Neighbourhood Plans

Taiwo Owatemi Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dr Evans]

My hon. Friend aptly points that out, and I am glad that it will be recorded in Hansard for anyone who may come across this debate.

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that there is somebody from the Opposition who has come to support today’s debate, and to show Labour’s position on supporting planning and ensuring that it is affordable?

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

I would point out that you have just arrived in the Chamber. You have made an intervention straight away; are you going to be speaking later on?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

No.

[Dr Evans]

I am hugely grateful to the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) for pointing that out. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) was referring to the Liberal Democrats, who I quoted in my speech. It is fantastic to see a Labour counterpart here to take part in this debate. This issue is important to all our communities, no matter which party we represent, and I am eternally grateful to her for being here to hear what we have to say.

I raised the point I was making because of the essence of our housing system. We need the right houses in the right place, with the right infrastructure and the right protections for our heritage and environment. We need houses that families can aspire to. In my area, more importantly, we need houses that the elderly generation can downsize to. We are struggling with both of those, not just in my area, but across the country. If we do not get this right, we risk losing our vibrant, rural aspects to suburban sprawl, with no thought given to where it should be. Piecemeal development does not help anyone—from schools to infrastructure and amenities, such as doctors surgeries—when we know that the country is under pressure.

How do we take this forward? Neighbourhood plans are a good way to help. This is where national policy intersects with localism, and rightly so. In my constituency, I have vanguard neighbourhood plans, such as in Market Bosworth, which has led the way for years in developing its plans. Various other areas, such as Markfield, Stoke Golding and Burbage, are all at different stages of working their way through their neighbourhood plans.

I am eternally grateful to the councils and individual constituents who have taken the time to go through what is, at times, a laborious, technical and painstaking process to try to get a result. What infuriates them more than anything else is that this has been ridden roughshod over because we do not have an up-to-date local plan. We must find a way to try to strength neighbourhood plans. In answer to the question:

“Can a Neighbourhood Plan come forward before an up-to-date Local Plan is in place?”

the House of Commons Library states:

“Where a neighbourhood plan is brought forward before an up-to-date Local Plan is in place the qualifying body and the local planning authority should discuss and aim to agree the relationship between policies in…the emerging neighbourhood plan…the emerging Local Plan…the adopted development plan…with appropriate regard to national policy and guidance”.

There is a framework there, but I question what that looks like in reality.

If only there were a legislative vehicle coming forward that could make a change. Well, it just so happens, as the eagle-eyed among us will have seen, that a Bill is being introduced tomorrow that will try to pull together and streamline 70 years of a fragmented planning system. I am pleased to see that this is taking place. There is lots to like in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: simplification, design codes, choices opening up for developers and stopping land banking. Many of these matters go far wider than today’s debate, but there are five guiding principles. Hon. Members who have heard me speak on planning may argue about the acronym with the Secretary of State, but I will not be going there today.

The aim of the Bill is to support local communities to have control over what is built, where it is built and what it looks like, and to create an incentive for developments to meet set standards, with the aim of developing high-quality design and beautiful places and to protect our heritage. The Bill will enable the right infrastructure to come forward where it is needed, enable local democracy and engagement, foster better environmental outcomes and allow neighbourhoods to shape their surroundings, because that is where the impact of planning is most immediately felt. The last point is really important, and it is why I have called the debate.

In among those details, the Bill says that local plans will be given more weight when making decisions on applications, and the same weight will be given to other parts of development plans, including neighbourhood plans prepared by local communities. There will be opportunities for communities and interested parties to influence and comment on the emerging plans, which will be supported by digitalisation to ensure plans and data are accessible and understood easily. It will ensure that neighbourhood plans are given weight in planning decisions and in the development of neighbourhood priorities, with a statement to be taken into account when preparing the local plan.

Additional parts of the Bill state that neighbourhood plans will focus on development and use of land that contributes to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change. That is done through a neighbourhood priority statement, which will set out the prevailing view of the community in a neighbourhood area on local matters including development, housing, the natural environment, the economy, public space, infrastructure, facilities and services in the area.

This is the prime evolution of where we are going with localism and neighbourhood plans, and I am pleased to see it. I would be more pleased if the Minister addressed some of the areas I have mentioned and talked about what the system will look like. We need to ensure that when it is working well, it runs at its full potential. Even more so, we need to know what it means for a community such as mine when the system starts to fall apart.

In closing, we have seen where the evolution of neighbourhood plans has come from. I have touched a little on the problems that we face when things do not go quite to plan—pardon the pun. Of course, we have opportunity for the future. I think we can all agree, yet again, that we need the right houses in the right place, with the right infrastructure, and the right protections for our heritage and environment. I would be grateful for the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Mangnall]

I beg your pardon, Ms Ghani. However, of course, this is a matter that we are now allowed to discuss, both today and ahead of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill tomorrow. This is an important point, because we, as Members of Parliament, are sent to this place on the back of our constituents and we engage with them on a regular basis through our surgeries. I suspect that I speak on behalf of all Members in this room when I say that planning, neighbourhood plans and development are things that continually drop into our mailbags or inboxes. It is of the utmost importance that, while in many scenarios, we are not able to engage quite as much as we would like, we now have the perfect opportunity to give them the voice to be able to stand up for what they care about.

As has already been mentioned, the Localism Act 2011 gave communities the power—the voice—to speak up for what they want in their local area. You may call me old fashioned, Ms Ghani—or perhaps not—but I am one of those old-fashioned Members of Parliament who happens to believe that decisions are made better in local areas by empowered local communities, and in the idea that Westminster and Whitehall do not know better on the needs of my towns and villages than my parish councils, my neighbourhood plan conveners, and my local council in some instances. It is that concept that I want to speak about in this debate.

The Localism Act created the hunger, the drive and the determination for every single member of the community to be able to speak up for what they wanted in their area, to ensure that they could have the right buildings in the right places, designed in the right way, and that the infrastructure would be in place and their community needs would be met. We have that opportunity tomorrow, in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, I hope. I think it is worth pointing out that the Bill does enforce and enhance certain aspects of the neighbourhood plans.

I have gone through the Bill and I am looking forward to debating it with the Minister and the Secretary of State tomorrow. However, in clause 88, we have a strong opportunity to look at how we can write into law, from the Localism Act, the way in which we can strengthen those neighbourhood plans. That will allow us to allocate land for development and to detail infrastructure, affordable housing and design requirements. Those are three of the many other options that are to be included in the Bill tomorrow, and they are to be welcomed, because we need to set the standard we expect for neighbourhood plans, to make sure there is commonality but also a unique perspective from every neighbourhood plan, so that people are able to present what they want in their area.

But—there is always a “but” in these instances—the problem is that there needs to be support to help neighbourhood plans to come together and be written. All too often, a neighbourhood plan is put together and the small mistakes made by volunteers, who are working incredibly hard, are exploited by the developers—something I shall come to in a second. If there is to be support, it has to be centrally provided and not come from local authorities. We must put the responsibility on central Government to help provide that support, rather than adding to the workload of local authorities. Indeed, a perfect example of how we are encouraging and enhancing local communities’ power and the strength of their voice is through street votes. As I mentioned to the Secretary of State before the debate, it is no good having a placeholder amendment in the Bill for street votes. We need more detail to make sure that we can reassure colleagues, as well as constituents, about this matter.

The challenges are many, but I will stick to just a couple. The first is around neighbourhood plans versus the Planning Inspectorate. These plans are hard to create. We have all spent time reading neighbourhood plans, and we have all gone through them with our communities and villages. We have seen our communities hold referendums on these matters, and we know how hard they work. Recently in my constituency, Dartmouth and Strete have both had referendums, and they have produced genuinely high-quality neighbourhood plans. Volunteers worked tirelessly to produce those plans in the first instance, but it does not strike me as particularly effective to encourage people to produce neighbourhood plans if those are just thrown out after the first challenge from a developer or local authority, or if the Planning Inspectorate ignores what is in those plans.

We have to think hard about how we provide support for neighbourhood plans in the future, so that people cannot be bullied and downtrodden by developers with expensive barristers, or by planning inspectorates that end up listening to the person who is paid £500 an hour rather than the local volunteers, who are doing it out of charity for their community. I have gone in front of the Planning Inspectorate on no fewer than three occasions to try to stand up for local communities. Sadly, I am not a barrister being paid £500 an hour—[Interruption.] It could happen, I suspect. However, I did the best I could to stand up for my communities and what they wanted to see. We need to make sure that neighbourhood plans are ringfenced and secure, and that where support is necessary, we can provide legal advice against planning inspectorates in certain circumstances. It is a modern-day David and Goliath story—one that I think the Minister understands and that the Secretary of State certainly understands, and one that we can address in the Bill tomorrow.

How we support neighbourhood plans has to change, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire said that we must find the balance and retain that important local voice. I have already cited the fact that we have had good referendums on two neighbourhood plans in my constituency, but there are two further examples, in the form of Collaton St Mary and Inglewood, where communities put together fantastic local plans. They understood what the affordable housing level would be, where the infrastructure would go and how the houses would be built—only for those plans to be completely overridden and their views ignored. Eventually it got to the Planning Inspectorate, and the decisions went against them. I hope the Minister will give me an answer, because I do not know what to say to them when they come to see me and say, “We put all this effort and hard work into a neighbourhood plan, in the expectation that we would be listened to, that this was us stamping our mark on our village and community and that we would get what we want. We are not nimbys. For that matter, we are not BANANAs”—which means build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody—“We are people who want to build houses so that people can live in our area, work in our area and have primary residences.” They are now deeply upset and have lost faith in the system.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about ensuring that residents are empowered and listened to with regard to local plans. In my constituency, areas such as Eastern Green, Holbrooks and Allesley are feeling very frustrated by the fact that every time they bring up suggestions about the local plan, developers are listened to rather than them. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important that we prioritise the views and needs of local people over those of developers?

[Anthony Mangnall]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. That is exactly the point: localism is about local communities having a local voice and deciding what they want in their area. I do not think any of us in this place would disagree that we want local communities to retain that strength of voice—that strength of community—that allows them to make decisions for themselves. That is what I believe conservatism should be about, and the hon. Lady is always welcome to join the Government side of the House if she subscribes to it in such a manner. As I was saying, we have to make sure that development plans are shaped locally, and that when neighbourhood plans come into contention with developers, those plans are able to be robust and rigorous.

I will make two more quick points before I sit down. Clause 83 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill—I am probably making some of the arguments that I will make again tomorrow—deals with the question of development plans versus the national development plan. We are asking local communities to come up with development plans, but telling them that when they come into contention, the national development plan will override theirs.

I am deeply unhappy that the national development plan has not even been published. Tomorrow, we have the Second Reading of that important Bill—a Bill that will be watched by all our constituents—and we are faced with the fact that documentation has not been published. I have been reassured that a lot of this documentation will come forward when the Bill is in Committee, but I urge the Government to act with a little more urgency and to expedite the publication of this document, because my constituents view this as an enormous power grab. They are saying, “We will produce our local development plans, but if the Government do not like them or if a contention is raised at any point during the development of those plans, they can be overridden by a central body.” If I am wrong, the Minister will steer me in the right direction, but I ask for details on that specific point to be provided as soon as possible. The Secretary of State must not have the ability to override local plans, because that will kill people’s faith in the system. We need to have the opportunity to amend this in Committee, and not simply have a Cttee of Government-appointed members. I am happy to volunteer myself, although I am not entirely sure that the Government will be taking me up on that offer.

When introducing the planning Bill, the Secretary of State used the acronym BIDEN, meaning we would build beautifully, we would build with infrastructure in mind, we would hold developers to account, we would take the environment into account and we would have neighbourhood plans. Having travelled across my constituency, engaging with local groups, parish councils and those who have produced neighbourhood plans, I can assure Members that those people like that acronym. They want to see it written into the Bill; they want to be reassured that the Secretary of State’s words are not just words but text in the Bill that we will debate tomorrow, and that that Bill will reform a planning system that has been found wanting for the past 32 years. We have the opportunity to achieve that reform now, and the Secretary of State has the opportunity to prove that he is good not just at rhetoric, but at passing pieces of legislation.

The hon. Member for Strangford may well have misled the House in saying that his constituency is the most beautiful. I am sure we would all disagree and would make the same argument for our own constituencies.