Pubs and Planning Legislation

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on introducing this important debate and the Backbench Business Committee on granting it. I have seen quite a lot of the workings of the pubco trade in my role on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee during work on our various reports. It has become quite clear that many large pub companies are really property-owning companies. The fact that their properties tend to be pubs is rather a sideline from their point of view. The companies are heavily leveraged and in debt and are looking at their assets to see what is the best way of working the building assets, rather than running them as pub chains, as we would like them to.

I am pleased that the industry will be regulated and that the Government have taken up the recommendations of my Committee and are introducing an independent adjudicator to ensure that rules are followed to prevent the exploitation of the remaining landlords in the pub trade, who have been suffering. This is another issue and might, in a sense, be an unintended consequence of cracking down on the exploitation of tenants. Companies are now looking around and saying that it would be much easier to sell the property off or rent it out to a supermarket and to make more money that way.

Two particular closures in my constituency of Castle Point have caused enormous controversy and upset. The King Canute pub on Canvey served its last customer in May 2014. The pub, one of Canvey’s most historic buildings, was originally called the Red Cow, but during the devastating flooding of 1953, in which many Canvey residents sadly lost their lives, it was at the doors of the pub that the water stopped—hence its renaming. It also served as a base for the armed forces, from which they helped residents during the floods.

I spoke to the landlady about a week before the news broke about the closure, and asked, “How’s business?” She was doing an awful lot of good stuff. I had attended several events that she had held for local charities in the pub and lent my backing to them. When I spoke to her, she was very positive and upbeat; so the closure came as an enormous surprise, not only to her and her staff but to customers and local residents.

The pub is in an historic building, highly valued by the community. It is intrinsic to the history of Canvey Island, unusual and quirky. We have been told that it is likely to become a Co-op but, despite assurances, there is no guarantee that we will even keep the building, which is beloved of residents and is a treasured community asset. So it is heritage, as well as community benefit and service to several charities, that the pub offered. The law gives no protection against demolition, other than the good will of the owners. I am lobbying to get the building listed as a heritage asset, even though it is not in itself very historic or special. However, it is an old building for Canvey and it is very well loved and particular to the island.

The same fate occurred to the Silver Jubilee pub on Canvey. As its name suggests, it opened in 1977 to commemorate the Queen’s silver jubilee. It was a very well liked local pub. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) mentioned knitting circles, and groups including a local knitting group, met regularly at the Silver Jubilee and they are now deprived of a place to go. When the area in which the pub stands was laid out and developed, the pub was considered necessary; it was integral to the plans for the area and there is no other pub nearby for local residents.

The closure came as a great surprise because there was no evidence that the pub was not successful. It seems that it simply was not turning sufficient profit for the big firms, who have been able to convert it to a mini Morrisons. Not only have they converted it to a supermarket and put flats above it, but they have now applied for permission to build houses on the adjoining car park.

A wise man—Ray Howard, the long-serving and very smart local councillor, who has served Canvey Island continuously since I was six months old—pointed out that if a single application had been submitted to turn the pub into a supermarket with flats above and to build houses on the car park, the change would have been a large enough to trigger some section 106 development money for the community. However, because the owners did not need to get permission for change of use for the actual building, they have managed to get through a loophole. That funding could have been used to put in a slip road for what many residents find a very difficult junction and that would help them get out into heavy traffic. We are trying to obtain that slip road none the less, but without that funding.

I reiterate what hon. Members have said. Pubs are community assets. They serve the public in a variety of ways. They have plenty of community uses and some have strong historic value locally. They are currently left with incredibly little protection. I believe they should be recognised as community assets as a default position—not one that requires a long, elaborate process, which residents are often not aware of and do not realise that they could have followed until it is too late. I urge the Minister to look at the matter again, so that such a long process is not required to establish pubs’ value in the future.

Obviously, if a pub is not profitable, that is a different issue. In the cases that I have described, however, the pubs seemed perfectly profitable—although they possibly would have been more profitable if they had not been tied in to a pubco—but they had immense value in the current property market. That is the cause of the problem. It really is time that the Government looked at this, because their other efforts to help the public house trade, by removing beer duty and so on, will mean nothing if pubs are simply turned into supermarkets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

Let me make a bit of progress before giving way again.

First, we should look at ways of being more proactive about developing the assets of community value regime across the piece. Secondly, we need to do more to encourage the adoption of neighbourhood plans, which enable a greater degree of granularity than in ordinary planning documents. If they are linked to a robust local plan—more and more authorities are introducing those—that, too, provides an opportunity to have plans locally that are attuned to the need to protect pubs in particular areas. That would be a good way forward too.

In the case of Mottingham’s public house The Porcupine—a much-loved asset—I had a lot of sympathy with what was said. Enterprise Inns quite cynically ran that pub down, and it is right to say that many of the pub companies have a bad track record of running down pubs essentially to improve their balance-sheet position. Enterprise Inns has long been doing that; it has a deliberate disposal policy. I totally agree with the hon. Member for Leeds North West that that is what we need to address. The debate is about the nuance of how best to do that. In that case, the public house was sold without notice to the community. That is an aspect of the way in which the regime works that we could look at again in the light of experience.

Happily, the Mottingham residents association and our local councillors were in touch with me quickly and we were able to make an application to the local authority, which swiftly had the matter placed on the agenda for the planning committee. A decision was taken and the pub was listed. The local authority, after a hearing, rejected the application. The supermarket Lidl that had bought The Porcupine site appealed. Representatives of the local community and I gave evidence at the public inquiry. I am delighted to say that the inspector rejected Lidl’s appeal, and the time for Lidl to challenge in the High Court has now expired. It was a win for the local community.

We were able to engage the services of the excellent Richard Harwood QC, one of our leading planning lawyers, who put up an exceptional case—[Interruption.] Actually, he was instructed by the local authority. Tribute should be paid to him. He understands the issues and did a great job. I have one or two of his suggestions for further improvements, which I shall put to the Minister in a moment. The point is that this can be done under the current regime, but can we make it easier? I would always like to make it easier for communities to help their pubs in the future.

In the debate on the Infrastructure Bill, the Minister announced certain changes to the assets of community value regime, which I welcome. I would like further clarification of the statement that the secondary legislation would be brought forward at the earliest opportunity. One advantage of doing these things through secondary legislation or planning policy guidance is that we can be more fleet of foot than if primary legislation is used. Can the Minister tell us when this legislation will be introduced? Can he confirm that this will apply to public houses and other assets of community value that have already been listed? That seemed to be the sense of what was being said in his statement, but one or two lawyers have said that it would be good to have absolute clarity on that point. I hope that that will not be difficult to achieve.

We could look at encouraging local authorities to do as the Mayor of London has done. When I read the inspector’s report on The Porcupine case, it was clear that he gave considerable weight to the fact that this was an asset of community value. In fact, the Government’s reforms bit, and were effective in this case. The inspector also gave considerable weight to the policies in the London plan that were introduced by the current Mayor of London to strengthen the protection of public houses in London.

Those policies resulted from a report by Steve O’Connell, the Conservative London Assembly Member for Croydon and Sutton, called “Keeping Local: How to save London’s pubs as community resources”. I recommend it to any Member, as there is no reason why other planning authorities cannot adopt that same useful approach. A number of specific policy lines have been put into the London plan. Members interested in this should look at policy 4.48A, the whole of policy 4.8 and policy 3.1B, all of which deal with the ability of boroughs—indeed, an obligation is placed on them—to bring forward policies to retain, manage and enhance public houses, where there is sufficient evidence of need and of community asset value and viability in pub use. Authorities are also tasked with the need to develop policies to protect valued community assets, and the London plan specifically refers to pubs in that context. Policy 3.1B also specifically refers to the need to protect pubs.

The Mayor’s “Town Centres Supplementary Planning Guidance”, which is given effect by the London plan, also strengthens the position of pubs, including specifically taking into account the continuing viability of use of the public house, the history of vacancy, the prospect of achieving reuse at market value and whether or not it has been effectively marketed. Some of the pubcos go through a sham exercise in marketing, which was exposed in the inquiry into The Porcupine. Frankly, the pubco had simply gone through the motions, and we were able to call an expert who demonstrated that this was not a genuine marketing exercise. These are things that we could sensibly seek to tighten up, and we could do so without direct interference by the Government, but they might like to think about strengthening the guidance to reflect what is already good practice in London in that regard.

There are a couple of other things we could do that would not be too onerous and would still maintain the balance that we always need in planning policy, involving flexibility when needs and circumstances change and vary from area to area. More could perhaps be done to increase the weight given to the harm caused by the loss of non-designated heritage assets. If the asset—often a pub, but it could be a church or something like it—is a listed building, it obviously gets much more significant protection. It might be worth looking at the operation of paragraph 135 of the national planning policy framework to see what could be done to increase the weight given to the harm that would come from losing assets that are of community value, but do not have the status of being listed buildings because of their architectural merit. Something might not be of great architectural merit, but it could still be of great value to the community. We should look at ways of providing help on that.

[Rebecca Harris]

What my hon. Friend says is precisely relevant to the case of The King Canute, which I raised earlier.

[Robert Neill]

Yes, that is something that it would be good to prevent. I am aware that the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) wanted to intervene earlier. I did not mean to be discourteous to him. Would he like the opportunity to intervene before I finish? If I have covered the point, well and good.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Williams]

It is, perhaps, difficult to pick on individual examples without getting into trouble, but one of the bookshops in my constituency closed because a well-known TV personality restaurant-owner paid more for the renewal of the lease than it could afford even though it was trading profitably as a bookshop. Now there is a much-shrunken version of it further down the road. We cannot have a planning system to protect every single piece of economic use of land in towns and cities in that way. We have to reflect the fact that commercial patterns change. That is what our constituents are doing; they are changing the way they buy books, and the way they drink and eat.

[Rebecca Harris]

In a previous life, when I last had a proper job, I was a director of a publishing company so I know a little bit about bookshops and the book trade. Bookshops have closed for many reasons, in particular the growth of the internet and Amazon, but that is not the same as the conversion of a bespoke building in a neighbourhood, designed for the one purpose of being a pub, despite its being perfectly profitable and there being no evidence that people are buying their alcohol online from Amazon these days. We are talking about a completely different scenario. We are talking about profitable businesses in bespoke premises being taken over for another use.

[Stephen Williams]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend. I am simply saying that the planning system has a column of use classes and different examples of commercial uses, and that it cannot always give protection to every kind of commercial use in that column of use classes. Other factors also come into play.