Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) Order 2016

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 General Committees

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

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

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead. The Labour party is absolutely not opposed to the concept of the change of use of industrial and employment land to housing. We all agree—indeed, we discussed this in Westminster Hall yesterday—that there is an urgent need to deliver more housing, particularly in London, where my constituency is located. That is an admirable aim and one that, prior to coming to this House, I was very much involved with delivering as a lead member and the chair of planning in Hounslow, where we delivered and, indeed, significantly exceeded, the delivery of total and affordable housing targets.

One only has to drive west along the elevated section of the M4 to see the numbers of new-build housing for which planning permission has been granted by the London Borough of Hounslow in recent years. That is why I believe strongly that local authorities that are delivering on new housing targets have to be able to retain the right to make planning decisions without the cumbersome need to apply for an article 4 direction.

The three-year rule was launched under the coalition Government, and that period has just expired. As a result of that relaxation of the change-of-use rules and the new permitted development rights, the borough of Hounslow lost 81,500 square metres of employment floor space. That represented a gain of 1,251 residential units, but that is against an overall delivery through planning decisions of several thousand units. More importantly, because of that relaxation of the rules and Hounslow’s inability to make decisions on certain sites and apply the 40% affordable housing policy, 512 affordable housing units were lost. As developments came forward for which applications for planning permission did not go to Hounslow, the borough could not impose the important affordable housing requirements on those developments, so more than 500 affordable units were lost in that three-year period. Hounslow has delivered 1,400 affordable units in the past five years, but it could have delivered at least another 500 more.

The removal of proper planning consideration and scrutiny for new developments, particularly where they involve change of use from existing—often older—office stock to housing, also concerns me because of the loss of decent housing standards: space standards, access standards, potentially design standards, and so on. All such developments should be subject to public scrutiny. That is why the planning system was set up.

I will give an example of some buildings in Brentford and Chiswick town centres. The market buildings in Brentford and five or six buildings in Chiswick, which are older office stock, have been full to the gills of small and medium-sized enterprises. They have effectively been incubator units and an important source of economic regeneration and jobs because of the role that those businesses have played in the local economy. Those businesses were in the town centre. Jobs were housed in those buildings, which were full until the landlord deliberately let the leases fall in and all the occupants had to find somewhere else, often many miles away, to do business, which, given that many of the business owners and their staff lived locally, added to traffic congestion and their personal stress. Because the people who worked in those buildings were there every day, they helped to sustain the local shops, pubs and restaurants, and the other services in those town centres.

Chiswick town centre is fairly prosperous, but even there, the independent and specialist shops and some of the catering businesses struggle. In Brentford, there is a vulnerable retail and shopping centre, which could not afford to lose the workers from those office buildings, who spent money five days a week—they had lunch hours and might have gone out after work two or three evenings a week. Those people have been lost and replaced by people who often work long hours, leave early and get back late, and might spend an hour once or twice a week in those town centres.

The planning authority—the planning committee, the councillors and the officers—should be able, with due consideration, to assess the positive and negative impacts of such changes of use and the loss of such offices. That is why the planning system was created 70 years ago. That system has stood us in good stead. Particularly in London authorities—in Hounslow as in most of London—it has delivered the new housing that we so desperately need, and done so rationally. In certain circumstances, it has enabled the retention of employment property where that is relevant, such as in the examples that I have given.

Most of the new housing in Hounslow has been built on former employment land; we have got shedloads of it and the vast majority of it has gone to housing, but through proper local planning decisions. There are examples, such as those I have given, that absolutely illustrate why local control should be there. Why remove planning controls and then put them back through the article 4 direction route? Why even go through that route? As I said, it took some time for Hounslow to be able to get the article 4 direction in place—there was the legal challenge and so on.

I want now to move on to laundrettes specifically. This does seem slightly bizarre; laundrettes to housing is not going to deliver very many new housing units. There are not many laundrettes remaining, but in London they provide an essential service. In areas such as mine there are large numbers of people living on low incomes in poor-quality private sector housing or in overcrowded flats with different tenures. Sometimes a washing machine is not provided; sometimes a poor-quality washing machine breaks down. If someone is on a very low income and their washing machine breaks down, that is a serious catastrophe. If someone has young children or is caring for somebody with disabilities who needs laundry and bedding changed every day, they need a laundrette nearby that they can get to. A washing machine breaking down is a serious crisis for many people on low incomes.

It is beholden on us as public servants to have a say in whether it is appropriate that a laundrette should remain or not. Clearly if there is no business or demand locally for a laundrette, the owner or leaseholder can of course apply to the local authority for planning permission, making the case that there is no need for it. In that case, if the evidence is there, the planning authority could well agree that there is no justification for that laundrette anymore and that it should revert to another use, such as housing. However, how many laundrettes are actually suitable for housing, as many of them are in shopping parades? I really regret seeing this very small but for many people very significant—

[Graham Stuart]

There is a provision. People do not have to apply for planning permission, but they do have to get prior approval. Has the hon. Lady considered that? Does she think it is inadequate, or has she just ignored it?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I do not find the prior approval rule sufficient to prevent this use, because the Government policy is based on a presumption that we do not need laundrettes anymore and that is what I regret. I would like to hear from the Government what the justification, and where the impact analysis, is for this legislation. In conclusion, I want to know what impact assessment the Government did on these two elements of the statutory instrument before putting them forward, because I have not yet seen the evidence—certainly from my perspective in London—that this is necessary.