Town and Country Planning

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the Minister for finding the time for this debate in response to the prayer motions that Her Majesty’s official Opposition have laid against these regulations.

I will start by telling Members a story, one that is real and with which some across the Chamber will be familiar. It does not have a happy ending, and given the Secretary of State’s radical extension of permitted development, it is about to get a whole lot worse for many people in many of communities up and down this nation.

Over the weekend, the Minister may have read an article in The Observer about permitted development. It began by talking about the experience of a woman, Katya, who lives in a block of flats created under the existing permitted development regulations. All Katya wants, like many of us, is a place to call home, to bring up a young family and to feel secure, space for her children to play safely, somewhere to shelter during this pandemic and to be able to travel to work from, and some communal green space. Yet Katya is one of thousands of residents who are crammed into former offices and industrial units that were not built for human habitation. Some have no or few windows, some are as small as 10 square metres—the average car parking space is 11 square metres—and many are on the outskirts of towns, with few amenities such as shops and schools.

Katya is not alone. Up to 60,000 units have been built under the previous extension to permitted development, many of which are unfit for human habitation. I am certain that neither the Housing Minister nor the Secretary of State would like to find themselves or their families in them.

This debate is about three further ways in which the Government want to create poor-quality housing by bypassing the local community, local democracy and local control: by adding new units on top of flats; by allowing developers to demolish and rebuild empty buildings; and by allowing people to add multiple floors to their homes in a village, town and city near you.

Let me take Members on a visual journey up north to Leeds, where Abbey, a young professional, bought her leasehold flat only to discover that it had been cladded with flammable material. She is one of many thousands affected. She cannot sell it. It is zero-rated for a mortgage and she has to pay thousands in waking watch and insurance fees. There are also massive problems, with which the Minister and the Secretary of State are very familiar, with the EWS1—external wall survey—forms.

What is the Government’s solution? Instead of building back better, safer, healthier and greener for Katya and communities up and down our nation, the Secretary of State will go down in history not only for his unlawful planning direction in Tower Hamlets, with the Westferry affair, but as Bob the bad builder, coming to wreck a village, town and city near you.

Instead of having a relentless focus on making people like Abbey safe in a cladded building, he has rammed through a negative statutory instrument to lob an extra two storeys on blocks of flats, overnight giving some freeholders and overseas investors a multi-million pound windfall of up to £42 billion.

At the same time, this very SI has added an additional cost for leaseholders who may want to buy the freehold. No need for donors to attend the Carlton Club dinner circuit anymore and exchange chummy texts—just sneak the windfall through Parliament via an undebated instrument. What does that instrument deliver a year? Just 800 flats per year; that is 8,000 over a decade.

To make matters worse, because permitted development bypasses the planning system, we could have a ludicrous situation where high-rise buildings extended by two floors do not go through gateway 1 of the draft building safety Bill. Have the Government learned nothing just three years on from Grenfell? Oversight, regulation and rules protect lives.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Amesbury]

In a moment.

In the spirit of cross-party co-operation, I happily quote the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who strongly advised the Prime Minister to get a “better housing adviser”. I find it difficult to disagree. Permitted development has been disastrous for our towns and cities since its introduction by the coalition Government in 2013 and things are about to get a whole lot worse. That is not me saying that—it comes from the Government’s own advisers. In fact, on the day that the Secretary of State laid two of the three statutory instruments that we have prayed against, his own commission’s review of permitted development was published—and it was damning.

The review found that only 22% of permitted development dwellings met the Government’s own space standards, fewer than 4% have access to a private amenity space and a vast majority have only single-aspect windows. These are not beautiful homes—in the words of another Government commission report—these are the slums of now, the slums of the future.

The Royal Institute of British Architects president, Alan Jones, put it like this:

“The arrogance and lack of understanding is breathtaking.”

It is not just RIBA that think the extensions to permitted development are a bad idea; they are opposed by the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Chartered Institute of Building, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Town and Country Planning Association and many more. Aside from some developers looking to make a quick buck out of shoddy housing, who supports these pieces of legislation?

With a slight nod to the fact that windows for people in flats might be a step forward, all three SIs allow councils to challenge developers if there is inadequate lighting provision.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman’s tone. He and I got on very well as co-members of the Select Committee, and he will know from his experience on that Committee that the problems with Grenfell, which he lays at the Government’s door, were decades old in the building regulations system. This is not something he can lay at the door of this Government—there were decades of failure. The issue in relation to the £40 million Westferry windfall for the developer is factually incorrect; there would simply have been a reduction in the amount of affordable housing on that development. On the space standards, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, today the Government set out clearly that space standards will be included in future permitted development rights.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In terms of Grenfell, I referred to the draft building safety Bill and gateway 1. Certainly in terms of planning permitted development, there is an issue there—it is an issue that we will undoubtedly discuss beyond the debate today. With regard to the concession to the rebels, and the fact that we have laid the motions today, of course we welcome baby steps forward—finally, there is a concession that actually people deserve space as well as windows. That is a step forward, undoubtedly, but major problems remain with permitted development.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) made some very fair points on space standards that we looked at in the Select Committee when I was a member. She will be aware that the Government have brought forward these new proposals to make sure that there are space standards in permitted developments. That is why I support the proposals in principle, although there are one or two points of detail that I would like to raise.

The hon. Lady painted one side of the picture, but I have seen many developments in my constituency and just outside it that are conversions of redundant office buildings that are not being used any more into perfectly adequate, nice apartment blocks for young first-time buyers. Clearly there is a lot of merit behind permitted development, which has delivered 60,000 homes in the past few years in terms of additional stock. That is partly how this Government have doubled housing delivery since the lows of 2009. There is a lot to commend in the Government’s action on this.

Statutory Instrument No. 755 seems to say that any two-storey property, pretty much anywhere in the country —there is no geographic restriction, as I understand it—be it a three-bed semi in Thirsk, Malton, Harrogate or wherever else, can have two more storeys put on top of it as long as it is no more than 3.5 metres higher than the neighbouring property. I worry about the street scene in that situation. It is the same for terraced houses as well. It may be appropriate in some parts of London where it would not impact adversely on the local street scene, but I wonder whether it would be appropriate in some parts of the country. I urge Ministers to consider whether more controls should be put in place in relation to certain parts of the country where that would not be appropriate.

Similarly, paragraph AB.2 allows a commercial property such as a takeaway or shop of two storeys to have two more storeys put on top of it, with, again, the 3.5 metre height restriction. Again, that could impact the street scene in certain parts of our towns, cities and suburbs. Another point is that lot of these kinds of properties are owned in self-invested personal pensions. They are commercial properties. Ministers will be aware, as I have raised this on a number of occasions, that residential property, even a rented property, cannot be put as a separate dwelling on top of a commercial property if it is owned in a personal pension and held in a pension wrapper, which is restricting supply in many towns and cities. We should change that to allow it to be the case as long as the properties were delivered for social rent at half market value to encourage development of such properties on their upper floors. If I look down the streets in Thirsk, I will see lots of instances where this is the case. This is a real opportunity to deliver more housing above shops in our city centres.

On the other planning reforms that are being brought forward, I very much support the zoning element. I do worry about some of the underlying assumptions, though, which are driving the high number of properties in certain locations with low affordability, and therefore expensive house prices. I am not convinced that simply building lots of houses in expensive areas is going to lower prices to the degree that Ministers obviously want.