Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Nesil Caliskan and David Simmonds

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Nesil Caliskan]

I recognise a number of those points, but supply of housing is the fundamental reason why we have a housing crisis in this country. The amendments being proposed sit alongside many of the solutions that she is seeking. Without our ability as a country, including local authorities, to see housing delivered at the necessary speed, we will never see the number of affordable homes we need or a buy-to-let market being constrained in the way that it needs to be. Supply is the No. 1 reason why we are experiencing a housing crisis. We cannot deliver the number of homes we need without fundamentally looking at the planning system.

Finally, on councillors having their say, the idea that councillors run for public office only because they want to sit on a planning committee—it sounded as if a number of Members were insinuating that—is, I am afraid, a little out of touch. There are lots of ways in which local authorities and councillors can make a difference. Planning committees are indeed one of the most attractive committees, but there are multiple layers of regulatory policy in a local authority that members not only can have a say on, but get to vote on. Earlier, I referenced a local plan that full councils are required to vote on.

An officer making a decision on an application that will not go to a planning committee does not remove a local authority’s ability to put out for consultation. Members of the public, and indeed councillors, will still have the opportunity to submit their views through what will be a statutory consultation period. Local authorities and planning officers will be obliged to take those views into consideration.

I want to underline the point that if we accept that there is a housing crisis in this country and that the planning system is broken, surely planning has to be an aspect that we look at in recognition that local authorities are sometimes being hindered by the existing framework. The speed at which we can deliver housing through a more streamlined planning system, putting faith in professionals in a local authority alongside councillors, will allow us to deliver the 1.5 million homes that we so desperately need.

[David Simmonds]

I will start where the hon. Member for Barking finished. We know that the planning system has delivered consents for 1.5 million new homes in England, where the development sector has failed to step up. One of the things much debated among political parties is the fact that that seems to suggest that, although there are undoubtedly issues, the planning system has been good at producing the opportunity for those new homes—the challenge has been the inability of the development sector to step up to the plate. That should be the priority to address.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley mentioned the Mayor of London’s recent decision about going into the green belt. That is in the context of a capital city that already has 300,000 unbuilt planning permissions for new homes. The Opposition’s argument is that the priority should not be increasing the stock of unbuilt planning permissions but delivering the homes that our country needs.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Nesil Caliskan and David Simmonds

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Nesil Caliskan]

I am so glad that I gave way to my hon. Friend, because that was precisely the point I was going to make and he has made it incredibly well. If we are serious about building homes across the country and about seeing the growth that investment in infrastructure, not least in transport infrastructure, will deliver, we absolutely have to give industry certainty. We have to be able to say to the public, “This will happen with speed.” The amendment seeks to deliver that and it is absolutely in line with the aspiration to speed up the planning process in this country, which at the moment is holding back investment, and to unlock land for development and infrastructure investment.

[David Simmonds]

I have a lot of sympathy with the comments made by the hon. Members for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme and for North Herefordshire. I appreciate that the clause was tabled quite late, and the evidence that we heard last week was mixed. The National Infrastructure Commission gave us its views on the impact of pre-application consultation, and local authority representatives who are responsible for that section of the planning system’s decision making said that they have quite significant concerns.

The Opposition have sympathy with what the Government are trying to achieve, but it seems to me that, as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington outlined, we need to look at alternatives. It may be that a regime of deemed consent is a mechanism we could use to speed up elements of the process, or perhaps altering how we set out the requirements of pre-app consultation.

I know that you have extensive experience in local government, Mrs Hobhouse, and you will be aware that, as a matter of law, Parliament has set numerous obligations on local authorities in respect of the quasi-judicial process that they follow in planning, and numerous other obligations in respect of what they do for their communities. The pre-application process is a means drawing out, before a major application is made, how the impacts may play out.

I can draw a good recent example from personal experience. The Chancellor, at the Dispatch Box, said that Heathrow expansion, and airport expansion more generally, would be enabled because sustainable aviation fuel would reduce emissions. It is true that sustainable aviation fuel mandates reduce the overall lifetime emissions from a given quantity of aviation fuel, but they do not reduce the level of pollution at the tailpipe of the aircraft at all. So when we look at Heathrow airport, it does not matter whether the fuel burned there is sustainable aviation fuel or conventional aviation fuel; emissions within the locality, which are what give rise to the legal obligations on the local authority regarding air quality, remain the same. It is not a solution. When a developer proposes to create a solar farm, a battery storage area or a nuclear power station—or any kind of major infrastructure—the pre-application process gives the local authority an opportunity to begin to understand which of its legal obligations may be engaged by the application.

I am conscious of the experience that the hon. Member for Barking described, illustrating the need to streamline the process as much as possible, but clearly, as several hon. Members have said, the major risk of that is that a developer comes along and sets out an ambition for a development, and residents are consulted and their response is, “In general—in principle—that sounds okay, but what will the impact on us be? Do we understand that from what the developer is putting forward?”