Planning Committees: Reform
Debate between Martin Wrigley and Matthew Pennycook(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Matthew Pennycook
On many sites across the country there are genuine reasons, including those of viability, why sites are not built out. It is not as simple as saying that every consented site that is not being built out is being sat on deliberately by developers, but we know that land is traded speculatively. I want to reassure my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour that, as I have made clear in answer to previous questions, there are existing powers that we can consider bringing into force, and there are measures that we took forward in the consultation on the national planning policy framework that we think will help build-out, particularly on proposals around mixed-use sites, but there is potentially more that we can do in this area and we are keeping the matter under close review.
Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)
Speaking as—until recently—the leader of a district council and a long-term member of our planning committee, I do not recognise the issues that the Minister is citing. A lot of the things he says relate to the absence of a local plan. I fully agree with that. My council has just put in place a new local plan, which is hopefully being approved right now. A better way to get more affordable housing would be to look at the way local authorities can finance the building of those houses and fix that. It would be better to allow local authorities to charge appropriate amounts to cover the costs of the planning, so that they can get the necessary planning officers, and far better to look at how many councils already do mandatory training. I hear from Liberal Democrat colleagues that they all had to do mandatory training, as I did in my council, so that is in place. I would like to see a list of how many councils do not do that. We also need to make water companies statutory consultees so that we do not hit flooding problems. Those changes will help. The problem is not in the planning process. More than 1 million applications have been allowed but not built—