Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Lord Soames of Fletching Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Greatrex]

I am sorry to disappoint the Minister, given that I seem to have just been anointed his protégé. That will have done me no good at all. If my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston cannot find any evidence that he has received that letter—[Interruption.] If he has not received the letter, it makes it very difficult for us to deal with these issues.

Let me return to the wider issue of what the Minister said a moment ago now in relation to the protection of certain areas, which the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall) and others have raised in amendments. There seems to be a suggestion that the exception in the Bill would be removed, but no indication of how that would be done, given that the Bill has been through the House of Lords and we are now dealing with its final stages.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) has not only wasted 40 minutes of the House’s time, but has been dilatory in reading his Bill Committee letters?

[Tom Greatrex]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman, who has himself tabled amendments to this part of the Bill, would be much more confident about the Minister’s approach if it had not just been suggested that a change would be made in relation to the protection of areas yet we do not have that information in front of us. How can we have any confidence in such an approach, given that we have less than 40 minutes in which to consider a wide range of amendments?

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[Stephen Williams]

It is not, because the planning use class orders deal with the totality of asset use classes right across the country. What most of us would be concerned about—whether in Northampton or Bristol—is whether the assets of real value to our constituents, such as the pubs that are truly popular and provide a wide community benefit, whether or not they have a community hall, are at risk. That is more important than dealing with every single pub, whatever the circumstances. If my hon. Friend listens to what I have to say, I hope he will be reassured.

I draw attention to the written ministerial statement laid today by me and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), who is responsible for community pubs, on the introduction of secondary legislation at the earliest opportunity to build on the existing protections to help communities preserve those pubs that benefit the community the most.

As part of our steps to strengthen community rights, we have already given local people the opportunity to nominate assets to be placed on a local register of assets of community value—those assets that are most important to them. More than 1,800 sites have been listed in this way, over 600 of which have been pubs, making them by far the most popular type of asset to be listed.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

This news will be warmly welcomed in Mid Sussex, where we have had some real trouble on this front. Are there any criteria in the Minister’s excellent proposal relating to what councils may put on their community asset lists to be protected?

[Stephen Williams]

The Localism Act 2011, the regulations, the guidance issued by the Department and statements by Ministers are quite clear that all that needs to be done to prove that an asset is of community value is for 21 members of the public to sign a declaration to the local authority—to Mid Sussex district council, for example—saying that the asset is important to them. As long it is not a private residence or a form of other asset precluded in the Localism Act 2011, the council must list it as an asset of community value, and there should be no gold-plating of the regulations as they are currently drafted. It is a very straightforward procedure, so I encourage my right hon. Friend to encourage his communities to adopt this policy.

The listing allows the local community the opportunity to develop a bid to purchase the asset, should it come up for sale. We have seen some positive examples in the case of pubs—the Angler’s Rest in the Peak district and the Ivy House in Camberwell, for example—where listing has helped to prevent the pubs from closing. We want to do more.

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[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I will be brief, to allow other Members to speak. We clearly need more time to debate major Bills such as this on Report. It does us no credit that we have insufficient time.

I rise to speak to new clauses 12 and 20. New clause 12 is supported by more than 20 of my right hon. and hon. Friends and would abolish the Planning Inspectorate, and new clause 20 would create a new community right of appeal against adverse planning decisions.

I believe that the Localism Act 2011 was one of this Government’s most important pieces of legislation. It gives communities power, and the provisions on community assets are one example of that. I welcome the Government’s proposals to strengthen those provisions so that pubs may be protected, which is a sensible way forward. I also welcome the development of neighbourhood plans, which, as the Minister said, are now proceeding well, with community support, including in my constituency. They give the local community the power to decide where developments should go.

However, that plan-led system can sometimes be a developer-led system, which is not what we want. Localism can be undermined, especially by decisions of the Planning Inspectorate. In a good report issued before Christmas, the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government said that it had received a great deal of evidence that the national planning policy framework

“is not preventing unsustainable development in some places”

and that

“inappropriate housing is being imposed upon some communities as a result of speculative planning applications.”

Such speculative applications, put in against the wishes of communities drawing up neighbourhood plans, are particularly damaging. Developers know that they have an opportunity to get permission for sites that they would not get permission for were the neighbourhood plan to go through. Too often, the Planning Inspectorate either upholds on appeal a local authority’s decisions to decline those applications or terrifies the local authority into submission, so that it gives permission because it knows that otherwise it would lose an appeal and would have to spend a great deal of money on doing so.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

I entirely agree with the thrust of my right hon. Friend’s argument. Does he agree that it is immensely discouraging to communities trying to make local plans when their wishes are ridden over roughshod by the Planning Inspectorate?

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend, who has been tireless in promoting the interests of local communities against such developments in his constituency.

The first problem is the Planning Inspectorate upholding or encouraging speculative applications. The second is that the inspectorate is interfering with local plans drawn up by planning authorities. The Conservative party’s manifesto at the last election stated:

“To give communities greater control over planning, we will…abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans”.

That is exactly what we should now do, but the inspectorate is rewriting local plans. It is raising housing numbers in my constituency to beyond the level set out in the south-east plan, and it is causing delay at a time when responsible authorities are planning for a great number of houses—40,000 in the district council areas that cover my constituency, where there are 7,000 unbuilt planning permissions in one authority alone.