Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend must have seen my speech, because I am about to move on to the matter of the green belt, which we will continue to protect, because our policy has not changed. We made a manifesto commitment to the green belt as a means of protecting against urban sprawl, and we mean to keep it. Local authorities should not develop on the green belt, save in exceptional circumstances, and local plan making should recognise the green belt as a constraint on numbers, as my letter to Members of Parliament in December last year made clear. For the record, we will not be accepting the recommendation in the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee’s report for a wholesale review of the green belt.

These measures and these commitments are important. They are a very important part of delivering the Government’s manifesto commitment to create the most ambitious environmental programme of any country in the world. We are clear that to help make home ownership affordable for more people, we need to deliver more homes, because by the age of 30, those born between 1981 and 2000 are half as likely to be homeowners as those born between 1946 and 1965. We need to take bold steps to provide enough homes in the places where people and communities need them.

At the last general election, we made a commitment to deliver the homes that the country needs—better-quality homes, of different designs and different tenures in the right places all around the country where they are needed. We have promised to extend the chance of home ownership to all who want it, and in any poll one cares to conduct, more than 80% of people—young people, less affluent people—will say that they want the opportunity to own their own home. They aspire to a stake in their community and their country, yet for far too many people that aspiration—

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

Painful.

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Lady says it is painful. Yes, it is very painful for those people who cannot get on the property ladder. It seems an impossible dream, because in places around our country, the average price of a home is many multiples of average earnings—in some places, it is 12 times the average wage. In other places there are just not enough appropriate homes for older people who want to step down the property ladder into more suitable individual accommodation.

If we are to keep our promise to those who aspire to own their own home or move into the right home, we must not only provide the right economic framework in which skills and jobs can thrive, and continue to deliver initiatives such as Help to Buy, right to buy and First Homes, which give people a leg up on the ladder, but we must deliver the homes people need. That is what we are doing.

We have delivered 1.8 million new homes since 2010. In 2020 we delivered 244,000 new homes across our country. We have an ambition to build—as do the Liberal Democrats, apparently—300,000 homes each year by the middle of this decade. That is in stark contrast to Labour’s lamentable failure to provide the homes this country needs. Under Labour, housebuilding fell to its lowest rate since the 1920s and the days when Ramsay MacDonald was the party leader—by modern standards he was quite popular. In London, Labour’s Sadiq Khan has built fewer than half the homes he promised, despite having an extra year in which to do it. In Labour-run Wales, so few council homes are being built that they could barely accommodate a Welsh rugby team.

We now have a new shadow Housing Secretary, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), who opposes the delivery of almost any building proposed in her constituency—something of a niche approach to home making. In truth—Labour Members do not like this truth; they cannot handle it—Labour does not like people to own their own homes. Labour Members do not want people, especially young people, to get on the property ladder. They do not like aspiration, they do not like capitalism, and they do not want our people to aspire to or to be capitalists. Well, we have something to say to that and it begins with a B. We say “Bolshevism” to that. Indeed, Lord Mandelson, one of Labour’s more successful and less bolshy people, says the same. When he returned from Hartlepool a few weeks ago, he said:

“I can see that people are proud of what they have achieved,”

He said that people are aspirational, and that they are not sure they have achieved that with Labour—a damning indictment of that party.

By contrast, Conservative Members are proud of those people, and we will ensure that people like them across the country achieve their aspirations under this Government. This Government are determined to level up opportunity the length and breadth of this country. From Redruth to Redcar we are determined to ensure that people are not priced out of their local communities. We are determined to get them on the ladder, because that is what they want. Just a week or two ago Sam Legg, just 19 years of age from Asfordby in Leicestershire, became the 300,000th Help to Buyer. He said that he could not have got on the ladder without Help to Buy and the support of this Government. If people like Sam and Megan, and millions like them all around the country, want to get on the property ladder, we must address the housing challenge head-on.

We know that introducing wide-ranging reforms excites real passion. It is right that those reforms are properly scrutinised by the House, and they will be; we are keen to ensure that our proposals are well considered and reflect the interests of every community across the country. We strongly believe that a modernised, transparent, engaging planning system that delivers better outcomes for local democracy, the economy, the environment and housing in a better and faster way is a long overdue reform. As we emerge from the pandemic, now is the time to drive those reforms forward: giving communities a real say in development; creating more beautiful places; making the very best use of brownfield sites to regenerate our cities and town centres; extending opportunity and security for millions; and delivering the homes our country wants and needs.

While the Opposition sink back into their comfort zone, extolling sectional interest and chained to Corbynite dogma, we will build the homes the country needs. We will build them back better and stronger. We will make sure that the banner of aspiration flies here.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to close this debate in which many Back Benchers have expressed their concerns, both about their local areas and about the Government’s stated intention to remove the community voice from local planning decisions. Unfortunately, time does not allow me to acknowledge all the excellent contributions to the debate.

The motion in my name and those of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) and others, states that

“planning works best when developers and the local community work together to shape local areas and deliver necessary new homes; and…calls on the Government to protect the right of communities to object to individual planning applications.”

We have brought it to the House because of the wealth of opposition throughout the country to the Government’s proposals, including from professional institutions, respected non-governmental organisations and councillors of all parties, including the Conservative-led Local Government Association, as well as the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee in its unanimous excellent report.

From the outset, the health and wellbeing of people and communities were at the heart of what became the town and country planning system. Planning is making decisions that are central to our lives and that impact on the generations that follow. It is not about churning out housing “units”. It is about delivering homes—enough homes for the full range of pockets and household types, particularly young people who want to get on with their lives. It is not just about building new estates. It is about place making, incorporating the social, transport and physical infrastructure that makes a place a community and ensuring that there are places of work, providing jobs, regeneration and growth. Planning is about deciding how we move towards net zero, how we enhance and improve our biodiversity, how we protect and enhance our natural environment, and how we build strong and sustainable local high streets.

Many of the challenges we face as a society and as a country will need to be tackled through the planning system. To do that, new development has to be planned and determined with the engagement of people and their elected local representatives, but the Government want to undermine local involvement—in fact, they want to undermine the whole planning system. The proposals in the White Paper, confirmed in the Queen’s Speech, are the next step in the Conservative party and its friends’ 10-year project to dismantle the planning system. They have been doing it for years, such as through permitted development rights and going back to delivering “slum housing”, as the Government’s own adviser described it. Instead of involving local communities in future development decisions, the Government want to limit that. The right to comment on planning applications would be abolished in the new growth areas, potentially in large parts of the country—[Interruption.] Well, which areas are going to be growth areas? It could be large parts of the country, affecting many constituencies.

Planning applications will be determined not by local elected councillors but by unelected planning officers. Even the delegation process will end. The Government’s ambition is to require all local plans, covering all of England, to be delivered within 30 months. That is way beyond the resources not only of most planning departments, but even of most community organisations that already comment on and are involved in planning matters. The task is just too great, the timescale just too tight.

Community engagement and discussion leads to better outcomes. When I speak to voters in my constituency, they consistently tell me that not only do they want truly affordable, good-quality homes, but they want the community services that go with them—sport and play areas, schools, more buses and so on. Hounslow Council’s planning decisions have delivered all of those, and more. The people are being sidelined because the Government do not trust the people. The Government justify tearing up our planning system by saying that they want to build more homes, but as we heard today, about 1 million homes have permission; they are just not being built out. The Government proposals risk ignoring the issues of quality, affordability or type of housing to be built.

There is a housing crisis—we accept that—but there is no doubt that the Government are delivering the wrong answer to the growing challenge. Too many young people are priced out of the community that they grew up in. The bulk of homes in recent years have been executive homes in the south-east or expensive London flats, all way out of the reach of local people. Defenders of the Government’s plans have said time and again that these proposals are the solution to the housing crisis, as though delivering all these homes would magically bring all house prices down to a level affordable to all young people across England. They know that the solution is far more complex than that.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I am sorry, but I cannot. You have told me, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I need to leave enough time for the Secretary of State.

Only in some places are prices low enough that young people can buy. Schemes such as Help to Buy are affordable in my constituency only to a few who earn City salaries or have a large chunk of money from the bank of mum and dad. From 2008, the Labour Government delivered the biggest affordable housing programme in a generation, with £10.8 billion in three years, but it ended with the 2010 election.

We need a planning and housing system that delivers well designed homes in genuinely mixed, well designed communities with proper infrastructure. The Government have had 10 years of tinkering and have undermined the planning system. They have allowed a free-for-all in town and village centres, where any shop can be converted into a flat without requiring planning permission.

No one on the Opposition Benches is suggesting that the planning system should be preserved in stone. It is ludicrously complex, and local plans take too long. There are elements that we welcome in the Government’s proposals—digital technology, a speeding up of the local plan process and a plan for every part of England. We agree, and the Government acknowledge, that there is a desperate shortage of planners with the range of skills needed. However, beyond the removal of public participation and the failure to address the housing crisis properly, so much is missing from the Government’s proposals.

Specialist housing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) mentioned, protecting our high streets, levelling up, protecting and enhancing our natural environment, delivering net zero, mitigating the impact of climate change—the Government talk the talk on those objectives, but do not walk the walk. The specific proposals are not there, and we cannot support the Government without those details. It feels as if they are just not interested.

We need an effective planning system—an improvement on the current system, not its demise. Rather than removing the public and their elected representatives from the picture, the Government need to improve their engagement and retain their right to have a say over planning applications. They can start by giving planning committees back the power to determine whether shops, office blocks and warehouses should be converted into housing, and if they are approved—because some are suitable—to ensure that they make for good-quality housing.

There are developers that want to work with communities and councillors to develop good places that serve the neighbourhood. I have worked on community plans with just such firms, and they should be encouraged, but too many of the Government’s friends and party donors in the house building industry just see the planning process as a block on their mission to deliver “units” and little else.

We want a planning system that effectively mediates between public and private, between community and decision makers, between local and national—a system that is transparent, open and participative. We need more decent, affordable homes, but a home is more than bricks and mortar, and a community is more than a collection of houses miles away from anything and anywhere. The Government must listen to the people and their elected representatives, not their paymaster donors. We do not need a developers’ charter; we need a charter for communities and delivering homes.

The Government’s gagging of communities, removing the inconvenience of people and their elected councillors from decisions, is perhaps a new version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” If the Minister is unsure about the reforms, he could call a friend, but after last week’s by-election result, I have a feeling that his friend will beg him to withdraw these plans. He could even ask the audience, but some of the audience on the Benches behind him do not seem, from their contributions today, to be too keen to help him. That simply leaves him 50:50—plough on, or ditch these proposals.