Housing and Planning Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am not sure he was listening to my comments. I was saying that many of us, as elected representatives, have been asked to support communities in objecting to applications involving buildings considered by the community to be too tall. The point I am making is that if the content of a permission in principle contains height parameters, it will reduce the scope for objections on those grounds, because the matter has already been resolved. Communities can be secure in the knowledge that the content on height has been agreed. That is the point that I was making.

Similar grounds for objection include concern that an application will leave the area too built-up without adequate open space, or that there will be too much pressure on schools or GP practices as a consequence of development. A minimum level of detail contained within a permission in principle, which could be stated within the local plan or within the listing on the brownfield register, or determined by the local authority where an individual applicant comes forward, will be helpful in giving a genuine level of certainty to developers and a genuine level of comfort to communities.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

As an hon. Friend said to me just now, the proposal is not for in principle permission but detailed permission. It is the Stalinist tractor figures. The hon. Lady would be more compelling and persuasive in her arguments if there were any timescale to give effect to the changes. She will know that the uncertainty over permitted development rights, the conversion of offices into houses or flats, has stymied that development to a certain extent. To include the amendment in the Bill would do exactly the same thing and slow down the production of people’s homes.

[Helen Hayes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, notwithstanding the reference to Soviet dictators, which is never a helpful contribution to political debate in this Parliament—I stand by that. He made a good point about the need for timescale and for the development management process to be rigorously managed. I agree with him on that point.

The content of permission in principle for which I argue could be contained in the entry on the brownfield register about a particular site. It could be part of the process of designating that site on the brownfield register. It could be part of the local plan process, and it could be something that the local authority designates when an applicant comes forward in person.

Without that level of detail, permission in principle is a very confused concept. It purports to be a move towards a zonal system but it misses the key point about the zonal system in countries such as the Netherlands, which is that all of the work required to give certainty through the planning process is undertaken in those countries during the plan-making stage. A zonal system that has comparatively little detail at the plan-making stage, and apparently even less detail in the planning permission stage, gives certainty to no one, will fail to minimise risk and may even succeed in increasing—

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[The Chair]

Mr Jackson.

[Mr Jackson]

Don’t say it with such enthusiasm, Mr Gray. It will not be that bad, and I think I will be brief.

[The Chair]

It is simply that the hon. Gentleman was not standing up, so I was questioning whether he was seeking to catch my eye. If he wants to speak in the debate, he ought to stand up and let me know that he wants to speak.

[Mr Jackson]

My Whip is giving me a strange look, so I will be quick. Before I start, I should parry the hon. Member for Bootle with hideous monstrous socialist carbuncles. I offer him the Chalkhill estate in Wembley and the Stonebridge estate in Harlesden as two great results of socialist architecture.

Moving on, the amendments are intellectually incoherent. They pray in aid a commitment to localism and local autonomy, but were they ever given effect they would be very prescriptive and present serious impediments to new house building. In fact, they would kill stone dead many marginal prospects for regeneration on brownfield sites across the country, and that is a serious concern.

[Peter Dowd]

It is a shame the hon. Gentleman mentioned brownfield sites, because I know one or two things about them, certainly in terms of my constituency. He talks about the amendment killing marginal developments, but some of the sites are so contaminated that the developments should be killed. The contamination is dreadful. The concern I have, which is missed out of these measures and I would like the Minister to comment on, is the testing done on those sites, which can be incredibly dangerous. Those tests should be done and should be codified.

[Mr Jackson]

In fairness, I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s constituency as well as he does, but I have visited Bootle and seen the challenges with regeneration across Merseyside, with Scotland Road, Rock Ferry, Tranmere and other parts of Wirral. Looking at the whole country, there are marginal regeneration cases that have resulted in good-quality housing.

My second criticism of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood is that there is no context. The context is that there are structure plans and local development plans that have gone through the proper processes of public engagement and formal consultation, and those plans are subject to the strictures imposed in primary legislation, including the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. A local planning authority should come to a settled view on what it wants to do with its land. The clue is in the name; the measure is a permissive capacity for the Secretary of State to intervene in extremis where a local authority has not brought forward appropriate land use plans. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South said so eloquently, to put these strict impediments on the face of the Bill would kill stone dead attempts to build more homes and to develop marginal units.

On the points made by the hon. Member for City of Durham, I was concerned by land banking so I looked at the Local Government Association figures from 2012. When one looks below the surface at the facts, the No. 1 factor in this was the capacity and expertise of the planning departments. If a legal duty is imposed on those planning officers to spend significant amounts of public money, both in consultation and viability assessments for these units, it would reduce the capacity of those local planning authorities to give permission. We need to look at the Secretary of State’s plans in that context.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that permission in principle should be given without adequate testing of those sites being carried out? We heard from the Minister on Thursday that it does not seem to be possible to remove permission in principle if subsequently a technical detail means that the development should not go ahead.

[Mr Jackson]

We already have a vast array of assessments and objective criteria by which we measure developments. We have the local plans, structure plans, site location plans and viability assessments. We have vacant building credit, for instance, which is now in court as the result of a legal case. We have plenty of opportunities for engagement, even without talking about neighbourhood plans. The idea that the first base of the Secretary of State is to intervene straightaway is nonsense.

Finally, it ill behoves being lectured on localism by a party responsible for home information packs, eco-towns and the disaster of regional special strategy with Prescott’s density and parking targets, which gave rise to some of the worst-quality housing we have seen in this country since the war.

[Brandon Lewis]

It has been enlightening to have effectively a second clause stand part debate on clause 102. The amendments clearly relate to clause 102, so I will respond to them in that context.

I was particularly taken by my hon. Friend’s comments about the Roman forts. I would encourage his father to visit the Caister Roman fort to see how we do it in Great Yarmouth and give us some views on how to get some development around that.

I was amused by the comments of the hon. Member for Bootle about a centralist approach, which I assume were tongue-in-cheek. In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough perfectly summed up what the amendments do. Having been a councillor for 11 years under a Labour Government, I know what centralism in local authority planning terms feels like.

With the best will in the world, the amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood miss a key point, which is that permission in principle is driven locally—planning permission in principle will come through decisions made by local people in their local communities. That is a fundamental fact. I know the hon. Lady was not here when we touched on that at the end of last week.

Amendment 285 would require the Secretary of State to set out in regulations that sufficient testing of a site must take place before permission in principle is granted. The regulations also set out that adequate funding is provided to carry that out. I will come back to that in detail in a moment.

I have two fundamental concerns about amendment 285. First, prescribing the particulars to be addressed when granting permission in principle builds unhelpful rigidity into the process. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South made the point very well. We have been clear that we consider the particulars to be granted permission in principle should be use, location and amount of development. The approach taken in the Bill is a prudent, balanced one that allows for the particulars to be set out in secondary legislation. It gives us the flexibility to ensure that permission in principle works as intended.

My second concern is the detailed nature of the issues that amendment 284 requires to be fully addressed at the permission in principle stage. We have been clear from the very beginning that, in order for the measures to deliver real change in unlocking sites and avoiding unnecessary costs, permission in principle should give up-front certainty on the core matters underpinning the basic suitability of a site, namely its use, location and amount of development, and allow matters of detail to be agreed subsequently, as we have outlined before.

Amendment 284 proposes that matters of detail, such as density, affordable housing provision, community and social infrastructure requirements, be settled at the permission in principle stage. Let me be clear that those are matters that should be addressed before development is allowed to proceed, and the local planning authority may well consider them when deciding whether to grant permission in principle. However, if we were to require those to be covered by permission in principle, far more detailed information and analysis would be required, which would entirely negate the value of the Government’s measures and effectively duplicate the existing outline planning application process. Matters such as affordable housing contribution and community infrastructure provision will be agreed and negotiated at the technical detail stage, in line with local and national policy.

On amendment 285, clause 102 will enable permission in principle to be granted when a site is allocated in qualifying documents. The Secretary of State will prescribe a qualifying document only if it has been through a suitably robust process, including public consultation and a site assessment. We intend to set out in secondary legislation that the qualifying documents will be local plans, neighbourhood plans and the brownfield register. Before allocating a site in a local plan, as I am sure Members will appreciate, local authorities already go through a detailed site investigation and assessment process as part of their strategic housing land availability assessment.

In the neighbourhood planning context, the neighbourhood planning qualifying body should carry out an appraisal of options and an assessment of individual sites if it intends to allocate sites for development. Any such appraisals carried out by qualifying bodies are subject to scrutiny by both the local planning authority and an independent examiner. Neighbourhood plans also go through a full referendum of the local community. That is absolute local power in the hands of local people—true localism.

Therefore, extremely robust testing already exists in plan-making processes, and the whole purpose of the permission in principle model is to draw on that and make the best use of all the local effort, detailed work and resource at the plan-making stage, so that we get back to what we should be aiming for, which is a plan-led system. As the Government’s measures propose to utilise existing plan-making processes, we do not anticipate additional burdens on local authorities.