Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Kelly Tolhurst Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

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

It is good to hear the policies that my right hon. and learned Friend is outlining. My constituency has a high housing target that is forcing the closure of a working port. How would the options she has just outlined help my constituency keep a working docks instead of seeing the development of high-rise flats?

[Lucy Frazer]

I know that my hon. Friend is a champion for her area, which has seen significant building. I cannot comment on any particular local plans, but an area must consider all the things that it needs to thrive, and that includes houses as well as employment facilities.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis. We do not know precisely what the Government have in mind for local housing targets, but my reading of their announcement is not that local authorities will simply use best endeavours. Although local house building targets will remain as an aspiration, they will not be enforced and we will therefore see a hit to housing supply, with a resulting hit to economic growth.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

rose—

[Matthew Pennycook]

I want to make some progress, so I will not give way.

We take issue with the Government making local housing targets unenforceable in the absence of a viable alternative to try to maintain supply.

We believe it is essential not only that the process by which the Secretary of State must designate and review an NDMP involves minimum public consultation requirements and an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny, but that the scope of an NDMP to override local plans is suitably constrained. On that basis, I commend amendments 78 and 79 to the House.

Part 4 addresses the new infrastructure levy, which is the Government’s proposed replacement for the present arrangement by which local planning authorities secure developer contributions. We believe the new levy is one of the most consequential aspects of the Bill and has potentially far-reaching implications not only for the provision of core infrastructure but for the supply of affordable housing. Although we fully appreciate that schedule 11 merely provides the basic framework for the levy, with a detailed design to follow, and that the levy’s implementation will take a test-and-learn approach, we are convinced that, as a proposition, it is fundamentally flawed.

As we argued in great detail in Committee, the deficiencies inherent in a rigid fixed-rate mechanism for securing both infrastructure and affordable housing, based on the metric of gross development value, almost certainly means the levy will prove onerously complicated to operate in practice and that, overall, it will deliver less infrastructure and less affordable housing in the future, while putting the development of less viable sites at risk.

For that reason, we remain of the view that if the infrastructure levy is taken forward, it should be optional rather than mandatory, with local authorities that believe that the needs of their areas are best served by the existing developer contributions system able to continue to utilise it. Taken together, amendments 81 to 83 and 91 would ensure that local authorities retain that discretion, and I hope the new Minister, whom I welcome to her place, will consider them carefully, along with amendment 86, which seeks to address a specific concern about how viability testing will inform the levy rate-setting process.

Amendment 84 seeks to ensure that if the Government insist it is made mandatory, the new infrastructure levy must deliver sufficient levels of affordable housing. Since the publication of the Bill, Ministers have repeated ad nauseam that the new levy will secure at least as much affordable housing as developer contributions do now, yet the Government have so far been unable to provide any evidence or analysis to substantiate why they believe it can fulfil that objective. More importantly, there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that the commitment made by successive Ministers with regard to affordable housing will be honoured. At present, proposed new section 204G(2) of the Planning Act 2008—in schedule 11, on page 291 of the Bill—only requires charging authorities to have regard to the desirability of ensuring that levels of affordable housing are

“maintained at a level which, over a specified period, is equal to or exceeds the level of such housing and funding provided over an earlier specified period of the same length.”

Put simply, the Bill as drafted would enable—one might even say encourage—inadequate levels of affordable housing supply to remain the norm by making them the minimum requirement.

If we want to ensure that the new levy secures at least as much affordable housing as is being delivered through the existing developer contributions system—and ideally more—we believe the Bill needs to be revised. That is not a view confined only to this side of the House. In the foreword to a report published only yesterday by the Centre for Social Justice, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes)—himself a former Minister in the Department—argues in relation to the levy that

“it would be good to see stronger safeguards in primary legislation, rather than in regulations, for protecting and increasing the existing levels of affordable housing supply funded in this way”.

Not for the first time, I find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman.

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[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I want to speak in favour of Government new clause 119, to which I am delighted to add my name. The campaign for a register for short-term Airbnb-style properties has been long in the making. Before I came to this place, when I was a member of Philippa Roe’s cabinet on Westminster Council, we successfully lobbied the Government of the time—the coalition Government—to secure a 90-day limit for lettings in London under the Deregulation Act 2015. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope you will allow me to pay tribute to Philippa Roe, Baroness Couttie, who lost her battle against cancer yesterday. I pay tribute to the brilliant work she did as a councillor.

It should therefore come as no surprise that I welcome the substance of the Government’s new clause 119, which would require the Secretary of State to make provision for a registration scheme for short-term rental properties. Legislating for such a scheme, let alone understanding the scale of the problem across the country, has been hampered over the past decade by a distinct lack of evidence and data. With this in mind, I would like to stress the importance of subsection 3 of new clause 119, which will mean that the Secretary of State

“must consult the public before making the first regulations under this section.”

This is absolutely the right approach, in my opinion. Consultation will be fundamental, and we need time to review the data and make sure that we are doing this right.

I have a certain amount of sympathy with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell). There are strong commonalities between the Government’s new clause 119 and new clause 107, and I know, having run a local authority, that we must allow councils the freedom to do what is best for their own area. Believe me, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. To avoid over-legislating, it will be essential that we get this right before applying the standardised registration scheme to the to-do list of local authorities, primarily because not all local authorities need a registration scheme; for those where a scheme is necessary, it must differ according to regional trends in short-term letting. Westminster will be different from York, and requirements in York will be different from those in Cumbria and coastal communities.

I take this opportunity to thank the Minister, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who has really listened and got this argument. I do ask, though, that we look at announcing a timescale for the first regulations to be brought forward, to allow local authorities to start planning now for the registration if it is coming later this year. I am delighted that the Department has accepted our arguments and has brought in new clause 119.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I rise to talk about targets but also, because of the shortness of time, to highlight the plight of my constituency, where targets have been on the tongues of all my constituents since I was elected to this House in 2015, predominantly because of the high level of housing needs being proposed across the unitary authority. Unfortunately, rather than being spread across the unitary authority, the majority of that proposed housing is within my constituency, particularly the Hoo peninsula, where there are many villages sandwiched between the Thames and the River Medway, surrounded by Ramsar sites and sites of special scientific interest and, of course, home to the nightingale.

As I said before, we also have Chatham docks—a thriving working port with business delivering major infrastructure for the UK. However, because of the council’s need to meet the high housing target, the docks are at risk of closure for the building of high-rise flats. We have done our part in my Rochester and Strood constituency on delivering homes; we have been delivering homes for the last decade and I am blessed with many new housing estates. My constituents want to understand how we can make sure we deliver the infrastructure to meet those high targets.

I have been pleased to support my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who has worked hard with Ministers. I am pleased with the engagement we have had with Ministers, but I would like the Minister to clarify some of the detail she mentioned in opening the debate around the NPPF consultation and, working with some of the information that has been put in that document around genuine constraints, how that would really affect constituencies such as mine that face very high targets and constituents who are incredibly concerned about infrastructure delivery and how it will affect their way of life.

In her summing-up speech, I wonder whether the Minister can give us more information about that and see how we can protect our villages going forward, while bringing on the new houses that we have been building and desperately want more of, ensuring that it is properly led and the community are happy with the development.

[Saqib Bhatti (Meriden) (Con)]

When I became the Member of Parliament for Meriden, three years ago to this day, I did so on the promise to do my utmost to protect our precious green belt. That is a promise I take seriously, and it is ever more important with the integrity of the green belt constantly coming under threat from development. In my constituency I have the Meriden Gap, the green lung of the west midlands, sandwiched between Birmingham and Coventry. It is a vital migratory throughway for wildlife in the United Kingdom—so much so that losing it would be catastrophic for wildlife across the country.

I stand by my constituents, who understand that, while we need more housing, we must do what we can to alleviate pressure on the green belt. Too often, I hear from constituents their dismay at the planning process. I am in no doubt that if we do not reform our planning system, we will disenfranchise whole communities and chip away at the very trust that people place in our democracy.

I am pleased that we are where we are today. Colleagues such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) have campaigned for common-sense reforms, and the Government have listened, with the result that we can now see light at the end of the tunnel. I am pleased that the Government are focused on brownfield first, a policy that I have championed for many years. In the west midlands, we have enough brownfield to meet our housing needs. The reforms around land banking are similarly important: too often, my constituents are flabbergasted that more green belt is being eaten up by development, when we know that developers have land banked for future developments.

I particularly want to address the Planning Inspectorate. I welcome the NPPF consultation announced today. My borough council has put forward a local plan: it has been a really difficult process and my constituents have been asked to make significant sacrifices to meet the duty to co-operate. The local plan was reviewed by the inspectorate. One site in it would have had 2,000 homes, but the inspector said, “You can’t do it—you need to do something with about 500 houses.” One site would have had an existing school moved to a new building and rebuilt, but the inspectorate effectively said, “You can have the housing, but you don’t need the new school.” That is clearly not okay. If we are building homes, communities deserve the infrastructure to go with it. The interim findings were against the mood and desires of the community that I serve. The planning inspectorate is clearly not in touch with the people it is meant to serve.

I have a few questions for the Minister. Can she confirm whether removing the duty to co-operate will enable Solihull Council to review the local plan again? If it says it can build 2,000 homes on one site, will it be allowed to do so? When it says it needs a new school, will it be allowed one?

This is about more than planning. It is about the faith that our communities place in democracy. It is about their voice. It is about their knowing that when they express their will, it will be so.