Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Teresa Pearce]

I thank the Minister for his intervention but I would like to see real statistical evidence. Are we trying to solve a problem that does not exist? We all have anecdotal evidence, but perhaps in Committee we will see more evidence.

It is my experience that some developers welcome pre-commencement planning conditions because they enable planning permission to be secured without finalising the full details. It can save work duplication. For example, a developer may not wish to spend significant amounts of time deciding between different types of render for the outside of a development when they know it could be agreed at a later date. Indeed, a condition could be established in the consent to match the local area and street scene.

London Councils says that the measure will put considerable strain on the resources of local planning authorities. It proposes that a better solution would be to promote best practice in pre-application discussions between developers and local planning authorities. There are questions on the process. For example, what if late representations are received, and what if a councillor wishes to add a pre-commencement condition on the night of the planning committee?

Behind that lies the fact that pre-commencement planning conditions are not a bad thing. They have an important role in securing sustainable development that is careful and considerate of local communities. Conditions should be imposed only when consent would not be acceptable without them. By allowing room for negotiation, we are changing the nature of how conditions are set and their purpose. We could inadvertently either encourage inappropriate development by lowering our standards of acceptable development or, when disagreement arises between applicant and planning authority, discourage developers from building, which no hon. Member wants. There are questions about whether the measure is necessary. I look forward to seeing the stats behind it to show that it is. There is an existing framework for applicants to appeal specific conditions that they consider do not meet the national policy tests.

If we are to proceed, it is essential to ensure that the Bill does not have unintended negative consequences. Greater clarity is needed on appeal routes when agreement cannot be reached, and on pre-completion and pre-occupation conditions. It is right that there is a public consultation, but even if the Bill becomes law, I do not anticipate it adding any of the extra homes that we urgently need. It is not pre-commencement planning conditions that slow planning consent, but the chronic underfunding of local planning authorities. It is not pre-commencement planning conditions that slow construction, but the drastic skills shortage in the construction sector. It is not pre-commencement planning conditions that slow new schemes coming forward, but the lack of strategic infrastructure involvement.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Teresa Pearce]

I am afraid I need to move on because many hon. Members wish to speak and the hour is late. [Interruption.] There are lots of Government Members.

The Bill makes provision for permitted development to be recorded on the planning register. Given the existing pressures and further commitments in the Bill— I have mentioned the wider question of resourcing—I should like the Minister to consider the funding of planning authorities. When local authorities are pressed for resources—they must decide, for example, between child protection and adult social services—planning is often squeezed.

The Bill attempts to streamline compulsory purchase powers, and includes temporary possession of land to enable schemes to store equipment and machinery so that they can be delivered. The temporary possession of land has been used widely in my constituency under the Crossrail Act 2008. The proposed changes to compulsory purchase orders would enable councils to capture the value from increased land prices to invest in the local infrastructure needed to complement and facilitate new housing schemes. While that can accelerate development, CPOs still require approval from the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, it is hoped that those measures will help to encourage development.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the Bill is what is not in it. Along with the Local Government Association and others, we welcome the news that the Government have not included the planned privatisation of the Land Registry. Will the Minister clarify whether the initiative to privatise the Land Registry has bitten the dust? Has it been kicked into the long grass or is in the rubbish bin?

The Bill is quite different from the measure outlined in the Queen’s Speech earlier this year. The Prime Minister said in her conference speech last week,

“something…we need to do: take big, sometimes even controversial, decisions about our country’s infrastructure.”

However, in the Bill, the Government’s proposal to place the National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory footing has been withdrawn. I hope that the Government will think again.

The Bill aims to build houses, but it does nothing to build communities. The failure to provide the commission with statutory powers to enable strategic decision making on infrastructure is a missed opportunity to tackle the housing crisis. The House Builders Association, which represents small and medium-sized builders, said that the Bill was unlikely meaningfully to increase supply.

This is the sixth piece of legislation in the past six years to make provision for planning. Another Bill passes and the Government fail adequately to resource planning departments, which have faced a 46% cut in funding over the past five years. A recent survey by the British Property Federation identified under-resourcing as the primary cause of delays to development. Another Bill passes, and the Government fail to increase the transparency of viability assessments, which many people believe is the key to ensuring that there is sufficient and appropriate affordable housing. Another Bill passes and we are no closer to developing garden cities and new towns, which we need to build to ensure that our children and our children’s children can find a home of their own.

The Bill will not deliver social housing and the genuinely affordable homes that are desperately needed. It will not provide facilities on new housing developments that are required to build communities, and it is unlikely to facilitate opportunities for the struggling SME builder, or tackle the growing skills crisis in the construction sector. The Bill has failed to tackle those issues, but I am interested to hear the Minister say that there is an appetite to look at the Bill and perhaps amend it in Committee. If it is not amended, the missed opportunity will manifest itself in a continued housing crisis until the Government can step up and match their rhetoric with substance.

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[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Beneath the thatch and clay tiles, in the shady byways and cobbled marketplaces of North West Hampshire, people are breathing a little easier as this Bill starts its passage. I would go so far as to say that on the village hall wall, next to the portrait of the Queen and the newly hoisted portrait of the Minister with responsibility for broadband, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), they are making space for a picture of the Minister for Housing and Planning, because he has finally taken a big step in bringing some sanity to what has previously been a gamble of a planning system.

We managed to get ourselves into a high-stakes game of poker between developers, councils, landowners and the Planning Inspectorate, and the compromise that emerged was often unsatisfactory to local residents, extremely expensive, and bureaucratic. That injected a sense of tension and an adversarial tone into the planning system, which should be constructive, in all senses of the word, and try to build the homes that we need.

The Government’s great peace offering to local people was the neighbourhood plan. Nowhere has embraced neighbourhood planning as strongly as my constituency, and the string of pearls running down the A303 from Oakley, Overton and Whitchurch down to Andover. We are destined to take tens of thousands of houses there over the next 20 or 30 years. Those places are embracing neighbourhood planning as the only way that they can see of making sure that planning is done with them, rather than to them.

Notwithstanding that, some ridiculous decisions have been taken in my constituency over the last year or so. In Oakley, just seven days before the referendum on the neighbourhood plan, which had been three years in the making, the Planning Inspectorate allowed an appeal for a slab development of 80 houses, which drove a coach and horses through the plan. The community might as well not have bothered. At that stage, people in the village had already voted by post, yet they knew that permission had gone through. I am very pleased that this Minister and his predecessor took on board the concerns of lots of Members, particularly rural Members, about the need to strengthen such plans.

I would like to raise with the Minister a couple of areas where the Bill could be given even greater strength. The interaction of the different actors I mentioned and the interaction between neighbourhood plans and local plans are absolutely key. Many Members have talked about providing some kind of stick to make sure that councils have a local plan in place. Thus far, neighbourhood plans are pretty pointless without the local plan being in place. Too many councils do not have them.

I wonder whether we could offer councils an incentive, rather than a stick. Where a village has put a neighbourhood plan together and it has been approved, where a borough has a local plan that has been approved, and where there is a five-year land supply, there should be a double lock, whereby the Planning Inspectorate has no remit. These people are playing ball. They have said, “Yes, we will take the houses. This is where we want them, and this is the size and mix we want.” That has all been approved by the Planning Inspectorate, so why should a speculative developer, with an ability to pay legal fees and for hearings, and with QCs on tap, be able to come along and bully the council into reaching some kind of compromise? The council knows that if it goes to the Planning Inspectorate, the decision may not go its way, and is worried about the fines it faces if it loses. A double lock would be a way of freeing people from the man in the suit from Bristol; that would be an enormous incentive. There would certainly be a huge amount of pressure from local residents on borough councils to get a neighbourhood plan, so as to protect the residents. I put that proposal on the Minister’s plate.

My second point is on getting local people to accept housing estates. Neighbourhood planning certainly makes people much more accepting of housing, but the Government’s admirable starter homes scheme could be used to get even more acceptance. When starter homes are built as part of a development—I will have a huge development with lots of starter homes outside Basingstoke in my constituency—anybody from anywhere in the country can apply for them. How about we give local people a short period of perhaps 28 days after completion in which they have first dibs on the houses built in their neighbourhood? That way, the children and relatives of local people—people who can prove a local connection—could snap up those houses first. It would go a long way to getting people over the line, particularly as regards the large-scale developments I will have, if they have that incentive, on a generational basis.

My final point, which I would be grateful if the Minister could address, is on the provision of broadband in new developments. I raised the issue in debates on the Digital Economy Bill. It seems mad to me that we are not putting broadband compulsorily into new developments, as we would gas and electricity.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend makes a fine point. When he refers to broadband, is he talking about fibre to cabinet, or fibre to premises? Is not the latter the key future-proof mechanism we need to enable properties to access high-speed broadband?

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend shows his customary ambition. I agree that we should make developers provide fibre to premises in all developments, particularly large ones. The Government are pumping billions into the housing industry over the next few years—rightly, because we need more houses. That will inflate the housing industry, and there will be a lot more activity and a lot more money to be made. The least developers could do is absorb the cost of putting future-proofed broadband in those houses. If we can get those measures into this great Bill, we will have something that neighbourhoods, particularly in North West Hampshire, will welcome. They will wave aloft the Bill as they hoist the Minister’s portrait in the village hall.

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). I fully support the provisions of the Bill, and I congratulate Ministers on giving people unprecedented power over planning. It is clear that this is a power not to limit development, but to decide where properties will go and what infrastructure is required. It is a power to decide how it looks—design is a key element in persuading local communities to support new housing in their area.

I welcome the Bill’s giving more weight to neighbourhood plans, which, as detailed in clause 1, will be effective earlier in the process. However, there is a conundrum, as colleagues have mentioned, but, as is not uncommon in the House, I will mention it again. A neighbourhood may have an effective neighbourhood plan that works with the numbers given by the district in its local plan, but it may not be able to demonstrate a five-year land supply. In those circumstances, would it not be appropriate to give full protection to a neighbourhood that delivers those numbers within the overall context of the local plan? That would be a great incentive for local communities to develop a neighbourhood plan and deliver the extra houses that are important to our communities and our national economy.

The neighbourhood planning process is dealt with in clause 5. Local authorities can give help, support and advice to neighbourhood planning steering committees. Some local authorities are less keen than others on neighbourhood plans, and regard them as an encumbrance. Would it be possible to provide some formal training, perhaps delivered centrally? I was delighted when my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who has been such an advocate of neighbourhood plans, came to my constituency to talk to local steering groups about how to develop them. As a result of his intervention, we now have some neighbourhood plans back on track.

I also think that small and medium-sized enterprises should be given more help. As we know, SME developers used to build 100,000 houses a year, whereas today they build about 20,000. They are critical to the supply element of the equation. I understand that the idea of extra financial support for SMEs has been mooted in connection with the autumn statement, because lack of finance constitutes one of their biggest difficulties when it comes to developing new homes, but another of their difficulties relates to land, and finding suitable small sites. The whole planning system seems to be stacked against SMEs. It is far simpler to build houses on allocated land than to build them on the windfall sites on which SMEs tend to develop them, but such sites are few and far between.

SMEs are important not just in terms of the number of houses that are delivered, but in terms of their contribution to local communities. They employ local people: local suppliers and local apprentices—SMEs account for a much higher percentage of penetration of apprenticeships per completion than larger developers—and local consultants as well. There are plenty of good reasons for the provision of more small sites that would be suitable for SME house builders, and there are a number of ways in which we could do that. It is frustrating that one of the local authorities in my constituency concentrates all its housing on large allocated sites, rather than spreading the load around the towns and villages for the purpose of not just sustainable development but sustainable communities.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned sustainable communities in the context of planning. Does he agree with Dame Alice Hudson, the head teacher at Twyford Church of England High School in my constituency? The school wants to expand, but feels that it is stymied by planning legislation. It has identified the site for a badly needed new high school, but at present there is opposition because of housing that will come with it. Dame Alice says that there must be a way of helping the school to provide more performance and other facilities for community use and public benefit. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me, and with my constituent, that there should be more joined-up thinking?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I definitely agree that there should be more community engagement. However, although many people in smaller villages and towns want more development, the policies of local authorities prevent that from happening, which is entirely counter-intuitive. The lack of new development puts schools, shops and public houses at risk. I wonder how we can influence local authorities and encourage them to spread the load around our smaller communities as well. Alternatively, could not a percentage of one of the larger sites—10% or 20%—be allocated to SME developers, so that they could meet some of the needs of larger communities?

Those are some thoughts for the new Housing Minister. SMEs are critical to the successful delivery of the houses that we need in the United Kingdom. However, I am happy to support the measures in the Bill and the ideas behind them.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

That is a question that I would like the Minister to put to his constituents. People surrounding new developments very much want to know what the development looks like, what the quality of the build will be, what materials are going to be used and whether they fit into the surrounding landscape. If he is serious about neighbourhood planning and giving people a say over what happens in their area, pre-commencement planning is important. Some of the measures could lead to more delays in the planning system, rather than speeding it up, which I think is what the Minister is trying to do.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady mentioned landscape. One of my SME developers was required to submit a landscape scheme before starting on the development itself, as a pre-commencement condition. Does she not see that some of these conditions are completely inappropriate?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The problem is that we do not know why the local authority required that particular condition. It could have been worried that no plan might ever be produced.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Third sitting)

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 20th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.

As the Minister knows from our discussions on Tuesday, we do not see neighbourhood planning and the provisions relating to it as the most controversial aspect of the Bill. Nevertheless, we have a couple of questions embodied in the amendments on which we would like some clarification from the Minister.

Amendment 4 seeks to amend the clause to ensure that the local authority will only have to have regard to neighbourhood plans when they are found to be consistent with the local plan. I am sure that in his response the Minister will say that it is already enshrined in legislation that they have to pay attention to the local plan, but we are seeking clarity on at what stage that needs to happen.

Let me start by saying that we are very supportive of neighbourhood plans and the measures in the Bill to make them more efficient in delivering housing, delivering it where local people want it and having it underpinned by the relevant infrastructure. We feel that planning is always more successful when people feel a part of it, rather than planning being something that is done to them and imposed from above. This point was made powerfully on Tuesday by the National Association of Local Councils, which also reminded the Committee that during the passage of the Bill we probably need to push for greater clarity on the exact role of neighbourhood plans and get some statements about the importance and significance attached to them and, in particular, their relationship to local plans.

The amendment would ensure that neighbourhood plans are only considered if they are in line with the overall strategic aims and visions within a local plan. As we are all no doubt aware, local plans set out a framework for the future development of an area, addressing needs and opportunities relating not only to housing, but to the local economy, community facilities and infrastructure. We are specifically asking the Minister to what extent neighbourhood plans are then being written to address not only the broader strategic aims of the local plan, but what it says about community facilities and infrastructure—that is, if it does. It might not, and if not, is the Minister clear that there is then a key role for the neighbourhood plan to ensure that those less strategic issues are addressed for the locality?

An underlying purpose of the amendment is to try and tease out from the Minister whether he thinks neighbourhood plans could, in fact, be a building block for local plans. There are distinct advantages for planning at a community level for housing supply, if that incorporates real local knowledge and that local knowledge is then put into a wider picture that is able to address local authority-wide needs. Hugh Ellis from the Town and Country Planning Association spoke on Tuesday about the real advantages that could have, saying:

“Neighbourhood plans are great at articulating community aspiration inside the local plan framework. When both work together very powerfully, that can be a very strong framework for a community.”––[Official Report, Neighbourhood Planning Public Bill Committee, 18 October 2016; c. 32, Q50.]

Ruth Reed from RIBA said it would be better for local and neighbourhood plans to be “in sync” to

“ensure coherence and strategy across a local authority to provide housing where it is needed.”––[Official Report, Neighbourhood Planning Public Bill Committee, 18 October 2016; c. 43, Q71.]

Local plans are also only adopted after public consultation and, in my experience, usually very lengthy—in fact, often more than one—public inquiries. As the Minister and all on this Committee will know, they do have considerable weight. It would be very helpful for communities to be able to feed in their vision for development at an early stage in that local plan-making project and process. We also do not want to find ourselves in a situation where strengthened neighbourhood plans are undermining local plans, leading to lots of competing visions of what an area could look like or deliver. Again, we feel that being very clear about the degree to which they have to follow a local plan might help to iron out some of those possible conflicts. As the Local Government Association has pointed out,

“It is important that any proposals do not have the unintended consequence of undermining the ability of a local planning authority to meet the wider strategic objectives set out in an emerging or adopted Local Plan”.

According to the Department’s own figures, about 200 neighbourhood plans that have progressed to the referendum stage have been approved by voters; I suspect the figure is a lot higher now. That shows a really positive reception for neighbourhood planning. I pay tribute to the Minister and his Department for bringing the whole concept forward. However, given the number of neighbourhood plans now being considered—I think it is a few thousand—and the way the Government rightly want to extend them, it seems likely they could end up competing with one another. We are trying to ensure, through the amendment, that that does not happen.

The guidance tells us that it is very important for a neighbourhood plan or order to follow a local plan, but they are not often tested against policies in an emerging plan. I will give an example from my constituency, where we are in precisely this situation, which is partly what prompted my question. A local plan went through a public inquiry and was thrown out by the inspector. The authority was directed to go back to first base in terms of drawing up the local plan, so it is out to consultation at the moment on some of the underpinning objectives, but a number of neighbourhood plans are about to go to referendums. Will those plans simply rely on saved local policies? Will they have to look at the local plan that was thrown out, or will they be tested against the underpinning objectives, which are quite wide-ranging at this stage? It would be interesting to hear from the Minister on that point. There is a need for further clarity, particularly with regard to the stage that the local plan is at.

These are very much probing amendments, as I am sure Committee members have determined. Amendment 5 would mean the local authority need not have regard to the local plan, unless it is consistent with the national planning policy framework and national planning policy guidance. This is a straightforward amendment. We should seek to put best practice at the forefront of neighbourhood planning by requiring that the plans are compatible with the NPPF and any relevant guidance.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady aware that paragraph 16 of the NPPF states that neighbourhoods should

“develop plans that support the strategic development needs set out in Local Plans”?

Is that not quite clear?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I am trying to tease out the extent to which the Minister thinks it is important right at the outset for neighbourhood plans to tell us how they are addressing the basic thrust of the NPPF and any relevant policies in it and taking on board guidance that underpins some of those policies. I do not think the issue of guidance is quite so clear. Perhaps it is generally assumed that the NPPF would be followed but not to the degree that planning guidance would have to be taken on board.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Fifth sitting)

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

It is not apparent to us what problem the clause is intended to fix. There is very little evidence to support the view that developments are being held up because of the application of pre-commencement conditions. The BPF at least helpfully referred to a survey; the HBF admitted that it was relying more or less on anecdotes from builders, particularly some of the larger builders, who said that pre-commencement conditions were unnecessary, put undue burdens on large house builders and were holding up developments, so the Government must do something. When I questioned them in our oral evidence sessions, what I got back were the opinions of certain developers, not those of any experts.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Has the hon. Lady spoken to some of the small developers in her constituency? I have certainly spoken to some in mine, and they, too, cite pre-commencement conditions as critical to their ability to get a speedy resolution to planning applications.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I was just about to come to the Federation of Master Builders, which looks after smaller builders; I was dealing with the HBF first because it tends to deal with the volume builders. We heard in oral evidence the opinion of some of the volume house builders, although we did not get from the HBF any examples of what types of conditions were proving problematic.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

rose—

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

May I finish responding to the previous intervention? To answer the hon. Gentleman’s second point, I talk to the small home builders—in fact, builders generally—in my constituency a lot. When we are looking at evidence, we have to look at it really carefully. Builders will often say to me, “We have to do a bat survey”—it is usually a bat survey, but occasionally a newt survey. Sometimes I ask them how long it takes and they say, “Well, it depends on the time of year, so it can be a bit problematic.” Generally, though, something has been done locally that they can tap into. Bats are usually the worst, but if we can find a way to deal with that without it being too onerous, perhaps such a drastic clause would not be necessary.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady mentions bat surveys. In September, one of my constituents was required to carry out a bat survey on a building that was due to be demolished. When it came to granting planning permission in December, the planning officer decided that there were no bats around in September so they would have to wait until May to do the survey again. Having carried it out once, they had to wait until the bats came back to see whether any bats were there in the first place. The hon. Lady asked for specific examples. A small developer was asked for a landscaping scheme before he was allowed to start building the houses, and that was not in a conservation area. These things clearly are an issue. We cannot just reject out of hand the fact that they are causing problems.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I would like to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are not dismissing those examples out of hand. My first point is that we are struggling to find examples. My second point is that, when we find examples, we have to decide whether they should be dealt with under a particular clause, such as clause 7, or whether we should find some other way of minimising the impact on the conditions set by the local authority.

The only example that the FMB was able to give us was of landscaping. However, landscaping is often what makes what might be a non-acceptable development acceptable to the local community. Communities want to know at the outset what a development will look like in the end, as the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton must know from his constituents—I know it from mine. If a building has an unsightly façade or a high wall, or if there is something that people are unhappy with, they will ask at the earliest stage, “What sort of screening will there be so that we don’t have to look at that ugly edifice?” Far from landscaping being a good example for the hon. Gentleman, it actually helps our case. He and builders might think that pre-commencement conditions are unnecessary, but our constituents think that they are really important.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I have listened to evidence from both the development industry and local authorities both as a member of this Committee and as a member of the Communities and Local Government Committee. Although there are some examples, which have been much quoted, of the excessive use of pre-commencement planning conditions, the evidence is really not very strong. There are many reasons why the measures proposed in clause 7 are, in fact, an attempt to treat the symptom of a problem rather than the cause of that problem itself.

When asked, and when I have questioned them, all the witnesses—pretty much without exception—who have spoken about pre-commencement planning conditions have acknowledged, and in some cases spoken extensively about, the constraints on local authority planning departments. As we know, planning is the second most cut area of local authority services since 2010. It is an area that has, for good reason, lost out in the competition for local authority resources between it and statutory services such as children and adult social services, which affect some of the most vulnerable in our communities. To my mind, that is because the funding of planning, and in particular development management, is not on an appropriate footing.

I was very disappointed and frustrated that the previous Housing and Planning Minister simply ignored this issue during the debate on the Housing and Planning Act 2016, and did not acknowledge that we needed well-functioning, properly resourced planning departments to facilitate the building of the new homes that we need. It is absolutely not right that planning should be competing with services that are needed by the most vulnerable in our communities, and therefore we need a different way of funding planning departments.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

How will extensive pre-commencement conditions that are difficult to discharge help with that process? Local authorities will choose where to resource their departments. The pre-commencement conditions simply increase the burden on planning officers.

[Helen Hayes]

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will explain exactly how that part of the argument hangs together.

There is evidence that officers are currently using pre-commencement conditions because they are simply unable to resolve every aspect of the planning application before the deadline for making a decision. In some cases, they are unable to look in detail at all the documents submitted as part of a planning application. In some cases, they are unable to spend the time negotiating and discussing with the applicant the type of detail that might be necessary. There is no question but that that is clearly not acceptable practice. Some have referred to that as lazy conditioning, but I would argue that it is, in fact, more commonly a symptom of the problem of under-resourcing, rather than deliberately poor practice.

When faced with the threat of appeal on the grounds of non-determination, local authorities and individual officers will look to use conditions as a way of making a timely decision to avoid losing control of every aspect of that planning application to the Planning Inspectorate. That is an entirely rational way for authorities to behave, rather than taking the risk of losing an appeal on the grounds of non-determination.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

Is the hon. Lady not arguing for the clause? She talks about best practice and engaging with the applicant and the planning authority to agree the way forward rather than unilaterally sticking in some pre-commencement conditions without discussing those with the applicant. Is that not exactly what the clause will do?

[Helen Hayes]

It is my view that a clause that requires an exchange of letters and makes agreement to the principle of pre-commencement conditions the preserve of the applicant rather than the local authority does the opposite. It does not encourage best practice; it encourages a much more litigious and formalised approach to negotiation, which does not allow for genuine engagement between applicant and planning authority. It would be far better to resource planning authorities properly to undertake those detailed discussions with applicants, so that they can agree and discuss the issues that are important to local communities and ensure they are properly addressed, with as many as possible being within the planning permission itself rather than within pre-commencement conditions. However, there is a role for pre-commencement conditions and it is a very important one.

Finally, we should remind ourselves of what pre-commencement conditions seek to achieve and why they are important. Conditions cover many aspects of application, such as the choice of materials, which is sometimes belittled as a trivial matter but is in fact so important in determining the impact that a new development will have on a community in the long term. Once something is built, it is there certainly for the rest of our lifetimes and perhaps those of future generations. What a development looks like, the impact it has and how sensitively considered the materials are plays a really important role in how acceptable it is to the local community.

Conditions also cover issues such as sewerage capacity, which influences whether residents will have serious problems, sometimes in their own homes, in the long term. They are a key means by which local authorities can safeguard the interests of local communities and ensure the quality of new development. Of course, they should not be overused or misused, but where that occurs it is a symptom of the lack of resources rather than wilful misuse or poor practice.

I argue that the setting of conditions should be the preserve of democratically elected local authorities, not contingent on the agreement of the applicant. Local authorities must be properly resourced to undertake pre-planning discussions, to review properly the content of applications and to agree as much as possible within the framework of the planning permission itself, in order to minimise the use of conditions. The clause is simply misdirected. It is trying to treat the symptom of a problem, rather than the cause. I hope the Government will therefore reconsider it.

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

That was a very helpful and, in some ways, enlightening response from the Minister. Unfortunately, we ended up having evidence presented to us that was not evidence and examples that were not examples, but instead a typology of circumstances in which the clause may or may not be applied. That is in a consultation document that sits outwith the Bill at this point.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

What does the hon. Lady regard as evidence? The submissions of developers, district councils, small and large builders—are they not evidence? Does she not recognise them as such?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The only example that has been given to us in the Committee, apart from the ones I speculated on myself, was landscaping. I think we dealt with why landscaping is so vital to know about at an early stage in the process.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Sixth sitting)

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I beg to move amendment 22, in clause 7, page 6, line 23, leave out subsection (5).

This amendment would ensure that local authorities are still able to make necessary pre-commencement conditions on developers.

Thank you for that direction, Mr McCabe. I will address my comments not only to amendment 22, but to some of our wider concerns about clause 7.

The Minister knows, because he heard the evidence, as we did, that clause 7 was the one bit of this relatively short Bill that concerned people who gave evidence to the Committee. In fact, a number of people thought that the clause was just as likely to slow down development as it was to speed it up. Councillor Newman, who represented the LGA, said:

“The whole perspective of what I am seeing in the Bill looks very much like a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach—another layer of red tape.”

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Mr McCabe, to serve under your chairmanship. Is not that exactly the opposite of what has been said? We are trying to get rid of the complexity of the system. Clause 7 creates conditions of good practice, where people sit down together and make an agreement. If a council is being reasonable and a developer is reasonable, there will be no issue. There will be written agreement and things will move forward. If either party is being unreasonable, an inspector will be able to look at that and judge for the other party. It is in everybody’s interests to sit down and get a sensible agreement on the conditions. Is not that a sensible piece of legislation?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Gentleman has described the situation that exists at the moment, not the position in which we will all be in after the Bill is enacted. The Bill puts in writing the agreement between the local authority and the developer. Significantly, as we have all been discussing, it gives powers to the Secretary of State to intervene in the process by producing regulations that will say something about the conditions that can be attached.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the system is working well at the moment because, as Councillor Newman reminded the Committee,

“nine out of 10 permissions are given, and 470,000 permissions are already granted for homes up and down the land that await development for various reasons.”

All those reasons are not pre-commencement planning conditions.

Hugh Ellis said:

“From our point of view, the concern about conditions is that they are fairly crucial in delivering quality outcomes.”––[Official Report, Neighbourhood Planning Public Bill Committee, 18 October 2016; c. 23, Q31.]

He also said that he had no evidence whatever that conditions result in delay. Duncan Wilson from Historic England said that local authorities are usually reasonable already. He did not feel that unnecessary conditions were being imposed, and he believed that that particular assertion could be challenged. That is what we have been attempting to do thus far today.

It is not just Her Majesty’s Opposition saying that all this is unnecessary; it is the Town and Country Planning Association, the LGA, Historic England and the British Property Federation, which said that it saw an issue with the discharge of conditions, but could not give us much detail on pre-commencement conditions.

I want to outline the evidence we have been given on why the clause is unnecessary. Various people who gave evidence said that they felt that if an application was turned down because an agreement could not be reached with the developer, it could take longer to argue about the condition and determine it than under the current set of arrangements. I point out to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton that that point has been made not only by me but by lots of other people.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady refers to the Minister’s comments about speeding up delivery. Does she accept that permitted development rights have in many cases done exactly that? She talks about the negative consequences of that policy but has not spoken about the positive consequences. Does she accept that there have been positive consequences, including the delivery of more residential units?

[Helen Hayes]

I was just about to say that in addition to the numbers, which I do not dispute are important, the size and type of homes that we are delivering matters. It matters whether we are delivering homes that families can live in and have a good quality of life in, or only homes that are too small even to fit adequate furniture into. Minimum space standards matter, and the Government have failed to address that issue. The provision of amenities matters. It matters whether there is a local park that is properly funded through the planning process. It matters whether the roads and pavements are of an appropriate standard, whether there is lighting and whether our neighbourhoods are attractive to live in. It matters whether there are places in schools and GP practices for an expanding population to access.

Above all else, affordability matters to my constituents. It is simply not fair and not appropriate that new homes are allowed to be delivered with no contribution at all to the affordable housing that we need more than any other type of housing in London. As a Member of Parliament for a London constituency, the Minister should, quite frankly, know that.

The extension of permitted development rights is a disaster for the delivery of the high-quality neighbourhoods with good facilities and services that we all want to see. We want to see the right numbers of homes being delivered, but we also want to build attractive and successful communities for the future, not tomorrow’s regeneration projects. I am deeply disappointed that, through the Bill, the Government are trying to patch up a broken policy, rather than accepting that it is not working in the way it needs to and reforming it to make it more fit for purpose, so that we can deliver not only the number, but the type and quality, of new homes needed within the successful neighbourhoods that we all want to see.

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[Gavin Barwell]

Well, it may be that the hon. Lady and I are not as far apart as I thought we were, because I agree with that. People have different requirements at different ages, and it is certainly important that adequate space is provided for family housing. She may agree with the point that I am going to make. I was going to close by giving an example of a permitted development conversion that I had the opportunity to see in Croydon. She may want to go and have a look at it herself.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I quite agree with the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood about family homes, but where the opportunity exists to innovate and create homes for young people and first-time buyers, particularly in areas of high house prices, should we discourage that purely on the basis of space standards?

[Gavin Barwell]

I suppose the story I told that prompted the hon. Lady’s intervention interested me because one might to a degree expect private developers to look to maximise the units that they can build on a site and their commercial return, but what was striking about that conversation was that the chief executive of a housing association also wanted that flexibility. He saw clearly that there was a trade-off between having homes that were fully accessible and fulfilled the space standard and maximising the number of homes for vulnerable people that he could have on the site. There is a debate to be had, but I do not think that the hon. Lady and I are as far apart on this as I thought we were.

Let me give an example. There is a building in Croydon called Green Dragon House, which was a fairly old office building that was not wholly vacant but had very limited use. It has been converted into 119 homes—a mixture of one and two-bed homes. It is a little like the Pocket housing schemes. It is very high-spec—the quality of the finish is very good—but the rooms are smaller than the national space standard. Interestingly, what is not taken into account is that there is a huge amount of communal space. Virtually the whole of the first floor of the building is given over to a high-standard communal lounge, and the whole of the roof is a terrace, which is communal space for residents. In a way, it is a different vision of how people might live, and it is targeted very much at young professional people.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Eighth sitting)

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 27th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

Lastly, given that there are a number of legal challenges, what process is in place to ensure the formal adoption of the plan? In the end, is the plan then adopted by the district council or the county council on behalf of it? With that set of questions, I will leave it there and hear what the Minister has to say about new clause 5 and amendment (a) on consultation.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I want to say a few brief words on new clause 5 and to get a thorough understanding from the Minister about a particular situation that I, and I am sure others, might have in my constituency. This is about a local authority’s ability to use new clause 5 or possibly new clause 4 to avoid its responsibility in terms of required housing in its area, and how the Minister or Secretary of State will determine why one local authority is determined not to take its fair share of required housing.

I have a number of local authorities in my constituency, some of which are very keen to deliver houses and are doing so. One or two are not. How do we deal with a situation in which one errant local authority does not appear to want to produce a local plan that meets its objectively assessed housing need, and so uses new clause 4 or new clause 5 through the back door? I have not dreamed that situation. It is not that production of the local plan is being prevented, but there might simply be a political reluctance in the local authority to put housing in its area or there might be an ongoing battle to deliver a proper local plan.

That authority could argue, “We haven’t got the land in our local authority area, so we think all these houses should go in the adjoining local authority area”—which has a sound local plan and is delivering on its housing numbers. It might say, “Houses shouldn’t go in my local authority area. They should go in this adjoining one because they’ve got lots of space and lovely green fields to put the houses in.” The errant local authority might argue that houses should go into another local authority. We then come along and use new clause 4 or new clause 5 to say, “This has to be a joint plan, and these houses will have to go into the other local authority area that’s doing its job properly.” How will the Minister or the Secretary of State determine situations in which a local authority is not carrying out its duty to assess need and deliver those houses? Will the Minister look into that situation?

[Gavin Barwell]

It has been a useful debate, and I hope I can provide some clarification. Perhaps a mistress of understatement, the hon. Lady said that district councils were not terribly happy and county councils were reasonably happy. My message to district councils listening to this debate is that it is completely in their own power to ensure that this new clause is never used. All they need to do is produce local plans that address housing need in their area, and there will never be any reason at all for the Secretary of State to make use of this power. The only circumstances in which the power could ever be used would be if a district council somewhere in the country were failing to produce a local plan that met need in its area. To county councils, I would say, “Don’t get too excited,” because I do not think the intention is to make regular use of this power.

I will make one observation. When you become a Minister, you get given a mountain of brief to read into your subject. Something that stood out from one brief was the powers that the Government have taken to intervene on local planning authorities that are not deciding a high enough percentage of major applications within the specified timescale. That was quite contentious when the powers went through Parliament. What is interesting about it is that it has, I think, been used only three times. The existence of a power that says that the Planning Inspectorate is now going to determine planning applications rather than the relevant local authority determining them, has acted as a real spur to people to raise their game. It has not been necessary to use the power very often at all, and I suspect that this power might serve the same purpose. If it has provoked a strong reaction among district councils that do not ever want to see this happen, and that leads to more of them adopting their plans on a timely basis, I will be very happy never to have to use the power.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which I should have done earlier.

Is the hon. Gentleman implying that every single development that is commercial to residential is not done well? In my life prior to entering politics, I dealt with many schemes that developers brought forward because of permitted development rights. They resulted in excellent developments that met market demand, which is key. I do not deny that there will be problems on some occasions, but is he trying to argue that every single development is an inappropriate home not built to the right standards?

[Jim McMahon]

I suppose the hon. Gentleman could listen to me, or he could listen to the architect who said of the Housing and Planning Bill:

“This new Bill only addresses speed of delivery: short-sighted political gain at the cost of long-term quality.”

The professionals are saying that quality is an issue. I can point to conversions in Greater Manchester, which I know well. Some have used the extended permitted development rights to produce a quality development. That will almost certainly be true, but we can all point to one and try to hold it up as an example of many, when of course that is rarely the case. However, as we are seeing, the Government just do not know. It is okay to shine a light on the evidence provided by professionals, but the Government do not know the answer. If a more regulated planning system were brought back in, council planning departments would definitely be able to get a grip on quality and see it through.

That is all we are asking for. It is not about passing judgment on whether premises should or should not be converted from commercial to residential; it is about ensuring quality, affordability and long-term sustainability and starting to plan communities and neighbourhoods, instead of letting developers get away without paying their fair share. I cannot see why anybody would argue against that. It would highlight the best developers who contribute to community and society. Fair play—they make a profit doing so, and there is nothing wrong with that, but there are some people who do not play the game fairly and who extract as much cash from it as possible, with absolutely no interest in quality or community. Bringing measures back in to take firmer control of that has got to be in the long-term interests of this country and of our towns and cities.