Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Second sitting)

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st June 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Are there any further questions before we move on to the next panel?

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

Q I have a question about the infrastructure levy that touches on the issues that my colleague just raised. Does the panel have any thoughts on the ways in which, if it is at all, the proposed infrastructure levy is more beneficial than the current arrangement? I appreciate that lots of detail needs to be filled in, but how would you—I suppose this is directed to Eamonn and Laura—see the infrastructure levy operating, particularly on complex brownfield sites?

Eamonn Boylan: One thing in the Bill that we very much welcome the principle of is the notion that the infrastructure levy is effectively extracted once value has been created. That will make it much easier to calculate an appropriate levy, particularly on a complex, multifaceted scheme.

The issue for us would be, if the income from the levy is delayed until after development has been completed, what are the arrangements that enable me to fund the infrastructure up front? That is needed to enable the development to take place in the first instance. It would need to be linked to the availability of things like the brownfield land release fund or, potentially, borrowing powers to enable us to invest in the infrastructure on the basis of a levy replenishing the borrowing at a later date. The principle is a good one, and I am sure it will be welcomed in the development community, but we need to find a way of making certain that it does not work in a way that prevents us delivering infrastructure in a timely way to enable schemes to come forward.

Laura Shoaf: I reiterate that there is still a lot to unpack and still a lot to understand about what it will mean in practice. We keep coming back to certainty and simplicity being the two things that really help enable us to get big, new-generation projects off the ground. I reiterate Eamonn’s point: anything that can be leveraged into some sort of pump priming to help to give both certainty and consistency would be genuinely very welcome.

Joanne Roney: I would just add that generally, across the UK, we are supportive of the infrastructure levy being non-negotiable, which is a strong statement to make, and of it being determined at a local level, which will take in those regional differences that Eamonn and I mentioned earlier—the viability in different places. There is a lot to welcome in this, but the detail needs to be worked through.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q I have a brief follow-up question for Eamonn. You said one of the potential advantages is that the levy is extracted at the point that the value has been created. Do you foresee any disputes arising between local planning authorities or combined authorities and developers as to valuation appraisals at that point in time? Will we get conflict at that point in time between the two sides over what the precise value is and therefore what the levy should be?

Eamonn Boylan: I will not pretend to you, sir, that I can have absolute confidence that we will avoid disputes over valuation. We have it at the start of projects now and we have had it at different stages. It will be essential to have established prior to the signing of formal agreement with the developer or developers that we have an agreement on the valuation methodology to be used at the point at which the levy is to be calculated—to try to remove some of that risk. That is certainly what we would hope.

Joanne Roney: I think the move to viability assessments increasingly being made public to planning committees helps to bring transparency and clarity to value early on in the discussions, as part of the planning process. We would want to build on that, so that we try to avoid those arguments. I am sure they will be there, but it is how they get resolved.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Thank you.

[The Chair]

As there are no further questions, I thank the witnesses for their evidence. We will move to the next panel: we have two witnesses virtually and two present in the room. If Members wish to remove their jackets, please feel free to do so.

Examination of Witnesses

Professor Graeme Atherton, Rich Bell, Sacha Bedding and Dr Parth Patel gave evidence.

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[The Chair]

I call Matthew Pennycook.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q I have a follow-up question for Rich and Sacha on neighbourhood planning. Given the campaign’s interest in neighbourhood planning forums as a model for community covenants, as well as for neighbourhood planning in the suggested power of those covenants, can you expand on how you see the potential use and/or misuse of some of the measures in the Bill, especially national development management policies on the status and functioning of local planning and, in particular—because it is an important aspect—on participation and trust in that process at a local level?

Rich Bell: I think we certainly agree with the comments that were made by many Members on Second Reading about the seeming primacy of the national management policy and the way in which the Bill seems to grant the Secretary of State the power effectively to overrule local communities. That does not seem to be in the spirit of the levelling-up agenda as we understand it.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Sacha, do you want to add anything to that?

Sacha Bedding: Only to say that the consequence of that would be more disillusionment, and it needs rectifying. If people are really to have a sense of agency and ownership of their own place and feel that it has been levelled up, they need to feel that they have the power to stop that happening. That needs teasing out in a thoughtful way, so that those powers that we hope will pass down to communities are enshrined and do not depend on the largesse of other people in more significant positions of power.

[The Chair]

I call Darren Henry.

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[The Chair]

I call Matthew Pennycook.

[Matthew Pennycook]

To clarify, Chair, will we not be able to get the other witnesses in?

[The Chair]

It is looking iffy at the moment. If they do not appear, we can have a brief discussion about how to address it at the end of the sitting.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Great—I will tailor my questions accordingly. Sam, thank you for attending. Do you foresee any issues with the requirements in clauses 75 to 81 relating to planning data and digitisation? Local planning officers will go to their IT departments and ask them to help facilitate that digitisation. Are district councils sufficiently well resourced, in terms of their IT capabilities, to manage the introduction of and ongoing compliance with those sorts of standards?

Cllr Chapman-Allen: There are two parts to that question. One is that, across the whole of the country, regardless of which tier of government deals with planning, we have a shortage of planning officers. That, sadly, is the nature of the beast, with their desire to work in the private sector, where incomes will be greater.

For us in district councils, for those who have not got a rural locality basis—that ability for residents to interact with their council—through poor broadband provision, I think the proposals for digitalisation for planning is the real positive. As for how district councils will operate that, we are already in the vanguard of that AI—artificial intelligence—and how we interact with our residents on digitalisation.

The trial that has already taken place across the country has been really successful. Both we and the Department have learnt a great deal from it. As long as the outlay, with some capital support, is forthcoming in the Bill, to ensure that we are able to uplift our software and our hardware, I think it should be a seamless transition. However, we have to ensure that we build that into our capital programmes and into the activity of our staff, so that we can deliver it and, in turn, train up how our council officers operate and, more importantly, ensure that the public understand how they begin to interact and use that new digital service.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q That is really helpful; thank you. Some specific software requirements are proposed in clause 78. Do you think that there is a risk that they might undermine public investment in software tools that have already been purchased and are in use, if the Government are in a sense dictating the types of software that need to be used across the country?

Cllr Chapman-Allen: There will be legacy licences for some existing software. They will have a lag time to run out or, depending on the Government’s position on this, if there is a hard reset date, there will be a revenue cost to the authority. That needs to be picked up as it moves forward. However, I do not think that it will be a challenge, because the uniformity for residents on planning—in particularly for developers and individuals applying with planning applications—will allow the smooth understanding of how to interact with their local planning service.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q On the national management development policies, clauses 83 and 84, the LGA has published concerns. Does the DCN share those to any extent? In particular, will you comment on how you see the impact of national management development policies on the ability of district councils to tailor plans to their local circumstances, to innovate and to embed higher standards that the Government might want to see in particular areas?

Cllr Chapman-Allen: I am not completely sighted on that clause, but in the wider sense of the LGA and DCN’s position on the proposed rules moving forward, this must be a bottom-up approach. As we have said time and again, in order for growth to take place, communities have to see the benefit realisation, whatever that is, whether for infrastructure, design or the specification of units we are building. As long as residents see the benefit to their communities, the policies that are forthcoming to date are in line with what we were expecting; with what we asked for back in the planning consultation in August 2020. That said, there will be nuances in every location across the country that will sit outside the NPPF, in which local planning policies from local plans must have that flexibility to support local needs and desires, and therefore those sorts of outputs.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Great. I have two more questions, Chair—I will try to rattle through them. Sam, earlier you touched on planning officers and the profession. Do you think that this Bill is missing an opportunity to address some of the issues around morale, capability, resourcing and status of planning officers within authorities?

Cllr Chapman-Allen: I do not necessarily think this is a position around culture and morale. Being a planning officer is one of those specialist trades in a district council, no different from an environmental health officer or a health and safety officer. It takes years to get to the standard required to undertake that duty and that requirement.

The challenge we face is that framework and that position, and the fact that we are competing with the private sector. So, particularly for those districts that surround the M25, it is immensely easy for those planning officers to transit in between and to commute into London. For those districts that are in rural locations, some of those challenges on connectivity, and on access to health and education, make it a career choice sometimes for people as to whether they want to reside in those locations.

Of course, the new agile lifestyle post covid presents some further opportunities, but it once again comes down to pounds, shillings and pence. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We can always pay more for planning officers, but sadly we are not able to get 100% cost recovery on planning applications. So, in response to your question, we could go further to ensure that district councils and others that deal with planning matters could get 100% cost recovery and therefore pay a higher value for those planning officers to deliver that service.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Brilliant. Just finally, nowhere in legislation is the purpose of our planning system set down. Do you think there is any value in more clearly defining the aims of the planning system? Is this Bill an opportunity to do that?

Cllr Chapman-Allen: Yes, there is, but I will put back on the health warning that with planning the clue is in the name—we need to make sure that we are planning for our communities for the next 10, 15, 20 or 30 years, and not being reactive. Also, this cannot be a top-down exercise for what we are trying to achieve. Every one of our locations, in our communities and in your constituencies, has its unique beauty, its unique opportunities and its unique challenges. Therefore, those local plans must be derived locally. As much as the national planning policy framework sits at a national level as the umbrella, I do not think it should necessarily dictate completely how we deliver planning locally for us.

[The Chair]

I call the Minister, Stuart Andrew.

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[The Chair]

Matthew, do you have any questions for the two panellists?

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q You will be relieved to hear I am not going to go over all my questions, Sir Mark, but I will ask James and Tim the specific question that I asked Sam about clauses 75 to 81 on planning data and digitisation. Can you foresee any issues with how authorities can implement those measures, specifically in terms of how well resourced IT departments are to do so? In his response, Sam from the District Councils Network said that yes, it will all work fine, presuming that the correct amount of capital support, and so on, comes with it. What needs to come with the Bill for you to properly implement those measures around data and digitisation?

Cllr Jamieson: The key thing is that we are all immensely supportive of digitisation; it is the way to go. We do not want paper. In fact, one of the things that we saw during covid was that a number of local authorities moved to remote working and digitisation anyway, which made the process so much easier.

This is something that we are supportive of. I think Sam is right that we need clear guidelines, the relevant capital support and clear technical things, such as, “How will the system work?” and “What are the data protocols?”, because we want a very clear system that works for everyone. As ever, I think we are all slightly nervous about big IT projects, but this should work, with proper engagement with local government to ensure that we do it in the right way.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Great. Tim, anything to add?

Cllr Oliver: Yes, I agree with both James and Sam. Obviously, planning is largely in the remit of the district and borough councils. In an ideal world, I would hope to see some sort of spatial development strategy, or the ability to create that. The duty to co-operate has not worked particularly well, and, where we are creating CCAs and county deals, it would be very helpful for there to be some input, at least, from a county-wide perspective. In terms of the digitalisation, I would leave that to the other two and I agree with what they said.

[Tim Farron]

Q Hello to all three of you; it is really nice to see you. Thank you very much for your time. My question is on housing and planning, so it is probably for Sam, but with a little bit of James, and we would be perfectly interested to hear what Tim has to say as well.

If we take it as a given that, particularly in the rural communities that many district councils serve, there is a collapse of the private rented sector into the Airbnb sector and a massive growth in second home ownership at the expense of permanent occupied dwellings, do you think that this Bill gives you any additional powers that help you to push back against that? What additional powers would you like?

Cllr Chapman-Allen: The relaxation for local authorities to tax second homes for council tax purposes had a really positive impact. We are seeing that across those communities in which second home ownership is immensely high. For communities such as yours, Tim, that Airbnb community is a challenge. First, it removes those rental properties from the market for long-term tenants. Secondly, it creates a really fluid community, and sometimes there are risks of antisocial behaviour related to that. There could be more strengthening for those local authorities to place conditions on new builds and new properties to ensure that the type of mix and tenure, and/or usage around holiday homes and/or Airbnbs, could be strengthened.

That said, we have the existing legacy problems for coastal communities, market towns and cathedral cities already. I would not necessarily want to suggest that we change that through this Bill now. We need to ensure that we are working with those landlords positively, as with housing providers and housing legislators, to ensure that they understand the challenges they face, but more importantly, the challenges that the communities face.

We have a long way to go. Over the last 12 months, there has been a lot of change for landlords. Sadly some of those have now vacated the market because of the changes in regulations, and policies required of them. We must ensure that we have a suitable housing mix across the country, and those who want to and do rent have an important part to play. Therefore, landlords have an important part to play in that process. I would not necessarily want to over-regulate so that landlords no longer want to operate in that market. However, there is a challenge around Airbnb and there is further work we can do to support the Government in implementing some legislation on that.