Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, people should be essential to our consideration of the Bill because if anything is about people, it is planning. I have shared this story before with Members of this House but it seems appropriate to remind them of it now. During the nine years when I was president of the YMCA, I saw the front line of this issue. My God, the need for housing could not have been more obvious. The sterling work done by so many staff and volunteers in an organisation such as that is fantastic. One of the things that always impressed me was that we had a youth training centre on the shores of Lake Windermere in which a great deal of exciting work was done. I was told by one of the workers there that a few days previously, a young girl had caught her attention because she was looking so animated and excited. The worker said to her, “What did you do today?”, and the girl said, “Oh, I saw far”. A couple of days later, because the girl was looking even more excited, she said to her, “And what did you do today?”, and the girl said, “I saw very far”. That was from someone whose home was in the centre of one of our own great cities.

The environment is every bit as important as the housing itself—of course it is. What kind of upbringing, development and fulfilling of the soul and spirit will be possible among our young unless they have a chance, a vision and imagination? That is why the concern with ecology, the green belt, areas of outstanding natural beauty, sites of special scientific interest and national parks is crucial. I have been for a long time involved in the voluntary organisations around national parks.

We want people to have a chance to live a good life and to expand. In the end, this is related to social behaviour and we would be foolish to overlook it. Everyone knows that we desperately need houses and we must get on with it. However, we have made big mistakes in our recent social history. We had to build houses and we built high rise. We then discovered that we had created hell in our midst because high rise was not the answer for people’s good lives. If we look further back in our history, the Industrial Revolution raped the countryside through wilful ill-being and industrialisation, for which all kinds of rationales were presented and invented. Of course, given a great deal of hindsight, it could all have been done so much better.

It always strikes me that in the building of houses we have so often made another mistake. We keep talking about how we want to be one nation together and to break down social stigma and so on, but we built places that could be nothing but council estates. They were council estates and people came from the council estates. We also built industrial barracks. When I was MP for Portsmouth, some of the worst housing was the virtual barracks in the name of council housing in the centre of the city.

We must think about these matters as we tackle speeding up the numbers. I hope the Minister, who is a civilised man, will take the opportunity as we consider the Bill to reassure us on these points, and that the existing legislation for the protection and enhancement of the things I have been talking about will be strengthened and preserved.

I am glad that we have heard about the efforts and battles of those who are trying to devise neighbourhood plans. The discouragement they sometimes feel is because, in the end, they are not certain that anyone is listening or is going to respond. That is a crucial point. I ask all noble Lords who have great experience in local government to remember, as they bring their expertise to bear on the Bill, that it is about people and how, with imagination, we can break down some of the social barriers. I have seen it done, for example, in places where council housing has been provided in an imaginative way that fits in with the local community extremely well.

I want people to have houses, and lives they can fulfil from those houses. That means we must keep this dimension constantly in perspective.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, this is a simple amendment. As I understand it, the position at the moment is that local authorities can decide to extend a consultation period but they are not obliged to do so. I believe that they should be obliged to do so because Christmas and August bank holidays are sacrosanct for families. It is a bit of a “slickie” if someone can slip in their application around such times —perhaps even by arrangement in less desirable cases—and it goes through, and then people come back from their few days away with their family to find that, suddenly, something they would have very much opposed has been passed. That is the reason for the amendment.

It is important that consultation should be carried out properly on every aspect of planning. It is not just a matter of time but also of the area where the application is for. In my experience, many planning authorities do not understand that in some streets in urban areas the houses are numbered 1, 3 and 5 on one side, and in other streets they are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Sometimes, they do not seem quite sure which houses they should serve the notice on. It is important that local people understand that something is being considered, so that they can decide whether it is good or bad for their area.

It is very useful in urban areas to put the notice on a local lamp-post or telegraph pole. However, it is not so useful when the next council officer who comes along sticks up a removal notice for someone who is moving house and obscures the previous notice. It is important that councils should be aware of what they need to do to enable people to understand local planning.

I went to a meeting in your Lordships’ House with Nick Boles, who had responsibility for this. One of the big discussions was about just who your neighbours are. If your house is on a corner, you can have four or five neighbours in different streets all around you. It really is important that the right people are notified. Even if it is not 100% right, at least a neighbour will say to you, “Have you seen the notice?”. However, if there is nothing there, you are at a terrible disadvantage. The first thing you know about it is when it has all gone through and it is too late. That is the reason for the amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

I would like to say what a sensible amendment this is. It is impossible to overestimate the amount of cynicism that there is around the whole issue of consultation. There is too widespread a view that it does not make any difference because the planners will do what they want to do anyway, and that switches people off coming forward and participating. A lot of work has to be done to build public confidence in the consultation process. The very specific matter raised in this amendment is important because it is a real issue. I have come across it myself when people have said, “For God’s sake, it’s Christmas. We didn’t know that it was not exempt from the consultation period”. I hope that the Government and my noble friends on this side of the House will take the amendment seriously as a very practical and human suggestion.

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor]

I shall speak to Amendment 27A standing in my name but, before doing so, I want to say that it must be a relief to the Minister to have what I think are three sensible amendments all thrown at him at once at this late stage in the afternoon.

I do not think that there is anything to object to in the noble Baroness’s amendment. With the neighbourhood planning process that I led locally, we happened to have a consultation period over Christmas and new year, and I was slightly startled to find that I was not under an obligation to extend that period in view of the circumstances. In fact, we extended our consultation period well beyond what was required under the neighbourhood planning rules, and I think it is a common courtesy to do that in holiday periods. As that is not always a courtesy extended by those making applications, perhaps the Government should make sure that it happens.

In relation to Amendment 62, we had a similar need for statutory consultees to respond to what we were doing in a timely way, but they too are notorious for not always doing that. Therefore, I hope that that amendment, as well as mine, will get a positive response.

Turning to my amendment, in the previous planning Bill the Government accepted proposals that I made for modernising the process under the New Towns Act to make the way in which local authorities bring forward proposals for a new settlement—under what is now the garden villages programme that the Government have adopted—easier and more modern. There would still be proper scrutiny, but it would be a process that could work effectively, and the Government accepted that. Since then, they have had a response to the national garden villages and towns programme that I think has exceeded all expectations, as local authorities have seen the opportunity provided by taking low-value land to create really high-class settlements to meet housing needs and which does not involve building around the edges of historic communities in a way that often wrecks those communities. Although people can be very dismissive of nimbyism—the “not in my back yard” attitude—for a long time I have said that that argument is often the right one. The planning system was introduced precisely to stop urban sprawl. As well as protecting the green belt, it was associated with renewing our urban centres with brownfield redevelopment, which is very important, and with the establishment of new settlements. I am delighted that the Government have gone down that route and that there has been such a lot of interest in it right across the country. I know that there are many more schemes still to come forward, and they will mean that we can meet the housing needs of our children, as well as the need for employment facilities, in a way that we too rarely see with most estate housebuilding at the moment.

The New Towns Act was drawn up in a very different era, not an era of localism but one in which national government had huge powers. When a new town development corporation is established, although it is the local authority that brings it forward—we are talking about relatively small communities and garden villages meeting local needs—the current statute says that the board, when established, is appointed entirely by the Secretary of State, not by the local authority that initiated it, and that all expenditure has to be approved in detail, to the last penny, by the Secretary of State. Given that these organisations acquire all the planning powers for the area that is designated and will make a huge investment in the community when that happens, very few local authorities would wish to see the Secretary of State take all those powers. Very few communities would feel comfortable with that either. Most importantly, a Government committed to localism would not feel comfortable with it. To put it bluntly, the Secretary of State probably does not have time to decide the last few pennies of expenditure by a body developing a local garden village.

The amendment is very simple. It says that where a local authority requests the Secretary of State to delegate powers relating to appointing the board and the financial conduct of the organisation, and therefore in practice its work, the Secretary of State should delegate those powers. That opportunity is not currently in the hands of the Secretary of State. I hope the Government will agree that, given the support they have given this policy and given the take up, it would be useful to make that change. I hope we can get a positive response from the Minister on that today.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 6th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I will follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in his masterly demolition of Clause 12. My first point concerns the notion of relevance. Clearly, the committee really struggled with notions of relevance and found itself quoting, in paragraph 13, the memorandum, which illustrated,

“examples of the types of condition that the proposed power would prohibit. They include: ‘those which may unreasonably impact on the deliverability of a development, those which place unjustifiable and disproportionate financial burdens on an applicant, or those which duplicate requirements to comply with other statutory regimes’”.

That could probably cover every single impact of every aspect of development. These are vague and general in the extreme, so no wonder the important conclusion of the committee was that it would be,

“inappropriate for the Government to be given a power which could be used to go well beyond the stated aims of the Bill”.

Were these regulations to be enacted, the committee recommended that,

“the affirmative procedure should apply to the exercise of the powers”.

Do the Government agree that if this clause stands, the affirmative procedure will indeed be adopted?

The Delegated Powers Committee, on which I had the honour to serve for many years, does not make such recommendations lightly. This is a very serious indictment and a very serious conclusion. Do the Government intend to accept that the affirmative procedure should apply in this case?

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I find these amendments very important and significant. If we are going to tackle the issue of regulation, it is terribly important that we get it right and that we tackle the real problems, not just theoretical problems or those identified by people who are discussing the issues at a rather remote level.

Let me be very direct: I live five miles outside Cockermouth, in the Lorton Valley. There is a tremendous debate going on at the moment about development in Cockermouth. It is not about whether the houses being built are liable to flooding; that is an issue, but it does not seem that they will be. However, people who have suffered terrible flooding experiences more than once in recent years now say that there is a risk that what is being done will contribute to the flooding of other people’s homes, because the drainage arrangements necessary for the number of houses being built are inadequate. This is a real issue and in our approach to it, we need to be careful and the Government need to take the points raised in these amendments seriously. This is affecting people now, and there is real anxiety. That anxiety is accentuated because in Cockermouth and the surrounding area, people are not convinced that the arrangements being made will prevent the repetition of flooding in future years. A great building programme is going ahead before the people directly affected have been assured that arrangements are in hand to meet the challenges that have arisen.

The issues raised this afternoon are crucial. I hope the Government will think hard about whether the clause is necessary and, if they are determined to go ahead with it, ensure that it meets the real issues that are affecting real people in real situations.

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[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I rise with great enthusiasm to support the noble Baroness in moving this amendment. I emphasise that I am very involved in the kindred area of national parks, and am vice-president for the Campaign for National Parks.

There is room for hope. As we wait for the White Paper, we hope it will have within it the same kind of undertakings that the Government have given on the national parks regarding their indispensability, their importance to the culture and the values of our society and the recreational and spiritual regeneration of those who are able to take part in what they provide.

I worry often about our highly quantitative society. There is a desperate need to reassert the qualitative dimensions of our society. Woodlands are rich in the heritage and history of our country. There are trees that have witnessed the whole evolution of our democracy and society over centuries. They are a real link with where we are, where we have come from and what we want to be, as our history is indispensable in understanding society and life and its challenges.

Other dimensions make the woodlands so important, particularly the ancient trees. Of course we want to build houses. Of course we want a thriving economy. But for what? Is it just to be able to say that our economy has grown and that people own houses to a greater extent than before? Or is it so that people can enjoy a richer, fuller society? Our young people need to have a sense of imagination and vision. Just think about what imaginative teachers are able to do with young children if they have ancient trees in their midst and can use the experience of the ancient trees in their whole approach to history, understanding and learning.

In my life, I have too often come across evidence of the absence of vision and space for too many of our youngsters in society, who grow up in a restricted material environment that denies them the opportunity to flourish as individuals and to become richer, fuller people. I must not yet again tell the story, which profoundly moved me at one point in my life, about a youngster—a seven or eight year-old—from an inner-city area saying that what was so exciting about being in a youth centre beside Windermere in the Lake District was that she had never seen far before in her life. What do we want our children to be? Automatons or living creatures with imagination? How will we sustain our democracy and our future unless we have people with vision and potential? Trees are crucial to this.

When I saw that my noble friend Lady Young was considering this amendment, with the able support that she has had from our Liberal friends, I felt that I must become involved, because this is an imperative. I hope that the Minister will hear the message and say that the Government will look with good will at the challenge. In a few hours, a whole story with its links and roots in history can be uprooted, thrown away and destroyed—something that has been there for hundreds of years. We must not go down in history as a society that has lost all sense of root, destiny and continuity and is just living in the instant in a material sense. I cannot think of an amendment that is more appropriate to the kind of discussions that we have been having this afternoon.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with what has been said and thank my noble friend Lady Gardner for tabling the amendment. I am conscious that we all want to make progress. This is an area where, in time, we should have some examination and this is not a statutory matter to address now.

I always conceive planning as being about good neighbourliness. One of the problems is that retrospective planning applications often come in when someone has encroached a little too much and not quite followed the drawings. Then, because a neighbour who has opposed an application is cross, they go to the council and say what they want to happen. One can get into a whole rigmarole involving costs, not only of retrospective application but of demands to building control such as, “Are you coming?”, “I don’t think that they are building on the right line”, or, “They are moving that hedge”.

Such areas, which seem small, have an impact on the issue of consent in the planning system, about which I have spoken to your Lordships in Committee on this and other Bills. For many reasons, including that given by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, my noble friend’s amendment does not work but I hope that we will hear some sympathetic sounds—I know we always do—from my noble friend on the Front Bench. This is an issue on which the Government might reflect as time goes by, because there is a sense that a lot of injustice is done out there by those who willingly or unwillingly play the system. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, that local authorities are generally loath to intervene unless it is a big issue. Planning officers ask themselves, “Would I have refused the planning application for that one or two-foot encroachment?”. These are the kind of considerations that apply. People should do what they promise they are going to do; that is what the system is about and should be delivered. People should not play the system.

I do not think that we can take this matter further now but hope that my noble friend will think about it over the months and perhaps years—I hope not too many years—ahead and closely examine where the frontier between consent and abuse of consent should be.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I should declare an interest as an honorary officer of the Campaign for National Parks. I am glad that the noble Baroness has introduced her amendment and is standing by it here on Report because this is a worrying development. A growing number of people deliberately defy the regulations that are meant to operate. It is not just a matter of building something for which they do not have permission and looking for retrospective approval; a more sinister element is that they get approval with conditions attached—for example, compliance with national parks’ general policy. However, the people then try to do what they want with the building and do not observe the conditions. There is an indication that they are doing this believing, for example, that the national park authority will be hesitant about pursuing them because it is worried about its budget, the costs and all the rest if that person appeals.

We must take seriously the prospect that the quality of an area can change within a short period because, once one person has done it, there is an invitation for all sorts of other people to do it too. I am glad that the noble Baroness is making a stand.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated in this debate on Amendment 38. I particularly thank my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, who has vast experience of not just national politics but, in particular, London politics. I know she feels very strongly about this issue. I have great respect for her and for the way she has presented the case. I am conscious that she has raised it on a number of occasions, most recently in Grand Committee.

Other noble Lords participated in the debate and sympathise with the general thrust of what my noble friend is seeking to achieve. They include the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who stunningly remembers being on a planning committee 43 years ago. It is hard to appreciate that, but he clearly has vast experience in this area. There were also the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Maddock, and my noble friend Lord True, who talked about good neighbourliness, which goes to the essence of it. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, sympathised with the thrust of what is being said here.

At the outset, I remind noble Lords that one thing that we are seeking to achieve in this legislation and more generally as a Government—supported, I think, by noble Lords from around the House—is localism, and therefore we have to be a little careful about resisting the temptation every time something goes wrong to weigh in and say, “That is not the right way to do it”. I appreciate that there is more to it than that, but we need to keep that sense of perspective in our minds.

The ideal is, of course, that everybody should seek planning permission before they start work. That is what the majority expect and, indeed, what the majority of people do. Sadly, as my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes has experienced, that does not always happen. We therefore need a way to deal with these cases. Where a local authority considers that a planning application is the appropriate way forward, it can invite a retrospective planning application. Otherwise, local authorities have at their disposal a wide range of enforcement powers.

My noble friend’s amendment calls for changes to the retrospective planning application process. I am afraid that the Government’s position on this has not changed. I think I said in Committee, and I say again now, that there are many cases where there is a genuine error, so we need this process to deal with that situation rather than a harsher regime. The retrospective planning application process is there primarily to give those who have made a genuine mistake the opportunity to rectify the situation, but I appreciate that the examples that get into the media are much higher profile than that. We have had the haystack case, the palace in Kirklees and so on. Different considerations will apply there.

Local authorities have other tools at their disposal. Local planning authorities have flexibility, but planning applications have to be determined in the same way as any other application. My noble friend did not receive notification of the planning application. That is a mistake under the current law, and we need to look at proper enforcement. If she is able to bring forward evidence of the process not being followed, I would be very keen to look at it with officials, and I undertake to do so. I am sure that there are things that we can be doing better in relation to that with a view perhaps to looking to the future rather than this legislation. She has highlighted an important problem.

There is no guarantee that planning permission will be granted just because the development already exists. We have seen examples where that has not been the case, so we know that there are local authorities that are tough and are probably doing the right things in relation to some development. In some cases, the impact of the development may be mitigated by imposing planning conditions on the retrospective grant of planning permission. Otherwise, local planning authorities have a wide range of enforcement powers, with strong penalties for non-compliance, at their disposal. Where an enforcement notice is served and the person appeals on the ground that planning permission ought to be granted, the person is deemed to have made an application for planning permission and must pay a fee. That fee is twice the fee that would have been payable in respect of a planning application to the relevant authority seeking permission for the matters stated in the enforcement notice. This is in recognition of the additional work and would obviously act as a disincentive in that situation.

My noble friend’s amendment would make retrospective planning applications compulsory for all breaches of planning control. As I say, we cannot accept that because we see situations where that would be inappropriate, as I think successive Governments have done. It would be difficult to enforce and could lead to delays and additional burdens. My noble friend’s suggestion of a penalty fee in addition to charges in respect of the costs incurred by the local planning authority would unfairly penalise those who had made a genuine error, and discourage the submission of such an application for proper consideration by the local planning authority.

That said, I recognise that my noble friend has brought forward a very important issue. As I say, if she is able to come forward with some evidence of local planning authorities not doing what they should be doing and not enforcing the law, I would be very keen to see that; if other noble Lords have experience of it, I would be very keen to see that too. I can give that undertaking. However, while thanking my noble friend for bringing forward an important issue which clearly has resonance around the House, for the reasons I have outlined and in the light of the undertakings I have given, I respectfully ask her if she would withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Judd]

I am very glad to support my noble friend in this amendment. She has put the case admirably this afternoon. I, too, am deeply impressed by the Minister. I have been in this place a long time now, and I find it difficult to think of a Minister who has gone out of his way more generously to try to meet wishes expressed in the context of serious debate. We had a very serious and useful debate in Committee.

Ancient trees and woodlands are almost impossible to value, because they have so much significance. I am particularly concerned in this context with urban areas. We are desperate to build houses and we very much need more houses in this country; it has to be a priority and we have to get on with it—but it is not just about putting people into shoeboxes. It is about putting people into a situation in which they can live and in which their imaginations can be stimulated—in which they can feel the spiritual dimensions of life, as the noble Lord has just said. All trees contribute in that context, but ancient trees have particularly powerful significance. Of course, if there are imaginative teachers in local schools, there can be references in the context of the education going on in those schools to what those trees represent in terms of the history of the country. We are at a time when we are very worried about national identity; we are very worried about people feeling what it means to be British and how the roots of being British are planted. Of course, the tree is a link to the past; what the tree has witnessed in its life is almost invaluable. From that standpoint, we ought to be very certain indeed that we are doing everything possible to protect trees in the situations that might threaten them.

I too find the wording in the Bill not convincing. Sometimes, there is an urban community—perhaps a relatively deprived community—where there are trees that matter in the ways we have been describing. What happens when it comes to the development process? You have the big forces of development—the big boys at work. How does the community assert itself effectively? We want to make sure that it can and that those who are concerned for the community can make representations on its behalf.

Personally, I would always like a total ban and to say that developers everywhere should do their development around the trees, particularly where there are ancient trees. This would be the ideal, but what we are putting forward seems to be a reasonable compromise. I much appreciate the sincerity and commitment of the Minister in trying to find ways of meeting our concerns. So I support him in every way I can—together with others, I am sure—by saying: let us just go this further mile and make sure what he has already been trying to do can be done well and effectively. I believe my noble friend’s amendment will make this possible.

[The Duke of Somerset (CB)]

My Lords, in Committee we heard powerful arguments both for retaining veteran and ancient woodlands and for the planting of new trees in new estates. I welcome the proposals in the White Paper but, as the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, has said, this is the vehicle that we are discussing now. So I support this amendment, as I feel strongly that trees in any form hugely enhance an urban setting. They can ameliorate the sterility and newness so often and inevitably associated with such new developments. It is not just landscape or townscape; it is biodiversity and ecology that are improved. It also has a beneficial effect on the people, young and old, who live in the new community; it is they who will benefit from these trees. Trees and plants promote respect and foster community by softening the architecture and giving scope for educational projects.

In Committee, I gave a long list of benefits associated with urban tree planting, so I will not repeat them now. I will merely say that trees add value to a scheme, over and above any detriments that one can imagine. As to what those detriments may be, I await the Minister's reply, as I cannot discern any. When he answered in Committee, he had none, except to cite the forthcoming White Paper. I thank him for what this will do, but support the greater aims of this amendment.