Pubs and Planning Legislation

Stephen Williams Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

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

As is customary, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the time for the debate and congratulate the sponsors of the motion. Much more significant congratulations are due to my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), because last night she announced her engagement. These days, we find out these things via Twitter; that is how I discovered the news last night. I am delighted publicly to congratulate her and John, who happens to be a friend, on their engagement. I wish them many happy years together. Hopefully, my hon. Friend and I will agree on a few other things as I proceed, too.

Recently, we discussed these same issues during debate on the Infrastructure Bill. I am glad that we have had more time to do so today. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) was deeply frustrated that there was not sufficient opportunity to rehearse the issues fully at that point. The Bill introduced a huge raft of changes. It was not possible perhaps for everyone to make the length of contribution on the amendment that they would have wished at that time, but we have had that opportunity today.

We are of course fully aware of the strength of feeling in the House about the importance of community pubs. We have made clear our commitment to protecting those pubs that most benefit the community. We recognise that public houses are important assets that play an important role in local communities, making important contributions to the economy and providing local hubs that strengthen community relationships and encourage wider social interaction.

I will shortly come to the changes to the planning system that I announced on the day of the Infrastructure Bill Report stage and specifically to pubs that are listed as assets of community value. However, I want to start, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West did, by reminding the House of the other measures that we have taken in government to support local pubs.

I think that the coalition Government can claim to be the most pub-friendly Government for quite some time. For example, we cut beer duty in the last two Budgets and scrapped the beer and alcohol duty escalators put in place by the Labour party. We have introduced a £250,000 fund for business partners to help to deliver more community-owned pubs and pubs providing community-focused services, which has contributed to a more than doubling of the number of co-operatively owned pubs over the past two years and seen many rural pubs offering a wide range of new community-focused services and facilities. I would like in particular to thank the Plunkett Foundation and Pub is the Hub for working as partners with my Department on those issues.

We have also reduced the bureaucracy that had been hindering landlords from running their pubs, for example through the removal of the licensing rules for small-scale live music venues. We have increased the business rates discount for pubs with rateable values below £50,000 from £1,000 to £1,500 for this year, a move that is estimated to benefit three in every four pubs in the country, and the protections we are giving publicans tied to large pub companies under the new statutory code of practice, to be enforced by an independent adjudicator, will address the imbalance in bargaining power between large pub-owning companies and the thousands of tenants that run tied pubs.

There are already protections for pubs in the planning system. Local plans right across a local authority and neighbourhood plans, which are becoming increasingly popular, should reflect and be consistent with the strong support for pubs in the national planning policy framework —that, I believe, is in paragraph 70 of the document—particularly if that is adopted in the local plan. For instance, last year I visited the Phene pub in Kensington and Chelsea where there has been huge pressure for pubs to be converted into houses, which have incredibly high domestic values. The Phene had been saved from that fate because of the strong planning policies that the council had put in place. Local planning authorities are encouraged to plan positively to support the sustainability of their communities. That includes plans to deliver the social, recreational and cultural facilities and services that the community needs, and to promote strong rural economies through the retention and development of local services and community facilities in villages, such as pubs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) rightly said that national permitted development rights play an important role in the planning system, providing flexibility, reducing bureaucracy and enabling the best use to be made of existing premises. Current permitted development rights allow for the change of use or demolition of pubs without the need for a planning application. That has been the case for quite some time. Some Members may remember that during the progress of the Infrastructure Bill I gave the example of the Ashley Court hotel in my constituency, where the owner wanted to sell it to a property developer and, despite the fact that it was a popular local pub with one of the most magnificent views in the whole of the city, he went ahead and demolished it. That was in 2007, I think. There was nothing I, as the local Member of Parliament, or the two local councillors for Ashley ward at that time could do about it. We all opposed what we felt was going to be the ultimate outcome, but he went ahead with the demolition. There was no provision in the planning law that we could use to stop it. That has been the case for some time. That is what will change as a result of the proposals in the Infrastructure Bill that I outlined.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification, but I am sceptical about the potential of the orders to stop demolitions. Earlier in the debate, a colleague of his on the Government Benches—the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), I think—suggested that the costs of ACV should be placed on the developers, rather than falling on the local authority. Does the Minister see any merit in that?

[Stephen Williams]

I will very shortly come on to the points raised about the process of listing ACVs and any costs that may arise.

It is right that non-viable and underused pubs and other commercial buildings should be able to change use quickly to respond to changing local demands. There are lots of reasons why pubs may close. As I said in the debate on the Infrastructure Bill, there could be demographic reasons, and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) made exactly the same point today. There could also be reasons of local employment—there may be a factory closure, or the location of a football stadium may move, which happens fairly often. There are lots of reasons why pubs may no longer have their former customer base and patronage. We are saying it would be inappropriate, and, in fact, disproportionate, for the planning system to have blanket protection for every single pub in the country, when there may be perfectly good reasons why a permitted development right is appropriate.

[Greg Mulholland]

Can we be clear? This is not about giving more protection; it is simply about allowing people the right to have a say over a change of use. Will my hon. Friend accept that the reality of what is going on is that profitable pubs are being closed deliberately as secret deals are done between large pub companies and large supermarket chains? It is nothing to do with pubs that are not viable or not wanted. Can he accept that point, and what is he going to do about it?

[Stephen Williams]

I accept what my hon. Friend says about supermarkets, and I assure him I am going to come to that point. The change that he wants and the motion suggests is not modest, however. It is quite a big change to the planning system to give blanket protection to one particular retail use of a piece of land.

Let me depart slightly from my remarks, as I have been provoked. There are probably lots of high street retail uses that different Members around the House might lament the loss of, as shopping areas have changed during our lifetime. I like going to pubs—I have even been to the pub with my hon. Friend several times and hopefully he will buy me a drink again very soon because we have not fallen out too much over this issue—but I am a bibliophile and really enjoy going to bookshops, and I lament the fact that many towns have lost all their bookshops. Even a seat with well-educated constituents such as mine, Bristol West, where there are lots of book- readers has experienced this; the number of bookshops open and trading in Bristol since I went there as a student in 1985 has shrunk markedly in recent years. Is the reason for that because there is not enough protection? The Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), was chair of the Labour club and I was chairman of the SDP-Liberal club at Bristol university at the time, and she will remember that there were lots of bookshops. There are not so many now.

Has that change happened because there is no protection in the planning system for bookshops—or for bakeries, or for other uses people value in the high street and wish were still there? No, it has not. It has happened because customer tastes and purchasing patterns change. We cannot have a planning permission that stands in the way of people changing how they buy things and exercising their commercial choices.

[Natascha Engel]

That is not the point we are making. All of us have said pubs that are no longer viable are very different from pubs that are perfectly viable. The Wellington in New Whittington is a heavily used pub, but the company that owns the building can make more money by selling it to a supermarket than by keeping it as a pub. It is still making money, however; it is making plenty of profit.

[Stephen Williams]

It is, perhaps, difficult to pick on individual examples without getting into trouble, but one of the bookshops in my constituency closed because a well-known TV personality restaurant-owner paid more for the renewal of the lease than it could afford even though it was trading profitably as a bookshop. Now there is a much-shrunken version of it further down the road. We cannot have a planning system to protect every single piece of economic use of land in towns and cities in that way. We have to reflect the fact that commercial patterns change. That is what our constituents are doing; they are changing the way they buy books, and the way they drink and eat.

[Rebecca Harris]

In a previous life, when I last had a proper job, I was a director of a publishing company so I know a little bit about bookshops and the book trade. Bookshops have closed for many reasons, in particular the growth of the internet and Amazon, but that is not the same as the conversion of a bespoke building in a neighbourhood, designed for the one purpose of being a pub, despite its being perfectly profitable and there being no evidence that people are buying their alcohol online from Amazon these days. We are talking about a completely different scenario. We are talking about profitable businesses in bespoke premises being taken over for another use.

[Stephen Williams]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend. I am simply saying that the planning system has a column of use classes and different examples of commercial uses, and that it cannot always give protection to every kind of commercial use in that column of use classes. Other factors also come into play.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Will the Minister explain to me in simple terms why protected development rights should apply to launderettes—and all those other categories—and not to public houses?

[Stephen Williams]

I am being invited to depart from my prepared remarks again, but that is the nature of debate. I do not know the whole history of the planning system. It has obviously evolved over a long period since the original Town and Country Planning Act 1947, which was passed by the Attlee Government. There may well be anomalies within the system; I am not aware of its full history. The motion gives examples including theatres and launderettes. I do not know how many theatres there are in Easington compared with the number of pubs, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that in my constituency of Bristol West there are hundreds of pubs and only two theatres: the Bristol Old Vic, the oldest and longest-running professional theatre in the country, and the Bristol Hippodrome. I am thinking off the top of my head here, but this is probably a matter of proportionality. Theatres are important to the community, and there are likely to be only a few in any given town or city, which might be why they are given that protection.

The same could apply to launderettes, although on the face of it, that might seem odd. There are far fewer launderettes in my constituency than there are pubs, and every time someone tries to close one, the local residents use the planning protections to fight the closure. Launderettes are obviously important, particularly for people who live in flats or houses of multiple occupancy. They are also important in city centres and university towns, where not everyone has the facility to wash their clothes at home. I think that that is why there is a distinction for launderettes, and I would not put the hundreds of pubs in any given location into that same category.

Local planning authorities can currently protect pubs by making an article 4 direction, which has the effect of removing national permitted development rights, and they can use that power where it is necessary to protect the amenity or well-being of an area. Once a direction takes force, a planning application must be made before any development can take place. Article 4 directions can be targeted at individual pubs or applied over a specified geographical area, as appropriate. The shadow Minister had some questions about article 4 usage, but she is no longer in the Chamber. She will be able to read my answers in Hansard, however.

The Secretary of State no longer has the power automatically to block article 4 applications, but he does have the power to ensure that they are not being applied completely disproportionately—right across a local authority area, for example. They are meant to be targeted. More than 130 local planning authorities currently have article 4 directions in place, 26 of which apply specifically to pubs. They include pubs in the London boroughs of Wandsworth, Camden, and Kensington and Chelsea, as well as in Bristol and Cambridge. So the powers are being used, but not as extensively as CAMRA would like. That is one reason that we considered bringing forward the change that was announced on the day of the Infrastructure Bill’s Report stage.

The listing of assets of community value under the Localism Act gives local people a greater stake in the future of assets listed and triggers a moratorium on any sale, enabling local people to develop a bid to buy the asset and ensure its continued contribution to their community. We welcome the fact that a third of the 1,800 assets across the country that have been listed so far—around 600—have been pubs. This has been by far the most popular use of the right, which has been in place for the past couple of years—not four years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West said. Those pubs include the Greenbank pub in Easton, in my constituency. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West has recently been involved in getting Lamplighters pub in her constituency reopened, and I should like to extend an invite to her. She and I should go to The Lamplighters to celebrate her engagement —maybe this weekend. I will buy the drinks for me and her, and for John, and we will find the necessary 21 people who want to list the pub as an asset of community value so that we can get it protected. Let us see if our diaries work.

[Charlotte Leslie]

You’re on!

[Stephen Williams]

I fully understand the widespread concern that pubs that are valued by communities could still be lost because of the regulatory environment of the planning system. That is why, on 26 January, we announced our intention to disapply the permitted development rights for the change of use or demolition of any pub that is listed as an asset of community value. I hope that that addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) about the King Canute on Canvey Island.

Pubs are not just useful to local communities as gathering places; they can also be significant landmarks along the high street. That is certainly true of the Ashley Court hotel in my constituency, which I mentioned earlier. It did not quite come up to scratch in terms of architectural merit, which is often the problem in big cities that have lots of listed buildings, but it was nevertheless an important landmark and now it has gone. However, demolition will now come within the scope of the changes that we are making.

The measure will be effective for a five-year period from the date of disapplication of the permitted development rights. That will affect the loophole to which my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West referred. Under the present listing rules, if a sale takes place, the clock starts again on the listing. We have already foreseen that loophole, and I am grateful to CAMRA for discussing it with me. We are therefore proposing that the protection should be in place for five years from the date of the disapplication. That will mean that, for those pubs, a planning application must be made to a local planning authority before a change of use or demolition of the pub can take place. That will give the decision back to the council representing the local community—giving people a say, as has been suggested several times—and provide an opportunity for local people to express their views and offer any counter proposals.

I want to deal with some of the other points raised in the debate. The process for listing assets of community value has been described as bureaucratic and costly. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire said that communities might not have the ability to deal with such a process. I understand that these rights are quite new and that there is still some knowledge to be gained about how they should be applied. That is why other Ministers and I, along with representatives of the partner groups we are working with in the Localism Alliance, are going round the country explaining how these community rights work. We know that there is still some awareness to be raised, however. The process for listing assets of community value is actually very straightforward. The requirement is simply to find 21 people who support the listing of a building or piece of land as an asset of community value and to submit an application to the council. There is absolutely no cost to that group of 21 or more people; the cost to them is zero.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)—who has had to leave the debate early to attend another engagement—asked whether we will review the changes after 12 months. They are linked to the Localism Act rights that we have introduced, and we have already committed to conducting a formal review of how that Act is being applied, later in 2015. We have already been gathering evidence informally, including from CAMRA, on how the rights are being used, and that review will certainly happen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West asked how to publicise the rights, and that is particularly important now that the listing of an asset of community value will have even more teeth than before. I suggest that, as constituency MPs, we will all want to publicise all sorts of things over the next few months, so we now have a real opportunity to go out into our communities and raise awareness of these issues. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West mentioned his occasional use of the pubs in Otley. I follow him on Twitter and from what I read I think he is much more than an occasional user. We should go out into our communities and publicise these changes. CAMRA, which has been working with the Department as a valued partner for quite some time now—since the Localism Act rights came into place—has published its own “how to” guide on listing assets of community value. I am sure CAMRA will update it to take into account the new teeth this new right will have.

I have dealt with the cost of listing, but my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West and the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) also mentioned the cost to authorities of listing assets. I was surprised to hear my hon. Friend say that Leeds city council says it takes 16 hours of officer time to deal with each application—I believe that is what he said, but he will correct me if I am wrong. No doubt my officials back in Marsham street will have picked up on that and will check whether it is the case. The procedure is quite straightforward in the legislation. We are aware, and some of the evidence we have been gathering from partners shows, that some local authorities are gold-plating what they need to do under the regulations. I do not suggest that Leeds city council is necessarily doing that, but we are aware that it is happening in some places. The procedure, as laid down in the Localism Act, is straightforward for listing an asset of community value. It is very simple for the promoters of that listing and it ought to be similarly simple for the local authority to consider whether the proposal meets the tests, as set out in the legislation.

My hon. Friend and others referred to the practices of pub property companies and others who deliberately promote the closure of local pubs in their area. I was made aware this morning of a report in the Evesham Journal about NewRiver Retail writing to 11 of its owned pubs in the Dudley area, which it seems to want to convert into Co-ops, and suggesting that the pub managers, for an incentive—I put it no strongly than that—should not seek to obstruct what it is doing. Planning law cannot stop all those sorts of commercial practices, but if any of the pubs in Dudley or elsewhere are important to the local community, people should get out there right now and list them, in order to give protection.

We believe the measure we have proposed strikes the right balance between protecting valued community pubs and avoiding the blanket regulation that could lead to more empty buildings around the country. We intend to introduce the required changes to secondary legislation at the earliest opportunity, and we will lay the regulations before the end of this Parliament. The Government have in place common commencement rules for changing business regulations on 6 April and, I believe, 6 October each year. We intend that these regulations will come into place on 6 April 2015—that deals with a key question Members asked—and we will lay the statutory instrument necessary for that in good time to make sure it happens.

I invite all hon. Members to join me in urging local communities to come together to support their local pub, use the community rights we have given them and nominate their local pub as an asset of community value. As I said, 600 pubs have been nominated so far. That is a good start, and if we all get behind this, working with CAMRA and local amenity groups, that number can expand significantly in a short time. If people think their local pub plays a key social and economic role in their community, they should act decisively and act now. They should not be reactive. I think someone spoke earlier about these changes and people being reactive. People should be proactive. I have been saying that, as other Ministers have, for the past 18 months or so. People should not wait for a threat. The right is there now, so please use it. If people think any community asset is important, they should list it now—they should not wait for a threat to come along.

The change we are making has been described as “modest”, but giving planning protection to pubs that are listed as an ACV is a significant change. The Government can fairly say that, without doubt, the future of local pubs will now lie in the hands of local people.