living in those communities demand?

[Gordon Henderson]

I do agree. It is critical that local people have a say and set the targets, because unless there is local support for something, it will never work. Looking at it cynically, we might say that many local authorities are deciding to build houses in inappropriate places because they can blame the Government for the fact that they have to meet housing targets. If it was up to local people, that would not happen. From a purely cynical point of view, it would be better to let local people do that.

[Wendy Morton]

I genuinely feel that there is a tendency to go for the green belt and greenfield sites. I hope that, as part of pushing targets down to a local level, we can put a duty on Ministers to ensure that we explore every possible brownfield site first and that those are built on before we touch the precious green belt.

[Gordon Henderson]

My right hon. Friend is perfectly right. I mentioned a number of developments in my area, one of which is on a brownfield site. We should be pressing to make sure that is done first, before we allow any other planning applications to be approved.

In thinking about mandatory housing targets, I urge the Minister and her colleagues to look sympathetically at new clause 21 to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which will be debated on Report, which would prohibit mandatory targets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dehenna Davison]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that point. She will know that there are existing funds available for brownfield development. The second round of that fund will be opening up imminently—I am glancing over at my officials and hoping for a nod—[Interruption]—I am getting a nod; excellent—in order for local areas to make the most of that to aid them in their brownfield redevelopment processes as well.

On infrastructure and the pressures on infrastructure, through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill we are looking to create a levy to ensure that infrastructure such as schools, GP surgeries and new roads are provided in a more effective, transparent and efficient manner.

[Gordon Henderson]

That point has been made to me before by a previous Minister. It is all very well saying that the infrastructure levy will provide GP surgeries, but there is no point having the surgeries unless there are doctors to put in there. There has to be a recognition that no planning of houses should be allowed unless and until we are provided with the doctors we require.

[Dehenna Davison]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. GP numbers is something we are all concerned about. That is why the Department of Health and Social Care is taking measures to recruit more GPs right across the board. That is part of the answer, but he is right to raise concerns on the specific planning issues, and I will pass those on to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) raised the issue of infrastructure and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. As part of the Bill, local authorities will be required to prepare an infrastructure delivery strategy, which will make it clearer to communities what infrastructure will be provided and when.

I believe our focus is sometimes too squarely on the numbers side of the equation, which means that we lose sight of the end goal. Numbers do, of course, matter. Thanks to the steps we took with industry at the start of the pandemic, we were able to keep home building going. We built over 216,000 new homes in 2020-21, a figure that was just a small dip from the previous year. In the circumstances, that is quite incredible. Since 2010, over 2 million additional homes have been delivered, including over 598,000 affordable homes—something that I know is on the minds of people across the country, particularly younger people hoping to get on the housing ladder for the first time.