Draft National Planning Policy Framework

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I have not spoken in a debate in the Moses Room before: it is an interesting experience. The Minister, in opening this debate, talked about the developments that had to take place in the post-war period to repair the bomb damage and other ravages of Nazi Germany upon this country. I hope that when we come to put this plan into operation—suitably, properly and, I hope, extensively amended—we will not see again the sort of appalling, brutal architecture and terrible developments that replaced so much of the old City of London, for instance.

This whole debate hinges on an adequate definition of what we mean by “sustainable development”. We have not had one yet. In the early 1970s I was particularly interested in studying what had happened after the war. I produced a book, Heritage in Danger, in which I looked at some of the more appalling episodes of iconoclasm and destruction that took place in our historic cities. I wrote about Worcester and Gloucester, where the heart was ripped out of beautiful places, symmetry was destroyed and balance overridden, and where appalling buildings were erected to replace buildings of great beauty. A movement began in the 1970s which owed much of its inspiration to the late, great John Betjeman, who I was privileged to call a friend. I always remember some lines he wrote when he was launching his Bath campaign:

“Goodbye to old Bath. We who loved you are sorry

They’ve carted you off by developer’s lorry”.

Because of the campaigning of John Betjeman and those who assisted him, the rape of Bath—as it was called—came to an end.

Similar enormities took place north of the border in Edinburgh, where the old town was desecrated, not least by the university. The Cockburn Association came into being to focus international attention on the beauties of the new town, the Georgian town, which has been miraculously preserved and enhanced. It seems to me that we do not want to repeat those episodes. Therefore, we have to look for a proper definition of “sustainable development”, which is at the heart of this document, which runs through it and which, as my noble friend Lord Reay said, occurs something like 90 times in it. There is no adequate definition in this document; what there is lacks clarity and precision.

We often talk about the importance of the Nolan principles. We are all supposed, very properly, to swear to them and adhere to them when we enter this House. However, what we need are some Hanham principles that will clearly define “sustainable development”. I suggest that there are two criteria above all others: first, the development must meet a specific need; and, secondly, it must contribute to, and not detract from, the area in which it is sited. Those should be the guiding principles behind all sustainable development, wherever it takes place. I very much agree with what my noble friend Lord Reay said about brownfield sites and the need to concentrate on those to start with.

[Lord Marlesford]

I will give my noble friend an example of a horrible use of the word “sustainable” in practice. In Suffolk, where I live, the Suffolk Coastal District Council fairly recently—within the past five years—said that if you want to convert a farm building into a house it must be used as a holiday home. That is very much in line with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. This example is of personal interest to me; I declare an interest as a farmer and landowner. When the council was asked why it followed that policy, it replied that that was a more sustainable use of the building, by which it meant that it did not have to provide the relevant infrastructure. Therefore, that council favoured holiday homes which people visited over houses in which people lived. That is an example, I believe, of the misuse, or the potential misuse, of the word “sustainable”.

[Lord Cormack]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that lengthy intervention; I was about to ask him if he would give way.

The two criteria that I mentioned have merit, but in deciding on them, planners must take into account the nature of the historic rural environment in which the proposed sustainable development is to take place and must look at such factors as population balance. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, in a notable and interesting speech with which I entirely agreed, referred to a notable contribution in Burnley by the Prince of Wales. We can also learn from the Prince of Wales in Poundbury, Dorset, where a new community was created in a rural environment in a balanced and properly sustained and sustainable way, with real attention to the scale of buildings. That was the worst thing about what happened in London after the war. I introduced a skyline protection Bill, but it was far too late and it was talked out by a Conservative Government. There is no reference to scale in much development. We must bear that in mind in this new and seminal document that we are debating this afternoon.

Something else that must be taken into account is tourism, the revenue it produces and the potential it has. Here, I touch on points raised by my noble friend Lord Reay. He referred flatteringly and entirely accurately to my fundamental opposition to wind farms, especially onshore wind farms, which produce an undefinable amount of energy and often rape and ravage the countryside so that the beauty that people come to see and that those who live there take for granted is destroyed forever. We have to bear carefully in mind that in the finite land mass that is the United Kingdom, we do not have vast swathes of countryside, as they have for instance in France. We must recognise the scale of the countryside and what people come to enjoy—be they tourists from home or tourists from abroad. When we consider developments, we must make sure that they impart new life and impetus into the areas where they are based and do not so unbalance and distort them that people are frightened away.

There was an interesting article in one of the papers this weekend about the apparent—I use that word deliberately because it has not yet been decided—threats to the village in Somerset made famous by TS Eliot: East Coker. It appears that some planners have it in mind to quadruple the size of the village in a way that would wholly distort the countryside there. We must not allow this document, when it finally emerges, to be a passport for those who would do that sort of thing.

I know from personal conversations with my noble friend Lady Hanham, who I hope will give her name to the principles of sustainable development, that she is just as passionately, honestly and sincerely committed to the enduring things in our nation's life as I am—and as anyone is. However, we must be very careful that this document, which will effectively tear up 1,000 pages and replace them with 50, 60 or 100—who knows, eventually?—does not discard protections that we have all too easily taken for granted, even if some of them were a bit cumbersome in the past.

I took a small deputation to see my noble friend a few weeks ago. Among those who came—she will readily remember—was the chief executive of the Heritage Alliance, which represents some 91 heritage organisations and is a splendid innovation on the heritage scene. It produced an interesting critique of the document we are discussing this afternoon, in which it made the point that the value of heritage to the wider economy does not seem to shine through this text. That point underlay much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said—and I will just say how much we all agree with what she does in her role as chairman of English Heritage, and what English Heritage does, often on far too meagre resources.

When we look at heritage in the context that the Heritage Alliance mentions in its document, we realise that tourism—which depends very much on heritage—is our most important and burgeoning industry. It brings so much into our country. We have recently moved house to the historic city of Lincoln, which is sustained by its heritage; and by those who come to walk up Steep Hill and pause to look at the Norman houses, the Jew’s House and so on. They head to the castle and then to the crowning glory of them all—the cathedral. Take those away, allow them to fall into disrepair, threaten them with juxtaposed development that is not suitable in any way and you will frighten people away. In so doing, you will impoverish not only a city but a whole area, a whole region.

I end on this note. We have a great opportunity in this document to produce something that will protect the best and ensure that high-quality development takes place. Of course, we have to have new things, but the design factors to which the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, referred, and which I am glad to say are in the document, rank as objects of high importance. We have got to ensure—the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made this point—that the final document is clear, precise and understandable. We want something that can be on the shelf not only of every planning officer and councillor involved in planning but on the shelf of every amenity society and everyone concerned with preserving the balance and beauty of our country, rural and urban. They should be able to take it down and read it; mark, learn and inwardly digest it; and understand it so that there is no ambiguity between the different bodies who read it. That is what we have to aim for. I hope that the consultation exercise will prove to be—I am sure it will—a totally genuine one; that the masses of representations that have been made from outside and that are being made here this afternoon, and were also made in the House previously, will be taken into account; and that at the end of the day, we will have a National Planning Policy Framework of which we can all be proud and which will stand the test of time.