Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Stuart Andrew and Lord Grayling

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is challenging me to expose my parliamentary expertise, but this is really in the hands of the Committee, so I would ask him to kindly lobby members of the Committee to help me get the Bill through, and I can help him with his aim.

Let me mention a key element that people have been raising, which is the issue of the five-year land supply. If an area has an up-to-date local plan, it will no longer need to demonstrate such a land supply, and that is so that we can stop speculative development.

[Chris Grayling]

Part of the problem we face—for example, in an area where there are small local district councils in charge of planning—is that, however much Ministers may say that targets are not targets, the local officers see them as such and see their task as being to implement a number that has landed on their desk. It is really important during this process that we break free of that. One of the reasons that councils are taking so long to form their plans is, frankly, that it takes so long for them to work out what on earth to do with the targets. Can my right hon. Friend please bear in mind, as he takes the Bill through, how we send clear messages to councils about what they are and what they are not expected to do?

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He knows—we have had a number of conversations on this very issue—that these are the things we are looking at. I look forward to bringing them forward as part of the Bill.

I want to touch on the issue of build out. I have heard loud and clear from colleagues, and so has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, about the issue of developers seeming to take a long time from approval to build houses. These commencement orders and an agreed rate of delivery will, we hope, help us to get such permissions built out much more quickly.

A number of Members—my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) and others—have raised their concerns about the national development management policies. One of the key aims of the Bill is to reduce the administrative burden on local councils so that they can concentrate on delivering high-quality, locally-led plans. That is why, through this Bill, we hope to shift the onus of delivering on national priorities to central Government through introducing a set of national development management policies. These policies will cover the most important national planning issues facing the sector, including net zero, tackling climate change and making sure that we are also dealing with heritage issues and protections of green belt.

To those who are concerned that these provisions will somehow override local plans, I would say that that is not the intention. The intention is to produce swifter, slimmer plans to remove the need for generic issues that apply universally, which will help us to reduce time-consuming duplication, and to ensure that local plans are more locally focused and relevant to the local communities. I hope that, during the passage of this Bill, we will be able to give more assurance on that.