Draft National Planning Policy Framework

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity to discuss the provisions of the National Planning Policy Framework. I welcome very much the rationalisation and simplification of our planning procedures that will follow from it. Nevertheless, the point of discussing a draft is to see whether we can improve it, and I share concerns about the dangers in the draft of a postcode lottery. Local decision-making needs to be balanced by proper safeguards so that the loudest voices in any particular locality do not dominate.

I, too, would like to see in the framework a more developed definition of sustainable development. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in wanting to check what the Government's view is of the Securing the Future quintet of 2005: living within environmental limits, ensuring a strong, healthy and just society, achieving a sustainable economy, promoting good governance and using sound science responsibly. I have the impression that economic development is the priority of this framework. That needs to be set within the equally important drives of a healthy and just society and environmental care for the future.

The framework helpfully quotes Gro Brundtland defining sustainable development as meeting the needs of the present without compromising future generations. It does not go on to quote the next phrases of the Brundtland declaration on the overriding priority of the needs of the poor and on the limitations caused by the needs of the future: namely, justice and environmental care. I hope that those principles will be more strongly stated in the final framework that the Government produce.

That would mean ending the idea that where a local plan is absent or silent, planning permission should be granted. Just because no one has thought about a proposal before does not mean that it should automatically be granted. A default answer of “yes” seems to be dangerous in legislation and could well lead to problems in, for example, the proper provision of affordable housing. We have seen recently what I believe to be the vexatious use of the village green legislation to prevent affordable housing being built. We need to be still clearer here about the need for such housing, especially in rural areas where depopulation continues to occur. People in many areas of North Yorkshire, for example, simply cannot afford to remain in their villages.

The stress on local decision-making is an encouraging development so long as it cannot degenerate into nimbyism. Parish councils and neighbourhood forums need to be required to take into account the needs of people who are not like us. There needs to be more here about the needs of those who may be perceived by local communities as a threat. That might include, for example, the provision of mental health provision or detention centres within a particular community. The proposal in paragraph 51 that a neighbourhood plan takes precedence over a local plan seems to be simply wrong. Surely there needs to be provision for an agreed resolution, with arbitration if necessary, but this will only be possible if we have a more developed definition of sustainable development, including both justice and the environment.

Paragraph 165 is about the natural environment and makes an interesting case study for some of my arguments. The aim, it says, should be to “minimise” adverse environmental effects. The aim should be to prevent adverse environmental effects. The paragraph states:

“Plans should allocate land with the least environmental … value where practical”.

Again, they should allocate land with the least environmental value and should seek to do that. It is a case of how much effort is put into overcoming the difficulties of that. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that one of the ways this can be done in the countryside is to have another look at which land is of the least environmental value, because the present planning laws do not always define that appropriately. It is the tentative nature of the aims which gives something of an excuse for ignoring them. The paragraph goes on to say that the “adverse impacts” need to,

“significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits”,

before planning can be refused. I think it should be the other way round. The benefits should have to be shown to outweigh the adverse impact significantly and demonstrably. There is a pulling back here from concern for the protection of the natural environment in the future. There needs to be a more positive framework for the environment here. In this respect, could the noble Baroness comment on the relationship between this framework and the natural environment White Paper? Some clear link between the two documents and the two policies would be immensely valuable.

Finally, I want to return to the major issue of justice highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker—the needs of the Gypsy and Traveller communities. They do have a mention in the framework, but we need a much more positive attitude to the contribution they make to our society, and a determination to serve the needs of this most ignored of all our minority ethnic groups. There is an opportunity here to provide proper planning provision for settlement sites and the like. Dale Farm may have been the crisis that hit our newspapers, but time and again, Travellers feel harried and unwanted, and local communities become fearful and defensive. Neither of those helps in terms of community cohesion. Proper planning provision could reduce this serious blot on the inclusive nature of our society. I very much hope that we shall be able to see that and tackle this issue, which has been around for a very long time.

I believe that this is a good start. A fuller definition of sustainable development and a greater emphasis on justice and the environment could make it a still more valuable framework as we look to the future.