Planning

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Christopher Pincher

Thursday 15th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way in a moment to my hon. Friend, but I am conscious, if I may say so, that I have a lot of questions to answer that he and others have asked and he does get a second bite of the cherry later.

We do need to ensure that more people are engaged, and we believe that by digitising the planning process, by creating map-based plans of local areas, we can engage many more people in the planning process, and they can get more engaged up front, making real decisions about the sorts of buildings that they want in their local geographies—the densities and the designs—and about the infrastructure to support those homes. That is real power, given to people much earlier in the process, so that they can become much more engaged.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Christopher Pincher]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment, but I will make a little more progress first.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight suggested that we are scrapping the planning system. We are not; we are proposing to reform it—and I will give him an example of what I mean by reform, rather than scrappage. These are our proposals. In areas that we have designated as growth sites, a local plan can set design and density standards, and describe the infrastructure expected from developers in those areas.

If the developers tick all the up-front boxes agreed in the plan and consulted on with local people, they will get their outline planning permission to begin their building process. They will still need to keep coming back to the local authority for consents, but they will get their outline planning permission. However, if they do not put forward an application that conforms with the local plan, they will have to put forward an application in the normal way under the present rules.

If developers bring forward an application in what we have described in the White Paper as the protected areas, they will have to bring it forward under the present system. The present system will remain, but we want an accelerated process to identify places where local authorities want to see development taking place, and to bring forward in those places designs and infrastructure requirements that the local communities want, need and have bought into.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Is he open to considering a process of deliberative democracy around planning, which really involves engaging with all parts of the community to work through the very difficult challenges in planning and come up with solutions that work for everyone?

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Christopher Pincher

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Lady is quite right, and we will look at the flooding issue as we further develop our proposals and bring them to Parliament. I recognise that this is a challenge; it is a challenge in my own constituency too.

One poll showed that 69% of people had no knowledge of or connection with local plan making. That is simply not good enough, and we believe that there is an appetite for change. Let me briefly come to some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Croydon North. We all know that he is trying to make a name for himself—quite some name—and we also know that he has one or two little hobby-horses. But like so many hobby-horses, they can turn into an obsession. He started out quite normally with an interest in planning and its rules, but quickly—all too quickly—it went downhill. He conceives himself as some sort of latter-day witchfinder general, a chief of the inquisition constantly in search of some heresy under every stone, and finding plots and conspiracy under every brick. I fear that his latest, albeit short, outpouring shows that the fantasy has gone a little too far. In just a few minutes, he has gone from acting like Tomás de Torquemada to being like David Icke. How long will it be before he runs off and jumps into his turquoise tracksuit and starts telling everybody that the world is run by lizards and that he is the godhead?

In the wording of the Opposition’s proposals, are they now saying that they oppose local development orders, which allow certain types of development to go ahead without a specific planning application, even though they introduced that legislation themselves in 2004? Are they also opposed to neighbourhood development orders, which also allow certain developments without specific planning applications? It sounds as if they are. In fact, it sounds as if they do not really know what they are talking about and that they do not have any firm, sound policies at all, which his predecessor, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), admitted in a private briefing.

I make this offer to the hon. Gentleman: come in to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, talk to our officials and let them explain how the current planning system rules for Ministers work. In that way, he can see for himself how carefully it is controlled. He may not take any notice—in fact, I suspect he probably will not—but at least he will have had the chance to listen, to ask some questions and possibly to learn.

There has been a good deal of discussion, in the House and beyond, about community engagement. I reassure the House that our proposals will not diminish the ability of local communities to take part in the planning process. On the contrary, they are designed to give communities more of a say, not less, with better information, easier means of taking part and, crucially, a clearer voice when it can make a real difference in the planning process.

Under our present planning system, when asked what they think of their local area, there are twice as many people who say that it has got worse as those who say it has got better. Under our present planning system, just 1% of the local population get involved in local plan making, and just 2% or 3% of local people get involved in discussions about local developments. That is very few—too few—yet with so little engagement, and often after months or years of tortuous wrangling, nine in every 10 planning applications end up being approved anyway. I do not think that those facts suggest a system that is really very engaging, still less one that is truly empowering. We can do better, and we will.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister therefore listen to local communities who want local occupancy restrictions so that they can live in local homes, as opposed to those homes becoming holiday lets and Airbnbs?

[Christopher Pincher]

We are certainly open to the proposition; we are taking it forward anyway with our proposition for first homes. However, I suggest to the hon. Lady that it would be very helpful if, as I know she believes should happen, her own local authority got a plan in place to protect its community—her community—from speculative developments.

Our proposals will increase opportunities for local people to be involved in local plans, using a map-based system that will show clearly what building is proposed and where, what it will be, what it will look like and what kind of infrastructure will support it—real involvement, including in the development of local design codes. Through our new office for place, drawing on Britain’s world-class design expertise, communities and their local councils will be empowered to set local design standards, putting design and beauty at the heart of our planning system.

Planning for the Future

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I shall do my utmost to respond to this wide-ranging debate in nine minutes. I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on securing this debate. For her, Christmas has come early, as it has for other right hon. and hon. Members around the Chamber who have been able to express themselves eloquently and passionately on a matter that should concern us all. I will try to address all the points raised by colleagues.

I shall begin by trying to clear up a misunderstanding that has been abroad in this debate and has also been around for some time, which is about what happens to the existing planning system. What we are trying to do through the proposals that we have tabled is to create a quicker, more transparent planning system. When applications that vary from the local plan are made, however, they will still need to be made through the present planning application process. In conservation and protected areas, all applications will require a bespoke approach through the present planning system, so it does not go away. We simply want a quicker and faster process that we can also apply. I hope that clears up that particular matter.

Two consultations were launched on 6 August. The first, on the local housing need calculation, closed on 1 October, and the second, on the broader, more forward-looking reforms in our White Paper, closed on 29 October. We received 2,500 responses to the local housing need calculation and some 44,000 to the White Paper. The local housing need calculation was all about making sure that we address the issue of affordability, which we know is a challenge in many communities around our country where housing is simply too expensive for many people to achieve. We all recognise that we need to do something about that.

We also need to make sure that we regenerate our communities and level up, and ensure the best use of brownfield. Those are considerations in our local housing need calculation. We also, to address the points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and others, need to be very clear about the challenge of building tall buildings in places that do not have them and do not want them because they are simply not appropriate.

It is not for me to try to play Santa Claus in this debate. My ministerial portfolio does not include responsibility for the festive season, but I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be able to say something soon about local housing need. This debate is focused particularly on the White Paper on planning reform. I am sure all of us will recognise that with so many responses to the consultation, it will take us a while to work through them. We want to do that because it is a genuine consultation, as I have said to colleagues across the Chamber on numerous occasions.

The consultation was not the end of the process of working through our reform proposals; it is the beginning. Through the first several months of next year, we will need to kick off workstreams on specific themes that develop out of the consultation, and to refine our proposals such that they are good and tight for the legislation that must and will come. That will enable us to table a Bill to deliver quickly the planning reforms we want, begin the systemic and cultural change necessary in our planning system, and ensure that the proposals are embedded, with public consent, as quickly as possible.

When I became the Minister with responsibility for housing and planning, I learned how long it took to implement the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, which we rely on for the majority of our planning decisions. I assumed that by 1948 everything was working effectively and quickly and everybody knew what to do. In fact, that particular Act was not fully enforced until the early 1960s. The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 took 14 or 15 years to fully roll out. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 and the Localism Act 2011 have still not been fully implemented. My point is that we need to approach this with care, think through our proposals with as much consensus as possible, and ready all the stakeholders in the planning process so that we can effect that cultural and systemic shift. That is our approach and it will remain as such over the coming weeks and months.

We all agree that we must reform our planning system. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) was kind in her remarks: she said that the Government have done very well in building new homes for people over several years. Our target is to build 300,000 new homes a year by the middle of this decade. That is a manifesto commitment that we will deliver.

The fact is that our present local planning system accounts for only 178,000 new homes a year, so the system must improve. Organisations as disparate as Crisis and KPMG all say that we need to build more than 250,000 homes a year if we are going to meet our needs. Therefore, a system that takes seven years to adopt a local plan, and which can take a further five years to develop large-scale housing and the infrastructure that supports it, is simply not going to build the homes we need.

[Rachael Maskell]

York has not had a local plan for over 50 years, so we have other difficulties. Does the Minister recognise that it is not just about quantum? Tenure of housing is also important and needs to match the need that is out there.

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. It is for local councils and local authorities to determine what sorts of housing they need in their local communities. The whole point of our proposal is to give local authorities and communities much more power to design their communities strategically and holistically, so that they can say where they want homes to be built; the types of homes they want them to be; what they are going to look like; what sort of infrastructure is going to support them; and what the building requirement controls will be.

We want to make sure that we build more affordable housing. Members will know that our affordable homes programme injects £12.2 billion of funds into affordable housing, which is the biggest cash injection in 50 years. More than 50% of the properties that will be built under that programme in the next five years will be for affordable or social rent. Some 32,000 of them will be for social rent—double the number built under the previous programme and substantially more than the number of council houses built in Wales last year. Only 12 council houses were built in Labour-run Wales in 2019. Thanks to its approach to council housing, the Labour party cannot even house a Welsh rugby team in Wales, so we will take no lectures from the Opposition about our approach to affordable housing.

In the short time I have left, let me say a word about the environment, because it is important. Through the Environment Bill, we want to make sure that we offer a net gain in biodiversity. That will form the basis of our approach to housing proposals, as adumbrated in our White Paper, including the future homes standard, which will drive a 75% improvement in carbon emissions from our new housing stock. The green homes grant will invest in and retrofit about 600,000 homes around our country, ensuring that they are more fuel efficient and effective in delivering for their residents.

We are determined to make our proposals work and to ensure that all our colleagues around the House of Commons, of whatever stripe, as well as other stakeholders, understand and support them, whether they be planning professionals, local councillors, local communities with neighbourhood plans—which I am keen to build into our process—or developers, big or small. We are determined to make sure that these plans have the wholehearted support of all those involved in them, because only through that mechanism can we make them work.

End of Eviction Moratorium

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Christopher Pincher

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my right hon. Friend, who is a doughty campaigner for her constituents in Chipping Barnet. I agree that we need to build upon the programme that she mentions. That is why, on 18 July, we announced the next steps accommodation programme, which I referred to earlier. At that point, it had spent about £263 million on 3,000 homes to help the long-term homeless. Dame Louise Casey is tasked with ensuring that we get people off the streets and keep them off the streets. As a result of the measures that we have undertaken, about 90% of those who were homeless at the start of the epidemic are now housed. We will continue to discharge our obligations. That is why, on 17 September, we announced further funds to the tune of £93 million to support the sorts of programme to which my right hon. Friend referred.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

York has one of the highest levels of private rent in the country. So many people are falling into rent arrears, and we do not have any capacity in our social housing provision. In fact, the waiting list has gone up by 300—over 20%—over the last six months. How will the Minister ensure that local authorities such as mine have sufficient resources in their discretionary grant to support constituents and stop them becoming homeless?

[Christopher Pincher]

As I have already described, we have disbursed £180 million in discretionary housing payments to local authorities to support them in supporting those in difficulty. We have spent several billion pounds on supporting local authorities through this pandemic, and we will keep our proposals under review, to ensure that we help everybody who is affected by this crisis, including the hon. Lady’s constituents in York. The measures put in place by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer—described by the shadow Chancellor as a “lifeline”—and by the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), which to date have injected a further £9.3 billion into our welfare safety net, are designed to do exactly what we want to do: keep people off the street, keep them in their homes and keep them in their jobs as we move through this crisis.

Amazon Deforestation

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Christopher Pincher

Monday 7th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Christopher Pincher]

That charge can be levelled at Governments of all stripes down the ages. Government Departments work together to try to achieve the right result in this arena. For example, BEIS officials are embedded in the COP 25 plan, and in that meeting, to ensure that it is handed over to us smoothly at COP 26, with objectives that can be taken up in the Italian-British conference of the parties.

As we have all alluded to, we cannot tackle this threat to our very existence on our own. Only through international co-operation can we protect our precious planet, and protecting forests is essential if we are to meet our global climate change goals. The Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change special report on global warming makes it clear that the preservation, restoration and sustainable management of forests is critical for limiting global temperature rises to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Our global leadership on climate change helped us to win our bid to host COP 26 next year. We will make telling progress towards carbon-neutral global growth only if we act together as a global community. That means that we need to have all the countries in the Amazon onside. Brazil is particularly important on climate change and deforestation, and has a critical role to play as a partner. We must work together to find solutions, which is why we have an ongoing dialogue with Brazil on these issues at ministerial and official level.

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs met last week with Brazil’s Environment Minister, Ricardo Salles, and she stressed the importance of efforts to halt deforestation. The Foreign Secretary has spoken to the Brazilian Foreign Minister, and I have met the Brazilian ambassador, Mr Arruda. We are committed to working with Brazil and other Amazon countries to tackle climate change and deforestation.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am listening carefully to the Minister’s speech, and to the diplomatic channels that the Government want to pursue to influence Brazil’s response to deforestation. However, could the Minister set out exactly what sanction or leverage they will apply? If talk is not enough and Brazil is determined to do something different, it seems that the exercise is quite futile.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I do not think that talk of sanctions will help the cause. Threatening Brazil will not encourage President Bolsonaro or his Government to talk with us about how we can collaboratively tackle the problem. It is better that we engage sensitively and sensibly than engage in megaphone diplomacy from afar.

We all care deeply about the future of our planet, and we are determined that COP 26 will deliver a greater ambition. It will promote tangible action to deliver the transformational change required by the Paris agreement. We are working closely with Chile to ensure a smooth handover from COP 25, as I described, and we firmly support Chile’s desire for an ambitious, blue COP 25 with a strong focus on oceans.

We remain committed to supporting the countries of the Amazon to tackle deforestation. Those countries will be vital allies in the fight against climate change. Brazil particularly, as home to 60% of the Amazon and 12% of the world’s forests, has a crucial role to play if we are to achieve our climate ambitions at COP 26 and beyond. If future climate negotiations are to succeed, we need to engage with Brazil and her neighbours positively and maintain a constructive dialogue, not shout at them from afar.

At the same time, the United Kingdom Government will continue to raise our concerns about deforestation and to support initiatives that protect the Amazon rainforest. Only through partnership and dialogue will we be able to preserve those precious tropical forests and avert the gravest forecasts of climate change. That is the responsible approach, the approach that will address the passions of the people outside the Chamber as well as within it, and the approach that the Government are determined to take.