Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That policy point is enshrined in the national planning policy framework and we will take it further in our proposals. The £400 million of brownfield regeneration funding that has been made available by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, added to by a further £100 million, is all designed to add teeth to our determination to develop on brownfield first.

There will be a continuing role for the existing planning application process. As I have said before in this House, that system does not go away. Where applicants wish to vary from the local plan, they will need to make a full planning application in the usual way. Even where the broad principle of development is agreed through the plan, all the details will still need to be consulted on with communities and statutory consultees, and approved by officers or committees where appropriate. We are also looking closely at enforcement rules to ensure that where, such as in growth sites, the local authority has set up clear rules about development—which, by the way, will have had community consultation and agreement in the local plan—the authority has the tools and the ability to monitor and enforce those rules as development is built out.

The hon. Member for Croydon North mentioned build-out. We are very conscious that Oliver Letwin and, before him, Kate Barker produced a series of reports about build-out. We reckon that introducing this new, speedier process, which will aid small and medium-sized enterprises, will make it easier to bring forward plots of land with planning application for development much more quickly, and there will be more competition among developers. If people know that there are some up-front rules that they have to adhere to in order to build, there will be no necessity to land-bank. We are also very conscious of the points that have been made by many Members across the House, and those beyond it, about the importance of getting permissions built out, so we are looking closely at ways in which we can incentivise developers to continue to work closely with local authorities and with landowners to make sure that permissions are built out as rapidly as possible.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend recognises the issue of build-out rate, but he has also referred several times to the risks of speculative development. The risk is that if you do not deliver, you lose control of your plan and are therefore subject to speculative development, which no one wants because such developments are sited in places that have not been supported at all. Does he agree that one of the upsides of the planning system must be to give communities certainty about the number of homes going forward, lessening the risk of losing the five-year land supply by having speculative development?

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend, who is an expert in this field, is absolutely right. As I said in my earlier remarks, too few councils have up-to-date local plans. That leaves their communities at risk of speculative development. By implementing our proposals, which will ensure that local authorities must have local plans in place within 30 months, we will help protect communities such as his and such as all of ours against speculative development.

Our reforms will also leave an inheritance of strengthening and enhancing our environment. They will mean that environmental assets are better protected, more green spaces are provided, more sustainable development is supported, and new homes will be, as I said earlier, much more energy-efficient. Our planning reforms will support the implementation of the 10% biodiversity net gain enshrined in the Environment Bill and capitalise on the potential of local nature recovery networks. We will also make the system clearer and more accountable.

Our reforms also include measures to protect and enhance the green belt, taking into account its fundamental importance when considering the constraints that areas face. We have made it clear in the NPPF, through Government investment and through our permitted development rights reforms, and we make it clear once again in our wider planning reforms: brownfield development must come first.

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[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Probably the most bogus claim made for the Government’s planning reforms is that they will lead to more homes. Exactly the opposite is true. Their reforms will incentivise the building of fewer, unaffordable, expensive properties rather than the more affordable homes we want. That was the message I heard when I was knocking on doors in Chesham and Amersham and in my communities in Cumbria over the past few days.

[James Cartlidge]

To be clear, is it the hon. Gentleman’s view that the Government should build more homes?

[Tim Farron]

Yes, and the Government’s plan is to do exactly the opposite. Their plan is to allow developers to build a smaller number of executive homes that we do not need, rather than the larger number of affordable homes that we do need. That is against the will and wishes of many people who live in communities around London, in Cumbria and elsewhere in the country. Today, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green), my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I will—along with, clearly, many on the Opposition Benches—vote with the courage of our convictions to defend our communities, and we will vote for more affordable housing. My challenge to Conservative Members is: “Do you care for your communities? Are you listening to yours? If so, you should have the courage of your convictions and vote with us in the Lobby tonight.”

Let me say more about the planning reforms. It is about not just what is wrong with them but what is not in them. Yes, they will lead to fewer affordable homes and cut local communities out of the planning process—it is an insult to the electorate not to listen to them and allow them to have their say—but the reforms are also a colossal missed opportunity.

Let me share with the House something that is and has been happening in my community during the pandemic. Over many years in places such as the lakes and the Yorkshire dales, there has been a steady erosion of local affordable homes for our communities. We see our communities become ghost towns as a large number and growing proportion of homes in those communities become second homes and holiday lets, leaving us without a vibrant permanent population.

As any geologist will tell us, erosion can take aeons and aeons, and then sometimes a whole cliff will fall into the sea in one go. That is what has happened in the past 15 months: there has been a 32% increase in the number of holiday lets in the Lake district. Up to 80% of all houses sold in Cumbria during the pandemic went into the second-home market. Those are the figures. The anecdotal, person-by-person reality includes the woman I spoke to recently in Ambleside who pays £700 a month for her small flat in Ambleside but has been kicked out so that her landlord can charge £1,000 a week on Airbnb. That is what is happening: a kind of lakeland clearances whereby people are being moved out of Cumbria because people can make more money without there being a local resident population.

I plead with the Government and the Secretary of State; it is great to see him in his place now: when drastic things such as a pandemic happen out of the blue, drastic action needs to happen, and it needs to happen right now, this side of the summer. I suggest that the Secretary of State amends planning law to make holiday lets and second homes separate categories of planning use, so that local authorities and national parks can say, “Enough is enough: if we do not make changes, Ambleside’s community is potentially dying out, and Kirkby Lonsdale’s, Windermere’s and even Kendal’s will, too.”

I am determined that our communities should move out of this pandemic stronger and more vibrant. They should not find a situation in which there just is not a local community anymore. Rather than introducing planning reforms that undermine local communities, the Secretary of State has the opportunity to change planning law to protect them, to stop these lakeland clearances and to make our communities last well into the future.