Neighbourhood Planning Bill (First sitting)

Lord Mann Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I am sorry to interrupt, Mr Colvile, but I am very conscious that we have limited time and three people want to ask questions. I will bring in John Mann, because I know he will be brief.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Q How many of these 500,000 unmet house planning consents are in neighbourhood development plan areas? Does anyone know?

Councillor Newman: I do not, but we will write to you rapidly with that information.

[John Mann]

Q What is the average number of new house proposals that come from existing neighbourhood development plans?

Councillor Newman: Again, the LGA will write to you.

[John Mann]

Q Nobody knows. What is the increase from what the position was in the same areas covered by neighbourhood plans, in terms of proposed new housing units in areas covered by neighbourhood development plans?

Angus Walker: I do not know the answer to that, but I think the Secretary of State said on Second Reading of the Bill that, of those who had an increase, the average increase was 10%. That does not give how many there were overall.

[John Mann]

Q You said that the five-year land supply for housing was critical for housing development. How do you know that?

Hugh Ellis: It is an element of it. To be clear, the problem with the delivery of housing in this country is not primarily the planning system; it is development, but five-year supply is important.

[John Mann]

Q Correct. Am I right in saying that every neighbourhood development plan, in order to be in any way legal, has to incorporate new housing development?

Hugh Ellis: The position is that it has to be in conformity with the development plan, if there is one, and the NPPF, which means that it has to recognise local housing need and the five-year land supply to go with it.

[John Mann]

No, is it not the case that a neighbourhood development plan has to have an increase in housing supply?

[Hon. Members]

No.

Hugh Ellis: The general view, when neighbourhood plans were being developed, was that they could not plan for less housing—which is sometimes how people tried to use them—than the local development plan had allocated, so there is a kind of floor. They certainly can plan, and have planned, for more housing than the local development plan has allocated.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann]

Q Is there a reason why English Heritage has not tried to initiate neighbourhood development plans using major historic buildings, such as cathedrals, as the core basis for defining urban communities?

Duncan Wilson: As I said before, we do engage with neighbourhood development plans, but normally on request, rather than proactive consultation on every neighbourhood development plan. When we do engage, we certainly encourage proper consideration of the historical character of the area and how development can sit alongside that. Cathedral cities are a really important subset of that group.

[John Mann]

Q My final question: is not the strength of neighbourhood development plans also their weakness? The strength is that at the moment a plan lends itself perfectly to villages with parish councils, which can easily, and very ably and effectively, localise the planning process—in my area virtually every parish council has or is developing a neighbourhood development plan, all of them increasing the housing supply significantly, and they will be delivering on that housing supply significantly over the next five years—whereas the weaknesses are in urban areas, where defining what the community is actually requires a bit of original thinking; otherwise everything simply becomes one urban mass. Is that not the opportunity, be it for the English Heritages, the good planners or enlightened councils, to get urbanised neighbourhood planning to involve communities in exactly the way that villages have hugely successfully involved vast numbers of people in the development of the existing neighbourhood plans that have been agreed, or are currently rolling forward?

Councillor Newman: I think you could have more urban neighbourhood plans, but I would want to see them still sitting with the overarching plan in an urban area—such as the one I am very familiar with, Croydon—to be the local plan. As we have learned from mistakes in the past—although I know this is not what you are suggesting—we should not just focus on increasing housing numbers without looking at the sustainability of the community in terms of health provision, school provision, transport links and everything else. Much as we need new homes, it should not just be a numbers game that leaves us in the same place we were in the ’70s.

Duncan Wilson: In relation to our historic towns, yes, I agree that neighbourhood plans would be and sometimes are a good way of crystallising that discussion, but it is really important that the areas around towns are brought into consideration too. Otherwise, you have a plan for an historic town and all the housing gets pushed out to the periphery, without a proper strategic consideration of how that relates to the historic town in terms of transport links, public spaces, infrastructure or design.

Hugh Ellis: In a way, the critical flaw in neighbourhood planning is the neighbourhood forum model. There has to be an issue around making that accountable. The differences in neighbourhood planning between an accountable parish or town council and an unaccountable forum were always pretty stark. It was always unclear where that ended up. There would probably be more enthusiasm for urban neighbourhood planning if that problem could be resolved.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q Will the changes proposed to the pre-commencement conditions leave enough flexibility to deal with things that local communities are really concerned about? In my area of Taunton, the big issues are all about what Mr Ellis referred to: design quality, the look of the houses, vernacular character, flood resilience. Can we get all that cleared through the changes proposed, or are we relying utterly on neighbourhood plans to do that? Are there enough teeth for that to be taken into account when the planning consents are given?

Hugh Ellis: Although there is conflicting evidence in planning, one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that the design quality of domestic housing in this country is one of the great lost opportunities.