Pubs and Planning Legislation

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

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

It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie). We certainly welcomed her application for this debate at the Backbench Business Committee. I am really glad that the environment is calmer today than it was two weeks ago when we last debated this matter. I am sorry that her amendment was defeated so narrowly, but it did demonstrate the strength of feeling across the House. As she says, pubs are not just buildings where alcohol is sold, but community hubs where people meet, relax and socialise. Pubs have done a lot to ensure that they reach out to their communities. They are now a place for, among other things, knitting circles and salsa dancing. It is unbelievable what happens in pubs today.

As the hon. Lady says, about 30 pubs a weeks are closing. It is often the case that they are closing because they are not used or because the demographic has changed. Everybody supports the idea that they should not be boarded up but used for something else. Her suggestion, and what the Opposition have been calling for, is perfectly sensible. We should give local communities a say in what happens to their pub, in the way that they would if it were a nightclub, a theatre, or, as the Library briefing says, a scrapyard. Local communities would get a say in the change of use from a scrapyard to a supermarket, so why not a pub?

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) raised an important point. Many pubs are heavily used. This is about not whether a pub is used, but whether the brewery, the pubco, or the property developing company that owns these pubs as assets can make more money out of them by selling them to supermarkets or by using them as pubs. That is the key issue that I want to get across today.

I am involved in a campaign in New Whittington, in North East Derbyshire, where the Wellington pub is, at this very moment, under threat of being turned into a supermarket. I just wanted to talk a little about what happens when a pub applies to be an asset of community value. It is not straightforward as the Government would have us believe. We helped to get asset of community value status for another pub, The Angel at Spinkhill, and it was incredibly stressful. Spinkhill is tiny and New Whittington is not much bigger. People love going to their pub, but unlike many of the property developing companies and pubcos they do not have the time, money or power to navigate a complex system to get that status, which only protects the pub from being sold for six months, giving the local community a chance to buy it and to run it as a co-op or as a community facility. That is not necessarily what they want to do. They want to have a pub, but running it themselves is quite a big ask and, especially in deprived communities in which those pubs are the only asset, that can be a serious issue.

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and I thank her for her support and for that of the Backbench Business Committee. She raises an important point about a weakness in the ACV system for pubs. A lot of the time, smaller breweries and smaller pub companies cannot buy pubs. This is not all about community ownership: these companies are trying to buy pubs, they want to buy them and to make a success of them, but they are not because of the ridiculous permitted development rights.

[Natascha Engel]

Absolutely, and those are the unforeseen consequences of such legislation. We are just asking for a level playing field within the planning laws.

I want to come back to a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) about the amount of money this system costs a local authority at a time when district councils, which are tiny with small budgets, have had their budgets slashed and cut to the bone. The amount of red tape involved in seeing the process of applying and receiving asset of community value status through is onerous. As I have said, our pub has petitioned the local authority and with luck, at the beginning of March, it will suspend the whole process. That is very stressful for members of the local community and this is a very difficult time for them. That is the problem: they are running against the clock. They have jobs and lots of other things in their busy lives, and they do not necessarily have the time to commit to such things in the way that pubcos, property developers and others do when they try to buy these pubs and turn them into supermarkets.

I want to say a big thank you to Viky Muddiman, who is running the “Save our Welly” campaign, to BBC Radio Sheffield, which has covered the issue at great length, and to The Chesterfield Post as well. I wish all those pubs that are applying for asset of community value status the best of luck in doing so, but it would be much better if we could get a quick change in the planning laws to equalise the system, ensure that all pubs are playing on a level playing field and give locals a say in what happens to their pubs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Mulholland]

I will come on to cover that point.

The problem is the conversion of pubs into supermarkets, and particularly their buying power. CAMRA figures show that two pubs every week are being converted into supermarkets—that is more than 100 a year—and in the past four years, Tesco alone has converted 37 pubs.

I have written to supermarkets as chair of the all-party save the pub group, and the replies I received were simply not honest. Supermarkets claim—I wonder whether this is where the Minister got a mistaken idea about what is really going on—that they are bringing derelict buildings back to life, which is a wonderful thing, and that the pubs were failed businesses. That is absolute rubbish; it is dishonest and they know it. The reality—I urge the Minister to look at this issue—is that secret deals are done behind the backs of communities between large indebted pub companies and supermarket chains. Supermarket chains are deliberately targeting and indulging in the predatory purchasing of larger pub buildings, precisely because they know they can impose stores on a local community without it being able to do anything.

We have the absurdity that a new Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Co-op—it is very engaged in this process—can impose a store on a community that is stunned to find that it has no right to object, yet the supermarket chain then has to submit planning permission for new signage. That sort of thing brings the planning process into disrepute, and from that point of view such a system cannot be defended. Ministers, the Department and some MPs are misunderstanding what is going on.

There is perhaps a little light at the end of the tunnel. We have all seen the figures and the fact that Tesco has got itself into a terrible mess—as out-of-control big business sometimes does. One Tesco store that was announced will now be closing—so much for bringing things to the local economy. Tesco will be closing the Tesco Express in South Tottenham, which used to be the Golden Stool and before then The Mitre. Having taken that pub away without the community having a say, Tesco is walking away and leaving a derelict building—so much for this being a wonderful thing for business and communities. Not only are supermarkets buying premises, they are leasing pubs from pub companies—an even sneakier and easier thing to do.

Of all the arguments I have heard in this place, the Government’s argument on this issue is one of the weakest and it is absolutely full of holes. It includes stating that somehow laundrettes, theatres and even nightclubs are apparently more important to DCLG than pubs. That is because the situation has been presented as somehow being about the derelict pubs we see around—at least one hon. Member has mistakenly taken that view to be a fact. The Minister told us about derelict pubs in Bristol, but those pubs are derelict even with the permitted development rights—that issue has absolutely nothing to do with it. Many pubs have now shut, but that goes back to the unfair business model of the large pub companies that Members across the House have mentioned. I pay tribute to the work of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee that was instrumental in exposing that and leading finally to change.

I share the concerns of the hon. Member for Easington about the moves to water down what we voted through on 18 November, and we all need to be aware of that.

The derelict buildings are nothing to do with it. We are talking about viable, wanted and profitable pubs. I would love to know what every right hon. and hon. Member who voted against new clause 16 will say when a constituent walks into their surgery and says, “We are losing our local pub. We have just found out that Enterprise Inns or Punch Taverns have sold it to Tesco, Co-op, Lidl or Sainsbury’s. Will you help us to oppose that?” They will sit there and say, “There’s nothing you can do, because they have the absolute right to do it. You can list it, but by then it will be too late.” As has already been mentioned, the ACV process is used reactively. It is used only when people see there is a threat to a pub. In some cases, that is far, far too late.

The hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) submitted an interesting freedom of information request. Of all the assets of all types—not just pubs—only 11 have been bought by communities. CAMRA knows of about 10 pubs now in community ownership that are listed as ACVs, but it cannot say whether the ACV initiative led to the pubs being saved, or whether that came later. The reality is that probably fewer than 10 pubs, of the 600, have actually been saved. It is fair to say that some of them have not yet been threatened, but only 10 have been saved.

I have already mentioned the problem with not giving commercial companies, the small breweries and small pub companies—who, incidentally, are thriving as the big pub companies fail—an adequate chance in this process. The Golden Harp in Maidenhead had ACV status, but then became a Tesco. The council turned down an article 4 direction, which is the other way in which DCLG suggests this can be dealt with. About 42 pubs in London that have ACV status are currently closed. Many are simply being land-banked, because developers know that if they sit on them for long enough, they will probably get whatever planning permission they want or need, or they will go ahead anyway.

We have to debunk the myth that going through the planning system to give people the right to a say somehow means that a pub is not only protected—it is not—but cannot become another use. That is simply untrue and it is wrong for Ministers to suggest otherwise. The truth is that viable and profitable pubs are being lost even when planning permission is needed. Indeed, in the constituency of the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), Ye Olde Dun Cow in Cowbit had ACV status. There was a community campaign to bring it back to life, but permission was given to demolish it.

The Summercross in my own constituency—one of my local pubs in Otley—was, after a hard fought campaign, turned into a care home, despite the fact that we gave the council figures to show that the pub was trading profitably when it was deliberately closed by a developer. The owner of Hooper’s in Camberwell obtained planning permission to convert it to a house even though it had ACV status. The Tumbledown Dick in Farnborough, an ACV pub, was partially demolished and is now in use as a McDonald’s against the wishes of the local community. The George IV in Brixton, the Emperor in Ipswich, the Chesham Arms in Hackney—this is not a happy picture, even when people do have to go through the planning process, so the Minister may seriously think that even if they make this limited change, or even if we get the new clause changed, it will save lots of pubs and stop conversions, but that is simply not the case.

There is a dangerous loophole that I urge the Minister to address. If an ACV pub is sold as a going concern, that bypasses the six-month moratorium, even if it is a deliberate sale as a temporary going concern where the intention is clearly to end its use as a pub. That undermines the position hugely.

We need a clear announcement. I hope and suspect we will get from the Minister today an idea of when, in the eight weeks left of this Parliament, we will hear that announcement. This is our last chance. I share the voice echoed by the hon. Member for Bristol North West. I urge the Government, even now, to think again, and this is where we come on to costs. I asked the chief executive of Leeds city council to give me its costs of every ACV status. The reply was that on average an assessment and approval of a nomination up to the stage of being first added or otherwise to the list of assets of community value costs around £1,070 in officers’ time. It also pointed out that the DCLG guidance states that on average a nomination should take 8.3 hours, but officers from Leeds city council estimate it takes twice as long. That, of course, does not include the time it may take to consider a formal review of a decision, any resource required if a review should go to a tribunal stage, or any time to deal with administering the process when an owner informs of the intention to dispose of an asset. That is without even the possibility of legal challenge, which is quite likely.

[Natascha Engel]

May I add to that very long list? The hon. Gentleman talks about officers’ time. What is the cost of the time of members of the local community who are putting in time, effort and a lot of resource?

[Greg Mulholland]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and I will come on to that point once I have presented the view of the local authority. I do not doubt that the Government believe in localism—I believe in localism myself—but localism does not mean passing the buck when the clear responsibility for the use class orders is with national Government and DCLG.

Several surveys have been conducted, including by the Save the Pub group and CAMRA. The Local Government Information Unit has figures showing that 45 out of 49 local authorities said they did consider pubs as valued community assets worthy of protection, and 33 of them said that existing planning regulations do not give sufficient protection to public houses from change of use and demolition. In every single survey, a large majority say that they would welcome the changes we suggest today.

On to the reality for communities, as the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) said, these are ordinary working people. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West used the word “misleading”. I worry that, because we did not have the chance to have this debate at the time, there was a sense, certainly on the Government Benches, that all one needs to do to register a pub is to get 21 people. Colleagues would say, “I’m not going to support you, because apparently we have a concession.” Let me read the reality of the situation as set out in the DCLG guidelines, “Community right to bid: non-statutory advice note for local authorities: part 5, chapter 3 of the Localism Act 2011”:

“5.1 A nomination must include the following information for the local authority to consider:

I. A description of the nominated land including its proposed boundaries. These boundaries do not have to be the same as ownership boundaries, for instance as shown on the Land Registry plan if the land is registered; nor is it necessary for all parts of the nominated site to be in the same ownership.”

That means communities are expected to go and get plans. They either have to pay the Land Registry—okay, that is not particularly expensive—or they have to produce plans themselves. The guidelines continue:

“II. Any information the nominator has about the freeholders, leaseholders and current occupants of the site.”

How many people living near to a pub would actually know that?

“III. The reasons for nominating the asset, explaining why the nominator believes the asset meets the definition in the Act.

IV. The nominator’s eligibility to make the nomination.”

That is not 21 people saying that they think a pub is important. The Minister and the Department have given the impression that this is a wonderful way to get all valued pubs listed, but there are thousands and thousands and thousands of valued pubs. The majority of the pubs we still have left of the 48,000 are valued, yet multiple applications cannot be made.

I have exciting news for the House. The first multiple application, as a test case, will be made next week in my town of Otley, in my constituency, by the wonderful community organisation, Otley Pub Club. Otley has 20 pubs. As an Otley resident and occasional user of those pubs, I can assure the House that all 20 pubs are highly valued by Otley Pub Club and the local community. They are going to seek to list all 20 of them, which has never been done before. We will see what happens.

I want to make the case for why the Government’s proposal is the wrong change and ours is the right one. If the applications are regarded as average and simple, listing all 20 valued pubs in Otley will cost £21,400 of taxpayers’ money and take 332 hours of officers’ time. [Interruption.] I hear the Minister chuntering from a sedentary position, but listing costs local authorities money, and several councils have said it amounts to about £1,000. It is more for an article 4 direction—more like £2,000, £3,000 or £4,000 per pub. To list all the valued pubs in the country, therefore, would cost millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, and that is not acceptable simply because it is local authority money, rather than central Government’s money. It is irresponsible, given that there is a much simpler solution and that local authorities are extremely hard-pressed with greatly reduced budgets in these difficult times. It simply is not an appropriate way to proceed.

Furthermore, of course, councils can and do turn down ACV schemes. Even if those 21 people go through the time-consuming steps—it took Otley Pub Club six months to produce its 20 forms—of ascertaining the boundaries, working up the plan, finding out who the leaseholders, freeholders and occupants are and giving their reasons for making the application, the local authority can still say no. CAMRA knows of approximately 40 applications that have been turned down. That does not sound like localism to me.

If, as he seems to be, the Minister is absolutely adamant in his view —on that, I share the frustration of the hon. Member for Bristol North West—I and CAMRA have some suggestions, and if he could consider them as part of introducing this proposal, that would be better. Two simple things need to happen if it is to have anything like the impact he suggests: first, we need to make it much easier, less onerous and quicker to get ACV status for pubs and to make it much less likely that a council will refuse; and, secondly, if the Minister is serious about pursuing this measure, we must strengthen ACV status not just by ending permitted development rights but, for example, in the case of the pubs I have mentioned, by making it much harder for developers to go against the will of the community and get planning permission where needed. Such is the power of those large companies that pubs are still being converted and bulldozed, even when the planning process has been followed.

To make this measure meaningful, the Minister should make it possible to submit multiple applications. If people say, “These are the valued pubs in our village”, why should we separate them? If there are three pubs in the village, they might all be valued. If there are 15 pubs in a town, 10 of them might be valued. If so, let the community list all 10. It is obvious and simple and would save local authorities money. In addition, it should not be the responsibility of local communities to establish boundaries. As the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire said, if local communities have to go through that process, they will not always bother.

CAMRA also asks that the Minister close the loophole whereby selling an asset as an ongoing concern bypasses the moratorium—a glaring gap in the Bill—and make the moratorium last longer than six months; it is not enough. If this is seriously about saving pubs, we must extend the moratorium. Furthermore, if he insists on going down this route, we need a new status with more powers; alongside the ACV status, we need a community pub of value status, and then DCLG could put in extra protections specifically for pubs. In Scotland, the legal system is in some ways more progressive, certainly in respect of the planning system. We should also establish a genuine community right to buy, rather than our very weak right to try—the right to put in a bid that in the end can simply be ignored.

I hope I have shown that the simple change of allowing local communities the basic right to comment—not just to object, but to support—on a significant change of use to a pub would be cheap and easy. The Government’s suggestion is a welcome but modest step forward. Even if, as we hope, more pubs are listed, many wanted, viable pubs will still close. That is a fact. It baffles me why this Government, who are committed to localism and have said they want to be the most pro-pub Government ever, have proposed a solution that is not pro-pub but is more bureaucratic, much less effective, partial, will take much longer and will cost millions more in taxpayers’ money than what we could achieve with one simple vote and change, through secondary legislation, to the use class orders.

In the last eight weeks of the Parliament, I urge my hon. Friend the Minister and his colleagues to do the sensible and obvious thing and put pubs in the sui generis category, alongside theatres, casinos, laundrettes and nightclubs. It is the simple and obvious thing to do. If the Government want to leave a legacy as a pro-pub Government, that is the announcement we need to hear in the next few weeks.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I shall be comparatively brief.

I wish to be a little more generous to the Minister than some speakers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on having secured this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on having supported it. Having been both pubs Minister and planning Minister, I am conscious that planning policy is always a balance, and striking a balance does not always make us popular—sometimes, we are about as popular as the landlord calling time on a crowded Saturday night—but it has to be done. I am therefore much more supportive of the Minister’s position.

That does not mean that, in the light of experience, planning policy cannot be improved, and I think that the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) has made some sensible suggestions that we ought to listen to, as too has my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West. I was also impressed by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris). In particular, I join in her tribute to Councillor Ray Howard, whom I have worked with over many years. He is rightly nicknamed Mr Canvey, and after almost 40 years of elected service, he now epitomises everything that good local government is about. I am happy to get that on the record.

I believe in pubs. I have been active in a campaign to save a pub in my constituency, and we succeeded within the current regime. There are hurdles, but they are not impossible. Equally, however, those of us who believe in pubs have to be realistic and accept that not every pub is viable or will be an ACV, so we have to take a nuanced approach. I approach this matter slightly differently from my hon. Friends. I am concerned that more pubs are not listed, but I think we should be looking at why we cannot encourage greater uptake of the ACV regime. As one of the Ministers who introduced the regime, I confess I had hoped that communities and local authorities would be more proactive in listing not just pubs but many other types of facility. That is something not just for the Government, but for communities themselves, to look at. In the case of my pub, The Porcupine in Mottingham, ACV status was achieved very quickly.

[Natascha Engel]

Surely the reason local communities are not better at listing these assets is that it is so difficult to do, not that they are too lazy.

[Robert Neill]

I do not think that local communities are necessarily lazy. That would be a patronising thing to say about any community. In Mottingham, the community moved swiftly and efficiently, the local authority co-operated and the pub was listed as an ACV very quickly. I do not accept all the criticisms made of the Government’s position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Williams]

I accept what my hon. Friend says about supermarkets, and I assure him I am going to come to that point. The change that he wants and the motion suggests is not modest, however. It is quite a big change to the planning system to give blanket protection to one particular retail use of a piece of land.

Let me depart slightly from my remarks, as I have been provoked. There are probably lots of high street retail uses that different Members around the House might lament the loss of, as shopping areas have changed during our lifetime. I like going to pubs—I have even been to the pub with my hon. Friend several times and hopefully he will buy me a drink again very soon because we have not fallen out too much over this issue—but I am a bibliophile and really enjoy going to bookshops, and I lament the fact that many towns have lost all their bookshops. Even a seat with well-educated constituents such as mine, Bristol West, where there are lots of book- readers has experienced this; the number of bookshops open and trading in Bristol since I went there as a student in 1985 has shrunk markedly in recent years. Is the reason for that because there is not enough protection? The Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), was chair of the Labour club and I was chairman of the SDP-Liberal club at Bristol university at the time, and she will remember that there were lots of bookshops. There are not so many now.

Has that change happened because there is no protection in the planning system for bookshops—or for bakeries, or for other uses people value in the high street and wish were still there? No, it has not. It has happened because customer tastes and purchasing patterns change. We cannot have a planning permission that stands in the way of people changing how they buy things and exercising their commercial choices.

[Natascha Engel]

That is not the point we are making. All of us have said pubs that are no longer viable are very different from pubs that are perfectly viable. The Wellington in New Whittington is a heavily used pub, but the company that owns the building can make more money by selling it to a supermarket than by keeping it as a pub. It is still making money, however; it is making plenty of profit.

[Stephen Williams]

It is, perhaps, difficult to pick on individual examples without getting into trouble, but one of the bookshops in my constituency closed because a well-known TV personality restaurant-owner paid more for the renewal of the lease than it could afford even though it was trading profitably as a bookshop. Now there is a much-shrunken version of it further down the road. We cannot have a planning system to protect every single piece of economic use of land in towns and cities in that way. We have to reflect the fact that commercial patterns change. That is what our constituents are doing; they are changing the way they buy books, and the way they drink and eat.