Community Facilities (Flitch Green)

Robert Neill Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) on securing this debate and on the powerful way in which he has put forward his constituents’ concerns. I am sure that everyone who has listened to the debate will understand why those concerns have been raised.

The debate raises important issues about the provision of community facilities, the planning process, the operation of section 106 agreements and the means by which planning gain—as it is often referred to—is captured for the benefit of the community. Those are important issues of policy that the Government are determined to address, because often it is the failure to give communities a tangible benefit from development and growth that makes them wary of growth and creates opposition. The Government, on the other hand, are keen to encourage sensible and sustainable development in the right place and with the support of local residents.

My right hon. Friend naturally and rightly concentrated on the battle of Flitch Green. Earlier, when we were unsure when we would reach this Adjournment debate, I would have been grateful for his having secured the debate on the battle of Flitch Green, so that one of my hon. Friends from the Ministry of Defence would have had to reply. As it is, however, I am glad to be able to respond while it is still today. He has set out in detail the history of the matter and difficulties faced by residents in securing the facilities that they were anticipating as part of a broader development. He pointed out that extant planning applications are under consideration, so he will understand why, owing to the responsibility of my Department and the Secretary of State in the planning process, I cannot comment in detail on the facts of the matter.

I hope, however, that I can assure my right hon. Friend that the Government are seized of the policy issues of concern that he raised. It seems that what has happened falls within permitted conduct under the law as it stands. That highlights the fact, however, that there are some deficiencies in the legal framework. Planning obligation is a well established concept and a valuable one. Planning obligations are legal agreements between developers and local authorities, and deliver what is necessary to make a development acceptable in order to obtain planning consent. It is necessary for planning obligations to meet clear policy and statutory tests to be acceptable considerations in the grant of planning permission.

Fortunately, the data that our Department have show that generally planning obligations deliver many millions of pounds worth of community facilities, affordable housing, open spaces, education facilities and other benefits each year. In by far the majority of cases, those obligations are delivered successfully. I am sorry to hear the history of my right hon. Friend’s case, where that does not seem to have happened, but generally they are a useful tool. Of course, there are always exceptions—and they are to be regretted—but I cannot say more about that.

It is worth setting out the current policy and legal position. Where developers have breached their legal obligations in this regard, the planning authority has powers to take legal action to enforce them, and that is done through the courts. The local authority also has the right to carry out the obligation itself and then recover any expenses incurred from the developer in question. As with any enforcement decision, there are resource implications, and the local authority has to weigh up the best course of action in each case. I am sure that Uttlesford council, as a responsible local authority, has done that.

We are seeking to revisit the approach through which we capture this planning gain. As my right hon. Friend rightly said, it seems that the situation in his case relates to section 106 agreements, which, although well established, have grown in their extent. It is the Government’s intention to seek an alternative route to capture the majority of planning gain.

We will give incentives and benefits to communities through the new homes bonus, which will enable councils to benefit financially from granting permissions. However, alongside the new homes bonus, we also intend to retain and reform the community infrastructure levy, which we envisage as the principal vehicle through which planning gain will be secured for the benefit of a community in future. That will enable a local authority to levy a charge in relation to development. We are determined to ensure—this is in the Localism Bill, which is currently before this House—that a meaningful proportion of the levy will be returned to the benefit of the community in the area of the development concerned.

Compared with the use of section 106-type planning obligations, the community infrastructure levy—or CIL—provides a fairer, and more transparent and predictable mechanism for raising contributions to the sort of facilities that we have been talking about. That will enable section 106 planning obligations to be scaled back and focus more on the site-specific issues that are necessary to enable the development to be granted planning permission, such as providing screening to protect existing houses, access roads to the site and so on. The CIL will remove much of the uncertainty around section 106 contributions. CIL rates will reflect development viability and—importantly in this context—there will be a mandatory up-front charge.

The developer will pay the CIL, so some of the difficulties with enforcing the obligations that my right hon. Friend mentioned will not arise. Our proposal will be much more straightforward for both the charging authority and the developer, because the responsible developer will know the cost of their planning obligation—a cost that can be paid up front—and the local authority will know how much it will receive, will receive it and can then disburse it to the benefit of the community. That will have significant benefits, avoiding both the need to go through the convoluted procedures for enforcing a section 106 agreement and the possibility of applications being made to vary it, which can take a long time and be the subject of lengthy disputes—I am not entirely sure whether that occurred in this case, but it seems that it may have done.

The situation in my right hon. Friend’s constituency has to be dealt with under the law as it stands, so I regret that that legislation, which is currently before the House, may be of only limited comfort. However, I hope that it is of some comfort for the future that lessons can be drawn from how section 106 agreements work. I would not want anyone to think that section 106 agreements do not work properly in the majority of cases. However, we believe that a revised CIL will be a fairer and better means of dealing with the problem and will, I hope, give residents greater certainty that if they move into a development, the sort of developments for which they hope will, in fact, take place.

Finally, my right hon. Friend’s point about the views of the parish council and the neighbourhood is also important, and is a further part of the Government’s reforms—in the Localism Bill and our allied planning reforms—which will involve creating neighbourhood planning. Once those reforms are in place, parish councils in areas such as Flitch Green will be in a position to develop their own neighbourhood plans, which will be able to specify exactly those sorts of issues, such as where playing fields or community facilities might be. Subject to the support of the community in a referendum, that plan will be incorporated into the district council’s local development framework and its development plan. In the future, therefore, communities such as Flitch Green and Felsted will have the real and genuine ability to control where development goes.

I am afraid that that is a promise of better things for the future, rather than something through which I can offer immediate comfort to my right hon. Friend, but I know that he has done his constituents a great service by raising this issue in his trenchant and characteristically eloquent way. I hope that he will at least be able to say to them that the Government are taking steps for the future to make sure that planning obligations are delivered in an appropriate, effective and transparent way that is to the general benefit of communities. I am grateful to him for raising those issues with me, and I am sure that the House will appreciate it.

Question put and agreed to.