Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Richard Drax Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Commons Chamber

The second type of professionals whom neighbourhood planners need to be able to employ are of a quite different kind: those with the imagination to enable people who are not in any sense experts, but who have a feel for their neighbourhood, to envisage what a particular set of policies in a neighbourhood plan, and ideally in a neighbourhood development order, will produce on the ground. Such professionals can conceptualise and draw what that will look like—literally, on pieces of paper or for display on overhead projectors—and work with the neighbourhood interactively at meetings. They can enable people to see what they cannot yet see so that they will know whether it is what they were looking for. That is actually quite a talent. Many hon. Members spend time in neighbourhoods talking about these things, and they will know how difficult it is to engage in conversation with 100 or 200 people who are all stirred up about local planning, to calm the atmosphere, to engage emotionally, to be imaginative, and to end up with something that the neighbourhood actually likes.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I am listening intently to the excellent speech of my right hon. Friend and neighbour. Does he agree that the planning process is often not clear, especially regarding the points that he mentions? In my area—the Purbeck District Council area—people have a lot of different views about how many houses there should be. Two numbers have been suggested, but we cannot find anyone who can agree on a number without fear of going to the planning inspector. The lack of clarity, or the lack of guidelines or of regulation—I do not know what it is the lack of—leads to chaos, anger and confusion.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My hon. Friend illustrates very well the point I am trying to make. There is actually perfect clarity on that subject in the local plan that his local authority and mine have jointly drawn up, but an expert is needed to interpret it for the neighbourhood. We cannot expect the parish council to know the answers to the questions, and if it asks inexpert people, it will get conflicting answers—very possibly more than two wrong answers if it consults more than two inexpert experts. A certain amount of money is required so that the parish council can employ a genuine expert who can give it good, clear answers to questions. As I have said, a second person is also needed—quite a different sort of person who can imagine for the neighbourhood what things could look like. By putting those together, we can overcome the obstacles to neighbourhood planning.

Unfortunately, those people do not come for free; they have to be paid for. Over the years, the Department has rightly produced funds to enable parish and town councils and neighbourhood forums to employ people, but unfortunately the funds were based on the presumption, which is now mercifully falsified, that neighbourhood planning would be slow to take off, and that very few plans would be produced at any given moment.

I am delighted that the number of neighbourhood plans is very great, and I hope it will be much greater—I hope that they become the norm and that tens of thousands arise in our country in the coming years. However, I very much doubt that the Chancellor of Exchequer, who faces one of the most difficult fiscal situations in our history, will come up with the funds required to meet that need, given the other priorities he faces. New clause 5 would find a solution to that problem and provide the money to employ experts on behalf of neighbourhood planners in parish and town councils. It would do so by using an existing pool of funds, as there is already a provision to share the community infrastructure levy that arises from each house built. Under the law, 25% is due to the parish or town council in the area where the neighbourhood plan is drawn up.

One problem is that the CIL money comes in after the houses are built, whereas the money is needed before—it is needed even before the neighbourhood plan is in place so that experts can be employed to help its production. The question is how we advance those funds. The new clause suggests that we could, through the Bill, put beyond doubt a local planning authority’s lawful ability to advance sums that would accrue to the neighbourhood when the neighbourhood plan is up and running and the houses are built for the purpose of employing experts to assist in the production of the neighbourhood plan. In that way, the houses could be built and the money could come in from the community infrastructure levy, meaning that the local planning authority could be repaid.

Despite the helpful way in which the Minister has engaged in the discussion, I do not say that the mechanics of the proposal are perfect. I hope he is willing to look at it in detail as part of a range of options for solving the problem to which I allude. I hope that, when the matter is considered in the other place, the Government will come forward with their own vastly superior, rock-solid measure to solve the problem. Otherwise, neighbourhood planning could be stymied not just by the problems that my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs cited, but by an inability to pay for the expertise required.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Drax]

It is a pleasure to participate in the debate, and, with a mainly rural constituency, I felt I must. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and my right hon. Friends the Members for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) on their contributions. I entirely concur with them and share their concerns on this important issue.

Let me touch briefly—I, too, have been got at by the Whips, which is unusual for me; I have not been got at in six years, but I have been today, so I shall not be long—on regionalism, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield brought up, and localism. As I am addressing my remarks to the planning Minister, for whom I have a huge amount of respect and who is doing a wonderful job, I would also like to touch briefly on housing density.

To look at this from a more macro point of view, my concern is that we will be here for many years to come, because planning has always been a complicated issue. With the pressures on immigration—no one should get me wrong; I am all for controlled immigration—and with a net immigration of 340,000, that means that something comparable to the population of the city of Leeds, with a population of 750,000, is settling in the country about every two years.

There are pressures on us all in this House, and they are going to increase—not just in our urban areas, but in our beautiful rural areas such as South Dorset. I entirely concur with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield that we must look at planning, and housing in particular, in a far more regional and holistic way. Local people entirely support the neighbourhood plans, which I think are a very good idea—as long as they are going to work, of course. Local plans must be respected and must have some statutory weight, as my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton said. A reasonable holistic approach is going to be far more pragmatic and sensible if, for example, a region with an urban and a rural area can decide where the jobs, the hospitals, the roads and all the different parts of infrastructure are. All too often, these do not come with proposals by developers because, of course, that costs money. Moving on briefly to localism, the opinion of local people must, of course, be sought, because that is going to be crucial.

Conservative Members must be very careful. I remember cursing Labour’s regional spatial strategy until I was blue in the face, but I think we are in danger of not listening to local people who have genuine concerns. This is nowhere more appropriate than in my part of the world in Purbeck. As I hinted to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), I think we need more clarity on the rules and regulations governing where houses should be built. Quite apart from all the local people, who are consulted, we have the officers, who in many cases do not seem to understand what the planning regulations mean or interpret them wrongly. There are the over-enthusiastic officers who get it completely wrong, and vice versa. Then of course there are our dear councillors on all sides of the political divide, who are doing their best, but they are human beings and often make mistakes. They may make decisions for political reasons. There are all kinds of factors that we in this House know lead councillors to make decisions, and they might not always be the right ones.

Local people in Langton Matravers in my constituency know exactly who needs to have a house: it must be affordable—and I mean affordable—and they know best where to place it. They do not need to be told by planning inspectors, whom everyone is terrified of, that they must have hundreds of homes on the edge of their beautiful village, which in effect almost turns it into a sort of ghetto and ruins the reason millions of people come to our beautiful constituencies. This clearly is absolute madness.

I know other Members wish to speak and the Government want to move on, but finally I wish to make a plea on density and style of housing. I have a friend in north Yorkshire who is a landowner and who has developed truly affordable proper homes—affordable homes for rent, which is equally important as homes to buy. The following point is crucial. In too many housing developments, particularly in rural areas, there is no area for children: the cars are parked on the street, the dustbins are at the front doors, there are no green fields to run out and have fun on.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point. One of the things I have been horrified by in following this examination in public is that here are these builders proposing building hundreds of houses over what is already a very substantial target, which the council has agreed to, and they have made no mention at all of infrastructure. How can anyone accept that?

[Richard Drax]

My right hon. Friend represents a beautiful constituency like mine and speaks eloquently, and I entirely concur with him, as I am sure we all do. I make a plea to the Government to look at some form of legislation to ensure that developers have a duty to develop responsibly and in ways whereby they treat people and families as human beings, not animals trapped in a cage where they cannot go outside and children cannot roam without annoying the neighbours. This will lead to social breakdown, as we have seen across the country in many areas, and the worst examples lead to more social incohesion, which is the last thing we need.

[Mr Burrowes]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to speak briefly to new clause 1 and amendments 24 and 25, which are both moderate amendments.

We have had a debate about betting shops and FOBTs, but Mr Deputy Speaker is giving great latitude to the discussion on new clause 1, because FOBTs and betting are the responsibility of another Department. This is essentially about the tools in relation to licensing and the welcome review. We have heard the warm-up act from my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). His speech can be rehearsed again when we come to the outcome, which hopefully will show evidence of the significant harm that is being done, particularly to the most vulnerable people.

I am not so concerned about the Derek Webbs of this world or the motivations of hon. Members or hon. Friends; I am concerned about the vulnerable people who are certainly being preyed upon, particularly in deprived communities, and especially as a result of the clustering of betting shops. There is good evidence from the Local Government Association that in areas of clustering there is increased problem gambling. We cannot avoid that evidence. New clause 1 seeks to deal with clustering.

It is just one tool. The number of betting shops, the number of those betting, and indeed those going to payday loan companies, are thankfully being reduced because of other regulatory measures. The 2015 regulatory interventions on payday loans were very welcome, and have had an impact. The additional taxation of gaming machines has also had an impact on the number of betting shops.

These are all tools at the Government’s disposal, but we are discussing planning tools and whether they are fit for purpose. In London there are local plans in Enfield and elsewhere—the borough plans that take account of impact on amenity, concentration of similar uses, security, locality and proximity to sensitive uses. That is all welcome. The previous Mayor of London also focused in his plan on the over-concentration of betting shops and prepared and issued the 2014 supplementary planning guidance. It recognised the urgent need to enable local planning authorities to control the proliferation of betting shops and to address implications of retaining the viability and vitality of town centres while protecting amenity and safety.

Governments, local councils and neighbourhood plans are all on this journey, but all of us in this place may not be on the same journey. There has been good cross-party support for the concerns about clustering, but is that adequate? Control, not least of clustering, is insufficient across the board and across the country, and we must consider the available opportunities. That is what new clause 1 is about. It provides for an assessment when an increase in the number of betting shops or payday lenders is proposed to ensure that deleterious impacts of clustering are prevented.

In many ways, the new clause pulls together the elements of the journey that the Government are on, and I look forward to hearing the Minister welcome the principles behind it. If he is unwilling to support it this time around, taking account of the concerns of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) about blocking, I hope he recognises that there are good intentions across the House. When the review of fixed odds betting terminals is published, if there is evidence of significant harm, I hope the Government will do what is already within their power and issue appropriate guidance. It matters that betting shops are sadly disproportionately affecting vulnerable people. There is something in the fact that the poorest 55 boroughs have more than twice as many betting shops as the most affluent 115 boroughs. There needs to be an appropriate local dimension so that those poorer boroughs have the Government behind them, backing them up with local plans. I am supportive of new clause 1, but I will not join the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) in the Lobby tonight. I want the Government to be true to their word and take appropriate action and issue guidance at the appropriate time, such as when we hear back from the licensing review.

I support amendments 24 and 25—two welcome and moderate amendments from my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen). She is somewhat radical on occasions, but they are moderate and simply state what we all no doubt want to ensure. When we consider new building and the current and future projections in our areas, we must take account of the entire population, older and disabled people in particular. The amendments make sense and fit with the Government’s agenda of integrating social care and with the Green Paper about integration across Departments. It is projected that over-65 households will represent almost half of all household growth up to 2026, so getting housing right for older people will have immense benefits for society and the economy. When we ask our local authorities about new higher accessibility standards, the number of retirement housing developments, easy access to public transport and other local services and facilities, home adaptations, disabled facilities grants, and proper and appropriate housing support services in sheltered housing, these amendments will give that real teeth and ensure that what we all want does happen. I look forward to the Minister’s positive response.