Localism in Planning

Robert Neill Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on securing the debate? In relation to our history, he and I accepted an invitation at the same time, and my little role in the invitation was to be a part-author in the national planning policy framework. I pay tribute to the preliminary work that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) did on that.

I understand the strength of feeling on the issue. After my 24 years or so in local government before I came into this place, I am very conscious that ever since 1947, planning has been about striking a balance. We are absolutely right to cherish and protect valued landscape. Equally, for a party and Government who believe in aspiration, one of the most significant aspirations is to enable young people and future generations in this country to have homes that they can afford. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs that those things can be reconciled, and we need to see how best we can do that.

It is worth pointing out that from the dirigiste and centralised situation that we inherited, much progress has been made. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) about the significant advances that I am proud we were able to make with the national planning policy framework. We also need to bear it in mind that other issues are already taken on board, including the question of materiality and the views of district councils. They are significant, and I totally agree with my hon. Friend. It is worth saying, of course, that it has been long-established planning law that decisions are taken according to all material considerations, and emerging plans can and should be a material consideration. What we may need to do—I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is working on this—is ensure greater consistency in the application of the policy by the Planning Inspectorate. I pay tribute to his work on strengthening the quality control in that regard. It is an important point that we need to deal with.

I wish to make another short point relating to the protection of green land and to brownfield-first. I note that the core planning principles in the NPPF refer specifically to using

“land of lesser environmental value”

and encouraging the use of brownfield land. On the question of housing supply and the figures relating to the five-year deliverable supplies, it is worth pointing out that footnote 11 to paragraph 47 of the NPPF specifically states:

“Sites with planning permission should be considered deliverable until permission expires, unless there is clear evidence that schemes will not be implemented within five years”.

Perhaps my error was not to have that put in bold rather than in a footnote—I will own up to that—but we need to ensure that it is fully taken on board by decision makers. However, the provision is there for that to be achieved. We need consistency of approach, and finally, we must deal with the issue of delay by statutory consultees, which was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). He is not unique in considering that, and I know that the Minister is already working on that case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hollobone.

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). He serves a beautiful constituency and he spoke passionately and in an informed way on behalf of his constituents. I agree with much of what he said, and I do not know whether that is a greater worry for him or for me—we shall see. I almost feel guilty for intruding on the Minister’s misery, because his own side appears to be doing a very effective job in opposing his policies. Nevertheless, I want to share with him my concerns about the move away from localism and echo some of the points made eloquently by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Everyone spoke strongly and powerfully on behalf of their communities.

As we heard from hon. Members, localism was a key Conservative pledge during the 2010 election, and that was apparent in the early months of the coalition Government. When the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government introduced the Localism Bill in 2010, he claimed to be

“getting out of the way and letting councils and communities run their own affairs”

in order to

“restore civic pride, democratic accountability and economic growth—and build a stronger, fairer Britain.”

Nowhere was the commitment to localism more fervent than in planning policy. The Conservative pre-election green paper, “Open Source Planning”, exemplified the localist approach, but three years, on a gigantic U-turn has taken place. The NPPF and the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, along with reams of secondary legislation and vicious local authority cuts, have completely torn apart the Government’s promise to instil localism in the planning system. Almost a year and a half on from the introduction of the NPPF, the full consequences of the Government’s approach are starting to become clear.

In March, a Local Government Information Unit research paper concluded that, far from putting people at the centre of planning, the NPPF is at

“risk of undermining localism in planning”.

The latest planning application statistics, released by the Department for Communities and Local Government, show barely any change in the number of approvals or the speed of decision making since the implementation of the NPPF.

[Robert Neill]

May I remind the hon. Lady that when the NPPF was introduced, her party criticised it and she advocated the retention of regional spatial strategies and targets? Is that still Opposition policy?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. We did not oppose the NPPF and I certainly did not argue for the retention of the regional spatial strategies. I must put that on the record.

In many places, planning criteria have worsened.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

I certainly hope I am not being single-minded and blinkered; perhaps the hon. Gentleman thinks I am. I of course accept that almost every urban area finds it very difficult to meet its needs within its boundaries, and that is entirely accepted within all our policies. The regional strategies of the previous Government effectively completely removed any flexibility from local authorities, and that is why in the national planning policy framework we have the duty to co-operate.

I am happy to say that I have met with an authority that is a neighbour to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and that authority is engaged in co-operation with his local authority to see how it can meet needs, not least those of the hon. Gentleman’s town. As he says, his town cannot meet the needs within its own borders without threatening its precious green spaces. Such spaces are, if anything, even more valuable in relatively built-up towns than in the countryside, and there needs to be co-operation within broader areas to meet the needs of all our citizens.

[Robert Neill]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend’s analysis. He makes a powerful and sophisticated case. Does he agree that the duty to co-operate is significant not only because it is the first time we have sought to have such a duty on a voluntary and localist basis—by agreement rather than imposition—but because of its link to incentives such as the new homes bonus and the reforms to local government finance with business rate retention, so that we can persuade communities that growth in the right place—I stress “right place”—is not a threat but potentially an opportunity that we can realise if we collaborate, sometimes across local authority boundaries?

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and puts the argument much better than I could. The Localism Act and the national planning policy framework attempt to achieve just that, replacing the previous approach of entirely denying local flexibility in how and where housing need was met.

It is right, briefly, Mr Hollobone, to give appropriately short shrift to the rank hypocrisy displayed by the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods). She was a Member and a supporter of a Government who introduced regional strategies that tried to impose eco-towns on constituencies such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), and who introduced the Infrastructure Planning Commission, which had no democratic accountability at all. For her suddenly to pretend that she is now a localist rings pretty hollow.

I will move on to trying to persuade my right hon. and hon. Friends—I seek not to persuade the hon. Lady—that localism is not dead but in gestation. At the heart of the Localism Act is the idea that control is gained from having a plan. A plan that fulfils the criteria of the national planning policy framework puts those with the plan in charge, and their decisions will not be overturned. Decisions might be challenged, but no challenge will be supported by the Planning Inspectorate. It all rests on having a plan, and the difficulty faced by many hon. Members and their communities is where no plan is in place. That is why so much of the discussion has focused on the question of what weight can be attached to emerging plans.

I want to share with my right hon. and hon. Friends the difficulty of the position that some of them want the Government to take, which is the suggestion that an emerging plan should immediately be given substantial weight in any decision on a planning application. That could simply create the problem that every community in the country that wanted to oppose a development might start the process of working up a neighbourhood or local plan and then take their own sweet time about it. That would immediately create an opportunity for communities to block all development by simply saying that they were engaged in a plan-making process.

That is why there must be a sense that a plan has reached a relatively advanced stage before it can be given substantial weight. Such a position has not been established by policy or Government, but over many years in the courts, as has been pointed out. I know that many people here think that an easy solution would be simply to abolish the inspectorate, but I say to them that all such decisions would then be taken by judges in courts. Developers will not stop challenging local decisions that they think do not accord with local or national policies. They will simply challenge them in the courts, at much greater cost to the taxpayer and, I suspect, to the not much greater contentment of residents.

The critical thing is to engage in plan making. The reason why I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends not to give up on the process is the good news that plan making is happening at a speed and intensity that has never happened before: three quarters of all local authorities in the country have now published a plan, and half of them have submitted a local plan to the Secretary of State. Some 800 communities in this country are now engaged in some stage of neighbourhood planning, and several hundred of them have already had their plan areas registered. The first three neighbourhood plans submitted to an examiner and passed as sound have passed their referendums, which is the first time that a Government have said to local people, “You get a vote on whether and how you develop in your local area.”

The referendums passed not just by resounding margins, but on a greater turnout than for the county council elections taking place on the same day. In Thame in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), people turned out to the polls to vote on the neighbourhood plan and did not vote for a county councillor. Why? Because the plan matters to people. As has been pointed out, the plan contained proposals to build 775 new houses in one of the most beautiful market towns in one of the most high-pressured areas in the country.