Planning

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have a meeting tomorrow with some people who are seeking to extend the life of a ragstone quarry in Kent, ragstone being a stone which is widely used in repairing and building public buildings. There has been substantial opposition to that but I learnt today, from the local Member of Parliament, that the largest element of opposition has come from people who have absolutely no connection whatever with the land in question. Indeed, they have come from areas considerably apart. That rang a bell with me. When the M11 motorway was built through my constituency and we had to face protestors who declared themselves the “Free Country of Wanstonia”, it turned out that all but about 5% were from outside the borough. The point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, about the need to make sure that you have local support and not pay too much attention to others would be a very big and valuable step towards getting away from development always being opposed.

I am very glad that my noble friend, when introducing the debate, referred to the National Planning Policy Framework. It has been an almost unqualified success. Some of the people who were initially extremely hostile to the first draft are those who now sing its praises most loudly. Some of them must feel slightly ashamed that they went over the top when the first draft was issued. My noble friend is absolutely right; this has been a great advance.

I am very aware that the Second Reading of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill has been taking place in another place today. I expect that it will not reach this House for some while. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will forgive me: it is not really appropriate to go into too much detail about that Bill this evening, but I should make one or two points. The House knows that on the recent Localism Act and Local Government Finance Bill I found myself, with others, repeatedly championing the cause of localism and arguing that central government must be prepared, having given local authorities a general power of competence, to allow them to get on with it and make up their own minds. The Localism Act gave that power not only to local authorities but, as we have heard, local neighbourhoods. They have much more autonomy in how their local plans are drawn up and, when my noble friend opened the debate, I was encouraged by the figures she gave on the number of neighbourhood plans. Of course, we did not get all that we wanted. There were other measures that one would have wished for, but the general thrust was very much in the right direction. All the amendments passed in this House were accepted by the other place, as were, only a few days ago, the amendments to the Local Government Finance Bill, including the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. It is a pity that she is not in her place.

However, on first reading, the Growth and Infrastructure Bill appears to go in the opposite direction. My noble friend said that it did not represent a change of policy. A good deal of persuasion is to be done if local authorities are to be convinced of that. The Local Government Association has given us some early indication of its views, and has stated:

“The Bill in its current form represents a blow to local democracy, as well as being at odds with the Government's localism programme”.

That may be a misreading of the Bill, but the fact of the matter is that that is widely believed, and we will have to look at the Bill carefully when it comes to this House.

A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Beecham, Lord Shipley and Lord Best, said that it is not the planning system which is holding up development, but it is primarily a matter of builders and developers, and particularly house buyers, having access to finance. However, the Government seem determined to believe that it is the fault of the planning system. If there really is a dispute about that, is there not a case for some serious inquiry looking at this matter? We may well look at this during consideration of the Bill, but it is not satisfactory when the great mass of local authorities say, “Look, we really are doing our best”—the figures have been quoted—only to be told by the Government that it is all their fault. This tendency to reassert some form of centralism is rather unfortunate. Although this is not the occasion for debating the interesting report prepared by my noble friend Lord Heseltine, he again has said that the thrust to localism is exactly the right way to proceed. Local authorities becoming more responsible for growth in their area and having more say is very much part of my noble friend’s recommendations.

My next point relates to the duty under the Localism Act of local authorities to collaborate with each other, which my noble friend mentioned. Noble Lords who took part in consideration of that legislation will remember that there was a good deal of scepticism about that. However, the experience of even the most recent period since then is showing that those fears were misplaced. There are now many examples of collective cross-boundary plan making. Indeed, the Planning Advisory Service, funded jointly by the Local Government Association and my noble friend’s department, is supporting this work and is a powerful voice for sharing experience of cross-boundary planning. I have been furnished with a list of very good examples of where that is happening. I shall not weary the House by reading it all but I take one example at random. The North Northamptonshire Joint Core Strategy is a statutory joint committee covering Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough and East Northamptonshire and involving Northamptonshire County Council. This is the first core strategy to be adopted in the East Midlands and currently it is under review, but the joint committee has been supported by a joint planning unit. That is a perfectly good example of collaboration and there are a number of others.

I spent a good deal of last weekend reading the report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, in between reading a report about how this building is falling down, which perhaps is even more alarming. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made the point that not only do we need collaboration between local authorities themselves but that there is a demand for collaboration between local authorities and local enterprise partnerships. Accounts reaching me suggest that most of these are getting under way extremely well. It is very important, particularly with the emphasis on seeking to build policies of growth, that the LEPs and the local authorities get on well.

Finally, I have a couple of detailed points for my noble friend that are of particular concern to London. I declare my interest as a joint president of London Councils and, along with almost everybody else here, I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The first point is permitted development rights for converting commercial property to residential property and the second one is the question of the localisation of the fixing of the level of planning fees. I shall say a word about both.

The Government are proposing to allow developers to convert commercial buildings to housing without the need for planning consent. That may be acceptable in many parts of the country but the idea is deeply opposed by London Councils and, in particular, by the City of London. In London generally the arguments seem to me to be pretty strong. London houses significant low-value but important design and creative industries which add a lot to the country’s GDP but whose ability to continue to function would be hampered seriously if developers simply bought them out and changed the use to housing. In parts of east London that is an important sector of an increasingly thriving part of the country. That automatic right to convert would be pretty unsatisfactory.

The City has even more specific anxieties. Over the years, the City authorities have handled the residential estates, which are a very small part of the whole, extremely skilfully. They have sought to confine that to quite specific areas on the periphery of the City while they remain determined to encourage commercial development to provide for the financial services industry’s crucial contribution to the nation’s GDP. Recently, I had an opportunity to raise this with the new Planning Minister, my honourable friend Nick Boles, and he confirmed that the City officials are in close touch with my noble friend’s department and I am expecting proposals to come forward for there to be exemptions from this automatic right to convert from commercial to redevelopment. I hope that my noble friend may be able to give me an update on this. Will the exemptions go wider than the City and include the London boroughs? To my mind, they have made a strong case.

Finally, I turn to planning fees. New draft regulations are coming before the House tomorrow. They are primarily a consolidation measure that was asked for by our committee. Sadly I cannot be at the debate because I have other commitments in the House. However, I will talk about not what is in the statutory instrument but what is not. Is there not a case for letting local authorities establish planning fees rather than for operating, as we have in the past, a “one size fits all” policy? The figure for planning applications in London is much higher. Inevitably, costs are higher, and some local authorities are making a significant loss, which has to be paid for either by council tax payers or by the taxpayer. It is thoroughly undesirable that that should happen.

Local authorities have been told that many developers would welcome a higher charge if it meant a prompter service, perhaps with more staff handling planning applications more quickly. Would that not be a better policy? I wonder whether my noble friend will reassure me that although that suggestion has been set aside the moment, for reasons that were spelled out in the Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations, the decentralised option will continue to be studied. Of course I understand that it is more complicated than just putting up fees to compensate for inflation. However, it would be appropriate.

I hope that local authorities will be given the chance to make a significant contribution to the growth agenda of the country. At the moment they are being held back by a number of measures—not necessarily planning measures—that reflect an increasing tendency to centralise. No doubt we shall have further opportunities to discuss this when the growth Bill comes before the House in two or three months’ time.