Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Steve Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have enjoyed a very interesting debate, with good contributions on all sides, and I thank all my colleagues who have taken part.

The Government have trumpeted the proposed planning reform Bill as a flagship in their legislative programme, but it is a flagship that may yet be scuppered in the docks, because it is nearly as unpopular on the Government Back Benches as it is on our side. There are certainly real problems with the current planning system that need to be addressed. We are not building the level of genuinely affordable housing the country needs, the Government abandoned the Labour Government’s target for net zero housing emissions by 2016, and public trust in planning is declining because the current process is neither fair nor particularly democratic. Communities are frustrated because they feel powerless to influence planning decisions that affect their own neighbourhoods.

However, the Government’s planning reforms not only fail to address those concerns but actively make the situation worse. Changes they have already introduced to permitted development are deregulating the existing system, so councils and communities no longer have the power they need to develop town centres in ways that work for local people, deliver good homes or support the local economy. It is astonishing that the Government ignored the results of their own consultation on permitted development, which roundly condemned the proposals because they disproportionately benefit property interests over local communities and ignore the need for higher standards in housing development.

The planning reform Bill compounds all that with a renewed assault on local democratic control of planning and regeneration, as we have heard from Members on both sides of the Chamber this afternoon. The Government are attempting to sell the Bill as the solution to a problem that does not really exist. Ministers say that the planning process is too slow, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) and others have already told us, the problem with getting homes built is not the planning process but developers who do not build the homes once they have got consent for them.

According to the Conservative-led Local Government Association, over 1.1 million homes that received consent in the past decade have not been built. That is over half of all homes that were approved by council planning departments. The Government have done nothing in an entire decade to incentivise developers to get on and build those desperately needed homes.

One of the problems—we have heard about it from Members on the Government’s own Benches today—is land banking. That is where a developer who gets approval for an application, an outcome that increases the value of the land, then sits on it and waits for land values to rise with a view to selling it on at some future point. It is a lucrative way to make money without the cost of actually building the homes. Instead of a planning Bill that will do nothing about that we need new measures that will incentivise developers to get shovel-ready new homes built far more quickly.

If the Government’s planning Bill is not really about building more homes faster, what is it for? Let us have a look at what they propose to do. Planning will be taken away from democratically elected local councils and handed over to development boards appointed by Ministers in Whitehall. It is very likely that these Conservative quangos will be stuffed full of developers greedily eyeing up local neighbourhoods.

The boards will zone areas for future development. As we have heard this afternoon from my hon. Friends the Members for Reading East (Matt Rodda), for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and others, residents living in areas designated for growth or renewal will be astonished to find that they no longer have the right to object to individual planning applications on their own doorsteps. They will have no right to object to tower blocks at the end of the road, to the concreting over of precious green space or to oversized developments that will overburden local infrastructure such roads, GP surgeries or public transport.

The Bill will lead to more situations such as Westferry, in respect of which the Secretary of State admitted breaking the law to help a Conservative party donor to dodge £40 million in tax, as he pushed an application through in the teeth of opposition from the local community, the local council and officials in his own Department. If the Bill goes through, the safeguards that protect local communities will no longer be in the Secretary of State’s way. Residents will be gagged from speaking out while developers will have the right to bulldoze and concrete over local neighbourhoods pretty much at will. It is Westferry on steroids.

The Bill is nothing less than a developers’ charter that silences local communities so that developers can profiteer at local people’s expense. So why are the Government doing this? We have heard this afternoon from their own MPs just how unpopular the changes will be with local residents. The answer is, I am afraid, all too plain to see: according to analysis by openDemocracy, donations to the Conservative party from major developers have increased fourfold since the current Prime Minister assumed office. All that cash was not given altruistically; it was a down payment in expectation of a return. Residents will lose their right to a say over their own neighbourhood so that the Conservatives can reward the developers who increasingly bankroll their party. The Prime Minister is paying back developers by selling out communities.

The Government’s proposals have been criticised by the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Town and Country Planning Association, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Local Government Association, the Countryside Alliance and even the National Trust—and no wonder, because what the Government advocate is not how good development works.

I had the privilege of chairing one of the country’s biggest regeneration projects, which delivered more than 5,000 new homes. I know from that experience how regeneration works for everyone only if it is a real and strong partnership between councils, communities and developers. The best developers know that, too: they do not want to develop in the teeth of local opposition; they want to work with the local community and build something that enhances the local area. Good regeneration is about not just bricks and mortar but people. Regeneration cannot be something that is done to communities without their involvement; it must be done with them.

The Government’s proposals on planning entrench sleaze. They are anti-democratic. They further undermine confidence in the planning system. They promote low-quality housing and fail to act on climate change. They do not deliver the level of affordable housing that this country so desperately needs. The Government must think again: if they persist in this brazen attempt to sell out communities to the wealthy developers who bankroll the Conservative party, they will deserve to reap the political whirlwind that will surely follow.