Planning and Housing Supply

Laurence Robertson Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, which has been supported by a large number of concerned Members. In particular, I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for sponsoring it along with me. There is concern among hon. Members and local planning authorities about apparent confusion in the Government’s planning policies. I requested this debate because I want to consider planning, the countryside and housing projections, as well as related issues, such as the Government’s professed preference for localism, as these matters are all interconnected.

Protecting the countryside was one of my main motivations for entering Parliament in the first place. As I represent the constituency of Tewkesbury, I am more sensitive than most to the need to avoid developing on or near flood risk areas. The terrible 2007 floods in Tewkesbury will never be forgotten by anyone who lived through them. I spend a lot of time trying to attract businesses, visitors and people in general to Tewkesbury, so I believe that a balance can be struck between allowing appropriate development and protecting our green belt, green fields and important open spaces, but I am not sure that we are striking that balance at the moment.

What do I mean by confusion in policy? The Government have said frequently, for example, that their policy is to preserve green-belt land, yet my local planning authorities—my constituency covers three—are telling me that the Government are pressuring them to provide for so many houses in their local plans or joint core strategies that it will inevitably compromise the green belt, green fields and flood risk areas.

In a ministerial statement dated 6 September 2012, the Government said:

“The green belt is an important protection against urban sprawl, providing a ‘green lung’ around towns and cities. The coalition agreement commits the Government to safeguarding green belt and other environmental designations”.

That seems clear enough. However, the same statement goes on to say:

“As has always been the case, councils can review local designations to promote growth. We encourage councils to use the flexibilities set out in the national planning policy framework to tailor the extent of green belt land in their areas to reflect local circumstances.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2012; Vol. 549, c. 33-34WS.]

That is less clear. Indeed, it is confusing, perhaps even contradictory.

On the face of it, reaffirming councils’ right to re-designate the status of their land could be seen as promoting localism. However, the fact is that Government pressure to create high housing numbers is forcing such re-designations, which flies in the face of localism and contradicts the localism policy. The Government’s policies on the green belt and the wider countryside are confusing and contradictory; clearing up that confusion is one of the purposes of this debate. The Government’s insistence on high housing numbers is threatening the green belt, which leads me to question why the Government believe that we need so many houses in the first place. I wish to consider the question of housing projections.

I recognise and claim everyone’s right to a decent place to live. My job immediately before I was elected to Parliament involved working with homeless women in London. My responsibility was to raise money to build a hostel and day centre for them, to enable them to take the first steps back to normality. I learned that in almost all cases, homelessness is caused not by a property shortage but by other factors such as finances, family breakdown, drug or alcohol abuse, unemployment, refugee status or other social factors. It is not that there are not enough houses.

The Government’s own figures seem to confirm that there is no shortage of houses. In an answer to a recent parliamentary question that I tabled, the Government informed me that at the last count, there were 709,426 empty properties in England. Add to that the number of houses with planning permission that are not yet built and the figure for available properties in England comes close to 1 million.

Of course, there are in fact shortages of two kinds of housing: affordable homes, which are scarce in the village where I live, and privately rented properties, partly because it is hard and often undesirable to be a landlord. There are shortages in those two sectors for reasons other than a shortage of houses as such. For example, it is getting on for 2 o’clock, yet any one of us could go out into London or anywhere else and find houses to buy this afternoon. I question the Government’s assertion that so many houses need to be built that local authorities must re-designate green-belt land in order to meet the Government’s arbitrary and undefined housing targets.

Tewkesbury is an example of what I mean. There is no housing shortage in my area. In fact, there is planning permission for houses that have not yet been built, as well as empty properties. In the past 20 years, 7,536 houses have been completed in the borough of Tewkesbury, yet the Cambridge university econometric assessment, which is used by local councils and presumably approved of by the Government, suggests that 10,900 houses will be needed in the borough over the next 20 years—or, to be strictly accurate, over the next 18 years, as two years of the plan period have already passed. Why has Tewkesbury’s housing need for the next 20 years been assessed as 45% higher than for the last 20 years? It needs explaining.

It gets worse. Tewkesbury borough is involved in drawing up a joint core strategy with Cheltenham and Gloucester. The JCS allocation for Tewkesbury borough for the next 20 years is not the 10,900 I refer to, high though that is, but 18,800, which is 150% higher than for the last 20 years. Why? Partly because it is deemed that Cheltenham and Gloucester cannot find land for their housing growth needs, so the houses will be dumped in Tewkesbury borough, potentially causing housing stock in Tewkesbury to increase by 54% over the next 20 years and causing the councils to build on green-belt land and in other undesirable areas.

That raises the question of the duty to co-operate. Gloucestershire has six council areas, not just three, and the duty to co-operate goes beyond county boundaries. Why, then, will the houses that Cheltenham and Gloucester are deemed to need but cannot accommodate end up being built on green-belt land in Tewkesbury? That cannot be fair, and it demonstrates the paucity of the current planning guidance, which says that plans will be considered unsound if the councils concerned have not co-operated. However, it is the councils that are not involved in the plan, as well as those that are, that need to co-operate. How does that work?

I reiterate that if it were not for the Government’s apparent pressure on local authorities to plan for a greater number of houses, the problem would not arise. Such a top-down approach is arbitrary and undefined. I say so because that is basically what the Government indicated to me in reply to a parliamentary question. In a written answer dated 9 July, the Minister told me:

“While there is no standard methodology, councils’ assessments should be demonstrably objective.”—[Official Report, 9 July 2013; Vol. 568, c. 191W.]

What exactly does that mean? If there is no standard methodology for assessing future housing needs, how can Government assessments be right and the local authority’s previous housing figures wrong? That is another question that I want answered today.

That brings us to the issue of localism. In my view, the Government were right to scrap the regional spatial strategies. It was surely wrong for unelected, anonymous people to determine how many houses an area should build and where they should build them. It was therefore with great anticipation that I and many others looked forward to the new housing and planning strategy—only, so far, to be disappointed.

Local plans have always had to be sound, and developers have always had the right to appeal against decisions against them locally; there has also always been a presumption in favour of sustainable development. However, we now seem to have gone beyond that, and to be setting the bar far too high for local planning authorities, and that causes them to contradict another area of Government policy, which is the need to protect the green belt.

As I have said, in my area, Tewkesbury borough will, if the JCS is adopted, have to increase its housing stock by about 54% over the next 20 years. That massive increase will mean that the council has to grant permission for developers to build thousands of houses on land that is currently designated green belt. Such sites have already been identified.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but is it that Tewkesbury borough council is not engaging in a conversation with neighbouring authorities, or do those authorities want to foist some of their development on Tewkesbury, or on its borders?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robertson]

The authorities are involved in the joint core strategy, which covers three councils, but there are six councils in the county, and others outside the county overlap with them, or are contiguous. Perhaps there has not been enough of an attempt to ensure that all councils join in, and there has been obstinacy on the part of some of those involved in the joint core strategy, but whatever the case, it is a really strange situation to have three councils getting together while others each have their own plans. The whole system is very confusing and difficult. As for Tewkesbury’s allocation, even if we accept the Cambridge assessment of 10,900 homes, we will not have that figure; we propose to have 18,800, even though we built only 7,500 in the previous 20 years. The situation is very confused.

I have mentioned that there are proposals to build on designated green-belt sites. If they are built on, it will bring the coalescence of Cheltenham and Gloucester nearer, but it was precisely to avoid that that the land in question was designated green belt in the first place, in line with the policy stated in the written ministerial statement that I read out. Surely that is not what this Conservative-led Government intend to happen?

As I have mentioned the Conservative party, may I say in the privacy of this room that our policies on planning are losing us many votes in many areas? I am sure that the leaders of my party do not intend that to happen. In some ways, I feel that the Government believe that recovery and growth in the economy can be kick-started by encouraging more house building. Perhaps that is why the Government are requiring such high numbers, rather than following assessments based on experience and fact.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I will be brief, because so many hon. Members want to speak. There are huge numbers of readily accessible plans in the system that no one is building for, so just granting more plans will not kick-start the economy; it will just provide more land-banking for developers.

[Mr Robertson]

I entirely agree. I do not believe that it is for the Government to engineer a recovery in such a way. Surely the market will determine in which areas there will or will not be growth, so why not leave local councils to determine how many houses they need over any given period and to make their plans accordingly? The Minister may reply that that is indeed happening, but it is not. The three council areas I cover have all told me that they have to make plans for a high number of houses, because the Government will reject plans as unsound if they do not plan for such large numbers. If that is wrong, I want the Minister to say so. I will then go back to those councils and tell them that their view is wrong. I do not, however, believe that that is the case.

There is certainly a feeling that developers’ ad hoc applications are granted too freely on appeal by the Secretary of State. I have examples of that in my area. Appeals have been granted that will allow the building of many houses at Bishop’s Cleeve and Winchcombe, against the wishes of local people. On the face of it, those appeals were allowed because the council has been deemed to have an insufficient five-year land supply. What is that assessment based on? Is it based on the number of houses built in the past, on some arbitrary and undefined calculation, or on figures in the regional spatial strategy? The strategy for the south-west was never signed off, and that whole policy has been scrapped in any case. Once again, this practice flies in the face of the localism concept that the Government are promoting.

Many hon. Members wish to speak, so I will summarise my main concerns. The Government’s policy on the green belt is confused and contradictory, and we need clarification today. Exactly how do the Government assess how many houses will be needed in the future? Why are they following the predict-provide approach? Why are estimates for future housing need so high, and why are they so much higher than what was needed for the last 20 years? As a slight aside, much of the population growth in the past 20 years has been caused by immigration. Given that the Government are intent on reducing net immigration and claim to have done so already, how can housing need be predicted to increase? Why is the localism agenda being ignored? Why is pressure being put on local councils, causing them to build on green-belt land? All those questions are being asked in the council areas that I represent and, most importantly, by the constituents I represent, and they would all like answers.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Brady. In your other role as the chairman of the 1922 committee, I am sure that you are delighted to see so many of your flock here. I wish I could pretend that I thought so many of my hon. Friends were here because I am so popular in the party or because I am a compelling orator, but I recognise that the reason is the level of concern in the communities that they represent and the lack of comprehension in those communities about some of the decisions being made on nearby developments that matter to them. Those decisions seem to be visited on them from on high without explanation.

Many hon. Members have asked specific questions. I could probably take up all the time until the end of the debate just answering them, although I do not intend to do so. Instead, if it is acceptable to you, Mr Brady, and to my hon. Friends and other hon. Members, I will try to address all the issues and see whether I can answer specific questions in doing so. If, by the time we start edging towards the close of the debate, there are burning questions that I have missed answering, I will be happy to take interventions to answer them. However, I hope that I will be able to cover most of them.

I need not start by underlining the scale of the housing crisis faced by this country, the extent of the need for housing or the grief and hardship that the crisis is visiting on millions of our fellow citizens. My hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) described it eloquently when discussing the average age of the first-time buyer and the average house price in his constituency, and others have referred to the situation in their constituencies. The hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) set out clearly the roots of the crisis and the fact that Governments of all stripes share responsibility for it. I hope that we can take that as a premise that everybody agrees on.

[Mr Laurence Robertson]

The Minister used the word “crisis”, but that is not a situation that I recognise. I would be grateful if he went into it in a little more detail.

[Nick Boles]

I will just recap some of the figures mentioned by the hon. Member for City of Durham and others. In the past year, the percentage of first-time buyers in England who were able to buy a home without their parents’ help fell to its lowest level ever, under one third. Two thirds of all first-time buyers in England last year required a subsidy from their parents. By definition, that means that they came from a relatively narrow social group—those from relatively well-off families. Until we introduced the Help to Buy policy, the opportunity to become a first-time buyer had been denied to a large number of our fellow citizens.

Another key fact also mentioned by the hon. Member for City of Durham is that the average age of first-time buyers has crept up and up, and is now nudging 40 in many parts of the country, although of course there are parts of the country where the crisis is not so acute. It is intense within the south-east and the south, but there are also pockets in parts of Yorkshire, and it is just as intense elsewhere, around certain big cities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laurence Robertson]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Brady. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, and to have served under that of Mr Havard earlier.

I thank all the Members who have attended Westminster Hall today and contributed to this very lively debate. I thank the Minister for his attendance and his answers. I am not completely satisfied, as he would imagine, by some of the answers he has given, particularly about this so-called “housing crisis”. He said that we are an ageing population. Of course we will age during the next 20 years, but we aged during the past 20 years as well, so I am not convinced that the projections should jump up so much because of that single factor. Of course, families go their own separate ways and people unfortunately have divorced, but again I am not aware that the projection will go up in the way that it would need to in order to justify the additional housing figures that are being talked about.

The Minister was perhaps talking about people being unable to buy houses, and ignoring the financial constraints. In my experience, it is not necessarily that the houses are not there. We went through a situation where some lenders were lending 125% of the house price, which had the effect of inflating those house prices. Now we have the opposite, where there is a very tight lending policy, and that is making it difficult for people to borrow. I accept the philosophy of price elasticity, of course—demand and supply—but there is more to it than that, so I am a little concerned that the Government are still clinging to the “housing crisis” phrase.

I will rattle through one or two final points. I am very much in favour of neighbourhood plans, of course, but they have to be in conformity with the local plan, so they are not actually that valuable.

My final point is the one raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) about infrastructure. Does that mean that numbers can be reduced? What about the green belt? What about flood risk areas? All these provide great difficulties, certainly in my constituency, to coming up with the sort of numbers that are being proposed by the Government—

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

Order.