Pubs (Planning Policy)

Robert Neill Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Westminster Hall

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

It is an absolute delight and pleasure to serve under you, Mrs Main. I also warmly welcome this debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) on securing it, on the constructive way in which he made the case for assisting community pubs, and on the excellent work that he rightly does as part of the all-party save the pub group. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) and the all-party beer group. All such groups and bodies are important players in the conversation that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West has said, we are having, and I promise him that we will continue to have it. It is an important issue. I appreciated the seriousness with which a number of my hon. Friends intervened to raise examples to reinforce a number of my hon. Friend’s legitimate points.

I will say this as gently as I can, but the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), may not have quite caught the mood of the debate to a nicety. It was not a partisan debate. If people want to play it along partisan lines, I can point out that, in 13 years of the previous Government, the situation developed, got worse and not much was done—an initiative 12 weeks before the general election was scant and shoddy recompense.

The hon. Gentleman did, however, remind me of a story about John Costello, the former Irish Prime Minister. He had lost a general election and was driving with his Attorney-General to the presidential palace to hand in his resignation. Their car had to stop at a crossroad, on to which a fight spilled out from a public house. Costello turned to his Attorney-General and said, “Do you know, I’ve never been in a pub in my life,” to which the Attorney-General replied, “Well, if you had, we might not be going to hand in our resignations now.”

I do not have to confess—I think it is well known—that I occasionally use a public house. I have certainly assisted my hon. Friend the Member for Burton in adding to the heaving numbers in a public house in Uttoxeter. I am conscious, from my own constituency as well as from my visits around the country since my appointment, that public houses are a key part of the community. We have vibrant pubs in villages, in suburban areas such as mine, and in inner-city areas, some of which I see when wearing my hat as the Minister with responsibility for the Thames Gateway.

Of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West has rightly said, changing circumstances mean that, because pubs are businesses as well as community assets, they will sometimes come under pressure and some will not be sustainable. I have mentioned the east end of London. I visited some old friends in Poplar, where demand for pubs has declined due to the change in the demographic of its population, so not all its pubs are likely to survive. It is important to recognise—I am grateful that my hon. Friend did—that we have to bring that balance into the equation. Equally, I think we have all come across the sort of cynical behaviour whereby viable public houses are sold, sometimes over the heads of the tenants, the landlords or the community. My hon. Friend has quoted a number of examples and, during a Localism Bill Committee sitting, I referred to one in my own constituency. The absentee landlord of The Broomwood pub, in Sevenoaks Way in Orpington, has deliberately run it down so that its value as an asset is diminished, in order then to seek planning permission to turn it into a McDonald’s. I am no more likely to frequent a McDonald’s than the shadow Minister is to frequent a pub. It would certainly not have been a good result for that community, and I think there is common ground between us on that point.

[Justin Tomlinson]

That can also be the case before a pub has even been built. In new developments—a lot of my constituency is new development—space is allocated in the master plan for a community pub. The developers deliberately do not sell it—as is the case with our local brewery, Arkell’s—and they then try to come back and say that the only demand is for additional housing.

[Robert Neill]

My hon. Friend is right. I shall refer to some of the planning proposals we are seeking to make, which I hope will deal with some of those situations.

The Government are seeking to approach the matter against the background of recognising that there must be a sensible balance and that, of course, it is sometimes legitimate to regulate to protect community interests. However, we are also dealing with businesses that need to be kept viable and remain attractive for investment, so as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West said, it is important that we deal with the matter in reasonable and proportionate way that does not build in inflexibilities that might discourage people from investing in the public house trades. We must get the balance right and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his contribution to helping us do that. I would rather deal with the matter in a considered way than engage in grandstanding, because there are opportunities that will come to us.

Let me consider some of the points that were raised. It is worth saying that the current national policy—planning policy statement 4—is perhaps not used as fully as it could be. I accept that point, and outside this Chamber I will happily take up with my hon. Friend ways in which we can ensure that local authorities are made aware of their existing scope. For example, PPS4—planning for sustainable economic growth—asks local authorities proactively to plan and promote competitive town centre environments to support shop services and other things that have small-scale economic uses. That can be taken to include public houses. My hon. Friend indicated that some local authorities are doing that, and I applaud them for doing so. Some of the public houses we have referred to might be in conservation areas or might have a particular merit, such as listing and so on. There are other forms of protection.

When determining applications affecting premises such as pubs, current policy also enables local planning authorities to take into account the importance of the facility to the local community or the economic base in the area. However, I acknowledge that that is not doing enough to slow down the attrition rate of pubs. Therefore, we are determined to simplify the system. My hon. Friend is right: the national planning policy framework is the appropriate vehicle for doing that. Since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, most planning policy has been dictated by guidance rather than through primary legislation, which has tended to be enabling. That is the route we intend to adopt.

We are committed to taking the existing protections that it is appropriate to continue with, simplifying them, amplifying them where appropriate and publishing a comprehensive, single, streamlined national planning policy framework. We are aiming to do that by April 2012. We will start to consult on that later this year, and I very much hope that my hon. Friends and the organisations in their constituencies concerned about the issue of planning and public houses will contribute to the consultation. That will also include planning for community and other leisure facilities. The linkage about encouraging live music, for example, that my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) referred to, is absolutely right. That is why, separately, the Government are proposing to reform the licensing law to make it easier for live entertainment to take place without some of the bureaucratic licensing requirements, particularly in smaller venues. I hope that that will add to viability, which is an important consideration here.

Two matters are important in relation to the Localism Bill. First, we are introducing neighbourhood planning, which will give neighbourhood communities a greater chance to shape their area in planning terms. Communities will be able to set policies for the development of their area, subject to the constraint that what they say must be in general conformity with the overall strategic policies of the local authority’s development plan, and that it will be subject to the national policy set out in the NPPF I referred to. Within those constraints, communities will be able to say what sort of developments—within reason—are acceptable or not acceptable and where. That is an important tool, and I hope it will enable people to have greater protection.

Such an approach will also give communities greater flexibility in expanding. Sometimes that is right because, for example, there might be a demand for additional housing in a village area. Incremental growth is not easy to achieve under the current planning system, so there is a greater pressure to convert the use of a public house to housing. Our proposals will make it easier for a neighbourhood to expand organically and therefore, I hope, to still keep the public house in existence.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Robert Neill]

Yes, of course. I think I know what the right hon. Gentleman is going to ask about, although I have to say that he has not been present during the debate.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

I was just about to say that the Minister is winding up. This is an hour-and-a-half debate and the right hon. Gentleman has not been here for the entire debate. However, the Minister has given way.

[Robert Neill]

I have given way, but I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be brief.

[Mr Lammy]

The Minister is aware that I have been concerned about these issues for some time. Will he say a little bit more about the legal status of the neighbourhood plan? He will be aware that The Oakdale Arms on Hermitage road, Tottenham is facing demolition in March, and there is real concern that the local community has not been involved.

[Robert Neill]

We have already set out the proposals we are intending to make, and there should be a referendum—an independent check—to make sure that the neighbourhood plan, once it is in place, is in conformity with other policies and that there is support from the community. The details are available in a guide to neighbourhood planning, which is on the Department’s website. When the right hon. Gentleman has looked at that, perhaps other hon. Members who are interested in the matter will have the chance to look at it.

As well as neighbourhood planning, there is the community right to buy. That gives a fair chance for communities to bid to take over assets and facilities that are important to them. Community right to buy is triggered by assets being listed, so it is an important power for community groups to take the initiative to list them. I do not pooh-pooh the community right to buy, as the hon. Member for Derby North did. Potentially, it is a powerful tool, and there are good examples where it has already been taken on. We have published a consultation document setting out details of how that scheme works. It will be underpinned by regulations to deal with the process. That consultation ends on 3 May and as I said, I hope that hon. Members and interested groups will contribute to it. Some of the details that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West fleshed out are exactly the sort of issues I promise him we want to take on board during the consultation.

I understand my hon. Friend’s point about the moratorium, and I would like to consider the matter in that context. The only query is whether too rigid a moratorium could itself create injustice in certain circumstances—for example, where the legitimate collapse of a business through commercial misfortune, as sometimes happens, triggers the need to realise assets quickly. It is about getting the balance right. I would not want to discourage people from investing in pubs, which might happen if they thought they could not always get their assets out again. However, there is more work that we can and will do on that.

On change of use, as was said, when used properly, there is already an ability to import viability into the test. Local authorities can remove committed development rights under the existing use classes order through what is called an article 4 direction. However, as part of our reform of planning policy, we intend to consult more generally on reform of the use classes order. Again, there is an opportunity for that conversation to continue. Similarly, as my hon. Friend says, we have announced a review into the use of covenants, which can be used to prevent a fair playing field for communities when public houses are sold on.

On the question of demolition, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) for his private Member’s Bill. In the past, demolition has been excluded, but we are prepared to look carefully with my hon. Friend and other hon. Members at whether there is some means by which we can, perhaps in the context of the community right to buy, extend planning control to the demolition of community assets. That might be a means by which we can achieve a proportionate solution. I hope the door is open to my hon. Friend in that regard.

I am sorry that there is no time for me to say more. However, I hope I have shown that we take the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West in the spirit in which they were intended. I congratulate him on what he has done. We will continue to have a conversation on those specific points.