Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Porter of Spalding Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a councillor in the borough of Kirklees. I added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, because I thought that the iron fist might be more effective in this regard than my noble friend’s velvet glove. Those of us suffering as a result of appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State have become as angry as the noble Baroness has with the situation that her village has faced.

The amendment highlights that the power of local people to determine the impact of planning on their area is constantly undermined, despite the Government’s commitment to localism and neighbourhood planning. Many of the parameters surrounding new development are set by government: planning legislation and the National Planning Policy Framework. All that is already in hand, and it is within that context that the local planning authority makes and determines through consultation decisions about its local plan.

It is interesting to remember how a local plan begins. It begins not with local people making decisions through their neighbourhood plan but with a call for sites, which means developers indicating which sites they would like to use and local landowners wanting to see the value of their land enhanced by putting it forward for development. I have no problem with either of those things; the problem I have is that they are the starting point. The whole purpose of the Bill seems to be to reverse that process and have neighbourhood plans as the foundation of a local plan. It puts local people in charge rather than developers and landowners.

When local councils come to determine the local plan, it includes not only land allocation but planning policies. In that is the formal consultation, which takes place several times, and then it is finally agreed. You would think that then, if the Government were sincere in their approach to localism, that would be the end of it: a huge document is produced which includes hundreds of detailed policies about what can be developed and where, and detailed maps of where land is allocated for business use, for housing, for flood prevention or whatever—and that would be it. After many years of consultation and consideration, one would think there would finally be an agreement, but no, that is not the end of it. Local people do not have a final say. There is then the examination by a planning inspector to test the development; for instance, on grounds of soundness. At that stage the developers have another go. Their site has been rejected so they bring it forward again. They obviously have a great advantage at that stage as they have expensive barristers at their side whereas local people just make their voices heard. Having gone through the earlier process, residents have a right to expect that their case should not be challenged any more.

Then we come to the question of appeals. Two points have already come up in our discussions today. The Minister said that a three-year housing supply is now the basis on which appeals can be made in regard to a lack of housing in a local plan. I seek clarification on whether that occurs only in relation to a neighbourhood plan or would cover the whole area of a local plan. That is very important, certainly in my district, where a number of appeals are going forward to enable developers to build on urban green space—the equivalent of greenbelt within an urban area—on the basis only of an alleged lack of a five-year supply, and despite the fact that a local plan has been agreed by the council and is awaiting examination. I hope that the Minister will clarify that critical issue because, as others have said, developers see a loophole enabling them to put forward plans on land that has in this case been set aside as urban green space for 40 years, and will continue to be so set aside in the next local plan, following its examination. However, a developer can put forward a planning application for that land and it is going to appeal—we await the result of that—on the basis only of this five-year supply issue. That is obviously due to the length of time that a local plan takes to go through the examination process.

As has been described, residents then feel thoroughly disenchanted with the whole process. Local residents who have been consulted through a local district plan, a neighbourhood forum or a neighbourhood plan have a right to expect that, having gone through all that and having made the compromises which inevitably and rightly take place so that development can occur, they should have their wishes upheld and not be undermined by what I regard as spurious claims by developers to override fundamental policies that have been agreed and contained in a local plan. That is why I support wholeheartedly the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify the situation as regards a three-year or five-year land supply.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I hope your Lordships will forgive me but I have not spoken in this Room before. It is my first time and if what I say is right, it is right, but if it is wrong, it is wrong. I declare my interests as the chairman of the Local Government Association until June—I hope—and as leader of South Holland District Council. In terms of what we are dealing with today, I am one of the four people who drafted the National Planning Policy Framework, so I know a little bit about what is in it and I certainly know what the intention was. It was to deliver sustainable development in places in the country where it is needed in a way that the people living in the local area could accept, to ensure that we get the homes we badly need in the most timely fashion.

I have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that neighbourhood plans were not seen by all of us as the route for making that happen. I personally objected to putting neighbourhood plans in, but that was not because I did not want development, it was because I wanted to see more development and I thought that neighbourhood plans would be a route to slowing it down. But the Government pursued them, so it is incredibly bizarre that if a neighbourhood plan or a local plan has been drawn up in compliance with the NPPF, the Planning Inspectorate is allowed—and some would say sometimes encouraged—to overturn it. The inspectorate should not be able to do that.

There are people outside this Room who think that the Planning Inspectorate has gone feral. It is not working to direction from the Government because it has individual planning inspectors working to their own direction for their own aims. It is important that the Government should insist on the supremacy of the public’s ownership of the planning system. If someone has gone through the pain of making a neighbourhood plan, even though I disagree with such plans in principle, if that is what the Government are intent on using as a way of encouraging development at the local level, once those plans have been tested in public by an inspector and are found to be sound and in compliance with the local plan, if one is in place, or at the very least in compliance with the NPPF, the Planning Inspectorate should never be allowed to overturn one of those decisions except on pain of some form of proper cross-examination by the Government.

We all know that even though the Secretary of State has signed off a planning appeal, it is very rare for the Secretary of State to be personally blamed for that appeal, because generally it does not get anywhere near them. If a neighbourhood plan or a local plan is in place and the inspectorate feels that for good strategic reasons it has to overturn it, there should be some insistence that the Secretary of State should actually take personal ownership of it so that people can be sure that there is political oversight of the bureaucrats working in the planning department. On that basis, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, is one that I am obviously happy to support. As we have heard, the purpose of the amendment is to place in the Bill a requirement, when the Secretary of State has determined an appeal against a decision, that due weight has to be given by the Secretary of State to any proposals set out in the neighbourhood development plan or a post-examination plan. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said that his amendment is much softer and he hopes to get a more positive response from the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, when he comes to reply. The noble Lord also highlighted the issue where people have worked hard to put together a neighbourhood plan only to have it overridden by the Secretary of State, which is very much the point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Porter, as well.

Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, seeks to give further strength to local development plans. If an application for planning permission is made to the local authority but is refused on the grounds that it is not in accordance with the local development plan, the assumption is that the Secretary of State will uphold that decision. It seems perverse that the Secretary of State would seek to overturn a decision which, as we have heard, is in line with the NPPF, so it is important that that point is made clear by the Minister. I hope that he will also respond to the points made by the noble Baroness in respect of localism.

I will leave my remarks at that but I may have one or two questions for the Minister when he comes to respond to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stunell]

I thank the Minister for his reply. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her support. I particularly valued the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Porter, if I may say so, because he was very clear in explaining that he does not necessarily believe that neighbourhood plans are the way to promote development and growth, and he started off at least as a deep sceptic. Nevertheless, he has championed the need to make sure that neighbourhood plans, once made, are treated as serious documents which carry very considerable weight in subsequent decision-making. That is exactly the view that I put and it is exactly the way that I have expressed it in my amendment, which is not to fetter the discretion of the Secretary of State but simply to insist that he gives particular weight to a neighbourhood plan in reaching a decision. I think that links up with one of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Porter. He said that some planning inspectors have gone “feral”.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

Can I clarify that? I did not actually say that; I said some people out on the street are saying it.

[Lord Stunell]

I will let the record stay as it is on that. At Second Reading, I referred to the fact that there are some rogue inspectors. Perhaps I can make clear that I am not accusing them of a breach of their duties under the seven principles of public service, but there is a continuation of the implementation of a policy which, at the latest, was discontinued by the Localism Act in 2010. That is resulting in insufficient weight being given to a statutory process—the establishment of neighbourhood plans—that should and could have the same weight as adopted local plans and any views that an inspector might seek to impose on the situation.

I referred to this at Second Reading and will do so again, but until 2010 the direction of travel was in one way, towards a professionalised planning service that did not give sufficient weight or an effective voice to local communities. In 2010, through the Localism Act, that was turned round completely in its intent by having plans established and developed by local communities and then allowing developers to implement them. Despite the scepticism at the time—the noble Lord, Lord Porter, might even concede this—neighbourhood plans delivered growth and more housing sites. I see the Minister nodding. This is not a question of the nimbys triumphing or an example of a wild political theory with malign consequences. It is working, delivering the results that everybody wants to see and it is in danger of being sabotaged by what I think is a continuation by some people—perhaps some senior civil servants in the department and certainly some inspectors—of a policy that was changed in 2010. They have not caught up with it. In that sense, it is quite right that they should be exposed. To use the phrase of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, perhaps some feet need to go on the fire where that is concerned.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his support. I think the Minister can provide us with a little more information about those 75 cases. How many of them related to overthrowing neighbourhood plans? Of the 75, how many were upheld? In how many cases were the inspector’s recommendations endorsed and in how many were they overturned? Let us get some idea of what we are talking about here. Of course, I was not alleging that the Secretary of State is overturning hundreds of thousands of cases of either neighbourhood or local plans. I made the case that we have a very new animal in the neighbourhood plan, which takes a gestation period and a good deal of effort to be delivered. If at the end of that process it is simply to be—I must choose my words carefully—disposed of, people will not invest their time in doing them. The whole strategic idea lying behind neighbourhood planning will fall into disuse and discredit.

I believe my amendment addressed that, giving a strong prod to the system to ensure that there was an effective and powerful impetus to giving validity to neighbourhood plans at the expense of developments that were clearly out of order. I am sorry that the Minister does not agree with that. I noted his emollient words in relation to Amendment 1 and I hope they apply to Amendment 5 too. I look forward to constructive discussion to see what we can resolve. If it makes him feel any better, I will not personally hold his feet to the fire. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.