Local Plans (Public Consent)

Debate between Nick Boles and Steve Baker

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am used to facing your inquisition and find my current position a more comfortable one to be in. Although it is more comfortable with respect to you, it is slightly less comfortable with respect to my cherished colleagues, who are familiar faces in debates such as these. They represent their constituents eloquently, passionately and with total conviction.

The difficulty is that in a sense it is of no comfort or consolation to those constituents that although they are suffering from intense problems, others are beginning to be able to make the system work. It is of no consolation to the residents of Fylde to know that in many other parts of the country, because residents there have managed to get a local plan in place, local decisions are being made and adhered to, not overturned by planning inspectors. Nor is it of any consolation to the people of Daws Hill to hear that in other parts of the country there are now 1,000 communities working on neighbourhood plans, nor that there have been 20 referendums on neighbourhood plans, all of which—20 out of 20—have shown the overwhelming support of local people for plans that, as in the community of Kirdford in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), are for quite significant housing growth. It is of no consolation to people to hear that things may be working elsewhere.

The responsibility for the Government is to create a system that applies to everyone and every area, in which every community and every council knows what its responsibilities are.

[Steve Baker]

The crucial thing about Daws Hill is that the two developments that bracket it were excluded from the neighbourhood forum. I have every confidence that if those two areas had been included the residents of Daws Hill would have been full and keen participants in the process.

[Nick Boles]

I fully understand the frustrations of the residents of Daws Hill about that decision. It is unfortunately the case that the council is the duly elected planning authority. It is democratically accountable and therefore it is with the council that the ultimate decision lies on which areas are to be designated.

I believe that every single contribution to the debate started with an acknowledgement of the desperate need for housing. The debate was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker)—I congratulate him on doing so—and so perhaps he will forgive me if I point out that in Wycombe, which is certainly not untypical in the south of the country, the affordability ratio stands at 9.6 compared with 6.45 nationally. That means, very simply, what the father of four told him: the average price of a house in the lower quartile—the lower quarter of available houses—is 9.6 times the average income in the lower quartile of earnings, so someone who is not particularly well paid would have to spend nearly 10 times their salary to buy a house.

Now, as we know, the Governor of the Bank of England has, entirely responsibly, clarified that mortgages of more than four times income should be rare. We also know that mortgage lenders require a deposit, and the Government have put in place the Help to Buy scheme to make it possible for people to get mortgages on 5% deposits. However, there is simply no way that that gentleman, or many like him, will ever be able to afford to pull together nine or 10 times the average income without huge support from somewhere else. This Government are not willing to stand by while housing and home ownership become the preserve of the rich and those with wealthy parents, and we have to act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Baker]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister for mentioning affordability in Wycombe, and I am acutely aware of it, not least because it affects me too. However, it is precisely because I agree with the imperatives he has set out that I think we should move to an incentives-based system that produces consent.

[Nick Boles]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, because it was much the most challenging and stimulating of his very challenging and stimulating speech. I hope he will be pleased that there is a pilot of development benefits, which the Chancellor announced in the Budget, and we are working on exactly how it will work. The idea that it is not just the local council that should receive income and revenue streams from development is controversial in our planning system. The council has traditionally always received such income, whether through section 106 agreements or, as happens now, through the community infrastructure levy and the new homes bonus. What has not happened before is that the benefits go directly to householders. That happens in the Netherlands and other parts of continental Europe, and it seems to secure a level of consent that, as hon. Members have eloquently explained, we still do not manage to secure, even with local and neighbourhood plans. That is why the Government are undertaking this pilot, and I would very much welcome my hon. Friend’s thoughts about how it should operate, because we are devising it at the moment.

On that subject, we have decided to allocate to neighbourhoods that put in place a neighbourhood plan—I remind my hon. Friend that 1,000 communities are working on them—25%, uncapped, of all revenues from the community infrastructure levy. That will go to the community—to the parish council—to spend on community assets, community facilities and improvements to community amenities, as the community determines. That will not be decided by the council or a Minister—it will be decided by the community. That is a proper reward for the intense and usually entirely unpaid work people in places such as Kirdford and Bassett put into their neighbourhood plans.