Holiday Accommodation

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on bringing to the Chamber his understandable concerns on two linked issues. I will do my best to give him some comfort on at least part of what he has to say. I am not sure whether this is an interest that I need to declare, but shortly before he was born, I had a holiday on Sheppey. I have been there, and I expect that somebody bought me the T-shirt.

[Gordon Henderson]

Since I am 63 tomorrow, I suspect that that is not quite true.

[Andrew Stunell]

I am sure that we both wish that that were the case. I have a recollection of the island and its unique character. I have not had the opportunity to go back, which I am sure will upset my hon. Friend. As he has said, times have moved on and he has painted an eloquent picture of the challenges faced by Swale borough council and locally elected representatives, as well as the challenges that he faces as the Member of Parliament.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing this debate and wish him many happy returns for tomorrow. Important points have been made not only about the importance of affordable housing, but about protecting the green belt. The Minister has mentioned the issue of other authorities. The issue with affordable housing in my area of York is very similar to that faced by my hon. Friend. The real problem is that we are not getting development going, and it is the affordable housing thresholds, which are being imposed through the planning process, that are causing developers not to bring land forward. A 50% affordable housing threshold means that 50% of nothing is nothing. Does the Minister think that reducing the threshold might lead to more affordable housing throughout the country?

[Andrew Stunell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I will do my best to give him some assurance, but I will come to that in a moment.

I want to start with the wider context. We the Government are certainly committed to a major upswing in housing to meet Britain’s housing needs. I think that it is well understood in the Chamber that the level of household formations is approximately twice that at which new homes are being provided, and that is clearly challenging for us. There is an urgent need for low-cost, affordable homes for sale and for rent. The Government’s comprehensive spending review announced proposals to introduce a social and affordable housing programme and, by tackling the overall, macro-economic situation, the Government are strongly committed to creating an environment in which the private sector can flourish as well. We want greater stability in the housing market and house price rises to be more in line with earnings growth.

We have put in place a number of policies that are explicitly designed to generate that investment. The new homes bonus scheme will be a powerful and simple incentive for local authorities and communities to increase their aspirations for housing growth. I was interested in what my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey had to say about the council tax discounts that have been applied on Sheppey. That is not, of course, a direct generator of new investment, but I want to assure him that the level of discount is a matter for the borough council to determine, and that it is not prescribed by this House.

My hon. Friend asked about a number of other things relating to the current management of the holiday home stock on the island. He drew attention to the fact that the borough council is considering whether to change the planning conditions on the requirement of residence from eight to 10 months a year. That is a matter for the planning authority to decide, and it has the flexibility to do that. Again, it is not subject to national rules and restrictions in so doing.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

May I add to the various comments made by my hon. Friends? I represent an area of south-west Wales that is heavily dependent on the holiday industry, and I wonder whether we are missing something. Will the Minister comment on the report of the Affordable Rural Housing Commission, which the previous Government, to their credit, put in place? It made the point that other hon. Members have made about the flexibility of planners and how some of them might not be as flexible as they could be—

[Simon Hart]

I apologise, Mrs Main.

[Andrew Stunell]

Thank you, Mrs Main. I understand the points that are being made and I hope that my hon. Friend will get some comfort when I address the changes to the planning system, which are currently being discussed by the Committee that is considering the Localism Bill.

As I was saying, the borough council has the flexibility to decide what planning conditions it imposes on both existing and projected new developments. Such flexibility already exists in the current planning regime. I will say in a moment how I believe the measures that we have announced in the Localism Bill—should they find favour with the House—will increase the flexibility of local planning authorities to deliver what my hon. Friends, now numbering three in this debate, are really asking for.

We do not consider that holiday caravans are the right way to increase the provision of low-cost housing, and I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey was advocating that. We would certainly appreciate any planning authority that took the view that the accommodation as it is at the moment would not be suitable for that use. In deciding whether an area should be developed or redeveloped for housing, any planning authority would want to take into account not just the site itself, but, as my hon. Friend said, issues relating to infrastructure, services, flooding and so on. All such matters should be considered by any planning authority when looking at the suitability of a site. They would have an encouragement via the new homes bonus to do so, which would bring them the equivalent of six times the annual council tax for that property as an un-ring-fenced, upfront payment—as a reward or a bonus for increasing their housing stock.

My hon. Friend said that the current planning frameworks make it difficult for applications on surplus holiday sites to succeed. There is definitely good news available in the planning system that we have set out in the Localism Bill. We are taking away the top-down prescription of what can and cannot be done. It will now be the case that if the Isle of Sheppey, or some part of the Isle of Sheppey, decided that it was appropriate for that community to have its own neighbourhood plan, it would be free to develop such a plan and reach such views as it saw fit about how the development should proceed. Although that would have to be within the constraints of the borough local plan, it would not be constrained by huge, thick volumes of national guidance.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government made the point to the House when introducing the Localism Bill that the current planning guidance exceeds in number of words the combined works of Shakespeare. That is clearly a ridiculous amount for any planning authority to take account of and it unduly and unreasonably restricts the capacity of local communities to determine their own fate.

I commend the provision of neighbourhood plans in the Localism Bill as a way forward for the island and for all the different communities in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Of course they cannot discount the issues of traffic, they must take account of some of the broader strategic issues, and there will still be the national planning framework, which will provide overall guidance in relation to the country as a whole. None the less, local communities will have a far greater capacity to decide what factors are relevant when considering applications and what factors should be discounted. The sixth identifier that my hon. Friend talked about will rapidly become redundant because the neighbourhood plan will have supremacy—if I may use that phraseology. I believe that the changes to the planning process that we are initiating will provide him with the capacity to tell his constituents that the prosperous, regenerated and renewed island that they—and he—want to see can indeed come to pass.

The message that I have delivered for the Isle of Sheppey is, I believe, just as relevant for York, but I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) that he will have to have discussions with colleagues in the Welsh Assembly. The powers in the Localism Bill will be made available to the Welsh Assembly through provisions in the Bill, and the Assembly may, if it chooses, adopt them and then adapt them to the circumstances in Wales.

I think that I have addressed all the key points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey, but if he feels that I have not, I will be ready to take an intervention. I hope that it is felt that I have given him a helpful answer, which is what was intended.

[Gordon Henderson]

I thank the Minister for his full response.

Question put and agreed to.