Lord Beecham
Main Page: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Beecham
My Lords, like the Minister and at least two other Members of your Lordships’ House present for this debate, I have been leader of a council —in fact, of course, my noble friend Lord McKenzie is also a former leader of a council.
Lord Beecham
Briefly but, I am sure, stunningly successfully. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, served on a local authority as well, so there are many of us with some local authority experience. I was, for a couple of years after I was leader, chairman of the development committee. I declare an interest as a current member of Newcastle City Council and, once again, as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Despite the moderate tones in which the Minister opened the debate, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Government are really viscerally opposed to planning. They are essentially an anti-planning Government in many ways, and that shows through their policies—not just strictly in the planning field. They have adopted wholesale the Treasury fantasy that the planning system is somehow responsible for low growth in our economy and for the lack of new housing. This is not an evidence-based approach; it is one that they partially successfully sold to the previous Government as well as the present one. However, the fact is—it is well known, although whether it has appeared in Private Eye I am not sure—that 400,000 outstanding planning permissions are available for residential housing to be built. Moreover, 87% of planning applications were approved in 2011; that is a significant statistic.
There is not, in general, a huge backlog in terms of the way in which planning applications are dealt with. The bigger problems actually come with the bigger schemes. We have now an almost interminable debate about a huge infrastructure project, on if and where to have additional airport facilities. This is taking years. It was to try to deal with these major problems that the previous Government introduced the Infrastructure Planning Commission which, of course, the present Government have abolished. However, if there were to be delays in the planning system it would partly be a function of the staffing which is having to be curtailed. Of course, the Government abolished the planning development grant, which encouraged and facilitated the adequate staffing of appropriate people in local authority planning departments.
Local government has a good record of promoting economic and housing development: witness the enormous regeneration of many of our provincial cities over the past couple of decades under, it must be said, Governments of both political colours. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, who certainly was instrumental in moving on this agenda during his time in office. It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, is not in his place tonight—indeed, one hesitates to say it, but he is rarely in his place, which is unfortunate because he has much to say and contribute, and was an outstandingly successful Secretary of State for the Environment in many respects. He does not cite the planning system as a major obstacle to growth in the interesting and idiosyncratic document which he has published with recommendations for a new approach to growth in the economy. He makes some recommendations about planning, but they are pretty modest in relation to the general thrust of his report.
One aspect of that report, of course, is the regional imbalance which is again becoming a current topic, and which the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, certainly addresses. It is interesting that, in some respects, he seems to seek to revert to previous practice. He refers to the abolition of regional development agencies; he does not call for their reintroduction, because it is quite clear that the Government have set their face against that—unfortunately, in the view of some of us. However, he talks about having local growth teams, which arguably could be said to replace the government offices which have, alas, also been abolished and which I and others have commented on in debates in this Chamber before. He calls also for, as he puts it, Ministers to be associated with local enterprise partnerships. Some of us are somewhat sceptical about local enterprise partnerships, certainly in terms of their accountability. However, he is almost turning back to the inner city partnership days when there was a Minister—the noble Lord was one of them—who was closely associated with a particular area. I do not know quite how many Ministers would be required to cover the 38 local enterprise partnerships but, whatever the mechanism, the intention is clear that you have to see the country as a whole and not simply leave it in an unstructured way, which has led to the imbalance that we are all familiar with.
Indeed, one aspect of this matter is that there is simply no planning framework for England. I have referred before in debates in your Lordships’ House to the report of the Town and Country Planning Association some years ago, which strongly suggested that we needed a national planning framework for England so that there could be a deliberate attempt to secure balance in development. I recall that when I pressed the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, during his second term as Secretary of State for the Environment, to support a particular development in Newcastle relating to a brewery site—since demolished and subsequently redeveloped—his officials said that it was of no concern to government as to where this investment should go. There was a rival contender for this investment in the Midlands, and the department was simply not concerned about where it should go. That seems to me an abdication of responsibility indicative of the failure to have a sensible national framework for these decisions to be made.
Coming to the current proposals, my noble friend Lord Davies has referred to one aspect which is a matter of concern—but only one of a number of issues which arise in terms of the Government’s apparent dilution of the current system. Affordable homes are no longer apparently to be required. There is to be a relaxation, perhaps, of Section 106 agreements and, of course, we have the wonderfully developed thought, translating Marie Antoinette into housing planning terms, that the answer is of course to “let them build extensions”. This seems to be the answer to both the housing problem and the plight of the construction industry. I suspect that that is a recipe for considerable difficulty between neighbours and around authorities as people fall out about unsightly or large extensions which would not otherwise get planning permission. I note that apparently it has been suggested that the Secretary of State is counselling people who still find difficulties in obtaining such permissions that they might sue their local authority for damages, which strikes me as a little excessive. There is also a suggestion from Mr Nick Boles, who is now a Minister in the department, that the three-year period for this absurd policy might well become indefinite.
Other matters also concern the Local Government Association and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, including the notion that applications might be made in certain circumstances direct to the Secretary of State rather than to the council. One might think that that is not the most localist approach to planning. Another matter of concern is a limitation of the power for local authorities to require information with planning applications. How they are supposed to deal properly with planning applications on sketchy information is not at all clear. Of particular concern to the CPRE is the fact that major business or commercial projects might be regarded as nationally significant infrastructure and therefore would be taken out of the local planning regime altogether. That also poses considerable threats—one thinks of large warehousing and other developments —which could significantly damage local authority areas.
There are many questions about other aspects of policy. What sort of housing are we to have in the Government’s view? Again, this is well known and I have referred to it in previous debates. In the past couple of decades—this occurred under the previous Government as well—houses and accommodation have been built with much smaller areas and lower space standards than most of the rest of Europe. Generally speaking, we have worse design features and less concentration on environmental aspects of housing. None of that apparently attracts the Government’s attention. It is carte blanche to build what you like where you like, which is not a satisfactory way of dealing with the substantial problems of local economy, housing need or the construction industry.
Although there are certain sensible ideas in the Government’s national policy framework—I know that my noble friend will address those later—the current atmosphere is one in which the Government are clearly potentially creating a situation in which we will see unsatisfactory development. We will not see the right number of houses built or the right kind of houses built that are desperately needed. I do not see the Government’s proposals at all achieving the aims which they profess they wish to see implemented. I regret that the role of local authorities in all this is clearly very much under threat. We are capable of producing a new partnership with the private sector and others with the right kind of development in the right place at the right time, given the power to do so.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I am grateful to my noble friend for his clear and convincing analysis of the situation. Does he agree that the abolition of the affordable housing obligation will lead to windfall profits for developers who will have signed the Section 106 agreement and costed in performing their affordable housing obligation, which they now will find retrospectively they do not need to perform? They will be able to write back that provision straight to their bottom line. Does my noble friend think that the public interest should in some way be allowed to share in these windfall gains?
Lord Beecham
I would rather that the windfall gains were not made at all. My noble friend, in his ingenious intervention, makes a perfectly valid point. This is almost the most lamentable feature of the Government’s current policy and I invite them to rethink it.