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.