Housing and Planning Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Absolutely not. Lots of housing associations and local authorities have written to us to say that they are concerned about how the new public body will operate and how onerous interacting with it will be. One said:

“Administrating Pay-To-Stay…will be a near impossible demand upon our self-managed community. Inevitably we would need to look at outsourcing much of this work which will further add to the demise of”

their community.

“It will also be a drain on”

their resources. The point they are making is that they are concerned that the new public body, which will probably be very bureaucratic, will set up a lot of new systems with which social landlords will have to interact and which could put onerous burdens on housing associations and local authorities.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there are several other concerns about how the new public body will be regulated? Will the regulation fall within the remit of the Homes and Communities Agency or the Financial Conduct Authority? If the new body makes mistakes that have the potential to affect tenants’ tax return obligations and so on, how will they be rectified and dealt with in a timely manner? Will that be an additional burden on the public sector?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The subject of our next amendment is how the system will be regulated and subject to external oversight. I will not stray on to that amendment now, because I want to hear what the Minister has to say about the issues raised by amendments 220 to 222.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I was on amendment 228. We want to ensure that from the proceeds of this particularly awful scheme, we at least get a positive outcome, a benefit in the form of some additional social housing. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Helen Hayes]

I support the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham about this extraordinary clause. It is extraordinary in its anti-localist and centralising nature. How can a local authority possibly be expected to estimate the employment fortunes of its tenants, which is in effect what the clause asks for? Is the local authority to conduct an annual appraisal of its tenants? Is it to ask them how things are going at work? Is it to ask them about their aspirations and the likelihood of their getting a pay increase?

Two things about the measure are problematic. First, it requires councils to make estimates based on information that they do not have and cannot possibly control. Secondly, there is no justification for why these payments should be made by local authorities to the Government in any event. The money should be used to deliver new homes and, if not to deliver new homes, to invest in the services that councils provide to their existing tenants and residents.

The Government resolutely refuse to regulate the private rented sector to moderate rents at all, but they will intervene in the rent setting of councils and housing associations. That is despite the advice of David Orr at the National Housing Federation, with which they have entered into the voluntary deal, that it is entirely inappropriate for the Government to engage in the process of setting housing association or local authority rents. The Government propose to require advance payments from councils. How will the measure in any way help to solve the housing crisis? How is it in any way of benefit to residents? How is it in any way compatible with localism?

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[Helen Hayes]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, although there is no excuse for local authorities to have an inefficient plan-making system, a major contributory factor in some cases is the extent of cuts to local authority budgets? Planning is the second most cut service provided by local authorities, after cultural services. The Minister should be addressing how local authorities are to resource the timely completion of their local plans. All other things—efficiency, and so on—being equal, resources are the problem.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and it is a point that we sought to address in the Lyons review by considering additional income streams that could flow into planning departments. Of course, in addition to the cuts that have been applied to local councils and planning departments, the Government’s changes, particularly to permitted development rights, have taken a huge lump of resources from local authorities because they are not able to apply the same fees for permitted development changes as they would for planning approvals. I am sure that the Ministers are well aware of the issue of the resourcing of local planning departments. I speak to lots of developers, and not one does not raise the issue. They all start by saying, “Look, the major barrier we currently have to getting planning permission is the fact that local authority planning departments are massively under-resourced”—they use the word “massively”—“and are having to take the brunt of cuts in some areas.” Councillors are having to make really difficult decisions about whether to cut their planning departments or care services.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Thank you, Mr Gray. I had better continue my discussion of new clause 14. I want to set out for the Committee the direction of travel on planning that we would like to see in the Bill. It might be slightly at odds with what the Government have outlined in clause 96, which, although it is concerned with local plan-making, seeks to take a direction that we would not entirely agree with. New clause 14 will ensure that planning decisions fully consider the need to create places and buildings that meet the needs of all sections of society across their lifetimes. It would provide support for plans and planning decisions that seek to meet locally assessed needs for accessible homes. Clause 96 is relevant because we are not sure that the interventions it will bring about will address the issue.

We want to see support for plans and planning decision making that would not only be based on locally assessed needs, but would seek to address particular needs. That is why the assessment of all needs is important. Sometimes, as the Minister will know, it is easy to overlook the number of fully accessible homes that are required in local plan making, for example. That needs to be based on a very careful consideration of what disabilities people might have in a particular area, and how that need might grow or diminish over the whole plan period.

What we would expect to see from local authorities is therefore not only some input in the local plan to demographic change and the realities of what an ageing population might mean for an area, but perhaps designing housing of a lifetime quality that would enable housing stock, particularly new housing that is developed, to be able to be applied to families and to people with special needs so that they do not have to move. What do the Ministers think about building lifetime homes that would be fully accessible over a lifespan? Or do they want more specialist housing? How do they think such housing would be planned for and built?

The new clause also has something about housing for older people. I was struck, as I am sure other members of the Committee were, in the evidence sessions at the beginning of our deliberations, by how many people across the sector were concerned with the needs of older people. Housing associations told us there is a real issue about supported housing for older people and people with special needs, and how it can be delivered.

[Helen Hayes]

Does my hon. Friend recognise the huge amount that has been invested by the development industry following the previous lifetime homes standard? The new clause would be a means by which that investment, which is no longer a cost to the industry but an efficiency, could be captured and taken forward, and we could all see the benefits of it.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I absolutely accept that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to remind me that local authorities do a very good job in trying to assess local housing need. The purpose of the new clause is to make sure that in doing so they understand the need for accessible homes, and perhaps look at ways of adapting future stock to meet the needs of people over a lifetime, rather than only having to think about specialist housing. It is about how the definition is made.

New clauses 14 and 15 need to be considered together. Through new clause 15, we seek, in the light of clause 96 on the power to direct amendment of a local development scheme, to test the Minister on whether the local plan will have primacy in local planning, or whether clause 96 will give primacy to another body or document. With these new clauses, the Opposition want to assert the primacy of the local plan in plan making in this country. We think that local authorities best understand the needs of local communities. Although the local plan-making process could be improved—I will talk about improvements that could be made in a moment—what we like about it is that local authorities have to consult their local communities extensively when they put their local plans together. Therefore, all parts of the community are involved in the creation of those plans.

There are lots of different methods that local authorities can use to ensure that the community is not only involved in putting together the local plan, but actively participates in it. Committee members have had information about the charrette system, which can help local communities to participate actively in the plan making. There are excellent examples from across the country. In the south of my region, Scarborough is a very good example. With new clause 15, we are asking the Minister, in the light of clause 96, to ensure that primacy is still given to the local plan.

[Helen Hayes]

In my 18 years of working as a planner, I worked with many local communities in the charrette process that my hon. Friend describes, which is an efficient way to get communities to buy into and give informal consent to new, high-quality developments that contain the appropriate community facilities. In many instances, it helps local authorities to deliver more developments than they would otherwise have been able to deliver. It is therefore a democratic and efficient means of supporting plan making.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point, which I should have emphasised when I started to discuss the new clauses. We tabled the new clauses because we want positive planning. We want to encourage local communities to get actively involved in planning, and to give their permission for new developments in their area. We want them to be fully involved in the consensus-making system, and in saying what their areas should be like in 20 or 25 years’ time.

Those of us who have had a degree of involvement in that process in our constituencies are often surprised, in a very positive way, by how people think about their local community, and how they want it to look in 25 years’ time. They not only want to ensure that there is housing for their children and grandchildren, although that is incredibly important given the housing crisis, but they want it to be in communities in which people want to live. That is why positive planning is so important.

I want to spend a moment or two on new clause 16. We want a planning system that is plan-led and fully inclusive. That is the point of new clause 14. New clause 15 is about giving primacy to local plans, and new clause 16 is about what we want those local plans to encompass that we think they are in danger of not encompassing under clause 96. This is about place making. It is unfortunate that there is absolutely nothing in this part of the Bill on how we ensure that the local plans and interventions proposed deliver a planning system that looks at all of the infrastructure needed to make places that people want to live in. I was struck by the number of witnesses who said in their evidence to the Committee, time and again, that the Government’s proposals do not give enough consideration to the infrastructure needed to underpin housing.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I will get on to the specific provisions, because it is important that this is read into the record. It would be wonderful if the Minister accepted what we are arguing for in new clause 16.

[Helen Hayes]

In relation to planning, does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with the Bill—the problem that new clause 16 seeks to address—is that it entirely lacks ambition for our planning system in this country? There is no ambition for planning. Planning is regarded in the Bill entirely as a constraint on development, to be minimised, whereas in fact it should be a set of facilitating processes helping to bring new development forward. In particular, there is no ambition for quality of place, or design quality and design standards in any sense, and no ambition for the sustainability of the communities that we create through the planning system. New clause 16 would address that.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. The problem that we want to address is the lack of vision for a planning system. Too often the Conservative party has characterised planning as a block to development, whereas we argue that if planning is done in the right way, and if the approach is fully inclusive, that brings communities along in the planning system. They help to plan neighbourhoods and that can speed up planning further down the line.

Perhaps something else happens as well—something that is even more important. We need a system that designs the communities that people want to live in, which should be fully sustainable. We have tried in new clause 16 to outline changes and improvements, and what the planning system should encompass to make that objective achievable, so that it can take root. We want a planning system based on principles of sustainable development that would positively identify land suitable for development in line with economic, social and environmental objectives, so as to improve the quality of life, wellbeing and health of people and the community.

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We also think it important, as a set of underpinning principles, that a contribution is made to mitigation and adaptation to climate change, in line with the objectives of the Climate Change Act 2008. Interestingly, removing the requirement to build zero-carbon homes has actually made it more difficult for local authorities to address climate change mitigation. We are saying that some of the measures proposed by the Government go against the underlying principles that we would like to apply to plan making in this country. We think that addressing climate change issues is important. Again, to address Government Members’ concerns, this is very much about steering; the underlying principles will steer a local plan to address climate change issues.

[Helen Hayes]

I recently had the privilege of hearing Al Gore speak in London. He expressed his puzzlement—that was the moderate and polite term that he used—at how this Government had taken so many steps in the wrong direction on climate change. Several of those policy decisions related to planning. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is what lies behind the importance of the reference in the amendment to the Climate Change Act 2008? [Interruption.]

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

If I can continue to outline the measures in new clause 16, I will do so. My hon. Friend makes a good point, and gives additional evidence that such principles must underpin local planning if we are to create communities where people want to live.

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[Brandon Lewis]

I rise to give some clarity and, hopefully, confidence to the hon. Lady. As I said, the clause retains existing powers, but it also allows for more targeted intervention by enabling the Secretary of State to direct a local planning authority to prepare or revise a document and take other steps necessary for that to become part of the development plan in its area. That will be more targeted than the current heavy-handed approach. The existing requirement on the Secretary of State to give reasons for exercising those powers will be retained. The hon. Lady is quite right that those powers are used rarely—in fact, they have been used twice this year. The requirement in terms of local planning authorities reimbursing the Secretary of State will also be retained. He will have to give reasons.

Should the Secretary of State need to step in, the measures give him options that enable more decisions to be made locally, which is hopefully a beneficial change. For instance, if an authority is not making progress with its local plan, the Secretary of State could direct the authority to take steps to progress it. The authority would remain accountable for the plan and could determine with its community—quite rightly—how it will address the Secretary of State’s concerns most appropriately to get a plan in place.

The clause ensures that the Secretary of State will retain the ability to intervene and prepare or revise the plan in consultation with the local community. Importantly, when that happens, the clause will give the Secretary of State other options. He could, for example, return a plan to a local authority to take through the examination process or to decide whether to adopt a document. I hope that the hon. Lady accepts that that is a big step forward for localisation in the local planning process.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 99, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 100 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 101

Planning powers of the Mayor of London

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Helen Hayes]

The Opposition support the aim of a planning process that does not inhibit the speed of potential delivery. London’s boroughs have a commitment to boosting London’s housing supply and building the homes that Londoners need in accordance with local priorities, but there is some concern about the planning requirements in the clause, which provide the Mayor of London with new powers of intervention. The Government must ensure that the new planning legislation that gives the Mayor greater powers to call in local planning applications does not undermine local planning controls that ensure that developments are of benefit to local communities and local development needs.

The Bill introduces new powers for the Mayor of London to call in planning applications in areas determined through the London plan. We support the Government’s ambition to ensure that the strategic importance of London’s housing supply is fully considered, particularly in those areas where it will have most impact. We also support more housing and a faster rate of home building in London. In July 2013, for example, more than 120,000 homes had agreed planning permission but had not yet been built.

It is not clear that the Bill gets the balance right between passing more power to the Mayor and local councils, or how it will achieve the right balance between rapid development and responsiveness to local communities. I would welcome more clarity on what the clause is specifically designed to achieve, why the change is necessary and what problems in the current London planning processes it will remove. Has the Minister consulted London’s local authorities on the new provision? Does he believe that responsiveness to local communities and the related duties of local borough planning authorities are safeguarded in the new provision? How will the role of authorities change? How will the provision be implemented?

Will the Minister publish further details on how the Mayor’s new intervention powers may be exercised in practice, safeguarding the need for active consultation with boroughs as part of the process, as well as detailed local community consultation? Will he make a commitment that any new intervention powers for the Mayor will be used only in instances of London-wide strategic importance?

To retain Londoners’ support for positive growth and development, it is critical that local communities have a say in planning decisions in their area. It is not clear how widely the new definitions of the London plan could be drawn or the extent to which the new powers could be used. There is therefore a risk that considerable new call-in scope could overwhelm the capacity of the Greater London Authority’s planning function and emphasise operational planning at the expense of its strategic role. It must therefore be ensured that any additional powers that seek to maximise the Mayor’s capabilities to control strategic housing supply do not undermine boroughs’ capabilities to deliver local housing stock. I would welcome the Minister’s response on those points.

[Brandon Lewis]

This clause, which amends sections 2A and 74(1B) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, empowers the Secretary of State to prescribe

“applications of potential strategic importance”

by reference to the Mayor of London’s spatial development strategy, otherwise known as the London plan or the London boroughs development plan document.

At present, the Mayor exercises powers under the 1990 Act to call in for his own decision certain planning applications of potential strategic importance for Greater London or to direct a local planning authority to refuse planning permission. The Secretary of State prescribes in secondary legislation which applications are subject to these powers. The practical effect of the clause will be to expand the circumstances in which the Secretary of State can prescribe applications as being of potential strategic importance, for the purposes of the Mayor’s call-in and refusal powers. For instance, it could allow different thresholds in growth areas identified in the London plan, allowing the Mayor greater influence over development in those areas where necessary. That would be an important additional tool to allow the Mayor to encourage development in key locations, helping to ensure the delivery of much needed additional homes.

The clause will also enable the Mayor, in circumstances prescribed by the Secretary of State, to issue consultation directions. These directions would require a London borough to consult the Mayor before granting planning permission for development described in the direction. The Secretary of State can already, under existing powers, issue similar directions to require local authorities to consult the Mayor when receiving applications for development on certain safeguarded wharfs on the River Thames or developments that would affect key London sightlines. In conjunction with the Mayor’s power to direct refusal of planning applications and policies in the London plan, those directions control development that might harm London’s capacity for waterborne freight or its protected views.

The effect of the clause would be to enable the Secretary of State to devolve decisions on which wharfs and sightlines to protect to the Mayor, which would complement the Mayor’s existing strategic planning role and allow the Mayor to be more responsive to London’s changing needs in the future.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 101 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 102

Permission in principle for development of land

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am not saying that all those sites are developable, of course, but 6,500 of those sites are occupied by Durham County Council and 200 are vacant today. Why can those properties not be put to better use? I am not just focusing on Durham. Southwark Council owns 43% of the land in Southwark—there are 10,000 garages. We need to put that to better use.

[Helen Hayes]

Southwark Council is indeed a large landowner in the borough, but I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises that it also has the single biggest commitment to building council homes—11,000 new homes over 30 years—on much of that land, including many garage sites in the borough.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very pleased to hear that but, when I travel home this evening, I will start at King’s Cross, which was a desolate brownfield site for decades. At the other end of my journey is York central, a desolate brownfield site for 20 years—in fact, since I started in business in York nearly 30 years ago.