Draft National Planning Policy Framework

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and it is always very difficult to follow a contribution as good as hers—but I will try. I agree with a great deal of what has been said on all sides in this debate. If the Government genuinely listen in this consultation—not just to your Lordships but to everybody else—they will produce a document that will receive a great deal of consensual acclaim. I should again declare an interest as a member of a local planning authority and of a planning committee.

I, too, will try not to repeat much of what I have said before. However, I must repeat that there are serious problems with the document. Its language in many cases is inappropriate in a legal planning document, and sloppy. It is still difficult to know whether some of the problematic language is deliberately or accidentally provocative. That is at the bottom of the argument.

There is also a lack of consistency in the document. I have a list of examples where it states different things about the same thing on different pages—and sometimes on the same page. There are gaping holes. This is perhaps due to trying to get it down to 50 pages. There is also a lack of clarity. The Town and Country Planning Association described it as,

“confusing, contradictory and legally ambiguous”—

which says what I have just said in slightly posher language.

My noble friend Lady Hamwee reminded me that I described it as a narrative more than anything else. The more I look at it, the more it reads like a political policy pamphlet in which people have put down proposals in order to be provocative. A couple of days ago in the House, we debated the first amendment to the health Bill. It was moved by the Labour Party but taken substantially from a Liberal Democrat conference policy motion. People in that debate argued rightly that what is appropriate language in a conference policy motion—which, at least in our party, we still think of as important—is not appropriate for legislation. This is guidance rather than legislation, but the same principle applies.

The National Planning Policy Framework overlaps and interlocks with the Localism Bill, particularly with two remaining issues: the question of sustainable development—what it is now to mean and where and how it should be defined—and the transitional arrangements from the old planning system to the new. I will not say too much about these today because we will discuss them again in some detail on Monday, for the umpteenth time, and the Minister may be able to say slightly more helpful things in the context of the Bill than she can in the context of the NPPF. We will see.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, referred to sustainable development. We have had some run-ins in my part of the world with her organisation, but it has been constructive and I hope that we will come to the sort of solution that she talked about.

The problem in many areas is that people think historic buildings are all castles and manor houses and so on in the countryside. Many of the most difficult ones, including ones that the noble Baroness talked about today, are in towns. Some of the great Victorian mills, most of which have been knocked down, remain and require a great deal of money and resources to achieve regeneration.

Earlier, the noble Baroness referred to the Weavers’ Triangle area in Burnley. What is going on there is tremendous, but it is in competition with other areas. I refer to Brierfield Mills in Pendle, which I know well. It is like a mini Salts Mill in that it is that sort of grade two listed building; it is really quite tremendous. The council and many local people are attempting to find new uses for it because its old use as a textile mill that employed thousands of people has gone completely. But it is extremely difficult. The Weavers’ Triangle, for example, is going to get one of the new technology colleges of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. We bid for the same college to be located in Brierfield, but we lost the bid. Regional development funding has been sought for both sites, and there are strong rumours that in the near future there will be an announcement that it is going to go to the Burnley site, not to ours—including the famous Todmorden Curve, so why can I argue about it? In fact, I do not argue about it. There are not enough resources to do it all, but it is very important.

This is a different sort of planning to that we see in the countryside. A lot of what I talk about in the NPPF concerns the future of the countryside and whether it means that mass housing developers can build great new estates on green fields all over the place, and whether the precious uplands of this country are going to be covered in new power stations or wind farms, and all those dreadful thoughts. This is where the controversy is and what the Daily Telegraph is talking about, but in practice there are many parts of the country where planning is about desperately trying to find people who are willing to develop and invest in projects which can economically and financially benefit from that investment. But I am talking about parts of the country that are not very attractive to people who want to build and make a profit. As well as the countryside, the National Planning Policy Framework also has to cater for that completely different environment.

I strongly support the submission made to the Government by the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee, of which I am a member, on CLG matters. However, I will not say more about it other than to express my support. I support much of what the Wildlife and Countryside Link has put forward, particularly its view that the document ought to include right at the beginning a clear statement of core planning principles. That is something the Government ought to think about very seriously.

Many noble Lords have talked about the problem of undesignated areas of the countryside, parts that are not designated as being of special national significance, but nevertheless contribute to what the CPRE and the others call the “intrinsic value” of the countryside. On the other side of that coin are the submissions from the Country Land and Business Association and one which I know has been put forward by my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor about the need for a planning system that allows appropriate development in the countryside, particularly in villages and using redundant farm buildings and so on, but which does not allow the countryside to be ruined. Finding that balance is very important indeed. I heard part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and it is clear that no one is arguing for the countryside to become fossilised. It is important that rural communities and villages remain vibrant and do not become dormitory suburbs stuck in the countryside. That balance can be achieved, and if it is, I think that it will attract a great deal of support from everybody.

It is very important indeed that local planning authorities can use the document when it is finally produced and that it will work in the sense of producing good local plans as quickly as the Government want them to be used. A great deal of that is in producing the evidence base and carrying out the processes of consultation which, particularly since the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, have been burdensome, particularly for relatively small planning authorities and ordinary district councils. The local evidence collection and the analysis of information as a basis for plans and policies that will stand up to inspection will be even more important under the new system because the regional plans and strategies will have gone, and a lot of what is in local plans at the moment derives from those regional strategies. A huge amount of the guidance in the PPSs that people translate into their local plans will be gone. Almost everything in the local plans will have to be based on local evidence-gathering and analysis of that evidence.

The planning officer on my council—Pendle—is Mr Neil Watson, who has had a good, hard look at this document. He says that the existing system has six clear requirements for building the evidence base. They are things such as retail infrastructure, a sustainability appraisal and so on. He has identified in the draft NPPF no fewer than 14 requirements—those six and eight new ones—and perhaps two more as well. If the Government are not careful, they will put a much greater burden on local planning authorities to produce evidence. If you do not produce evidence and show it as a basis for your policies, you will not get your local plan through the inspection process. The whole thing will fall apart at local level—it happens in a lot of places—and also at national level. So this is very important.

Finally, I will pick up on what the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said about the great need for detailed guidance on what the document means. I wonder how many pages will be in the detailed guidance: perhaps it will be 1,000. Clearly it will not be: the Government may get it down perhaps to 60, 70 or 80 pages by the time they have taken into account the consultation. That would be a step forward. Then, over the next three and a half years of this Government, how many more pages of different sorts of guidance on the planning system—called different things—will the Government churn out? We will stop counting some time in the hundreds, and when it gets to 1,000 perhaps we will have a debate here about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the local plans will remain part and parcel of the requirements that people have to pay attention to. Those that have already been developed can and should be updated. That is going to be done on a fast-track basis. I said earlier that discussions were going on with the inspectorate. Those policies that have relied on the regional spatial strategies will maintain until and unless they are changed, and with the adoption of the National Planning Policy Framework. Where they are completed, they are the supporting documents; where they are not completed, they will have to be completed as quickly as possible. In between that, account will have to be taken of the national planning policy framework in any decisions being made.

[Lord Greaves]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can she just clear up one point that has been raised? Who will have the responsibility of issuing the certificates of conformity on those local plans and local government frameworks that have already been adopted?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the planning inspectorate will be responsible for issuing the certificates and also for ensuring that the fast-tracking of plans is put in hand.