New Housing Supply

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Bob Seely

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way to a disgruntled Back Bencher. If he reads the NPPF letter, the “Dear colleague” letter, he will find that although there is leeway on housing targets, there is set to be higher density and more liberalisation in many areas. A lot of what we tried to achieve was to free up the market to make it work better.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Gentleman on that. Whether it is by means of the emphasis in the proposed NPPF on locally prepared plans providing for “sufficient” housing only, the softening of land supply and delivery test provisions, the ability to include historical over-delivery in five year housing land supply calculations or the listing of various local characteristics that would justify a deviation from the standard method, the intended outcome of those changes is to allow local authorities to plan to meet less than the targets that nominally remain in place.

As I said, the choice the Government made entails a deliberate shift from a plan-led system focused on making at least some attempt to meet England’s housing need to one geared toward providing only what the politics of any given area will allow, with all the implications that the resulting suppressed rates of house building will have on those affected by the housing crisis and economic growth more widely. The next Labour Government will fix this mess. When it comes to housing and planning, our overriding objective will be to get house building rates up significantly from the nadir we will surely inherit, including, as part of that effort, markedly increasing the supply of affordable homes and, in particular, genuinely affordable social homes to rent. We do not intend to pluck an annual national target out of the air and ineptly contort the system to try to make the numbers across the country add up, as the Government have done by imposing an entirely arbitrary 35% uplift that most of the 20 cities and urban centres in England to which it applies are clear cannot possibly be accommodated.

[Bob Seely]

rose—

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will not give way.

But we will insist that the planning system is once again geared toward meeting housing need in full. To that end, if they are enacted as expected, a Labour Government will reverse the damaging changes the Government propose to make to the NPPF in relation to planning for housing. However, although reversing those damaging changes to national planning policy will be an essential first step, more far-reaching reform will be required if we are to overcome the limitations of a speculative house building model, a broken land market, and a planning system that is at once both too permissive and too restrictive. That will mean, among many other things, overhauling England’s dysfunctional planning structures so that the system more effectively facilitates strategic housing growth across those sub-regional areas with significant unmet need. That might be by way of extensions to existing urban settlements or entirely new settlements—I would argue that we need both in good measure. It will mean more proactive public sector involvement in housing delivery on large sites across the country, so that quality place making and long-term value creation become more than just the rare exception.

Let me make it clear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Labour’s approach will not be premised on a drive for units at any cost. We appreciate that many local communities resist development because it entails poor-quality housing in inappropriate and often entirely car-dependent locations, without the necessary physical and social infrastructure for communities to thrive, or sufficient levels of affordable housing to meet local need. We would argue that that outcome is a direct consequence of the Government’s over-reliance on private house builders building homes for market sale to meet overall housing need. Yet when it comes to house building, there need not be an inherent trade-off between quantity and quality. A Labour Government will be determined to see increased rates of house building, but equally determined that much more supply comes via a long-term stewardship approach so that, if not removed entirely, public opposition to significant development in contested areas should at least be much reduced.

Similarly, we reject the notion that building more homes must come at the expense of wider national policy objectives. In addition to increasing housing supply in a way that prioritises quality of build and quality of place, we will act to ensure that the housing and planning systems play their full part in addressing other pressing national challenges such as the drive towards net zero, the need for urgent nature restoration and the need to improve public health.

To conclude, it is not the only way of solving England’s housing problems and it certainly will not be a panacea for them, but building more homes remains the most effective way that we have of tackling almost all of the housing-related problems with which our country is contending. The Government needed to build more homes before the so-called planning concern group extracted its damaging concessions late last year. As a result of the Government’s appeasement of that group, we now face the very real prospect that house building rates will plummet over the next 12 to 18 months.

We desperately need a change of approach, but it is a change that the present Government and the Ministers on the Front Bench are incapable of delivering. It is high time that we had a general election, so that they can make way for a Government who are serious about ensuring that we build to meet housing need in full and boost economic growth.

Planning

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Bob Seely

Thursday 26th January 2023 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing this important debate, and on the clarity with which he set out his position. I thank the hon. Members for Keighley (Robbie Moore), and for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), for their contributions.

The Opposition are in complete agreement with the hon. Member for Isle of Wight on the need to reform planning. After a decade of piecemeal and largely inept tinkering, the planning system that the Government are presiding over is faltering on almost all fronts. It is failing to meet the housing, amenity and infrastructure needs of many, if not most, local areas; failing to play its full part in addressing various national challenges, from the climate and environment emergency to improving public health; and failing to sustain what little public trust and confidence it still enjoys. There is no question but that it needs to be overhauled.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight will not be surprised to learn that the Opposition agree that action is required on several of the planning issues that he identified—indeed, I would say that action is long overdue. Let me address a number of those in turn. The first issue is land banking. We appreciate that developers require a pipeline of planning consents to manage capacity in the face of inherent uncertainty, and that reference to 1 million outstanding planning permissions is therefore an overly simplistic and, in some ways, inaccurate critique, but Labour agrees that developers regularly make use of current and strategic land banks to game the planning system. That represents a serious problem, and robust measures are required to address it, as well as build-out rates more generally; certainly, we need much stronger forms of intervention than the useful, but ultimately inadequate, set of measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill.

The second issue is brownfield land, which has been alluded to a number of times. Labour recognises that there are simply not enough sites on brownfield land registers to deliver the volume of homes that the country needs each year, let alone enough that are viable and in the right location. However, we absolutely support the prioritisation of brownfield land development, and agree that much more could be done to facilitate good brownfield development, not least by overhauling and repurposing Homes England.

The third is compulsory purchase. We are in complete agreement on the need for local planning authorities to have greater compulsory purchase order powers, and we have been clear at every stage of its passage that we support the CPO provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, including those introduced in Committee on compensation in relation to hope value. Indeed, we have repeatedly urged the Government to go further and implement the proposals outlined in the second part of the compulsory purchase compensation reforms consultation, namely to disapply section 17 of the Land Compensation Act 1961 in certain circumstances and enable local authorities to acquire land at or closer to existing use value in order to increase the number of financially viable developments and expedite regeneration schemes on them.

The fourth is community participation, which has also been mentioned several times. Labour absolutely agrees that meaningful public participation in the planning system is essential. We believe that where it takes place, it helps to improve outcomes, and we want to see much more of it, particularly when it comes to engagement in the preparation of local plans. The problem is that the legitimacy of the planning system has been severely damaged in the eyes of the public over the past decade as a result of a series of changes, not least of which is the progressive extension of permitted development rights since 2013, and the slum housing—putting it bluntly—that it has so often been used to create. That has left communities with much less say over development in their area than they previously enjoyed. Various measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill undermine the status and remit of local planning, and deny or frustrate the right of communities to be heard, and that will only compound the problem. It was regrettable that members of the Conservative planning concern group ultimately chose not to join us in resisting them.

Where we fundamentally part ways with the hon. Member for Isle of Wight and his colleagues in that group is on the importance that we attach to, among many other laudible objectives, ensuring that the planning system is explicitly focused on meeting objectively assessed housing need. For all the rhetoric about seeking a fairer planning system, in recent months, what the hon. Gentleman and his group have convinced the Government, in their weakness, to adopt is a proposed national planning policy framework that will provide local planning authorities with myriad different ways of avoiding delivering the homes that people need. Whether it is the emphasis in the revised NPPF on locally prepared plans providing for “sufficient” housing only; the softening of land supply and delivery test provisions; the ability to include historical over-delivery in five year housing land supply calculations; or the listing of various local characteristics that would justify a deviation from the standard method, taken together, the proposed changes will give those local authorities that wish to take advantage of it the freedom to plan for less housing, irrespective of whatever target nominally remains in place.

It is true that the proposed changes to the NPPF are only being consulted on, but we know that they will almost certainly be enacted. The effect of the signal that they have sent, as was surely intended, is already evident; numerous local plans have been paused, explicitly on the basis that the proposed changes justify a review. Local plans have been mentioned at several points in the debate, and in her response, the Minister will no doubt highlight the need to bring forward more. We absolutely agree. It is an indictment of this Government’s performance that after a decade of plan making, 59% of the country still does not have an up-to-date local plan. Although the proposed changes to the NPPF may well increase local planning coverage across England, they will almost certainly do so on the basis of numerous development plans that will not meet the needs of their given housing market areas in full. The Government are making the entirely arbitrary figure of a 35% uplift to urban centres policy by placing it in the NPPF. They clearly hope that it will mean that England’s largest cities and urban centres will do the heavy lifting on housing supply, but most of the cities that it applies to cannot, or will be unable to, accommodate the output it entails.

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Gentleman agrees with us on some things, and disagrees on others; that is fair enough, but does he accept that the UK has some of the least dense cities on the planet? We are a very crowded, small island, and we need to increase density in our cities. The most attractive places in our inner cities tend to be those with the highest density, so high density is not a problem in itself. Actually, forcing higher density creates better-quality services, because it builds a market for those services. This is an incredibly sensible thing for the Government to do.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Let me be clear: I take no issue whatever with the drive to densify already developed urban areas, but as I argued, the cities and urban centres to which the uplift applies are pretty clear that they cannot, or will not be able to, accommodate the levels of housing supply that it entails, not least because of the constraints imposed on them by a number of the proposals in that NPPF consultation—I do not know whether he is aware of that, or how involved he was in the negotiations that he mentioned—and the absence of any effective means of managing cross-boundary housing growth.

The net result of all these changes, as I think everyone here knows full well, is that the Government have consciously accepted that fewer houses will be built in England over the coming years. That decision entails a deliberate shift from a plan-led system focused on making at least some attempt to meet housing need, to one geared toward providing only what the politics of any given area allow, with all the implications that entails for the housing crisis and economic growth. These latest politically driven changes leave national planning policy, and the planning system as a whole, more confusing and contradictory than ever.

Local planning authorities remain under-resourced, overwhelmed, demoralised and consequently unable in large part to process applications at pace. England’s planning structures remain dysfunctional; they are utterly incapable of managing housing growth at a strategic scale. Not only does the system as a whole lack a clear and overarching purpose but the unifying thread that ran through the 2012 NPPF—namely, the presumption in favour of sustainable development—has now effectively been jettisoned.

So I conclude by returning to my original point of agreement with the hon. Member for Isle of Wight. The planning system is indeed crying out for reform, but not the reform that he and his colleagues are pursuing and the Government have conceded to. Instead, it requires reform that the present Government are now incapable of delivering. It is high time that we had a general election, so that the present Government can make way for a Government who are serious about ensuring that the planning system and national planning policy are designed to meet housing need and boost economic growth.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Matthew Pennycook and Bob Seely

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I want to make some progress, so I will not give way.

We take issue with the Government making local housing targets unenforceable in the absence of a viable alternative to try to maintain supply.

We believe it is essential not only that the process by which the Secretary of State must designate and review an NDMP involves minimum public consultation requirements and an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny, but that the scope of an NDMP to override local plans is suitably constrained. On that basis, I commend amendments 78 and 79 to the House.

Part 4 addresses the new infrastructure levy, which is the Government’s proposed replacement for the present arrangement by which local planning authorities secure developer contributions. We believe the new levy is one of the most consequential aspects of the Bill and has potentially far-reaching implications not only for the provision of core infrastructure but for the supply of affordable housing. Although we fully appreciate that schedule 11 merely provides the basic framework for the levy, with a detailed design to follow, and that the levy’s implementation will take a test-and-learn approach, we are convinced that, as a proposition, it is fundamentally flawed.

As we argued in great detail in Committee, the deficiencies inherent in a rigid fixed-rate mechanism for securing both infrastructure and affordable housing, based on the metric of gross development value, almost certainly means the levy will prove onerously complicated to operate in practice and that, overall, it will deliver less infrastructure and less affordable housing in the future, while putting the development of less viable sites at risk.

For that reason, we remain of the view that if the infrastructure levy is taken forward, it should be optional rather than mandatory, with local authorities that believe that the needs of their areas are best served by the existing developer contributions system able to continue to utilise it. Taken together, amendments 81 to 83 and 91 would ensure that local authorities retain that discretion, and I hope the new Minister, whom I welcome to her place, will consider them carefully, along with amendment 86, which seeks to address a specific concern about how viability testing will inform the levy rate-setting process.

Amendment 84 seeks to ensure that if the Government insist it is made mandatory, the new infrastructure levy must deliver sufficient levels of affordable housing. Since the publication of the Bill, Ministers have repeated ad nauseam that the new levy will secure at least as much affordable housing as developer contributions do now, yet the Government have so far been unable to provide any evidence or analysis to substantiate why they believe it can fulfil that objective. More importantly, there is nothing in the Bill to ensure that the commitment made by successive Ministers with regard to affordable housing will be honoured. At present, proposed new section 204G(2) of the Planning Act 2008—in schedule 11, on page 291 of the Bill—only requires charging authorities to have regard to the desirability of ensuring that levels of affordable housing are

“maintained at a level which, over a specified period, is equal to or exceeds the level of such housing and funding provided over an earlier specified period of the same length.”

Put simply, the Bill as drafted would enable—one might even say encourage—inadequate levels of affordable housing supply to remain the norm by making them the minimum requirement.

If we want to ensure that the new levy secures at least as much affordable housing as is being delivered through the existing developer contributions system—and ideally more—we believe the Bill needs to be revised. That is not a view confined only to this side of the House. In the foreword to a report published only yesterday by the Centre for Social Justice, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes)—himself a former Minister in the Department—argues in relation to the levy that

“it would be good to see stronger safeguards in primary legislation, rather than in regulations, for protecting and increasing the existing levels of affordable housing supply funded in this way”.

Not for the first time, I find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman.

[Bob Seely]

One of the specific things that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and I requested in our agreement with Ministers was to make it easier for councils to increase the percentage of affordable housing. Clearly there is the economics of how that can happen, but we absolutely encouraged them to allow us to have that wording, so that in a place such as the Isle of Wight we could dramatically increase affordable housing as a percentage of housing. We actually put this at the centre of our plans.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Increasing the supply of affordable housing, which is at pitifully low levels, is a laudable aim. I agree with the hon. Member on that, and I therefore hope he can support our amendment 84, because it would achieve the objective in relation to the infrastructure levy by requiring charging authorities to ensure that levels of affordable housing are maintained at a level that, over a specified period, enables any given authority to meet the housing need identified in its local development plan, and I commend it to the House.

Turning to part 5 of the Bill, this concerns the Government’s proposed new approach to assessing the potential environmental effects of relevant plans and major projects—namely, environmental outcomes reports. Chief among several concerns we have about the proposed EOR system are the deficiencies of clause 122 in relation to non-regression safeguards. While we welcome the inclusion of this clause in the Bill as a means of constraining the use of the wider regulation-making powers in part 5, we are concerned that the clause as drafted contains a series of loopholes. First, use of the relevant non-regression provisions is entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State. Secondly, the Bill stipulates that the principle of non-regression will only apply to the

“overall level of environmental protection”,

rather than specific aspects of it. Thirdly, the definition of environmental law used in the relevant subsection will limit the extent to which it can provide protection against potential future regression.

The Minister who responded to the debate on this issue in Committee provided some measure of reassurance as to why the clause is drafted in the way it is, but our concerns have not been entirely assuaged. We have tabled amendment 88 to ensure that the new system of environmental assessment would not reduce existing environmental protections in any way, and I look forward to hearing how the Minister responds to it in due course.

We want to see many other changes to the Bill. Among other things, we have tabled amendments and new clauses to ensure that the Government undertake a comprehensive review of the extension of permitted development rights since 2013; to allow local authorities to hold planning meetings virtually or in hybrid form; and to place a duty on local planning authorities to appoint suitably qualified chief planning officers.

Of particular importance to us is the need to ensure that the Bill fully aligns the planning system with the UK’s climate mitigation and adaptation goals. In Committee, Ministers argued repeatedly that existing local and national duties, requirements and powers are sufficient to ensure that the planning system responds as required to the climate emergency, yet that is demonstrably not the case, given that the system regularly throws up decisions that are seemingly incompatible with the need to make rapid progress towards net zero emissions by mid-century and to prepare the country for the changes that are already under way. That is likely to remain the case until the Government produce clear and unambiguous national policy guidance, in the form of a revised NPPF, and legislate for a purposeful statutory framework to ensure genuine coherence between our country’s planning system and its climate commitments. New clause 98 would deliver the latter, and I urge Members to support it.

Before I turn to a number of the substantial Government amendments that have been tabled since the Bill left Committee, I will speak briefly to new clause 114. As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, despite a notional majority of more than 80, the Government are developing an alarming habit of allowing national policy to be dictated by the demands of amorphous groups of their own Back Benchers. In the case of onshore wind deployment, the Government’s weakness in the face of such demands is all ostensibly to the good, because Ministers are now seemingly committed to amending the NPPF to finally end the harmful effective moratorium imposed on onshore wind since 2015.

However, the written ministerial statement published last Tuesday provoked more questions than it answered. For example, what criteria will Ministers specify to determine what qualifies as a demonstration of local support for onshore wind projects, given that there is certainly no clear indication that the Government are minded to bring consenting for onshore wind in line with other forms of infrastructure, as it should be?

To take another, there is the assertion in that statement that we need

“to move away from the overly rigid requirement for onshore wind sites to be designated in a local plan.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2022; Vol. 724, c. 9WS.]

What is meant by that? The Minister will know that sites do not have to be identified in local plans to receive consent for onshore wind deployment, but there is a strong presumption that they should be, and rightly so. If we are to strengthen our energy security, cut bills and reduce emissions, we need local authorities to proactively consider the opportunities within their boundaries for the deployment of all forms of renewable energy, including onshore wind generation.

Given the degree of ambiguity that now surrounds the Government’s position, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Secretary of State has simply sought to buy himself the time he needs to get this legislation passed by alighting on a form of words nebulous enough to temporarily appease the warring factions within his party.

New clause 114, in contrast, is clear and unambiguous. It would require the Government to remove the onerous restrictions that the NPPF places on the development of onshore wind projects, and it would ensure that local communities have their say via the planning process, without imposing a uniquely restrictive consenting regime upon only this form of renewable energy generation. It would ensure that local authorities must at least explore the desirability of renewable energy deployment, including onshore wind, as part of the local plan preparation process, and I commend the new clause to the House.

Turning finally to a number of the Government amendments that have been tabled in recent weeks, Government new clauses 49 to 59 insert an entirely new part into the Bill, as the Minister said, that enables community land auction pilots to take place. As many Members will be aware, such auctions are not a novel concept, having been first proposed as far back as 2005. On paper, the premise appears entirely sensible. Landowners would have the freedom to voluntarily come together to grant options over land in the area of a participating local planning authority, with a view to it being allocated for development in the local plan. On the assumption that the option value would be significantly less than the market value for housing development, and that landlords will release said land at the lower price to realise the guaranteed short-term return, the authority in question will be able to exercise or sell the option, capturing some of the increased value uplift and using it to support local development.

In practice, the idea is riven with flaws. First, the circumstances for which this theoretical arrangement is designed—namely, a collection of small and completely substitutable land parcels with multiple landowners—bears little relation to the characteristics of the actual land market across the country.

Secondly, the idea that auctions will drive down land prices in the absence of any element of compulsion is frankly for the birds. One need only look at Transport for London’s disappointing experience with the development rights auction model to see how the proposed arrangement will fall short in that regard.