York (Green Belt)

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd July 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

It is a pleasure, Mrs Osborne, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) for having invited me, a few months ago, to visit the fair city of York and, as he pointed out, to spend a certain amount of time stationary in a traffic jam, which did of course allow me to appreciate some of the wider environmental beauties of the city. He was kind, but too kind, to me; I might be honourable, but I am rarely right, and I am certainly not yet right honourable.

Let me start by clarifying green belt policy in the national planning policy framework. Although my hon. Friend referred to it, it is important to understand quite how clear and how strong that policy is. Paragraph 79 of the NPPF says:

“The Government attaches great importance to Green Belts. The fundamental aim of Green Belt policy is to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open; the essential characteristics of Green Belts are their openness and their permanence.”

That could not be clearer, which is why, when we were going through the process of revoking the regional strategies that were so unpopular and that also failed to deliver their own targets, we listened to representations from my hon. Friend and many others that we should save the policies in the regional strategy for Yorkshire and Humberside to ensure that protection for the green belt around the city of York should remain, until that can be permanently defined in the local plan. I certainly welcome the fact that there is now a local plan process under way in York—it is long overdue—and that that will involve a determination of the boundaries of the green belt of York for the long term. The NPPF says:

“Once established, Green Belt boundaries should only be altered in exceptional circumstances, through the preparation or review of the Local Plan. At that time, authorities should consider the Green Belt boundaries having regard to their intended permanence in the long term, so that they should be capable of enduring beyond the plan period.”

It is important that the conversation that is taking place in York at the moment has a lasting outcome.

The priority that we give to the green belt has also been recently reflected in a written ministerial statement published by the noble Baroness Hanham in the other place. She made it clear that we will be looking more closely at applications for Traveller sites in the green belt, and that we will consider calling in more of those applications than we have in the past, because we are concerned about the balance of policy, as set out in the NPPF. We recognise that there is a need to provide sites for Travellers, as there is a need to provide housing for all members of the community, but it must be properly balanced against the protections for the green belt. We do have a concern that, in recent decisions, that balance has not been completely right.

As my hon. Friend will be aware, we have also clarified our views on the siting of renewable energy infrastructure, especially onshore wind turbines. Recently, on 6 June, the Secretary of State said that the Government will issue new planning practice guidance to assist local councils in their consideration of local plans and individual applications. That will set out clearly that

“the need for renewable energy does not automatically override environmental protections and…decisions should take into account the cumulative impact of wind turbines and properly reflect the increasing impact on (a) the landscape and (b) local amenity as the number of turbines in the area increases”.—[Official Report, 6 June 2013; Vol. 563, c. 114W.]

I hope that my hon. Friend is reassured that those two decisions, on Traveller sites and on wind farm applications, show that we are determined to protect and reassert the protections for the green belt that are contained in the national planning policy framework.

It is important to note that, as the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) pointed out, York has an intense housing need. That is evidenced by the house prices in the city of York, which are well ahead of many of the other communities in the area. The NPPF is clear also that it is the responsibility of every local authority in its local plan to make provision for that housing need and specifically to bring forward sites that are immediately deliverable and developable to meet that housing need over the next five years. That, too, is an important priority in the national planning policy framework.

In a sense, the Government and I make no apology for the fact that we do not believe that it is right for Ministers to decide how any local community should balance the important priorities in the NPPF. That is something that can only happen through a local conversation between all parties about a local plan. I welcome the fact that that local conversation has now started. It was a great abdication of responsibility by previous councils that they failed, over many decades, to conclude that conversation.

My hon. Friend is absolutely entitled, encouraged and empowered to take part in that local conversation and to represent the views of his constituents as eloquently and as passionately as he has today. It is not for me as a Minister, nor for any other Minister, to interfere in that conversation or to indicate that one particular policy in the national planning policy framework is more important in a particular set of circumstances than another policy. The importance of the protections for the green belt is clear. The protections are clearer than they were in any previous set of national policy, but so, too, is the requirement to meet housing need.

Almost the most important thing in the national planning policy framework and in the Government’s overall approach to planning—I hope this will provide some reassurance to my hon. Friend—is that development must be sustainable. That means that the development proposed in any local plan must be sustainable, and that any individual planning decision to allow for certain developments must also demonstrate that the particular application is sustainable—environmentally, economically and in terms of the transport infrastructure. All those things are important, and there is no point for any local authority anywhere in the land to propose development in a local plan that is transparently not sustainable, which is where the role of the Planning Inspectorate comes in through the examination.

When the draft has been consulted on and a final draft has been produced, the local plan will be presented for examination by the inspector. My hon. Friend will have, at that point, yet another opportunity to make the arguments on behalf of his constituents as to why he feels that elements of the plan, if it has not been amended by that point, are still not sustainable. The inspector will consider all the evidence and submissions in making a final determination as to whether the plan is acceptable.

I am afraid that, because of that process, I must resist my hon. Friend’s plea for an amendment to the national planning policy framework. It is perhaps a disease that all politicians on both sides of the House suffer from, and I am certainly not immune to it, to think that the answer to every particular problem is a change in national policy. I fear that that is not the case. The virtue of the national planning policy framework is that it is crystal clear, but it will only retain that virtue if it remains stable, and if we are not permanently fiddling with it to try to suit it to a particular circumstance. None the less, I can reassure my hon. Friend that the protections for the green belt are very strong, and he has all the arguments well marshalled to make his case in the local plan process.