Town and Country Planning

Mike Amesbury Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the Town and Country Planning (Permitted Development and Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 632), dated 23 June 2020, a copy of which was laid before this House on 24 June 2020, be revoked.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this we shall discuss the following motions:

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 755), dated 20 July 2020, a copy of which was laid before this House on 21 July 2020, be annulled.

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) (No. 3) Order 2020 (S.I., 2020, No. 756), dated 20 July 2020, a copy of which was laid before this House on 21 July 2020, be annulled.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the Minister for finding the time for this debate in response to the prayer motions that Her Majesty’s official Opposition have laid against these regulations.

I will start by telling Members a story, one that is real and with which some across the Chamber will be familiar. It does not have a happy ending, and given the Secretary of State’s radical extension of permitted development, it is about to get a whole lot worse for many people in many of communities up and down this nation.

Over the weekend, the Minister may have read an article in The Observer about permitted development. It began by talking about the experience of a woman, Katya, who lives in a block of flats created under the existing permitted development regulations. All Katya wants, like many of us, is a place to call home, to bring up a young family and to feel secure, space for her children to play safely, somewhere to shelter during this pandemic and to be able to travel to work from, and some communal green space. Yet Katya is one of thousands of residents who are crammed into former offices and industrial units that were not built for human habitation. Some have no or few windows, some are as small as 10 square metres—the average car parking space is 11 square metres—and many are on the outskirts of towns, with few amenities such as shops and schools.

Katya is not alone. Up to 60,000 units have been built under the previous extension to permitted development, many of which are unfit for human habitation. I am certain that neither the Housing Minister nor the Secretary of State would like to find themselves or their families in them.

This debate is about three further ways in which the Government want to create poor-quality housing by bypassing the local community, local democracy and local control: by adding new units on top of flats; by allowing developers to demolish and rebuild empty buildings; and by allowing people to add multiple floors to their homes in a village, town and city near you.

Let me take Members on a visual journey up north to Leeds, where Abbey, a young professional, bought her leasehold flat only to discover that it had been cladded with flammable material. She is one of many thousands affected. She cannot sell it. It is zero-rated for a mortgage and she has to pay thousands in waking watch and insurance fees. There are also massive problems, with which the Minister and the Secretary of State are very familiar, with the EWS1—external wall survey—forms.

What is the Government’s solution? Instead of building back better, safer, healthier and greener for Katya and communities up and down our nation, the Secretary of State will go down in history not only for his unlawful planning direction in Tower Hamlets, with the Westferry affair, but as Bob the bad builder, coming to wreck a village, town and city near you.

Instead of having a relentless focus on making people like Abbey safe in a cladded building, he has rammed through a negative statutory instrument to lob an extra two storeys on blocks of flats, overnight giving some freeholders and overseas investors a multi-million pound windfall of up to £42 billion.

At the same time, this very SI has added an additional cost for leaseholders who may want to buy the freehold. No need for donors to attend the Carlton Club dinner circuit anymore and exchange chummy texts—just sneak the windfall through Parliament via an undebated instrument. What does that instrument deliver a year? Just 800 flats per year; that is 8,000 over a decade.

To make matters worse, because permitted development bypasses the planning system, we could have a ludicrous situation where high-rise buildings extended by two floors do not go through gateway 1 of the draft building safety Bill. Have the Government learned nothing just three years on from Grenfell? Oversight, regulation and rules protect lives.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Amesbury]

In a moment.

In the spirit of cross-party co-operation, I happily quote the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who strongly advised the Prime Minister to get a “better housing adviser”. I find it difficult to disagree. Permitted development has been disastrous for our towns and cities since its introduction by the coalition Government in 2013 and things are about to get a whole lot worse. That is not me saying that—it comes from the Government’s own advisers. In fact, on the day that the Secretary of State laid two of the three statutory instruments that we have prayed against, his own commission’s review of permitted development was published—and it was damning.

The review found that only 22% of permitted development dwellings met the Government’s own space standards, fewer than 4% have access to a private amenity space and a vast majority have only single-aspect windows. These are not beautiful homes—in the words of another Government commission report—these are the slums of now, the slums of the future.

The Royal Institute of British Architects president, Alan Jones, put it like this:

“The arrogance and lack of understanding is breathtaking.”

It is not just RIBA that think the extensions to permitted development are a bad idea; they are opposed by the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Chartered Institute of Building, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Town and Country Planning Association and many more. Aside from some developers looking to make a quick buck out of shoddy housing, who supports these pieces of legislation?

With a slight nod to the fact that windows for people in flats might be a step forward, all three SIs allow councils to challenge developers if there is inadequate lighting provision.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman’s tone. He and I got on very well as co-members of the Select Committee, and he will know from his experience on that Committee that the problems with Grenfell, which he lays at the Government’s door, were decades old in the building regulations system. This is not something he can lay at the door of this Government—there were decades of failure. The issue in relation to the £40 million Westferry windfall for the developer is factually incorrect; there would simply have been a reduction in the amount of affordable housing on that development. On the space standards, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, today the Government set out clearly that space standards will be included in future permitted development rights.

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In terms of Grenfell, I referred to the draft building safety Bill and gateway 1. Certainly in terms of planning permitted development, there is an issue there—it is an issue that we will undoubtedly discuss beyond the debate today. With regard to the concession to the rebels, and the fact that we have laid the motions today, of course we welcome baby steps forward—finally, there is a concession that actually people deserve space as well as windows. That is a step forward, undoubtedly, but major problems remain with permitted development.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I declare an interest, as chair of the all-party group on healthy homes and buildings that sits in this House. We carried out an inquiry two years ago and made recommendations. The hon. Gentleman is talking about the importance of homes having the heating, quality of life and lighting correct, and having environmental amenities throughout. A home is not just four walls; it is much more than that. Does he agree that that has to be part of what the Government bring forward?

[Mike Amesbury]

I wholeheartedly agree with those powerful and pertinent points.

The quality of housing—the minimum standards required from Government—should be guided by a moral compass, one that puts health and wellbeing at the heart of housing provision, rather than the profit margins of some of the more unscrupulous developers in our country. Rather than bypassing local residents and councils, why not resource and fund local planning authorities properly and maximise that civic voice to create healthy communities and housing that people are proud to call their home? Ministers wax lyrical about the need for more affordable housing, yet this massive extension of permitted development bypasses the requirement for section 106 contributions and in many cases community infrastructure levy payments too, robbing communities of decent affordable housing and local infrastructure. The Conservative-led Local Government Association estimates that 3,500 affordable homes have been lost due to the current regime of permitted development. This centralisation of our planning system is a Stalinist power grab, bypassing local democracy and creating a developer’s charter, while vandalising the character of our villages, towns and cities, hollowing out our high streets, flattening industrial estates and concreting over green space. It is ideological claptrap with bells on. I worry that the Secretary of State is spending far too much time with his Russian oligarch friends—Private Eye is even referring to him as “Moscow Bob”.

If these statutory instruments are passed today, when more of these unplanned monstrosities start to appear in our communities, residents will no longer be able to voice their concerns to local councillors, their MPs or the local planning departments.

[John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)]

On the point about local democracy, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be as pleased as me to note that the plans for local development codes and local style codes, which have to be drafted by local councils—set by them, with local standards—ensure a valid local voice; it is just doing it in advance, rather than retrospectively. Surely he must accept that his points about a lack of local democracy are without foundation.

[Mike Amesbury]

Labour and Conservative councillors, parties of all political persuasions, are expressing major concerns about this. The Tory shires are on the march about it. It is a fundamental attack on democracy. It hands too much power to unscrupulous developers—that is a fact and we will consistently challenge on it. When MPs vote on these measures today, I know that Katya, Abbey and many thousands more who desperately need decent, safe and affordable homes will be looking at us all to know which side we are on. A vote to annul these SIs and to stop this chaotic vandalism coming to a town or city near you is a vote to stop this power grab from our local communities, which will create a bad developer’s charter.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Amesbury]

I thank Members from across the House for all the powerful contributions made today. I am sorry that I cannot acknowledge them all, but I am limited in time. Although we recognise the Government’s last-minute concession on space, resulting from our motion, and the work of campaigners from across the country in the housing and planning sector, the fact remains that this is a developer’s charter. It will enrich them, freeholders and overseas investors to the tune of billions. As has been said eloquently by Members from right across the House, it will create vandalism in our streets, communities, villages and high streets; lobbing two storeys on semi-detached houses and on flats—flats cladded with flammable materials—is nonsense. It is not building back better, building back safer—it is nonsense. As for affordable housing, 6,400 social houses last year—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat.