National Planning Policy Framework

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

This week, we heard the extraordinary statistic that only 56 affordable homes had been built in the entirety of London in the past six months. As a result, Newham council has been trying to entice housing associations across the country, including in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), to take families on housing benefit off its lists and into different parts of the UK. All that points to the major housing and planning crisis that the UK faces.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am looking forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s speech on planning policy, but may I say that the problem that Newham council has faced is not only the lack of affordable homes, but the housing benefit changes that have been forced on it by this Government?

[Tristram Hunt]

I am very grateful for the intervention, which highlights exactly what we warned of: such changes need to be managed properly. In that context, what we hoped for from the Government was a considered and rational strategy for planning reforms to safeguard our great towns, cities and countryside, while ensuring economic growth. Instead, what we received was a botched draft planning policy framework, complete with ugly denunciations of such great English institutions as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and of anyone else who dared to question the Government’s damaging proposals. We expected more from the Minister. Instead, as Fiona Reynolds, the director general of the National Trust, put it, the Government’s statements were “arrogant”. She said:

“The language exposed some of the Government’s failure to connect with how people feel.”

We now have the finished document, and I am happy to support some of the major U-turns the Government have adopted, such as the explicit recognition of the value of the countryside as a whole; the strengthened protection for the green belt; and the more balanced, if still ambiguous, definition of “sustainable development”. Those are all to the good, but there are some worrying omissions.

Part of the great urban regeneration story of the past 10 years, under Labour Governments, has been a specific programme of encouraging brownfield development. Last year, some 76% of new dwellings were built on brownfield sites, which is an increase on the 55% in 1989. The figure for Stoke-on-Trent was 90% and the one for Liverpool was 91%. It is therefore worrying that the final draft of the NPPF talks only of “encouraging” the effective use of brownfield land, rather than, as Labour did, “prioritising” it. That does not amount to a robust “brownfield first” policy and is a weakening of the guidance in previous regulation. Hon. Members who are concerned about their towns and city centres would do well to reflect on that: an encouragement is not an obligation. As a result, and with no explicit brownfield development targets, there will be serious scope for legal battle involving developers, who will appeal to sections of the NPPF that emphasise economic viability and deliverability over sustainable brownfield development. That is all the more frustrating given that there are almost 62,000 hectares of brownfield or previously developed land in England ready for building on.

I am glad that the Government have taken on board the Labour party’s criticisms of the draft framework in relation to the sequential test on all large retail development. I make a general point about policy development by this Government when I say that we are here to help: if they listen to us at an earlier stage, they can get rid of some of these complexities. I met my local planning officers at Stoke-on-Trent city council last week, and they were adamant that we would not see the kind of urban regeneration we want in Hanley without a proper system of sequential testing.