Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Roberta Blackman-Woods

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

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Well, we will have to disagree. I think that if somebody is asking for planning permission—not just outline planning permission—for a major development in a conservation area that abuts a world heritage site, it is vital that the materials to be used are included as a pre-commencement condition.

Government Members will love the next part:

“No development shall take place until full details of the location of the proposed bat loft and a scheme for the provision of 10 house sparrow terraces have been submitted to and agreed in writing by the local planning authority.”

We all agreed earlier that protecting wildlife is really important. As the Minister knows, sparrows need to be protected if they are to survive and thrive. Such mitigation and compensation are necessary within the breeding bird assessment regulations.

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

I hope that the hon. Lady is not going to go through too extensive a list. One of the points that we have been trying to make is that quite a lot of the conditions that have been mentioned could be carried out during, say, the demolition phase; they do not have to take place or be agreed before the contractor starts at the site.

On the particular condition that the hon. Lady just raised, although it might be possible for the developer to agree a location for the bat and sparrow accommodation, there is no guarantee that the inmates will transfer willingly. Anybody who knows anything about bats—I happen to, strangely—will know that one can put up a bat loft to accommodate displaced bats but they might not use it for years, and they might never use it. They are capricious creatures that might decide to go elsewhere, perhaps because of the noise of the development.

The same is true of colonies of sparrows. Sparrows are strange birds, in that they do not travel very much. They tend to live in one place—as the hon. Lady said, they colonise particular areas—and they might even pick a particular tree that they never leave, but they are unlikely to move simply because someone decides to put up accommodation. All these things are iterative and could be done during the demolition phase. There is no reason to wait months and to have an argument about where the sparrow accommodation should go, because even the sparrows might not agree on where is decided.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Gentleman might have had a point had there been a demolition phase. As there is not, it is important that all these things are known up front. A further condition was noise mitigation. The developers were asked for details of proposed foul and surface water drainage; for an archaeological investigation; to refrain from site clearance, preparatory work or development; for a tree-protection strategy; and for a site map.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Roberta Blackman-Woods

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

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

I was going to speak later.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I am not trying to suggest there has been a problem in the past, but we have neighbourhood planning provisions before us in a Bill that seeks to strengthen and streamline the process of neighbourhood planning. It is the Opposition’s job to seek ways of improving the Bill and one way might be to give greater clarity and confidence to the public and all our constituents that neighbourhood plans are being effectively and efficiently examined. That provides more confidence in the process, which we are incredibly supportive of.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

I realise that the hon. Member for City of Durham is benignly motivated, but I had a horrible feeling that she might have been seized by Stockholm syndrome with regard to the planning industry. She referred quite a lot to what the planning industry had to say, but I think she misunderstands the great advantage of neighbourhood plans. They are organic community creations outside the accepted rules, shibboleths, morals and principles of the planning system. She seems in her amendments to be trying to put barriers and bureaucracy into neighbourhood plans, which they are specifically designed to overcome.

There are already safeguards in the neighbourhood planning process. When a neighbourhood plan is approved by referendum, it must go to the local council where there is democratic oversight; it must be adopted as part of the local plan before it is accepted completely; and it must be examined. By the way, I am not surprised the RTPI was willing selflessly to put itself forward as the monopoly examiners of plans for a fee, adding yet more cost to the process.

It strikes me that the hon. Lady is creating bureaucracy in the system—

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

May I say at the outset that I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of what I was seeking to do? I was seeking to get further clarity in the Minister’s legislation, not to put prescription in place. As far as I can recall, I did not mention fees for the RTPI.

[Kit Malthouse]

No, I accept what the hon. Lady says and I apologise. She said these are probing amendments and I was being slightly flippant, but I doubt very much whether a member of the RTPI would do the examination free. The point is that if you restrict it to just them, I imagine the fees might rise slightly. Basic economics is that the smaller the pool of people, the more fees will rise.

I acknowledged that the amendments were probing, but I am not sure what problem the hon. Lady is trying to solve. Thousands of neighbourhood plans have come forward and there are two major issues, which the Bill solves. The first is more assistance from local authorities, because obviously the plans have to conform with the local plan and they are often developed in parallel. Certainly mine were developed in parallel with the local plan. There is quite a lot of iterative process between the two and the Bill allows that. Secondly, if they are going to do this work, there should be protection in the planning system, which is also in the Bill.

Beyond that, I fear the hon. Lady is trying to create with the amendments—I accept they are probing—a sort of recreation of the whole planning system on a local scale, instead of realising that the process is organic and should be exactly that without as much restriction as the formal planning and plan development process has, notwithstanding the fact that there will be supervision by the local council.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Roberta Blackman-Woods

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

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

Q 6868 Do the provisions of the Bill go far enough to support groups that want to undertake a neighbourhood plan and, in particular, does the Bill do enough to support groups in disadvantaged areas? Please address both parts of the question.

Jonathan Owen: You have probably put your finger on the most important issue facing the plans, which is how to make them credible and respected in the system, so that communities engage with and buy into them. The Bill does a lot to help with that process. I have visited lots of parish councils over the last few years and they certainly have expressed concerns about how difficult it is to revise some neighbourhood plans, and about some of the advice that they are getting from principal authorities. Some elements of the Bill will help with that, but I do not think that it tackles the fundamental issue, which is how credible the neighbourhood planning process is within the planning system as a whole. We are in danger of building a lot of expectations that will not be fulfilled.

Neighbourhood plans have been enthusiastically embraced by parishes and communities, with loads of people volunteering to help with them and 400,000 people voting in elections or referendums on them. A really good plan is produced at the end of that process, but all too often those plans are set aside on appeal, or decisions by planning authorities are taken contrary to the plans. We would like to see the Bill tightened to ensure that neighbourhood plans have more influence in the process, and so that there is a clear statement from Government about what exactly the role of neighbourhood planning is in the planning process.

Ruth Reed: Funding has already been put in place for providing plans for disadvantaged areas, but local authorities are beholden to identify and bring forward local plans and we do not yet know whether the funding is sufficient to enable that.

Where you have a clearly identified community, whether it be parishes or other well-knit communities, it is very easy to put in train the process of producing a local plan. In a city area with no clear community boundaries or, necessarily, a sense of community, plans are much harder to bring forward. I am not sure that there is anything other than the intention under previous instigations to provide funding—there is nothing necessarily in the Bill—to promote the identification of those areas and to bring them forward. It would be good to see this rolling out across all communities to give them the same access to the democratic influence in their immediate area.

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

Q Dr Owen, you said that a lot of neighbourhood plans had been overturned, or that decisions on appeal have blown a hole in the neighbourhood plan—that certainly happened in my constituency—so do you think that the provisions of the Bill will iron some of that out? Do you think that the intervention point, or the point at which the plan has more weight post-inspection, is the right moment, or could it conceivably be earlier in the process?

Jonathan Owen: I think it is helpful that the Bill proposes, in effect, giving plans influence from earlier in the process. Obviously we need to see how that works in practice, but it goes some way to address some of those concerns. We probably need during the passage of the Bill to try to press for greater clarity on the exact role of the neighbourhood plan and get some statements about the importance and significance attached to them.