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.