Planning Reform

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Nick Boles]

I cannot comment on any particular plan, but windfall sites absolutely can form part of a plan. Where an authority can evidence that it has had a consistent delivery of housing through windfall sites in the past, and it is reasonable to expect that there will continue to be such a delivery of housing through windfall sites, it is absolutely reasonable to say that part of its planned projections assumes a level of windfall site delivery. There is nothing in the policy to prevent that.

I will move, very briefly, to the question of the weight of emerging plans. The hon. Member for City of Durham was absolutely right to say that it was a vexed issue in the last debate that we had on this subject. We are trying to make this issue clearer in the draft guidance and although the consultation has closed on that draft guidance, as far as I am concerned consultation never closes.

If hon. Members would like to look at that draft guidance, they should refer to the Department’s website. I would be very happy to take any comments or concerns from them. We have also invited my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who both had very serious concerns about this process, to meet the chief planner to discuss in detail how it will work.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

I did not get the opportunity to speak; I will put my speech on the website. The Minister can go further than issuing draft guidance and actually amend the NPPF, because all is not lost. He does not have to come back to Westminster Hall and have “Groundhog Day”. He can also take into account the cumulative effects of development within the NPPF, at paragraphs 186 and 187, to close a loophole that he has been hearing about today; he has also heard about the pain that that loophole has caused. I also have other suggestions that I will write to him about.

[Nick Boles]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. We are not looking to change the NPPF, because after such a dramatic change in the planning system, stability has an enormous value.

However, what we are looking to do in the draft guidance, which we hope to confirm shortly, is to make it clear that it is sometimes reasonable—in exceptional circumstances, but exceptions happen all the time—to refuse a planning application. That is the case if, one, the application is so substantial that it runs the risk of undermining the plan to which it is being referred, and, two, where a local plan has been submitted for examination—it has not yet passed examination, but has been submitted. A refusal can also happen in the case of a neighbourhood plan, when it has entered into what is called the local authority publicity period; it has completed consultation but it has not yet gone to referendum or, indeed, to examination. Before the plans have been examined, they will have material weight and they can, in exceptional circumstances, be used just on the basis of prematurity to refuse an application, if the application is so substantial that it could completely knock the legs out from that emerging plan.

I hope that I have reassured hon. Members. We have listened very carefully to the concerns that have been expressed. As I say, we have met other Members who have had concerns about this issue and we have done our utmost to listen to them, and to try to reflect those concerns.

I simply point out that that is not entirely within our gift, because, much as I understand how my colleagues from all parts of the House would dearly love to abolish the Planning Inspectorate, I can tell them where these things would end up if we abolished it—they would end up in court. It would cost their local authorities a lot more money to fight these things in court than it does to fight them either through an examination or in an appeal with the Planning Inspectorate. Planning inspectors are a better solution for local councils and local communities than the available alternative in a system where the rule of law enables people to challenge Government decisions whenever they like.

In the minute or so I have left to me, I will address the very important point that my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome made about design. To reassure him, hopefully, I will read the draft guidance about the very point that he made:

“Development should seek to promote character in townscape and landscape by responding to and reinforcing locally distinctive patterns of development and culture, while not preventing or discouraging appropriate innovation.”

Local vernacular is critical to making people feel that development is a friend, and is actually helping and supporting communities, rather than undermining, challenging or alienating them. It is something that matters a great deal to me. I believe that if we built more beautiful houses in more beautiful places, we would build more houses, and ultimately that is what we all want to achieve.