Planning and Regeneration

Debate between John Penrose and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Dobbin. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing the debate. It is an extremely important debate, and because the Minister and I serve beautiful city constituencies—in his case Bath and in my case Durham—it is relevant to both of us. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare made two important points that I agreed with and want to emphasise. First, change is coming to the high street and we need to think better how to prepare for and manage it to ensure that the cityscapes that we treasure are not damaged. Secondly, we must recognise that planning is important in shaping places and that it can be positively used for the benefit of our communities. We do not hear that very often; we usually hear that planning is a brake on growth and that it is damaging. I was glad that the hon. Gentleman used Milton Keynes as an example of what positive planning can achieve. We might not see the outcome of planning decisions for several years, but 30 years on we can see that Milton Keynes has benefited from careful planning.

Several hon. Members made important points about their communities and protecting their high streets. I will, rather cheekily, pick up a point that the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) made strongly. He said that localism was important, and he was worried that some of the changes that the Government are making might damage localism and take decisions away from local planning authorities. The Opposition objected to the changes contained in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which will transfer many decisions to the Planning Inspectorate. It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues did not join us when we opposed the Government’s plans.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) made powerful speeches about use class orders, which picked up on the point made by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare. They made important points about the need for local people and local authorities to have more control over use class orders, which I will discuss in more detail later. The Government have just produced a school food review report that suggests that fast food outlets should not be available near schools. It will be interesting to know whether the Minister has had any conversations with his colleagues in the Department for Education about how that could be implemented.

More generally, we heard a plea for more flexibility to be given to local authorities on how use class orders are used, which I have been advocating for a long time. I see no reason why use class orders cannot simply be given to local authorities to use as they want. Local authorities represent their communities and know about what use classes should be available, how they should be used and how to rescind one and to put another in its place. If the Minister wants to extend his localism credentials, this is something I could give him on a plate: take use class orders away, look at them and give them to local authorities. That would be a much more sensible way forward.

To return to the comments made by the hon. Gentleman, he referred to how local councils can already protect views through conservation areas, under the Civic Amenities Act 1967, which established the right of local authorities to designate a conservation area. The policy has been fairly successful, because we now have 8,000 conservation areas throughout England. Under the Act, conservation areas are defined as

“areas of special architectural or historic interest, the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance”.

That can and often does in practice include views, so although I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely, I am not exactly sure what additional protection he thinks is needed for particular views.

[John Penrose]

I was thinking either of the much larger example of an entire skyline, which would be hard to preserve, protect or allow to alter in a particular way through the conservation area designation, or of the very narrow, specific example of a particular line of sight, perhaps on a small scale, down a particular street with something that happens to be framed at the end of it, which would be a criminal waste to allow to be got rid of but which is too small and too specific for the conservation area legislation to work.