Localism in Planning

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Good morning, Mr Hollobone. I will try to keep my remarks reasonably brief, to allow my hon. Friends the opportunity to participate in this debate, but the number who wish to do so is evidence of the growing concern in our constituencies about planning matters and the need to ensure that we strike the right balance between providing housing and ensuring that the countryside can be protected and that we keep the promises that we made to local people. I am therefore grateful for securing this debate.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I apologise to my right hon. Friend for intervening so early, but I am also serving on a Joint Committee, to which I need to return. I just want to say how much I welcome his securing this debate and the fact that so many colleagues wish to take part. I have made it clear to the Prime Minister on the Floor of the House that the national policy planning framework is not working to protect the green belt. There is greenfield development in the green belt designated for my constituency at the behest of a planning inspector, rather than local people, which is evidence that our system is not working. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend is raising these issues today.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. Eleven Members have indicated that they wish to speak, and I am absolutely determined to do my best to ensure that those 11 people speak. It would greatly help the chances of those who want to speak if they do not intervene beforehand; otherwise we simply will not be able to get everybody in.

[Nick Herbert]

I understand the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt). Protected landscapes, including the green belt, are specifically singled out in the national framework to ensure that they are not subject to these pressures. My concern is for the wider countryside, which does not have such designation, yet he points out that there is concern in those protected areas, too. That is another reason why we need to reconsider the matter.

We agree that we need more housing. Houses have never been less affordable. The gap between incomes and house prices is very wide, and there is clearly a problem. There is clearly a need for more houses, given the rising population, changing lifestyles and so on. That much is not in dispute.

The new Government agreed to approach those issues by moving away from the top-down approach of setting housing targets, so the coalition agreement was explicit:

“We will rapidly abolish Regional Spatial Strategies and return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils… In the longer term, we will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live”.

The regional spatial strategies have been abolished. The top-down target has nominally gone in the south-east, but a number of problems have arisen, despite what the coalition agreement promised.

First, district councils in my constituency, and I believe elsewhere, do not believe that the targets have really disappeared. There is considerable danger that because of the way the process has been set up—with a requirement to conduct a strategic housing market assessment that may not properly take into account the downturn that we have had—and other pressures, which I will address, what those councils are really being told is that they have little choice but to reimpose the target that we said we were taking away. That damages confidence and removes the freedom that local authorities should have to deliver housing.

The whole theory of the localist approach is that, if we move to a system of incentives and encourage responsibility from councils, they will plan for additional houses in a way that does not set up conflict. Indeed, in my own area, whereas 51,000 houses were allocated to the four district councils that cover my constituency under the south-east plan, the current proposed plans of the four councils suggest that they will build nearly 40,000 houses, which is well over three quarters of the target originally set by the previous Government.

We must reject the false dichotomy that there is either a highest housing number or zero houses, with my constituents or councils rejecting the prospect of any house building. The councils are not doing that; they are actually planning for a very responsible level of housing, but it is important that they do that by consent and can carry their communities with them, which is the principle that we set out. If the emerging plans that they published are overturned by the Planning Inspectorate, or if the councils set a higher number than they want to build because they fear that some plans will be overturned by the inspectorate, that freedom has effectively been taken away. So my first key point is that we must not chase the target that we said we would abolish. If we chase that target, we will undermine confidence in the system that we said we would set up.

Secondly, although planning authorities are required to assess housing needs in their area—it is right that they should be able to do so—it is important that they also weigh up the availability of infrastructure to support those housing needs. We have a serious infrastructure deficit in West Sussex. We have an inadequacy of water and real pressure on unprotected countryside, which is important for agricultural use. We have pressure on school places and rural roads. The system will be failing if district councils are not able to adjust their figure to reflect that and say, “This is what is realistically deliverable in our area.” Again, district councils feel under huge pressure to adhere to the original high housing target with little regard to such infrastructure considerations, which should be material and allow councils to set a reasonable level of housing.

Thirdly—this is the real point that I wish to make—there is now a growing risk that we will return to the bad old days of planning by appeal, under which the plans put together by local authorities are effectively overturned by the inspectorate. More to the point, before plans are fully in place, the inspectorate might be allowed to uphold appeals from speculative developers that are charging into my constituency—I understand that they are all over the countryside—and putting in applications in the hope that, in the climate that has now been set, the inspectorate will uphold them. I believe that those developers are responding to a signal that has been sent to them.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend probably knows the district of Uttlesford as well as he knows his own constituency. Does he not think it is particularly iniquitous if the Planning Inspectorate makes the kind of decisions to which he has just referred when the district plan is not in place, not because of the planning authority’s idleness or unwillingness, but because it is being held up by waiting for confirmation from the highways authority or the Highways Agency?

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree. My right hon. Friend makes his point very well.

The dangers of returning to planning by appeal are multiple. First, such a return is founded on the mistaken belief that the way to get house building moving is to send some kind of signal through the system and the Planning Inspectorate that such speculative applications are to be rewarded. That is not the way to get house building moving. We need a correct analysis of the real reason for the slow rate of housing starts, which is the economic downturn. In so far as the rate is increasing again, that is due to the upturn in the economy.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I apologise to my right hon. Friend for not being able to stay for all this debate, as I warned him. The process that he describes is exactly what is happening in Gloucestershire. There is evidence that developers are trying to submit applications under the wire before the democratically approved joint core strategy can be implemented—again, not due to any laziness in local councils. Local politicians are trying to distinguish between real housing need and demand, whereas the inspectorate appears just to be backing demand, and in areas such as his and mine, demand is virtually insatiable.

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with every word my hon. Friend says; he describes the problem precisely.

The first mistake is to believe that sending a signal and using the inspectorate in that way to reward speculative applications will contribute to getting construction going. It will not, because what is happening frequently is that developers are simply land banking permissions. They are not necessarily building. When they choose to build, it will be when they think that they can make a return and when there is demand for the houses that they wish to sell. What they are doing at the moment in many cases, in my constituency and elsewhere, is taking an opportunity to obtain a permission where they have absolutely no intention to build immediately.

The system is rewarding those developers by having insufficient regard to permissions that have already been granted. That is the second key concern. Given how the rules are set up in relation to the five-year land supply, the calculations that local authorities are required to undertake mean that they cannot include swathes of existing permissions that they have allocated, which places completely unrealistic targets on them.

In one district council in my constituency—Horsham—a rate of house building is now being required that has never been achieved in the area, even in the boom years. It is good news for the developers, who will not be developing for years but will secure planning permissions on greenfield sites. By setting up a formula that fails to give weight to unbuilt planning permissions, many of which are on brownfield sites, we are effectively moving not to the brownfield-first site policy that we should have but to a greenfield-first policy. That is an environmental disaster.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

One problem on the Isle of Wight—and, I have no doubt, elsewhere—is that local people cannot afford housing because people from overseas come to the island.

[Nick Herbert]

More affordable housing is clearly needed, and there is strong support in local areas for that housing to be provided, to maintain the character of villages and ensure that communities remain strong. No one disagrees that more housing is needed, particularly more affordable housing, but as the policy is constructed with a five-year land supply requirement that pays insufficient attention to unbuilt planning permission and is effectively a greenfield-first policy, it will not deliver the affordable housing needed; it will simply enable developers to build their balance sheets.

There is disagreement about the number of unbuilt planning permissions nationally; the Minister has had an exchange about it. It would be helpful to have some up-to-date, reliable national figures. According to the four district councils covering my constituency and beyond, the total number of unbuilt planning permissions granted is well over 16,000 and the number of houses proposed to be built is 39,000. The number of unbuilt planning permissions granted is getting on for half the number of houses wanted, yet the councils are being told that those unbuilt permissions cannot really be taken into account when they set the number. That is the problem.

The practical effect of the policy is damaging to a principle that I know that the Minister adheres to strongly, as do I—neighbourhood planning underlying the publication of local plans. That was the most potent feature of the Localism Act 2011: neighbourhoods would be given the responsibility and incentives to plan for their own futures. In my constituency, some parish councils have stuck their necks out to prepare responsible neighbourhood plans, saying what amount of housing they can take. Some are taking an amount that they would not have dreamed of, and are now feeling considerably undermined. I cannot overstate how seriously I take that.

In my constituency, the parish councillors—good people—are all volunteers who have taken a considerable amount of local effort and, in some cases, risk to promote the plans, while speculative applications are coming in that are being granted either because the district council wants to grant them or, in many cases, because it fears that they will be upheld by the inspectorate. Such speculative applications are often completely contrary to what is wanted in the parishes under the neighbourhood plan. The consequence is that faith in the neighbourhood planning process, which could be so powerful and will deliver the local and affordable housing that we need, is in danger of draining away.

I have just forwarded to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, copying the Minister, a letter from three chairs of parish councils in my constituency. They specifically asked me to draw the letter to Ministers’ attention. It says:

“Neighbourhood planning should encourage partnership working between parishes and districts. In truth, it is damaging the very fabric of these important tiers of local government. We also run the risk of damaging the trust of local people who have been allowed by government, and encouraged by parish councils, to engage in the neighbourhood planning process. To have their contribution disregarded will be damaging at resident, parish and district levels.”

Those are not party political elected councillors; they are volunteers of no party who are committed to the neighbourhood planning process, and they feel that it is being chucked back at them by the actions of the planning inspector.

I will conclude by suggesting some remedies, so that I do not simply criticise what is happening and because I believe that the current situation is retrievable. It is not so radical a suggestion to abolish the Planning Inspectorate entirely. The Conservatives used to believe that we would not hand decisions to quangos—indeed, that we would get rid of quangos. I note that the Conservative party manifesto at the election, entitled “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”—an invitation that I have now declined—says:

“To give communities greater control over planning, we will abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans”.

There it is. We set it out in those terms. I accept that that did not find its way into the coalition agreement, but that is the promise that this party made to local people, yet we are now effectively allowing the inspectorate to do exactly that.

We could also extend the moratorium on speculative applications as plans emerge. That approach is not necessarily the right way to go, as it would mean that there would be no way to incentivise areas that are not planning responsibly to continue.

I have three suggestions that I believe the Minister could follow, even if we are to continue reneging on our manifesto promise. First, we must give proper weight to emerging plans, not just pay lip service to them or produce written answers and say publicly that weight is being given to them. In particular, where applications are not supported by parish and district councils, the inspectorate should be required to take notice of that, yet it is doing exactly the opposite at the moment. That could be done by executive decision, and a signal could be sent from the centre.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

An appeal decision on a wind farm has just come through, following the new guidance and a big policy change, but one of the points made by the Planning Inspectorate was:

“National policy has not been changed by the recent Ministerial Statements”.

Surely, therefore, we must go slightly further than my right hon. Friend’s first point might suggest.

[Nick Herbert]

I saw the response that my hon. Friend refers to, and I am sure that it will have raised the eyebrows of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who was clear about the signal he intended to send. Further clarification is now necessary. We need an unambiguous and published signal to be sent about the weight to be given to the emerging plans.

Secondly, we need a brownfield-first policy, not a greenfield-first policy, which means clarifying the issue of deliverability set out in the national policy framework. Unused permissions should not be discounted simply because developers say, “Oh, well, we can’t build there”. That should not be the definition of deliverability, entirely to suit the developers. Of course they will say that, because that is how they can secure planning permission for their greenfield sites. We must have a more intelligent approach.

Thirdly, we need to take proper regard of infrastructure, and guidance due to be published by the Government provides the opportunity to do so. The Minister kindly suggested that I should go to see Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, who has been responsible for drawing up the guidance, after I tabled an amendment to the Growth and Infrastructure Bill and made my points about the inadequacy of infrastructure. I accept that there is no impropriety and that Lord Taylor has properly registered his interests with the authorities, but I am concerned that not only is he producing the guidance on infrastructure, but he is a director of a company that is seeking to build a new town in my constituency. In doing so, that company is trying to overturn the local plan, which has just been produced by Mid Sussex district council. If we believe in localism, and having said that local authorities were to have the ability to set their own housing numbers and be in charge, we cannot allow people simultaneously to try to overturn those plans and be involved in the publication of guidance that is meant to reinforce localism. The system is making a serious mistake if it is permitting that.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that his proposals would provide an opportunity for people who are able to purchase only a house of a certain cost, in other words affordable housing? Does he feel that a portion of land should be set aside within a development, so that some land is processed for development now and some land is banked? We have that in Northern Ireland, and I want to see what he thinks.

[Nick Herbert]

That is an interesting suggestion. So far as further policy development is concerned, we should look at what measures can be taken to prevent land banking and at more radical reform of the planning system, which is undoubtedly constraining supply in a way that drives up prices. In the meantime, we need to make the system of localism that we promised work.

In my constituency, one chief executive of a district council, whom I will not name, told a group of parish councillors who were discussing with him their proposed neighbourhood plan, “Localism is dead.” That is the message that people on the ground are beginning to receive. When we explicitly promised localism not only in the Conservative manifesto but in the coalition agreement, when we have just passed a Localism Act, when we have told people that they will be in charge in their local communities and when we have put on them the responsibility for planning sensibly, we must uphold their ability to do so. Allowing a quango, through the back door, to reimpose the top-down housing targets that we said we would abolish is damaging to the process of localism, to public trust and, if we persist, to the Government themselves.

I am a passionate believer in localism. I want to be able to go out and defend the policy. It could be made to work, but that first requires acceptance that it is going wrong.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Before I call the next speaker, John Mann, I thank Nick Herbert for his contribution. Owing to the level of interest in the debate, the Chairman of Ways and Means has given me permission to impose a three-minute time limit. I know that that is short, but it will mean that everyone gets in if there are no interventions. The running order that I propose is as follows: John Mann, Nicholas Soames, Annette Brooke, Caroline Nokes, Stuart Andrew, Bob Neill, Penny Mordaunt, Andrew Bingham, Zac Goldsmith, Chris White, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and John Howell. All should be able to get in. The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman has kindly agreed to limit her remarks to 10 minutes, which will give the Minister slightly longer—perhaps with interventions at that stage—to respond to any residual concerns. I hope that that is acceptable to everyone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

I entirely understand that. I might well wish that we were in a world where we could say to everybody, “You’ve got a year. Make as much progress as you can in a year, and nothing will happen in that year.” My right hon. Friend will understand that, given the level of housing need and the appalling record of housing delivery even during the boom—when, frankly, money, developer finance and mortgages were not a problem—it is simply impossible for us to impose that kind of moratorium. However, I can tell him that in a matter of days, we will introduce the planning guidance that we have long promised and that will address the issue of the weight given to emerging plans. We will make it clear that once a plan has reached the point that, first, it has become specific and, secondly, it has gone through a fairly substantial level of public consultation, it will become something of real materiality—to use the lawyers’ phrase—as a consideration in decision making.

[Nick Herbert]

My hon. Friend and I agree about housing need and the value of plans when they are formed—it is good to hear that weight will be given to emerging plans in the new guidance—but my concern is that he seems to be giving the impression that everything is going swimmingly; it is not. The very neighbourhood plans that it is so important for people to embrace—he believes in that as much as I do—are being undermined, because people will walk away if they think that the inspectorate will overturn those plans. It is therefore a mistake entirely to dismiss the idea of giving stronger guidance. Unless people have confidence that they can take such judgments without their being overturned, they will not engage in the process. That is the damage that is being done. Commitments on giving weight to emerging plans have been given before. They were given during the passage of the Localism Bill. So far, those commitments have not counted for anything.

[Nick Boles]

Perhaps this is the core of our disagreement: my right hon. Friend argues that I am too sanguine, and I say that he is in too much of a panic. Even on neighbourhood planning, the fact is that the figures for April, June and July show that the number of communities engaged in it has gone from 650 to 710 to 750, that the number of plans designated has gone from 300 to 360 to 408, and that the number of plans published pre-submission has gone from 24 to 28 to 35, so progress is being made. I understand that people are concerned, which partly prompts them and gives them the incentive to get the move on that we all want in trying to avoid unwelcome developments.