Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Sajid Javid)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I welcome the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) to her new position. I wish her and her team all the very best.

I have been a Member of this House for six-and-a-half years. In the countless contacts I have had with my constituents over that time, one issue has come up more often and more consistently than any other: housing. I am sure other hon. Members would say the same. Whether it is a lack of affordable accommodation, standards not being met, calls for housing to be built on one site or campaigns against it being built on another, the subject dominates inbox, postbag and surgery alike. Meeting that challenge requires action on many fronts, but at the heart of it all is the need for a clear, fair and, above all, effective planning system.

My two Conservative predecessors at the Department for Communities and Local Government did more to reform planning than all their Labour counterparts combined. More than 1,000 pages of policy was reduced to just 50 and the Housing and Planning Act 2016 did much to streamline and speed up the process. It is a record of real action and real change that is already paying off. The year 2015 saw more planning permissions delivered than in any year since records began. Almost 900,000 new homes have been delivered in England alone since the start of 2010.

As I said just last week, however, there is much more to do. The Prime Minister has been absolutely clear that, if we are going to build a Britain that works for everyone, we need a housing market that works for everyone. That means doing still more to tackle the housing shortage by giving communities greater certainty over development and reducing the time it takes to get from planning permission to completion. This Bill will help us to do just that.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way so early. He is quite right about the inbox: this subject dominates so much of the dealings we have with our constituents. There are two areas the Bill does not cover that I think it ought to. I wonder if, over the course of the next few weeks, he and his fellow Ministers could consider whether the Bill should be amended to deal with them.

The first point is that inspectors, on dealing with developers’ appeals, take into account the number of planning permissions given but not the number of housing starts. Planning permissions are in the hands of the district planning authority, but housing starts are in the hands of the developer. If the developer will not make use of the planning permission, it is unfair on the district council and unfair on the affected neighbourhood that does not want to see the planning go ahead.

Secondly—I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will be very, very quick indeed—in relation to matters going up to an inspector, I gather from the Minister for Housing and Planning that they cannot be called in once they have gone to the inspector, but they ought to be if there is to be any even-handed justice and equality of arms.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Just before the Secretary of State responds, my patience with and tolerance of the extremely long intervention by the right hon. and learned Gentleman is not to be taken as a precedent.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Garnier Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I hope that if the Government are willing to listen to this argument, as I believe they are, and come forward with proposals to deal with the situation—should the measures I have tabled not be the right way to do so—we will rebuild confidence in neighbourhood planning and it will proceed.

The measures I have tabled work as follows. New clause 7 addresses the first problem I set out. It would require planning authorities to consult neighbourhood planning bodies on decisions to grant planning permission. Where a planning authority wanted to approve a major development against the wishes of a neighbourhood planning body, the planning authority would be required to consult the Secretary of State before granting permission.

The five-year land supply is dealt with by new clause 8, which would empower the Secretary of State to issue a development order to: clarify the means by which housing land supply is assessed; define the minimum amount of time before a local planning authority’s failure to meet its housing targets would result in its local plan being out of date; and specify that neighbourhood plans should be taken into account, notwithstanding the lack of a five-year supply of housing land.

I very much hope that the Minister will respond to the new clauses in the spirit in which I have tabled them. There is a genuine problem here, but it is capable of being addressed without undermining the need to build more houses in this country. We must respect local communities that do the right thing and embark on the plans, because there is a real danger of undermining localism and communities if we do not act to ensure both that the principles of neighbourhood plans are upheld and that made neighbourhood plans that have been approved by the local population in a democratic vote cannot be overturned by speculative developers.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being most generous in allowing interventions. Does he have the problem that I have in my constituency, namely that the district council has very nearly, but not quite, given sufficient permissions for the set number of dwellings for the planning period, but the developers given the permissions do not make the building starts, so when the next scheming developer comes along, the district authority says no, but the planning inspector says yes, because the area has not built up to the number? Building is in the control of the developers, but the permissions are in the hands of the council.

[Nick Herbert]

My right hon. and learned Friend puts the point incredibly well. That is exactly how developers are able to game the system and why the way in which we calculate the five-year land supply is fundamentally flawed and is giving rise to this injustice. The loophole has to be closed, and I very much hope that the Government will do so.