Future of the Planning System in England

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is those sorts of issues that are often resolved at the planning application stage. Whether they can all be dealt with in a local plan, however well intentioned, is the real challenge. Often, it is the particular designs of a scheme—how they relate to the environment and how traffic issues are dealt with—that really cause most concern and problems for people. We must ensure that the public voice on those issues is not lost in any reforms.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD) [V]]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for an excellent report. I congratulate him on a valuable report and on such an extensive consultation. Among the responses garnered have been those that have raised the failure to tackle excessive second home ownership in areas like mine. Is he aware that over the period of the pandemic a very bad situation has got much, much, much worse? The proliferation of excessive second home ownership in areas such as the Lakes and the rest of Cumbria robs those communities of a permanent population and can kill those communities altogether.

During the pandemic there has been a 32% increase in the number of homes in the holiday let market, and something like 80% of all new purchases in the Lakes have been to the second home market. Does he agree that the planning Bill is a place where the Government could very quickly tackle this problem by making holiday lets and second homes a different category of planning use, so that communities like mine in Cumbria can protect themselves from being cleansed of local people?

[Mr Betts]

I hear the problem. It was not one that the Committee specifically considered in our report, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that this is something that the Government could take into account in their legislative proposals.