National Planning Policy Framework

Stephen Gilbert Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

Top-down, imposed on communities; done to people, not with them; reflecting the ambitions of regional quangos, not local circumstances; adversarial, pitting communities against each other and individuals against developers; lop-sided; not transparent; appeal-led; not delivering on the ground—that is where we are today with the current planning system. It is absolutely right that the Government should seek to reform it, and I welcome that. My belief is that the combination of the Localism Bill and the national planning policy framework will deliver an inclusive process that will bring people together, enabling a plan-led approach where developers and communities get round the table together to work out what is in their neighbourhood’s best interest. Such an approach will be bottom-up, secure consent, take conflict out of the system and finally be transparent in a way that it has not been until now.

I have a great deal of sympathy for what is in the NPPF and the way it relates to the Localism Bill and the need to simplify national guidance and be clear about the need for sustainable development. However, we also need to ensure that development is well planned and genuinely sustainable, and that we create a planning system that delivers attractive communities in the right places, not endless cul de sacs that, although they might cumulatively occupy a large amount of space, fail to deliver the places that people want to live in. Such places need schools and pubs, leisure facilities and green spaces. I agree with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) that we need a clearer definition of “sustainable development” in the NPPF. We need to ensure that the provisions cover economic, social and environmental concerns together, and that no one leg of that tripod is given too much prominence.

A second major principle of the NPPF is the presumption in favour of sustainable development. I think that I understood my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr Brine) correctly when he said that the first presumption that he wanted to see in the NPPF was that development should be carried out according to local plans. He said that that should be the bottom line; it should be where we start from. That is very much the Government’s intention, and it would be useful to make that slightly clearer in the proposals.

As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) said, when the NPPF is finalised, all existing unadopted local plans, as well as those that are in an advanced stage of preparation, will technically be out of date. As a result, the presumption in favour of sustainable development will apply to all development proposals when the contents of the NPPF become the de facto policy across the country. As I understand it, that will remain the position until local plans are updated to reflect the guidelines in the new NPPF.

Paragraph 26 of the document states:

“It will be open to local planning authorities to seek a certificate of conformity with the Framework.”

That optional approach appears to imply that the Government will offer to test the draft and adopted local development frameworks to see whether they conform with the NPPF. That raises a whole new series of questions about how an LDF based on a revoked regional strategy or on the existing PPS1 could ever meet a test of conformity with the new NPPF, especially in relation to the presumption in favour of sustainable development. When the final version of the proposals comes out, will the Minister clarify how that will work effectively? We need to be clear about the transitional arrangements because the lack of a transition plan would be an open invitation to anyone with land to put in an application to develop on it. What does the Minister think about implementing a two-year process, so that local authorities can get up to speed with their local strategic plans before the provisions come into effect?

If we get this right, we will end up with much simpler planning guidance that will significantly increase the local neighbourhood role in planning and support a genuinely more sustainable approach to development, while still delivering the homes to support the economic development that we all need.