Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Taylor of Goss Moor Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, Amendment 16 is about a review of neighbourhood areas and is particularly focused on the importance of existing parish and town councils as a basis for neighbourhood planning. It is a very important amendment and I am grateful, in promoting it, to the National Association of Local Councils for finding a way of getting it onto the agenda of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill. I should declare an interest as vice-chair—I think—of the APPG on Local Democracy.

One-fifth of the population of England is parished, according to the NALC. I was looking for the statistic—I have it somewhere but did not find it—on exactly how many neighbourhood plans are in parished areas. Perhaps the Minister can help me there. It is certainly over four-fifths. The great majority of neighbourhood plans have been promoted by the town or parish council, which is the qualifying authority in those areas. We know that 1,800 neighbourhood plans have been started, are under way or have been finished. In all of them, there is a clear relationship between the neighbourhood planning process and the town or parish council, but only a fifth of the population is covered by parish and town councils. The fundamental question behind the amendment is: what are the Government doing to set up more parish councils? Clearly, that must be with the agreement of local people, not imposed, but a lot of principal local authorities do not want any more town councils around the place and are not being very helpful.

I do not know what proportion of the population of the country is covered by neighbourhood plans, but it might be something like 5%. If that is the case, everything that we are talking about in earnest is very much a minority interest out in the country. If only one in 20 people in England is covered by a neighbourhood planning process of any kind, either neighbourhood planning is not for most people or, as I would suggest, it is not being sufficiently promoted to get more people involved.

Some planning authorities not only do not like parish councils, they are not very enthusiastic about neighbourhood plans. Clearly, if you are working on a local plan, you may not want to devote additional resources to neighbourhood plans. Although the responsibility for drawing them up lies with the neighbourhood planning group—either the forum or the parish council—it requires time and effort from local planning officers to ensure that it fits with the local development plan, planning law generally, and will work.

Most big urban areas have not got on with neighbourhood planning yet. Most neighbourhood plans are in rural villages or suburban villages. Some areas are pioneering—the noble Lord, Lord Clarke, will tell us about his—but there are not many in the big urban areas. However, it is not just the big urban areas that are a problem. If my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market were here—I think she is occupied in the Chamber—she would be talking about a town in her area that wants to get on with having a parish council and neighbourhood planning, but is being blocked by the local authority. So it is not just the big urban areas: unparished areas are missing out on neighbourhood planning.

I come back to the reasons why parished areas are taking the lead on this. First, the fact that there is a parish or town council means that there is a focus in that community to discuss and promote such a plan. There is an existing body of local councillors who are used to considering and acting on local issues and problems and giving their view on planning applications. Some of them turn up at planning committees for the principal authority to give oral evidence on behalf of their parishes, but send in their views in writing. Parish councillors are used to considering proposals and schemes by principal councils and government legislation. People ask them whether they want to take part, and they discuss it. In many parts of the country, including mine, they are taking part in community transfers, taking over land, property, facilities and services from district councils at parish council level, so they are used to this kind of thing.

Secondly, as well as being focused, they are a source of resources. They are not huge resources, but they have a clerk, to start off with, and perhaps some other staff who can do the initial things that need doing to get a neighbourhood plan steering group going and are used to dealing with correspondence, reports and all the rest of it in legislation. The other resource that parish councils have is money. They can use some of their precept money to supplement grants from the Government towards the neighbourhood planning process. On our previous day in Committee, we discussed how much the grants are and whether they vary, and I do not have any further information on that. Whether or not they are the same for all parishes, whether big or small, in most cases government grants for a neighbourhood plan will not be enough to carry out that plan. In some cases, the grant will be nowhere near enough. Parish councils are one source of local funding. They are not the only one, but they can do it.

On the other hand, forums are ad hoc and random, and they depend on somebody turning up and taking the initiative or a local group learning about it. There is no one in the community who will automatically consider whether to have a neighbourhood plan. This amendment states that local planning authorities must review their neighbourhood areas and look at how many there are, where they are, what proportion are parished, the progress that is being made and, in particular, the unparished areas that are missing out on neighbourhood planning and must consider how to promote neighbourhood planning better. The amendment puts the onus on planning authorities that are not terribly keen on neighbourhood planning to get keener on promoting it in their area. Finally, if places which are not parished ought to have neighbourhood planning, the amendment requires local authorities to consider undertaking a local government review to consider, with the local population, whether to start the process by setting up a parish council or a town council which would have the ability and resources to produce a neighbourhood plan. It would also be able to do everything else that parishes and towns do. I live in a borough which was mostly not parished when it was formed 40 years ago but is now wholly parished and the process has been almost entirely beneficial. I beg to move.

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)]

I apologise for arriving a little late. Trains from the West Country are operating rather badly because of bad weather and the London Tube is operating really badly just because it is the London Tube, but it is a delight to be here now. Before I speak, I should draw attention to one of my interests which I have previously declared. I am the president of the National Association of Local Councils, and I will be speaking on an issue that it has raised. It is reflected in some of my noble friend’s comments.

It is clear that the great majority of neighbourhood plans that have been brought forward are in parished areas. I have represented a local community for many years, and I continue to live in one, and I have chaired a neighbourhood plan process initiated by a parish council. It is very obvious that parish councils, in communities where they exist, are very successful in moving things forward in representing community interests. In the context of neighbourhood planning, they provide an essential vehicle for initiating a plan, ensuring there is proper accountability to the wider community and, in the absence of sufficient funding for some of what happens, providing funding. In the case of our own neighbourhood plan, we initiated at a point where there was no government funding at all for the interregnum because the old fund had run out and the new one had not been established. The parish council, although a very small and poor one, was able to step into that breach.

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[Lord Judd (Lab)]

I would like to say what a sensible amendment this is. It is impossible to overestimate the amount of cynicism that there is around the whole issue of consultation. There is too widespread a view that it does not make any difference because the planners will do what they want to do anyway, and that switches people off coming forward and participating. A lot of work has to be done to build public confidence in the consultation process. The very specific matter raised in this amendment is important because it is a real issue. I have come across it myself when people have said, “For God’s sake, it’s Christmas. We didn’t know that it was not exempt from the consultation period”. I hope that the Government and my noble friends on this side of the House will take the amendment seriously as a very practical and human suggestion.

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor]

I shall speak to Amendment 27A standing in my name but, before doing so, I want to say that it must be a relief to the Minister to have what I think are three sensible amendments all thrown at him at once at this late stage in the afternoon.

I do not think that there is anything to object to in the noble Baroness’s amendment. With the neighbourhood planning process that I led locally, we happened to have a consultation period over Christmas and new year, and I was slightly startled to find that I was not under an obligation to extend that period in view of the circumstances. In fact, we extended our consultation period well beyond what was required under the neighbourhood planning rules, and I think it is a common courtesy to do that in holiday periods. As that is not always a courtesy extended by those making applications, perhaps the Government should make sure that it happens.

In relation to Amendment 62, we had a similar need for statutory consultees to respond to what we were doing in a timely way, but they too are notorious for not always doing that. Therefore, I hope that that amendment, as well as mine, will get a positive response.

Turning to my amendment, in the previous planning Bill the Government accepted proposals that I made for modernising the process under the New Towns Act to make the way in which local authorities bring forward proposals for a new settlement—under what is now the garden villages programme that the Government have adopted—easier and more modern. There would still be proper scrutiny, but it would be a process that could work effectively, and the Government accepted that. Since then, they have had a response to the national garden villages and towns programme that I think has exceeded all expectations, as local authorities have seen the opportunity provided by taking low-value land to create really high-class settlements to meet housing needs and which does not involve building around the edges of historic communities in a way that often wrecks those communities. Although people can be very dismissive of nimbyism—the “not in my back yard” attitude—for a long time I have said that that argument is often the right one. The planning system was introduced precisely to stop urban sprawl. As well as protecting the green belt, it was associated with renewing our urban centres with brownfield redevelopment, which is very important, and with the establishment of new settlements. I am delighted that the Government have gone down that route and that there has been such a lot of interest in it right across the country. I know that there are many more schemes still to come forward, and they will mean that we can meet the housing needs of our children, as well as the need for employment facilities, in a way that we too rarely see with most estate housebuilding at the moment.

The New Towns Act was drawn up in a very different era, not an era of localism but one in which national government had huge powers. When a new town development corporation is established, although it is the local authority that brings it forward—we are talking about relatively small communities and garden villages meeting local needs—the current statute says that the board, when established, is appointed entirely by the Secretary of State, not by the local authority that initiated it, and that all expenditure has to be approved in detail, to the last penny, by the Secretary of State. Given that these organisations acquire all the planning powers for the area that is designated and will make a huge investment in the community when that happens, very few local authorities would wish to see the Secretary of State take all those powers. Very few communities would feel comfortable with that either. Most importantly, a Government committed to localism would not feel comfortable with it. To put it bluntly, the Secretary of State probably does not have time to decide the last few pennies of expenditure by a body developing a local garden village.

The amendment is very simple. It says that where a local authority requests the Secretary of State to delegate powers relating to appointing the board and the financial conduct of the organisation, and therefore in practice its work, the Secretary of State should delegate those powers. That opportunity is not currently in the hands of the Secretary of State. I hope the Government will agree that, given the support they have given this policy and given the take up, it would be useful to make that change. I hope we can get a positive response from the Minister on that today.

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, I shall speak again on behalf of my noble friend Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. Amendment 62 is in her name. As my noble friend Lord Taylor said, it is an eminently sensible amendment.

For the past eight years, my noble friend Lady Bakewell has sat on a committee that considers planning applications. She is therefore painfully aware of the length of time that some statutory consultees take to respond. Whether it is the highways department or rights of way department of a county council, the Environment Agency, the Highways Agency, Historic England or the National Trust, some will be consulted on a regular basis and perhaps all will be consulted on some sensitive applications. Very often, their comments will be of a minor nature, but on larger applications their contributions will be critical to, for instance, traffic flow and pedestrian safety, as well as to ensuring that flooding considerations have been adequately catered for and to the protection of the built environment and flora and fauna.

My noble friend does not wish to name and shame those statutory consultees that are tardy in the extreme with their responses—she is very kind—but their silence, despite frequent reminders, causes planning officers a number of headaches. The applicant becomes irritated at being frustrated in their desire to proceed with their development and unjustly blames the planning authority for not getting on with it. Members of the local community, which may have been consulted by both the developer and the planning authority, wonder what is going on and when they might be able to attend the planning meeting and have their say. The ability to express their view in public is extremely important to neighbours and often to the wider community. It is an integral part of the democratic process. It can help protestors to see that there are viewpoints other than their own, even if they do not agree with them. It is not conducive to community cohesion for residents to have to wait, often for very long periods of time, before applications are considered in public as a result of the local planning department, in turn, having to wait for and chase consultees for their responses. The Government and local planning authorities are keen to speed up the planning process. This amendment would certainly be one step towards achieving that aim. I look forward to the Minister’s response.