Housing and Planning

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

Of course the process will remain balanced. We introduced the presumption in favour of sustainable development so that the balance between the environment, business and heritage could be finely drawn. As somebody who sees planning inspectors’ reports reasonably regularly—a joy that my hon. Friends the new Ministers will now have—I know that they are clearly taking very seriously the mechanism of looking at those three pillars of sustainable development.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

How does the Secretary of State propose to prevent developers from using this as another opportunity to build on greenfield land—not green belt, but greenfield—instead of being forced to build on the banks of brownfield land for which they already have planning permission?

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Lady needs to understand that section 106 is about agreed development—it is not about inviting developers to look at other sites but about existing permissions. The Local Government Association helpfully points out that there are about 400,000 permissions for dwellings. That strengthens our case, because a lot of those developments are locked by section 106. We will go about them on a case-by-case basis, and developers will have to demonstrate that the development is uneconomic in order for the section 106 provision to be renegotiated. We have played a big part in the process with local authorities that have started it, and it works out extremely well in the sense that social housing then starts to be delivered. This package will deliver housing in a more realistic way.