Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Horam Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, I will comment briefly on Amendment 64 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. We all understand and sympathise with her point about the time and effort put in by volunteers. In cases of which I am aware, it is very often a very small number of volunteers who really drive it. They find it difficult to pull in people from the wider community. They have to work very hard to get any real response. This is my problem with the wording of the noble Baroness’s amendment. She talks about plans within an area,

“covered by a made or emerging neighbourhood development plan”.

“Emerging” is the crucial word. She then defines an emerging neighbourhood development plan as one,

“that has been examined, is being examined, or is due to be examined, having met the public consultation requirements necessary to proceed to this stage”.

In other words, it is very embryonic. We do not know what the final view may be.

To give an example, I know of a neighbourhood plan in the north-west of England where two or three people in the parish have got together some but not a lot of information about housing and development plans in their area—as much as they can find without much help. They then decided to hold a public meeting. They leafleted their entire parish and brought people together. Inevitably, although people said that they were interested and declared their concern, usually about the housing aspect, the people who turned up to the meeting were few in number, despite a large amount of effort. The people I am talking to became worried and said that they must broaden the consultation to community groups, which would take some time to get around to all the people they felt they should see. They thought they should make another effort at consultation, which might be attended by more people. They reckon that all this will take a year before they have a clear idea of what residents in their area want.

What is the amendment talking about? What stage of the planning and gathering of information is the noble Baroness talking about? It sounded to me as if it was early in the stage. What worries me about that is we do not necessarily know whether the initial ideas will be the same as the final ideas that come out of that prolonged process. Will she explain that to me?

[Baroness Parminter]

If I answer that question, perhaps the noble Lord might say, if I were to change my amendment to “post-examined”, whether he would be prepared to accept it. There is a debate about what is the appropriate time to give due weight to the emerging plans. The Government have moved back. We obviously have a different Minister now, but during the consideration of the Housing and Planning Bill the Government were not talking about post-examined plans. They realised that we need to add protection from an earlier point in the process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor]

It may be helpful to explain the point in time that the noble Baroness has proposed. At the point when you are awaiting examination, the process has already gone through all the community consultation stages. A final draft neighbourhood plan has been written. It has gone through the approval process with the local planning authority, which has to check that it conforms to the local plan and the National Planning Policy Framework. Any necessary amendment would have been made at that stage and it would also have gone through all the statutory consultees to then be submitted for examination. It then awaits examination prior to an examiner being appointed. At that point, all the processes have been completed. The only issue, and the only thing the examiner tests, is whether it complies with the national planning policy and the local plan.

[Lord Horam]

The noble Lord knows far more about these planning details than I do—I concede that. Speaking as a lay man, the amendment’s language does not seem to convey what he said. It conveys something much earlier in the process than what the noble Baroness said. I am to some extent relieved but, none the less, if the language can be interpreted in different ways—I am neither a lawyer nor a planning expert—it would, frankly, worry me. I am therefore concerned about this amendment, although I understand the sensible motivation by which it is put forward.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke strongly in favour of neighbourhood plans at Second Reading. It is great that there are so many champions of neighbourhood planning in all parts of the Committee. The plans embody the spirit of localism by allowing local communities to have control over their new developments and where they take place. While I therefore totally commend the spirit of the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, I do not support its substance for the simple reason that I do not think it is necessary.

The Government have already acted to address substantively the concerns that the amendment seeks to address. I would argue that the measures in the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, together with previous reforms introduced in the Housing and Planning Act 2016, deliver much of what the amendment seeks to achieve. Clause 1 places a clear requirement on planning decision-makers to have regard to neighbourhood plans that are post-examination. That is clearly the right place and time to look at these as that is when plans will be sufficiently advanced. While decision-makers can take pre-examination neighbourhood plans into account, insisting that they should have similar regard to plans that might not yet take account of all material factors such as planning for necessary local growth and so on does not seem an entirely sensible way forward.

Again, the National Planning Policy Framework already clearly says:

“Where a planning application conflicts with a neighbourhood plan … planning permission should not normally be granted”.


The Written Statement in December further made clear that,

“where communities plan for housing in their area in a neighbourhood plan, those plans should not be deemed to be out-of-date unless there is a significant lack of land supply”.

That is under three years. This gives a degree of protection not previously available. I also welcome all the government amendments that require local planning authorities to notify automatically neighbourhood planning groups of future planning applications in their area. At present, they have a right only to request information but are not necessarily told. This amendment would greatly improve what is there.

Briefly, I will also address the proposal in the amendment to consult the Secretary of State if the local authority intends to grant planning permission that goes against an agreed neighbourhood plan. I would also argue that this is unnecessary. I understand the concern of the noble Baroness about the calling in but any neighbourhood planning group can currently request the Secretary of State to consider calling in a planning application to determine the outcome.