Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, and I share his concern. While all four of the district councils in my constituency are preparing responsible plans for the delivery of substantial numbers of houses, speculative applications are being made by developers who are circling villages like hawks. They want to get in quickly and secure planning permission that would otherwise not be given under the local plans but is being allowed in this instance because the planning inspector is taking a view of the provisions for five-year land supply that is excessive and unrealisable.

The inspectorate has just examined Horsham district council’s plan. It makes substantial provision for housing in the area to meet local need, but the five-year land supply provision presumes that building could take place at a rate that has never been achieved by the local authority and never could be, because it does not take account of the fact that developers did not build using the existing permissions that were given by the local authority in the years of the economic downturn. The five-year land supply provision is resulting in the allowing of developments in villages in my constituency that will damage the villages and erode green space between them that should be maintained, and runs against what local people seek in their neighbourhood and local plans.

If we are to deliver the localism that we promised, it is important for top-down intervention by the planning inspector to be prevented. After all, in our Conservative party manifesto we made this pledge:

“To give communities greater control over planning, we will…abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans”.

If we believe in localism—if we want to put power and responsibility in the hands of localities through neighbourhood and local plans, which is already proving very successful, and which does not produce fewer houses but produces them by consent in the places where people want them—we should not allow a body that is based in Bristol to come in and effectively rewrite those plans, because that undermines the localism that we promised.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend suspect that the planning inspectors are overriding local plans because they want to chase councils to make them hurry up and complete their plans? Could that be a deliberate policy?

[Nick Herbert]

I suspect that there is something in what my hon. Friend says, and that the purpose of pursuing a tough approach is to ensure that local authorities produce their plans as swiftly as possible. The four district councils in my constituency are proceeding as fast as they can, making very difficult and sometimes controversial decisions about where development should take place. Villages in the constituency are beginning to write neighbourhood plans which require a great deal of local effort from volunteers, which are complex, and which take time. It is unfair to penalise bodies that are making responsible decisions by allowing speculative applications that harm the process of building consent.

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[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I support every part of this Bill. Like many Members, I want to focus on part 5 and talk about energy security and fracking.

As far as I am aware, there is no possibility that we have a great shale reserve under the estuarial mud of Castle Point. However, residents in my constituency have enormous experience of living very close to two major top-tier COMAH, or control of major accident hazards, sites and have a connection to the UKOP and GPSS—United Kingdom oil pipeline and Government pipeline and storage system—networks. Some hon. Members—I do not think any of them are in the Chamber today—might remember an exceptional speech given by my illustrious predecessor, Sir Bernard Braine, who talked out a previous infrastructure Bill, the British Railways Bill, in order to prevent an oil refinery from being built on Canvey Island. We have enormous experience of what it is like to live near critical infrastructure and to be concerned about it and campaign on it.

Energy security is rightly a key concern of this Government, but it is also vital that communities support the resulting new infrastructure, especially if they may have to live with it for many decades to come. We have talked a lot about safety, security and trust. We need two things for buy-in from local communities: first, to ensure that they benefit from the presence of the infrastructure or the extraction of the resource; and secondly, to ensure that they have complete confidence in the safety of the operation and the risk management regime that is in place. Clause 40 and the various community profit-sharing agreements cover the first requirement quite nicely for fracking activities, but it would be valuable to have such compensation schemes for all newly registered top-tier COMAH sites and infrastructure sites. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), who is no longer in his place, spoke about the need for more gas storage, which is a pertinent thing that the Government should be looking to make sure we achieve.

Needless to say, my constituency would have benefited enormously if such a scheme had been in place many decades ago when the oil and gas tanks sprang up on Canvey, although the current owners of the sites, Calor and Oikos, have become, with a little gentle prodding from me and Councillor Ray Howard, very good neighbours that give generously to the community. They have gone to great efforts to remove tanker movements from our roads after the very cold winter of 2012 when a lot of that was going on.

If these sites are to go forward, we need, from the absolute outset, clarity about the location, about the proximity to schools and to homes that will be acceptable, and about whether tanker movements will be required. We need the Government to have a very clear safe-siting policy, as advocated by my constituent George Whatley, who is a founder member of the former People Against Methane campaign in my constituency. Whichever areas are chosen for any critical infrastructure, local communities must know what to expect from the very beginning, and must be on board with that.

It is most important that we secure confidence in the safety regime, which is the hardest thing to achieve. We have a complicated safety regime in this country. We hear that it is the best in the world. I have investigated it many times, and that definitely seems to be the case. However, it is complicated and confusing. People always fear that faceless bureaucrats or profit-hungry businesses are not telling them the whole story, and that in any regime where the operator is doing the monitoring, a tick-box exercise is occurring and there is no transparency in the system. We can talk about bringing in new regulations and higher standards, and of course we want to have absolutely the highest standards, but they mean nothing if the public do not understand them and cannot make sense of them, and there is a lack of transparency about the process.

With fracking, in particular, it is vital that people living in residential properties have confidence in what is a new and popularly controversial process, because it is going on right under their feet. During a debate in the media on fracking in Scotland, the trade body Oil & Gas UK asserted:

“The underground activity of fracking will not be noticeable at the surface and will not impact on the enjoyment landowners have of their property.”

The first part of that statement may well be perfectly accurate, but I can certainly see that the loss of peace of mind someone may have if they are not confident in the safety of this could result in quite a considerable loss of enjoyment of their property if it is happening under their feet. It is vital that we instil confidence and do not just say that we have a great safety regime, but make people understand that and see it. Complete transparency and accessibility for the community is required.

The regulatory regime on fracking, which is administered primarily by the Health and Safety Executive in collaboration with the Environment Agency, with heavy involvement by the Department, seems to be extensive, but because a number of agencies are involved in different regulatory roles, it could hardly be called particularly transparent and easy for the public to understand. I suggest that at some point the Government consider a way of bringing in local reps or intelligent observers who can provide local confidence. We need not just men with clipboards and letters after their names, but a local rep who is totally independent, and who is not even a member of the council, because that might be interested in administering some of the planning gain from these sites.

The HSE’s 2012 guidance on fracking makes reference to “other interested parties”. I wonder whether there is the capacity for those people to attend meetings with the operators and the regular on-site inspections held by the HSE and the Environment Agency, because these have the greatest capacity to boost the transparency of safety and risk management operations. Perhaps the Minister could confirm whether there is scope for such local representatives to count as other interested parties under the regulatory document. I urge the Government to include that provision in the regulatory regimes for all significant sites in our nation’s infrastructure policy in future. Without a clear, transparent, understandable regime, no amount of officialdom telling us that we have the best regime in the world will satisfy local communities if they do not understand it.