Localism in Planning

John Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow, if somewhat distantly, my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). There was much in his speech with which I agree.

I have in my constituency the town of Thame, which has recently completed a neighbourhood plan. During completion of that neighbourhood plan, which took a year and a bit to come to fruition, the council’s district plan was the subject of an examination in public under the old rules, under which the inspector could have interfered in where the housing went in Thame, but he did not. He said that he would interfere in where the housing went in Wallingford, which had no neighbourhood plan, but because Thame had an embryonic neighbourhood plan—an emerging plan—he would not determine where the housing would go; he would leave that to the people of Thame to determine during the production of their plan.

I think that that is a clear model for how the inspectorate should take into account emerging plans. It has set a very good precedent and one that I urge the Minister to get the inspectorate to follow. I remember from my days as a mere Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department that we frequently had to call in the Planning Inspectorate to stress the point of consistency in how it approached taking plans into account.

There is no excuse for a district council not having a local plan. It is a great shame that we could not have abolished the regional spatial strategies on day one of coming into office. We could not do that for a number of legal reasons: the challenges that it would have involved. It has taken quite a long time to get, on a rolling basis, the abolition of those regional plans. Nevertheless, councils that have looked at this have taken into account where the thing is going and have gone back, where they have had time, to look at the housing numbers. In many cases, they have found that the housing numbers now exceed those that were originally in the regional spatial strategy, but that is for them to decide.

The one thing that we have skirted around in this debate is not the housing targets, but the need for a robust five-year land supply. If we are going to say, “We have this number of houses to provide,” we need to show the mechanism by which we are going to provide it. By insisting on a robust five-year land supply, we should be able to do that. Neighbourhood plans have to be in general conformity with the district council’s plan, and that includes the five-year land supply, so there should be no difference at all between the two. There should be a great overlap between the two forms—

[Mr Andrew Turner]

I am rather concerned about this five-year provision in a country in which we are cutting migration. That means a significant reduction—a significant lowering—in demand.

[John Howell]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but in some ways it is irrelevant. That is an issue for district councils to take into account.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Thank you all. Everyone has been exceptionally well behaved, and as a result, we can relax the no-interventions rule. The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman has agreed to keep her remarks to 10 minutes, so there will be plenty of time for the Minister to make his remarks and for hon. Members to come back, if they wish.