Neighbourhood Planning Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Lord Mann

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

[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.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Lord Mann

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

[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.