National Planning Policy Framework

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I will be quick. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on initiating this hugely important debate on an issue that matters a great deal to communities across the country. I agree very much with his points. I will restrict my comments to two points, because much of what I wanted to say has already been said.

My first point relates to the debate on the Infrastructure Bill, in which my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) reminded Ministers that the Conservative party manifesto promised that to

“give communities greater control over planning, we will…abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans”. —[Official Report, 26 January 2015; Vol. 591, c. 644.]

He cited other comments in the manifesto, but that was a key one.

No matter what our views on the record over the past four or so years, we all have to accept that on a number of levels, the promise of localism has not been delivered to anything like the extent that communities imagined might be the case at the last election. I remember talking a great deal in hustings and public meetings about localism. The promises I made were a reflection of the promises being made by the party I belonged to, but in many cases I have had to apologise to those people, because we have not gone as far as we said we would.

Local decisions are routinely overturned by the Planning Inspectorate, even in minor cases. Indeed, the default position for many councils is an assumption that they will be successfully challenged and will have to cough up. That distorts the decision-making process at local authority level and has caused resentment in communities. I know that it has caused resentment in mine, so I was pleased when the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), responded so positively. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) quoted this in her contribution, but it is worth repeating. He said:

“Let me be absolutely clear: if the existing regime is not satisfactory, as he describes, we will have a regime that is. New guidance will be issued that is stronger and more effective, that defends the interests of local authorities”.—[Official Report, 26 January 2015; Vol. 591, c. 644.]

I sincerely hope that that happens.

When can we expect to see the beginnings of that new guidance? Is it likely to be this side of the election? I very much hope so. For the record, I add my support to the calls of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs for the establishment of a new community right of appeal against adverse planning decisions that run contrary to emerging neighbourhood or local plans. I hope the Minister will also respond to that.

Much of what I have said has been said by other Members present, so I will move on to my second point. I will focus on a recent planning change that has not been properly thought through and is having a serious impact on some communities, particularly my own. Changes to the planning regulations enable owners of office space to convert it almost automatically to residential use. I understand that that was an attempt to tackle a serious national housing shortage, but it is not the appropriate answer.

The effect in Richmond borough—I represent half of it and half of Kingston—has been the loss of a staggering 20% of our office space in the year since the changes were made. One in five office spaces have become residential in just one year. It is not empty premises that are being converted; small businesses are being moved on by landlords for obvious commercial reasons. I do not blame those landlords for that, because the upside of making those changes is tremendous, but we are being left in a position where small and medium-sized enterprises—the biggest providers of jobs in our economy—are unable to find affordable places from which to operate. There are other knock-on effects, too. When businesses are lost, so is daytime trade. A lot of our traders in small shops are already feeling the pressure and tell me so regularly.

I have the honour and pleasure of representing a network of vibrant, dynamic communities, and the changes genuinely threaten their future. We do not any more than anyone else want our areas—in my case, Barnes, Kew and Ham—to become dormitory zones, but that is the direction of travel as a consequence of this ill-thought-through change. Clearly, many commercial premises lend themselves to conversion to residential use, but it is crazy to make that the default position in law. Those decisions should rest with local elected representatives who know their communities inside out and are capable of making informed decisions.

[Martin Horwood]

Exactly the same phenomenon is happening in Cheltenham. We recently lost two corporate headquarters, both of which have been converted into exclusive retirement flats that are not really available to local people. It seems to me that, if we are not careful, there is a risk that attractive communities such as ours are in danger of becoming dormitories.

[Sir David Amess in the Chair]

[Zac Goldsmith]

I very much take the hon. Gentleman’s point. He made a thoughtful speech earlier, all of which I support and agree with. That is exactly the point. If his community is attractive, mine is even more so, so the threat is double. We are seeing change happening on an alarming scale. A viable community is a mixed community, with traders, offices and people, and busy during the day, during the evening and at weekends. There is a risk of communities such as mine morphing into dormitory zones as a consequence of these policies.

The current arrangements are clearly flawed. I have written to the Secretary of State but am yet to receive an answer. Nevertheless, I strongly urge the Government to rethink the arrangements that I have just described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government have been working to roll out a series of workshops around the country to enable people to come together to hear about the benefit and value of neighbourhood planning from people who have done it. There was one not long ago in Norwich, in my county of Norfolk. Broadland district council has done some fantastic work in supporting the local community. I see examples of it everywhere. At the summit on Monday, Broadland district council offered to talk to other areas—even those outside Broadland—about the benefits of neighbourhood planning, and about how to do it and how to move it forward in a straightforward way.

The issue of speculative development has been raised a couple of times today. Members touched on the community right of appeal, which we went into in some detail in our debate a few weeks ago, so I would encourage Members to look at that transcript. Where local authorities do not have an up-to-date local plan or policies, the presumption in favour of sustainable development applies. However, that does not mean development at any cost. Speculative development is not acceptable if it is not sustainable development. Decision makers are required to consider all aspects of sustainable development, including the economic, social and environmental aspects, and inspectors do that.

I will give some examples of recent appeals that demonstrate that inspectors sometimes find that development is unacceptable even in the absence of an up-to-date local plan. That relates to my point about making councillors more aware of the decisions that are actually being made. It is important to remember that the proportion of decisions that are made on appeal by a planning inspector against a council’s decision has not changed in a long time—it is still about 1%—which shows that, in that sense, the system works.

We will not necessarily prevent developers from doing what they do, which is to try to get something developed, if they think it is profitable for them. However, if there is an up-to-date local plan in place, and especially if there is an up-to-date neighbourhood plan in place, and a developer wants to do something outside those plans, unless it has the support and agreement of the community that should be the hardest thing they ever try to do. It should be pretty much impossible to achieve.

For example, in Aylesbury Vale, appeals against applications for several thousand homes were recommended for refusal only last month, and the recommendations were upheld by the Secretary of State. Despite the lack of a five-year housing land supply, an inspector considered that the proposals would have had an adverse impact on the character and appearance of the landscape, and were not supported adequately by sustainable transport provision. In Chichester, an inspector concluded that a proposed development of 110 homes would be “mediocre” and “unimaginative”, and therefore contrary to the requirements of the framework. Those are just a couple of examples.

I will ensure that we do more to publicise recent cases more widely to reassure councils that unsustainable development can be resisted. I will also ask the Planning Advisory Service to work with local authorities to ensure that our message is clearly understood. The framework does not stand for development at any cost. It promotes positive planning and sustainable, good-quality development.

I am also aware of the many concerns of local authorities that consider that they have to waste considerable time and resources in defending challenges to their housing supply. We will therefore issue new guidance to clarify the operation of the five-year housing land supply, which will give local authorities greater confidence in resisting challenges to their evidence, if they have prepared it appropriately.

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friends that the provision of timely and robust infrastructure is vital to delivering sustainable development. National policy and guidance already set out clear expectations for securing infrastructure provision in the planning process. Local authorities already have a range of legislative tools to deliver that in a timely and transparent manner. Furthermore, the cumulative impact of development and the need for infrastructure to support development are material considerations in deciding whether individual applications should be approved. I hope councillors will make themselves aware of that.

My hon. Friends the Members for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) raised issues about the section 106 changes, permitted development rights and the Government’s recent consultation, to which we will respond shortly. The vacant building credit applies to non-residential buildings, and the relief is intended to reflect the often high costs of conversion and refurbishment that are associated with bringing existing buildings back into use. One of the points that I would have made to Westminster council, if it had contacted us directly—I have said this elsewhere—is that the buildings were vacant, so the authority’s argument that it is losing money does not stack up. The buildings are not currently in use and are not proposed to be used for anything. Therefore, they are new, fresh opportunities for residential use. However, I will write to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster with full details about how the process works, and I am happy to meet him and/or the local authority to go thorough the issues. On the issue of permitted development rights, he is right that there have been exemptions for parts of London.

On the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park about section 106, I will say two things. First, I have a great deal of sympathy with the arguments. We looked at that issue as part of the consultation, and I will deal with it when we respond. I am sympathetic to why the exemptions were put in place, and I understand their importance for the strategic commercial work spaces that we have in London. That is why those protections were introduced. I appreciate that there is a strong argument that nothing has changed.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I do not know the stats for Westminster, but in Richmond the majority of the units that have been converted so far have not been empty. They were occupied by businesses that were pushed out by artificially raised rents to achieve exactly that outcome, so what the Minister says is not strictly speaking correct.

[Brandon Lewis]

I would gently say to my hon. Friend that he should not conflate two different things. When I was talking about vacant properties, I was talking about the vacant building credits, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster referred. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park is referring to section 106 agreements that cover office-to-residential conversions, which is a different development right. I appreciate that there is a difference between the two. If local authorities think there is a specific issue in an area, they can use article 4 directions to deal with that. However, I will take my hon. Friend’s points on board.

I am extremely grateful for the forthright debate that we have had today.