National Planning Policy Framework

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on securing this timely debate. Planning, of course, always raises controversy, and my constituency, like the Cotswolds and elsewhere, is no exception.

The ministerial foreword to the NPPF by the then Minister with responsibility for planning, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), states:

“The purpose of planning is to help achieve sustainable development. Sustainable means ensuring that better lives for ourselves don’t mean worse lives for future generations.”

The foreword goes on to talk about the demands for growth. We all want to achieve growth, but it has to be done in such a way as to satisfy existing residents.

My constituency is particularly badly affected at the moment, because the roughly three quarters of the constituency that comes under the auspices of North East Lincolnshire council has no up-to-date local plan. That was debated in this Chamber about a year ago, when the previous Minister with responsibility for planning, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), described the fact that my local authority had taken some six years to produce a local plan in colourful terms:

“World wars have been fought and won in the same amount of time.”—[Official Report, 29 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 205WH.]

That attracted a headline in the local paper, and I am sure the Minister will make an equally good response that draws headlines.

The Government have achieved a great deal through localism, and neighbourhood plans spring to mind. It is a question of balance and whether we are giving our communities sufficient say. Most would say not, but they only say that when a particular proposal is detrimental to them, their village or the part of town in which they live. For the rest of the time, they are happy to turn a blind eye and say that it is for the next parish, ward or whatever it happens to be, but major applications can completely change an area’s character. Over a fairly short period, a semi-rural suburb can become part of an urban area. It is only right that local people should have much more say on such developments.

In recent years, the role of councillors has diminished in some respects, particularly under the previous Government. Members will recall that there were targets for planning decisions taken by officers, so the role of elected representatives and the involvement of local people was therefore much reduced. Local people felt that they had no voice whatever. We all know that consultation is fine, but what people really want is an actual say. They expect their local councillor to have a say on planning applications, and by “say” they mean a vote. Will he put his arm up for or against a particular application? I recognise how difficult it is. I spent 26 years as a councillor, and planning issues were almost always the most difficult to address, which to some extent is because people only become aware of, and get involved in, a decision when it is too late and too far down the road to stop.

The Minister was on the Front Bench a couple of months ago when I moved a ten-minute rule Bill to allow objectors to have the right of appeal to the Planning Inspectorate in certain circumstances. I recognise that that right has to be limited and that the whole system would completely grind to a halt if objectors could appeal against every conservatory and extension, but in certain circumstances—one being the lack of a local plan—there should be the right of objection to major developments. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) subsequently secured a debate on that subject in this Chamber, and the Minister responded. My hon. Friend put forward a case similar to my own—that there should be rights of objection—but in his response, the Minister spoke glowingly about consultation and so on, saying that the Government’s aim was to ensure that everyone had a clear local plan and so on.

However, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds pointed out, it is when there is no local plan that people feel particularly angry and lacking in any sort of involvement or influence in the system. We all know of such circumstances, not just where a local plan is lacking. Many developments have gone ahead in areas particularly susceptible to flooding, for example, where the advice from local people, drainage boards and the like was, “Under no circumstances must you develop there.” Planners have come along and said, “That’s fine; we’ve consulted with the Environment Agency and all these experts,” but the experts on the ground, such as the local farmer who has seen that field flood decade after decade, have been ignored. If local people were much more involved—if the farmer and the drainage board had the right of appeal in certain circumstances—the system would be greatly improved.

I recognise the moves made by the Government on localism. Neighbourhood plans are welcome. Waltham parish council in my constituency is consulting on its local plan at present, and is doing a fine job, but again, although such consultations are important, they involve a relatively small number of people. We must explore ways to involve more people in shaping their own neighbourhoods, not just by going to a few meetings, making presentations and so on, but by giving them real power to shape the area that they live in. Realistically, that can be achieved only by votes and rights of appeal.

I notice that paragraph 17 of the framework says that

“planning should be genuinely plan-led, empowering local people to shape their surroundings”.

I am sure that we would all say “Hear, hear” to that, but the system, although improved, is still creaking. People still feel left out and not involved. I appeal to the Minister to give serious consideration to limited rights of appeal.