Enderby Wharf Development

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Gavin Barwell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Main. I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on securing the debate and the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) for his contribution. They both vividly described their constituents’ concerns about this particular development and were both powerful advocates for the communities they represent.

I will start by addressing one of the points that the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse made at the outset, which is that this is a complicated issue because it engages the policy of a number of different Departments. I am determined to do my best to speak not just on behalf of my own Department, but for the Government as a whole. When I was a constituency MP, one of the most frustrating things was receiving piecemeal responses from different bits of the Government on a complex issue, so I will do my best to respond to all the issues that he so forcefully raised.

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will start with the issue that I am responsible for—the planning history in relation to the site. He made one point particularly powerfully: that the planning system has a difficult job to do, because it has to balance competing interests. He was commendably honest in saying that there are a lot of good things for London about the development, such as the contribution it will make to our tourism and the new housing units that will be built, even though they may be more expensive than the three of us would wish to see given the needs of Londoners and their ability to afford them.

By way of background, I point out that planning permission for a new docking jetty for cruise ships, plus a hotel, residential units, a skills academy and other infrastructure, was originally applied for in November 2010 and was granted by the Royal Borough of Greenwich in March 2012. As part of that planning application, planning obligations of about £400,000 towards the monitoring of emissions and improving air quality in the immediate vicinity were agreed. My Department did not receive any requests for the Government to call in the original planning application.

A further application was submitted last year to revise the terminal element of the development and other features, including by replacing the hotel with two residential towers. The 2015 proposal was subject to an environmental impact assessment, which identified no significant impact on local receptors. Though it was technically outside the scope of the application, because the principle of the jetty had already been agreed to in the original application, my understanding is that the Royal Borough of Greenwich commissioned consultants to undertake a detailed air quality assessment. The results of that assessment showed that vehicle emissions would not lead to any exceedances of the relevant air quality objectives for all pollutants, with the exception of short term nitrogen dioxide concentrations, which I think we would all agree are still a very serious issue. Those concentrations were calculated using the worst case scenario, and the results showed that it was highly unlikely that they would combine to result in exceedances of the directives. Interestingly, there was also no objection from the Environment Agency in relation to the application.

A number of residents in the constituencies of the hon. Members for Poplar and Limehouse and for Greenwich and Woolwich have recently campaigned vigorously against the development on air quality grounds, as has been explained, and asked for the 2015 application to be called in. I think the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse also wrote to the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), requesting that. He considered those requests, having regard to the national call-in policy thresholds that we set to determine when applications should be called in, and decided not to call in the application in this case. The Government are committed to giving councils and communities more power to make decisions on planning themselves and believe that, wherever possible, those decisions should be made locally.

As the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse said, a resident then took the case to judicial review, on the grounds that Greenwich council had failed to require, or take into account the need for, an assessment of the total cumulative effect on air quality, including the effects of ship emissions. The High Court held that Greenwich council had considered the air quality issues in line with the relevant planning policy and guidance, and had made no error in law in its decision.

On air quality as whole, as a Londoner I completely understand the strength of the concerns that local residents have expressed and that the two hon. Gentlemen have articulated in this debate, including the cumulative impact on local air quality. It is worth remembering that, since December 1997, each council in the UK has had to carry out a review and assessment of air quality in its area. If a local authority finds places where the objectives are not likely to be achieved, it must declare what is called an air quality management area. It is an indication of the scale of the issue that we face in London that the entire borough of Greenwich is designated as an air quality management area. Anyone listening to the debate will understand why both residents and their representatives have particularly strong concerns about the issue.

The planning policies and guidance issued by the Government include strong protections to safeguard people from unacceptable risks from air pollution, and new regulations on sulphur emissions from ships have also recently come into effect. The national policy statement for ports is clear that decision makers—in this case, the Royal Borough of Greenwich—

“should generally give air quality considerations substantial weight where a project would lead to deterioration in air quality in an area, or leads to a new area, where the air quality breaches any national air quality limits.”

The national planning policy framework, for which my Department is responsible, explains that those national policy statements are relevant to local authority planning decisions.

We have set out in the national planning policy framework that planning decisions should ensure that new development is appropriate for its particular location and that the effects, including the cumulative effects, on the existing background levels of pollution should be taken into account. It also sets out that planning policies should

“sustain compliance with and contribute towards EU limit values or national objectives for pollutants, taking into account the presence of Air Quality Management Areas”—

as I said, the whole Borough of Greenwich is an air quality management area—

“and the cumulative impacts on air quality from individual sites in local areas. Planning decisions should ensure that any new development in Air Quality Management Areas is consistent with the local air quality action plan.”

There is strong evidence that national planning policy gives significant scope for the consideration of those issues in the determination of planning applications.

I turn to shore-to-ship electrical provision, which both hon. Gentlemen mentioned. The national policy statement for ports—which, for clarity, is a Department for Transport lead, although I am not trying to pass the buck at all—sets out that all proposals should either include “reasonable advance provisions” to allow the possibility of future provision of shoreside fixed electrical power infrastructure or should

“give reasons as to why it would not be economically and environmentally worthwhile to make such provision.”

We have made clear that national policy statements form part of the overall framework of national planning policy, so that statement would have been a material consideration in decisions on the planning application. Ultimately, however, it is a matter for individual local authorities—in this case, the Royal Borough of Greenwich—to consider what conditions should apply to a planning application to make the development in question acceptable in planning terms before consent is given.

The hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich set out with commendable clarity the three tests that have been applied in this case, and the fact that Greenwich Council—or its advisers, it sounded like—had accepted the three arguments put forward. He also laid out why he remains unconvinced on those three points, which we might wish to return to outside this debate.

The Government take air pollution very seriously and are committed to improving the UK’s air quality, reducing health impacts and fulfilling our legal obligations. Not only this Government but the Labour Government who preceded us have improved air quality significantly over recent decades. Since 1970, sulphur dioxide emissions have decreased by 96%, particulate matter by 83% and nitrogen oxides by 61%. None of those figures, however, mean that the situation faced by many Londoners, and indeed people in other parts of the country, is satisfactory. There is clearly further progress to be made, and I entirely understand the concerns raised by the two hon. Gentlemen today and by their residents and constituents.

I understand that colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Transport who lead on air quality and shipping and maritime policy respectively will be examining the issue of shipping emissions as part of the UK’s national emissions ceiling directive implementation plan. Shore-to-ship electricity is one feature that might control emissions. Clearly, we should consider all technologies and all possible regulatory levers.

We have made sure that local councils have the tools they need to ensure that developments are appropriate for their location and to prevent unacceptable risks from pollution. However, I end by saying that I am very happy to meet with the two hon. Gentlemen and to talk to my ministerial colleagues in order to look further into this case. I commend both hon. Gentlemen for raising their constituents’ concerns in the House.