Local Plans (Public Consent)

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on securing this important debate. I must say that I am a little more positive than him about the Government’s planning policy; the issue is more that we have failed to grasp the changes in the policy and to use them in the town halls of this country.

The Government have come a long way towards injecting democracy, kicking and screaming, into the top-down, target-driven planning regime of the previous Government. The Localism Act 2011 and the national planning policy framework combined formed a strong first attack on the problem. They enshrined the importance of community buy-in as a central tenet of strategic and long-term planning, gave back powers to local councils and local communities and ended the top-down targets regime.

That said, it seems that the changes may have taken a little while to sink in at town halls, with many councils initially looking to opt for figures and equations taken from the inflated top-down targets of the regional spatial strategies rather than grasping the nettle and coming up with new approaches to determine housing need. As disappointing as that is, it is at least understandable. Outside council chambers, planning is a multi-million pound industry and developers are able—and more than willing—to outspend taxpayer-funded local councils in legal consultations, planning inquests and court cases, including at Glebelands and Jotmans Farm in my constituency.

With that in mind, it is entirely probable that local council planning departments are unwilling to be innovative and to break the established mould until another council had been successful, for fear of an expensive legal challenge by developers. I also fear that officials, councillors and perhaps even the Planning Inspectorate became quite comfortable with the old defence that, “The Government are forcing this on us; there is nothing we can do.”

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that threats are made to planning committee members—that if they do not approve schemes, they will be challenged by the developers?

[Rebecca Harris]

Absolutely. I hear that said regularly. The costs of court cases are waved at councillors who are responsible for public funding. It is a permanent threat. On balance and given that backdrop, however, the Government’s planning reforms have fared pretty well, particularly since the superb guidance update and the accompanying letter that the Minister wrote to the chief executive of the Planning Inspectorate earlier this year.

Small districts and boroughs such as Castle Point have traditionally suffered the most in development plans, as their comparatively dense populations create big needs that put immense pressure on infrastructure and the precious little undeveloped green space on urban peripheries—no matter if there are larger districts with a higher ratio of undeveloped green space in urban communities within commuting distance.

If the big unit developers have their way with the green belt in Castle Point, it will be an unmitigated disaster, and not only for the environment—it will just not work. Developers too rarely deliver what they promise. They land bank, speculate on markets and cause distress and uncertainty to local residents, who see large swathes of undeveloped land swallowed up in a development plan only to see it sit there for years until the market is right. That is precisely what happened at the development between The Chase and Kiln road in my constituency, which was included in the last development plan in the 1990s and where construction began in earnest only two years ago.

The updates and clarifications on the NPPF issued by the Minister in February give more weapons to local councils to defend local plans from aggressive developer interest and allow them to be shaped more by engagement with local residents and therefore to achieve popular consent. We need to grasp what the updates offer local communities. They make it clear that the green belt does not have to be sacrificed in local plans and give more scope for local councils to bring forward the smaller and sometimes grotty brownfield sites that blight local neighbourhoods for redevelopment instead. That policy direction is well complemented by the Chancellor’s recent announcement, during his speech at Mansion House, that several hundred million pounds will be put in funds to help local councils bring forward brownfield sites.

I have stood in Westminster Hall and the main Chamber on a number of occasions to discuss how small brownfield sites not only are more likely to be realised for development faster, but put less strain on infrastructure. They are more likely to benefit the local economy by using local builders, solicitors and estate agents and by being marketed to local people. I am pleased by the updates brought in by the Minister earlier this year, making it easier for councils to have local plans based on such sites.

I thank the Minister for the strength of the policy updates, but I have a further, specific reason for thanking him. He supported me in my request for a representative from the Planning Inspectorate to visit Castle Point and explain to councillors and officers in blunt terms that they did not have to include undeveloped and locally treasured green belt in their new local plan if they could make, support and explain a case for why they thought it more important to preserve such spaces than to meet their purely statistical housing projections.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) on this fantastic debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) is absolutely right that the policy of public consent for local plans, when it works, can work well. Unfortunately, in Labour-run Kirklees council, we do not have a local plan; there is not even an emerging local plan. What advice can the Minister give my constituents, who are now seeing a free-for-all? Furthermore, a Lib Dem councillor voted for the Lindley Moor development in the north of Huddersfield, which was completely against residents’ wishes. That was a casting vote, so my constituents are feeling frustrated.

[Rebecca Harris]

Castle Point council is due to consider the public consultation responses to its emerging local plan and to take account of the policy updates. Although it is purely up to the elected councillors of Castle Point to make decisions on the local plan, I anticipate that much more brownfield than previously anticipated will be proposed for development, which can only be a good thing.

The Government have faced a mammoth task to inject real democracy and a commitment to community engagement into the system. They have shown commitment to the challenge and made significant progress, which should be applauded. Few residents would disagree that we need to build more houses, but only through democratic engagement and buy-in will that happen—and, I believe, happen more quickly—in such a way as to cause the least detriment to existing householders.