Neighbourhood Planning Bill (First sitting)

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Villiers]

Thank you. That is helpful.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Q I was pleased to hear that answer, Mr Whitaker, because that issue was on my mind as well. You suggested earlier that planners might focus on the essentials of preconditions. We have to be clear about who determines what the essentials are. For example, when is a bat more essential than a ditch? I think you have made it quite clear, and I do not think that those of our environmental colleagues who are listening will feel you are trying to steamroller over the environment. Can you just give me a yes or no?

Andrew Whitaker: Yes.

Roy Pinnock: He is not.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q You are not. Good. Then I would like to go on to my main question, which I put to Mr Murray first. If the local authority and the developer disagree on a pre-commencement condition, there is no recourse in the Bill other than to reject the application and to then appeal the whole thing. I wonder whether that puts off, in particular, rural folk from applying for planning conditions. Does the system put them off because it is too arduous if they fear being turned down the first time?

Ross Murray: They can be put off at two stages. They can be frightened by the whole prospect of a change of use and actually applying in the first place. In the post-common agricultural policy Brexit world, we know that the rural economy has got to diversify and we have got to reduce our reliance on agriculture, so there has to be development. I think if we have legislation that does not ease that process of the scrutiny of applications, it will put people off. It will also discourage people from actually going through with appeals. I have members who have applied for planning permission, and when the list of conditions comes out, even if it is passed, they know an appeal is not affordable. They are put off by the prospect of a very expensive appeal, because there is the prospect of the inspector opening up the whole principle of the application.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q They cannot just appeal on one of the small preconditions that was under debate, is that right?

Ross Murray: They cannot appeal just on that, or they are at risk of it being opened up. I must say I think clause 7 is almost there, but it could be bettered if you put in a simplified appeals process. We already have a simplified system for householder or advertisement development, which is eight weeks’ written representations rather than a full-blown appeal. There is a precedent there, and I think that would help.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q Do you think we would get more houses and more developments as a result of a small tweak like that?

Ross Murray: I think there is absolutely no doubt about that. If we get the legislation right with clause 7 and bring in a proposal like that, I think people will understand that the planning process is fairer, simpler and less costly.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q Shall we just put that to Mr Dixon? Do you think that would help small and medium-sized developers as well?

Andrew Dixon: Some kind of appeals process on the issue of pre-commencement conditions?

[Rebecca Pow]

Yes; making it simpler, rather than have to go through everything.

Andrew Dixon: It could be a useful addition to the system. By and large, and perhaps we are being too optimistic, we do not think it is very likely that there will be protracted negotiations about the use of pre-commencement conditions. The aim should be for some of those conversations to be conducted fairly simply and fairly quickly. We are perhaps a bit more optimistic, particularly around smaller applications, about the scope for huge controversy in those conversations. We think the most important thing is that that conversation takes place at an early point in the process.

Roy Pinnock: Just to be clear, the BPF’s perspective is that the clause, as it stands, will not achieve anything—that is to be somewhat bleak. It will leave applicants in the position they are already in, which is that, if they do not like their consent, they can appeal and have a de novo consideration by the Planning Inspectorate, which will take some time. That is very weak as a dialogue and as a negotiating position.

[Oliver Colvile]

Q Thank you for allowing me to have a second go, Mr Bone.

I have always thought very seriously that we should make sure we have master planning taking place at a very early stage as well, which would mean the local community could get very involved in it. I am also not going to miss an opportunity to talk about ecology and about making sure that we include hedgehog superhighways in the development, too. That is important, because it is something that does not often necessarily feature in the discussion that takes place with developers. It would be a really good thing if we could encourage that, in my view, because hedgehog numbers have declined by 50% over the past 15 years.

Roy Pinnock: Planning application resources have also declined by 50%, which I think was recently noted in the Communities and Local Government Committee’s evidence session on the local plans expert group. That is perhaps unrelated.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann]

Q My final question: is not the strength of neighbourhood development plans also their weakness? The strength is that at the moment a plan lends itself perfectly to villages with parish councils, which can easily, and very ably and effectively, localise the planning process—in my area virtually every parish council has or is developing a neighbourhood development plan, all of them increasing the housing supply significantly, and they will be delivering on that housing supply significantly over the next five years—whereas the weaknesses are in urban areas, where defining what the community is actually requires a bit of original thinking; otherwise everything simply becomes one urban mass. Is that not the opportunity, be it for the English Heritages, the good planners or enlightened councils, to get urbanised neighbourhood planning to involve communities in exactly the way that villages have hugely successfully involved vast numbers of people in the development of the existing neighbourhood plans that have been agreed, or are currently rolling forward?

Councillor Newman: I think you could have more urban neighbourhood plans, but I would want to see them still sitting with the overarching plan in an urban area—such as the one I am very familiar with, Croydon—to be the local plan. As we have learned from mistakes in the past—although I know this is not what you are suggesting—we should not just focus on increasing housing numbers without looking at the sustainability of the community in terms of health provision, school provision, transport links and everything else. Much as we need new homes, it should not just be a numbers game that leaves us in the same place we were in the ’70s.

Duncan Wilson: In relation to our historic towns, yes, I agree that neighbourhood plans would be and sometimes are a good way of crystallising that discussion, but it is really important that the areas around towns are brought into consideration too. Otherwise, you have a plan for an historic town and all the housing gets pushed out to the periphery, without a proper strategic consideration of how that relates to the historic town in terms of transport links, public spaces, infrastructure or design.

Hugh Ellis: In a way, the critical flaw in neighbourhood planning is the neighbourhood forum model. There has to be an issue around making that accountable. The differences in neighbourhood planning between an accountable parish or town council and an unaccountable forum were always pretty stark. It was always unclear where that ended up. There would probably be more enthusiasm for urban neighbourhood planning if that problem could be resolved.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q Will the changes proposed to the pre-commencement conditions leave enough flexibility to deal with things that local communities are really concerned about? In my area of Taunton, the big issues are all about what Mr Ellis referred to: design quality, the look of the houses, vernacular character, flood resilience. Can we get all that cleared through the changes proposed, or are we relying utterly on neighbourhood plans to do that? Are there enough teeth for that to be taken into account when the planning consents are given?

Hugh Ellis: Although there is conflicting evidence in planning, one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that the design quality of domestic housing in this country is one of the great lost opportunities.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q And it is one of the big bugbears locally, when you talk to people, in all neighbourhood planning.

Hugh Ellis: We are capable of delivering so much better. That would require two things: a sense that planning is part of the solution to these problems and not always part of the problem, and a fairly robust local planning process. I think it would also include a greater emphasis on good design as an outcome in planning.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q But where would you put it? In the pre-commencements?

Hugh Ellis: You would need to think about it right from the top. The content of the NPPF on design is actually quite good, but I do not see it being enforced, particularly, through plan-making.

[Gavin Barwell]

Q I have two quick questions for Councillor Newman. You felt that the planning conditions measures were a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I want to get a sense of the size of the nut. Among the previous witnesses, there was a consensus that the use of pre-commencement conditions has been growing over time. Does the LGA share that view?

Councillor Newman: As I said at the start, I think there is sometimes a perception in Government that planning is the problem. Maybe we are not even looking to crack a nut. To repeat what I said at the start, we risk setting up a far more confrontational process at the start. Conversations around design, sustainability and so on get lost, because people have to take a fixed position very early on in the process. Look, it is not perfect—there will always be examples that people can give of where it has ended up in confrontation—but the evidence seems to suggest that the nut is not particularly large.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Q Part of this has been covered by John Mann’s questions, but just to be clear, it seems to me there are far fewer neighbourhood plans in big cities than elsewhere. It would be useful to understand from you what you think the main cause of that is. Is it because it is very difficult to identify a community small enough to be viable for a neighbourhood plan within a bigger urban area?

Jonathan Owen: I think it is that, and I think those communities need support from their local planning authorities. Of course, the absence of a parish or town council in those areas means there is no institution that can drive it forward and raise funds through precepts to support the neighbourhood plan, with an ongoing democratic existence over time.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Q One of the things so many communities want is to have an influence on how their communities look and feel, what nice places they are to live in and all of that. Do you think the changes proposed in the Bill will help that? Will people really feel that they are going to influence the places in which they live?

Ruth Reed: I think it would be helpful if it was explicit that provision is made for enabling the capacity for local communities to express what they want out of the quality of their environment. I do not think it is explicit. It is implied that there will be funding provided for guidance, but it does not say that that should be what it is. I think it would be good if the Bill made a clear statement that good design will be brought forward through this process.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q Do you think that will be an incentive for people who are sceptical about the process we have been discussing? Would it really encourage them to do it?

Ruth Reed: I think if they felt they had some control over the way things looked, they would be much more incentivised to bring it forward.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

Q I am interested in the powers providing the finance to deliver and get the expertise in, and so on. What about practical support beyond that, for instance toolkits, pro formas and websites that can generate content and formatting? Maybe I can use this opportunity to blow the trumpet of Greater Manchester, which is currently embarking on a project with the Cabinet Office to develop open data mapping. Would more projects like that help your parish and town councils?

Jonathan Owen: I have been interested in how the neighbourhood planning process has taken off over the last few years. We should recognise that it was an experiment, really, and we are at the early stages of that experiment. In any experiment we need to have plenty of ways to share good practice and showcase what others are doing, and the kind of toolkits you have mentioned. Certainly, from talking to parishes, they are reassured when they are able to talk to other parishes or other neighbourhood forums that have done it and learn lessons from that. Anything that we put in place—not necessarily in the Bill but through any financial support— to ensure that sharing of good practice would be brilliant.

Ruth Reed: Any obligations placed on local authorities to provide extra services, if they are not accompanied by funding, are going to put extra pressure on a system that is already in a—

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

Q In suggesting modifications that might be introduced to the neighbourhood plans, do you think that there will be enough chances to include and consider the environmental implications?

Matt Thomson: The existing legislation—the Bill does nothing to harm this—gives communities the opportunity to address whatever issues they feel that they want to address through their neighbourhood plan. The serious question is whether the effort to which they go to do that will be taken notice of when it comes to planning permissions being granted.

Neighbourhood planning has the power for placemaking and environmental protection. Difficult decisions at a local level about how to balance the need for housing in a green-belt village with the desire to protect the green belt and that kind of thing are effectively made through neighbourhood plans. The question is whether the decisions actually get made in accordance with the neighbourhood plan. At that point, the concern about environmental protection really kicks in.

[Rebecca Pow]

Q If this was made very clear, perhaps with the guidance of the Bill, would that encourage communities to be keener to have development?

Matt Thomson: There is already evidence that demonstrates that as soon as communities start considering about their development needs, even when they start off from a very nimby perspective, they think, “We are really worried about development that is going to come and destroy our village,” or whatever, and then they all sit down together and start talking about it. They then realise that there is a development need: the neighbour’s children need somewhere to live, there is a school that is threatened with closure or a shop that is closing down and so on, and people start to recognise the needs that they have. But again, because they are the local people and they know their area, they are best positioned to resolve the potential conflict between growth and conservation.

Carole Reilly: There is a wide interpretation of environmental issues. We talk about coding on houses and new developments having to reach certain codes, but neighbourhood planners are the best people to understand their area and to build into it those things that make places permeable—things that make you able to walk to your shop, and not have a development that faces out in which you get in your car and drive to the mini-supermarket.

We do see lots of neighbourhood plans that are coming up with environmental policies, and they are very interesting. They have policies around walkability and building cycle paths. I think that is core to building communities; I do not think they are separated.

[John Mann]

Q On that point, before you spoke, Ms Reilly, I wrote down safe walk routes, including school routes, and road design and layout. Are there sufficient powers in neighbourhood planning in relation to those issues, or is that merely illusory? Separately, Mr Thomson, in relation to neighbourhood plans that specify explicit preference for forms of energy that should be used within the neighbourhood and state that preference should be given only to housing that uses those forms of energy—in other words, plans that define what the energy requirements should be and how they should and perhaps should not be delivered—is there more scope for that? Are the powers there?

Carole Reilly: I think there is more scope for it. One of the things we see time and again in neighbourhood planning is protecting green spaces. There is a balance between what is a land use planning policy and what is something that has actually drawn people to the table in the first place but is not a land use planning policy, and is then appendicised in a neighbourhood plan and therefore does not form part of a statutory document. These things always have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but there are loads of examples of neighbourhood plans that have protected green space and encouraged cycle paths, and there are other things that are more tangential that have not.

On the issue that was Matt’s answer about environmental energy use, the key question will be about viability. One of our technical support packages is around viability. We see neighbourhood planning groups being increasingly interested in site allocations, understanding the strategic environmental assessment and, on top of that, looking at the viability of a site. Neighbourhood planning groups will look at those sites that are not interesting to the volume house builders—they will look at a site that might have four plots on it. We run a programme for community-led housing in locality and we see these inspirational community organisations that think, “Actually, we need something for old people and we want to build it here,” in stuff that would be completely overlooked. I think it is not just about energy; it is about understanding those areas that would be distressed areas forever and understanding them within their viability in terms of using different sources of energy.