Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Swinfen (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. A local village pub gives the opportunity for people to go out for a drink, and possibly a meal, and to walk home rather than having to drive. If you go out for a meal and cannot or should not drink because you have to drive home, it can wreck the evening for at least one member of the party. If you walk home then even if someone has had a little too much, they can be helped quite easily. The local pub is a very useful institution. In the 40 years that I have been in my village, three pubs have closed down and we are now left with two. One provides some form of entertainment at least once if not twice a week throughout the year and the other, as well as being a pub, has a very good restaurant and rooms for people to stay in—so they serve different communities. The village had five pubs in the past because it is on the main route for pilgrims coming from the continent to Canterbury Cathedral. Nowadays, they come in on coaches from Dover and do not use their legs, which perhaps might atrophy in due course. For these reasons, I support this amendment.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate but I do so in support of the amendment, mainly because I am very fond of pubs. I am a great pub user and always have been—paying great tribute to Adnams bitter in Suffolk is, I think, in order.

Perhaps it is necessary for us to appreciate just how important the pub is in village life. The local post office is too, but we are talking about pubs. In modern terms, you either get that or you do not, but it is absolutely crucial. In my village of Mellis in Suffolk, we have a pub called the Railway Tavern. Many years ago it broke away from the brewery. That was a problem because it had to buy all its alcohol from it, which affected its profitability. That did not work and it was boarded up for a while. It was then bought, but that landlord did not make it work and it was boarded up again. Then the village got together and, with the present landlord, ran it for two to four weeks to get it going—such was the village feeling about the pub. It is now going well and Frank, the present landlord, does an extremely good job. The pub does everything: it has wi-fi, fish and chips regularly on a Friday night and quizzes. It really is the heart of the village.

Noble Lords have referred to the number of village pubs there used to be. We could all talk about our towns and villages that used to have 20 pubs and now have only one. We have reached the stage where this is very serious. Those who feel strongly about the role of the pub in towns and villages—about how crucial they are to village life—must stand up for them. If this amendment will do anything to make it a little more difficult to transform a pub quickly and commercially into something else, I am all for it. I therefore very much support the amendment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated in the debate on Amendments 60 and 61. I also thank those noble Lords who attended the briefing session this morning on the White Paper and I urge others to pick up a copy from the Printed Paper Office. We will put on further sessions on it but as I had undertaken to hold a session before Report, I thought it was important that we did so. I am very grateful to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, Gavin Barwell, both of whom were there. As I said, we will have more sessions; in the meantime the consultation on those items we are consulting on is open until 2 May.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lords, Lord Cameron and Lord Shipley, for speaking so eloquently on Amendments 60 and 61. I will concentrate first on what we have done and are doing, then look at the substance of the debate and pick up the points made by noble Lords. I do not think we have had this much interest on anything in the Bill, and certainly not since we debated ancient woodlands. These things are clearly central to our well-being and life in our country.

Noble Lords have raised a number of concerns about the loss of valued community pubs. I would therefore first reassure the Committee that we recognise the role that pubs can, and do, play in local communities. They provide valuable local hubs that strengthen community relationships and encourage wider social interaction, as well as contributing to our wider economy. The nature of the pub has changed massively in our lifetime; they are very different now from 20 or 30 years ago, when I think many were still primarily drinking establishments. Those are very much the exception now. It is now not at all unusual for people to go to a pub for a meal, and come out not having had an alcoholic drink. For a party of four or five, one person will perhaps be nominated as driver and others may just have a glass of wine with a meal. We can all see that it is very different from the way it used to be.

The importance of the pub is recognised in paragraph 70 of the National Planning Policy Framework, which requires local planning authorities:

“To deliver the social, recreational and cultural facilities and services the community needs”.


In doing so, it says that those authorities should,

“plan positively for the provision and use of … community facilities (such as … meeting places, sports venues”,

and “public houses”. Before turning to the detail of the amendments, I take this opportunity to set out the important steps we have already taken to support valued community pubs.

First, alongside Power to Change, an independent charitable trust that supports community businesses across England, we are co-funding the “More than a pub” community pub business support programme. This will provide £3.62 million of grants and loans to enable up to 80 communities to buy their pubs between 2016 and 2018. We also recently announced funding of £50,000 to support the organisation Pub is the Hub’s work on community-focused pub-based services. This will help more pubs diversify to provide essential community services, which would otherwise have been lost. As an example, the Codrington Arms in Gloucestershire recently reinstated the local post office and village shop by utilising an outhouse on the premises of the pub, which is to be applauded.

Communities can also use the powers given to them through the community right to bid to list their local pub as an asset of community value. To date—I think the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has already given this figure—local communities all over England have listed nearly 4,000 assets, of which 2,000 are pubs, so I would say that this has been successful. Views have differed; I think the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, indicated that he was not as impressed by that as others have been. We will continue to listen to evidence on the operation of this legislation and examples of good practice. It would be helpful if those noble Lords who said that the process is complicated or costly, which I do not accept although I do not have evidence to counter it, were able to come up with some evidence that it is costly or difficult—or even that communities are unaware of it. I would be interested in that. Separately, we scrapped the beer and alcohol duty escalators and froze beer duty in Budget 2016, having reduced it in each of the three preceding Budgets.

I would like to respond in more detail to the noble Lords’ amendments. Both Amendment 60 and Amendment 61 seek to remove the permitted development rights allowing a pub to change to a restaurant, financial or professional service or shop, or to be demolished. This would be for all pubs and mean that a planning application would be needed in all cases. Noble Lords will, I am sure, be familiar with the important changes that we made on 6 April 2015. These were precisely to remove permitted development rights from pubs which are valued community assets, so that a decision in those cases would be made at local level. From this date, permitted development rights allowing the change of use or demolition of pubs are removed in respect of pubs and other drinking establishments which the community has demonstrated it values by nominating them as an asset of community value.

Permitted development rights therefore do not apply for as long as the pub is nominated or listed as an asset of community value. This means that a planning application is then required, allowing for local consideration and providing an opportunity for the local community to put forward its views to the planning authority. To guide decisions in these cases, it is important that local planning authorities have relevant policies in place in line with the National Planning Policy Framework.

I therefore urge local communities to come forward and nominate their valued community pubs. The community in Charing did this fairly recently and successfully prevented a change of use of its pub. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, referred to an example in his community, too. I say in passing that there is separate protection for historic buildings. If a pub qualifies on that basis, that is in addition to the normal planning requirements. That would apply to quite a lot of village pubs, although I accept that not all pubs would qualify in that way.

If there are local concerns about the prospect of a pub that is not nominated or listed changing use under permitted development rights, the local planning authority can make an Article 4 direction—the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned the Wandsworth example. A direction can be made in respect of an individual pub or pubs in an area. We consider that this approach provides valuable protection while avoiding blanket regulation, which would add bureaucracy and costs to all pubs.

Although it is not a declarable interest, I should say that in another life, when I was in the National Assembly for Wales, I was the co-chair of the Cross-Party Group on Beer and the Pub. Before someone trails my biography, finds that and says, “You didn’t mention that”, I mention it now. So I speak with a bit of experience of visiting pubs—mostly in Wales, but not exclusively. There are many thriving pubs that are worthy of protection. When you have to queue at the bar to get a drink or order a meal, that cannot be because they are doing badly. There are, on the other hand, pubs—I can think of many, although of course I will not name them—where you walk in and you know straightaway that it is in trouble. The person behind the bar looks indifferent. The pub does not do food; it may do a bag of crisps, but that is about it. I cannot see why we should seek to protect such pubs. They are often in dreary buildings—it is just the feel of the place.

That said, there are many pubs of which you think, “This is an important, integral part of the community”. I have been in community pubs that do a range of things; there may be a citizens advice bureau, a visiting library or the village shop. When you speak to the people who go there in the evening, you find that some did not go until it started to do all these things. Some people past the retirement age who would not have set foot in a pub when they were younger go there and help with the meals, for example. They just generally like the life that is there. That applies to young people, too. I have seen this. The nature of the pub is changing. Some pubs are, as I said, an integral part of the village. I associate myself with what was said about the closure of a village shop, post office or pub. That often excites interest from the community, because these things are community assets. I understand the point that is being made.

Let me turn to some of the comments that have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, talked about the vital glue that holds a community together— entrepreneurial flair is needed and engendered in some communities, while there are other communities where that is just not happening. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, talked about the cement for communities; again, I understand the point that is being made. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, correctly said that the protection as a community asset is only for five years. I find it hard to believe that successful community pubs will not know that they have to reapply. They will be aware of that. After you have made the initial application, it will not be difficult to make the reapplication five years on, if that is still appropriate. My noble friend Lord Horam talked about the historic connection of the Conservative Party with the brewing industry. My noble friend Lord Young has asked me to make it absolutely clear, as I do, that he has no connection with the brewing industry—nor do I, in a financial sense. We now have that on the record.