Planning Guidance (Northumberland)

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Gale. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) on securing the debate, which I know is important both to his constituents and more generally. I am delighted to be doing business with him again in a Committee Room of sorts. Our roles today are slightly different from our previous incarnations in the Select Committee on Justice.

I shall try to deal with the important points raised by my right hon. Friend. He has made powerful points in the context of his constituency and its surrounding county. In a wider context, there has been a positive and constructive debate on matters of planning policy in relation to the Localism Bill and in other debates in both Houses. I welcome the opportunity to debate those matters further.

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend recognises, fairly, that there is a pressing need for reform of national planning policy. The system has grown unworkably complex, with more than 1,000 pages of national planning policy and at least a further 6,000 pages of guidance. The complexity of that system slows down decision making and frustrates the sustainable growth that the country needs, such as new homes for young families struggling to put together a deposit and new jobs to breathe fresh life into local economies. He correctly recognises that that applies in rural areas as much as in towns and cities.

A streamlined framework focusing on key priorities will be more accessible and transparent. In the future, anyone who wants to understand the principles informing how decisions are made will be able to do so. That is important, as polling evidence suggests that many people feel cut off from the planning system because it is too complex. They do not feel able to find their way through it. They feel that they are unable to understand or to influence. If the system is not intelligible to the intelligent and well-informed citizen, it is not delivering on one of its key purposes.

It is important to get this right, because planning is a very important tool. It is how we create communities that work and, as my right hon. Friend said, places that we are proud of, and it is how we lay the foundations for business. Also, and very importantly, it exists not only to protect, but to enhance our green spaces, parks and countryside for our enjoyment today and for generations to come.

Let me make some remarks on the specific issues that my right hon. Friend helpfully raised. I am sure that you, Mr Gale, and other hon. Members will understand that I am constrained in what I can say today, given that we are engaged in considering the large number of responses—some 14,000, as I recall it—that we have received to the consultation. Of course, we need to give all the responses careful attention and avoid any impression of pre-empting the outcome of the consultation.

We have heard concerns expressed about the effect of the proposed presumption in favour of sustainable development on local areas, whether that is my right hon. Friend’s rural Northumberland or urban areas. Some of those concerns—I exempt my right hon. Friend’s observations from this entirely—have been very wide of the mark. Joseph Harper, QC, editor of the “Encyclopedia of Planning Law and Practice”, has said that much of the criticism is ill informed. However, that does not mean that there are not genuine concerns, which I hope that the Government will be able to allay.

We want to ensure that planning is a positive process that reflects the needs of each area and to emphasise the central and critical role of the local plan in decision making. We want local authorities to be responsible for deciding what housing and other development they need and where it should go without the sort of top-down, unpopular targets that were imposed on them under the previous Government’s regional strategies. We want that development to be plan-led. Indeed, the proposed new system does not undermine the concept of the plan and enhances its importance.

What the presumption says, in layman’s terms, is quite simple: locally prepared plans should set out what is needed in each area, development in line with those plans should be approved without delay, and in the absence of an up-to-date plan, the policies in the draft national planning policy framework, including its requirement for development to be sustainable, should guide decisions.

My right hon. Friend raised a concern about irrebuttable presumptions. I assure him that that is not the case. Like any legal presumption, the presumption is rebuttable by evidence, which is a basic legal tenet. In this context, the best evidence to rebut a presumption will be the existence of an up-to-date local plan that deals with the issues raised by the development in question.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I want the Minister to take into account the situation in Northumberland, where the county planning department took over from six district councils, some of which contained significant areas that were not the subject of a developed or agreed local plan. In these times of straitened resources, getting the structure of local plans fully completed and agreed in every place will take some time. We may need some kind of transition period before the principle can operate in quite the way that he has suggested. Will we not have a situation where some factors are not properly examined, because there is no local plan governing the situation?

[Robert Neill]

I take my right hon. Friend’s point. I am sure that he will have noticed that the Minister with responsibility for decentralisation, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), recognised that point in the debate that we had in the House recently. I cannot pre-empt our response to the consultation, but I reassure my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed that his point is particularly well heard by the Government. The Minister with responsibility for decentralisation has indicated that we will look to provide suitable transitional arrangements for local authorities in such circumstances, including the local authority of my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed.

Against the background of the importance of a local plan, the onus is put on democratically produced local plans to identify and provide for the needs of each area. Plans must be based on evidence and be deliverable, or they will not have the confidence of the community or of investors, who might need to be brought into the area.

On housing, plans must, as is the case now, reflect the local housing based on a strategic housing market assessment and the availability of suitable land, which is set out in strategic housing land availability assessments. SHLAA, as they are often referred to, do not allocate land for development, but inform decisions on land allocations to be taken through a local plan. They form part of the evidence base. Policy restrictions such as landscape designations and the potential impacts of development on the landscape are identified through the assessment. Sites are chosen for development in the local plan and are subject to full consultation with statutory consultees and the public through the local plan process. None of that is undermined in the new system.

[Sir Alan Beith]

That is a key point on which I want to press the Minister. If the assessment has been carried out in a way that fails to address some issues, such as landscape, is there any proper mechanism by which it can be reintroduced when a planning decision has to be taken?

[Robert Neill]

Ultimately, each planning application has to be addressed on its merits and the relevant material considerations and policy. The plan is one of the principal material considerations in a case, but the existence of, for example, designations that are consistent with national policy or other impacts can always be taken into account. There is a classic dictum by Lord Clyde in the House of Lords on such matters, which states that the weight to be placed on any material consideration is a matter for the decision maker. Again, that has not changed. Obviously, the weight that each material consideration carries will vary from case to case, but that is the whole point of the system. I assure my right hon. Friend that such issues are not shut out by the process.

The natural environment is an important part of the process. We pay great attention to the safeguarding of the natural and historic environment. Under local plans, communities can shape development in an area to reflect what is important locally, which includes special landscapes or the character of villages. Again, the best protection, making allowances for the transitional arrangements that I have referred to, is to get a plan in place, which can reflect precisely the points raised by my right hon. Friend.

Although we recognise that we need jobs and homes for young people and opportunities for businesses to expand, that will not be at the expense of our natural and historic environment. The draft framework sets out the Government’s thinking on how the planning system should safeguard the environment while providing for sustainable growth. The national planning policy framework maintains designations for the green belt, areas of outstanding natural beauty, national parks, sites of special scientific interest and other designations that protect the character of our country’s landscape, stop unsustainable urban sprawl and preserve wildlife. We are going further on that, because we will introduce a new local green space designation through the NPPF. It will enable communities to identify green areas of particular importance to them for special protection. That might be a key green in a village or a market town, as well as in a major city.

If we are going to protect the environment, it is important that we use land effectively. That is why the draft framework clearly states that

“plans should allocate land with the least environmental or amenity value.”

That means using derelict land when considering where to develop. We want developers to reuse derelict land, if that is the most appropriate course of action.

We also want to respect the historic environment. It is a non-renewable resource, and its conservation is integral to sustainable development. I reassure my right hon. Friend that we are committed to ensuring that the framework will maintain the existing protection, as set out in planning policy statement 5 for the historic environment, and we are looking carefully at the specific wording in the NPPF.

My right hon. Friend mentioned wind farms. Residents will have greater choice than ever in that regard through their local and neighbourhood plans—neighbourhood plans are a key part of the system, too. The plans will enable them to decide the look and feel of the places that they live in and love, while making sure that genuine larger-than-local objectives are met, such as protecting the natural environment, supporting sustainable local growth and combating climate change. I appreciate that proposals for wind farms can be controversial, but onshore wind, along with other renewables, has an important contribution to make to our energy mix and to reduce the pressure on consumer bills. However, that is not and should not be any excuse for building wind farms in the wrong place. The draft framework does not give a green light to all development proposals.

Whatever the class of development, decisions will continue to be plan-led. Plans will continue to set out what would be unacceptable, and they will be underpinned by the environmental safeguards in national planning policy. I believe that our new planning policies will ensure that communities and their environment are protected from unacceptable developments.

The consultation is closed, and I have indicated the steps that we are taking to consider it. As well as the written consultation, we held 11 regional workshops, including in the north-east. We have had wide engagement with organisations across the spectrum, including those referred to by my right hon. Friend, and I am glad to say that there has been good progress. We are finding unlikely bedfellows—property developers and environmental groups—sitting down and talking together to find common ground on how we go forward.

I hope that I have given my right hon. Friend and his constituents a renewed assurance on the transitional arrangements and the importance of historic and other environmental protections, and reassured them that the new planning policy framework is an opportunity, not a threat. I look forward to working with him again to see how we can take the framework forward as it is translated into a final document.

Question put and agreed to.