National Planning Policy Framework

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Mosley]

Of course they currently have a right of appeal, but it is via judicial review, which can be difficult and very expensive. Nevertheless, that right is there. I personally think we have the right balance now, but it is something we need to consider.

In addition to green belts, the fundamental importance that the framework places on all green spaces is extremely reassuring. I particularly welcome paragraphs 73 and 74, which enshrine in the planning system the intrinsic value of open spaces and playing fields. The document reads:

“Access to high quality open spaces and opportunities for sport and recreation can make an important contribution to the health and well-being of communities.”

The commitment in the framework that all open spaces lost to development must be replaced by “equivalent or better provision” will be received warmly by everyone in this country, young and old, who recognises the importance of these spaces for our local communities.

Furthermore, the introduction in paragraphs 76 to 78 of the new local green space designations adds even greater weight to the importance of the local neighbourhood plans introduced under the Localism Act 2011. The NPPF is unequivocal in its defence of green spaces and will ensure they are there to be enjoyed for generations to come.

Representing a city steeped in history, I am obviously concerned to ensure that the importance of heritage is recognised in the planning system. Heritage should be seen not as a barrier to growth but as an intrinsic part of it.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s celebration of the virtues of heritage. Will he clarify whether he voted for VAT to be put on alterations to listed buildings and churches?

[Stephen Mosley]

I will stick to the NPPF debate, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

In Chester, we do not insist on the preservation of our Roman city walls, our Roman amphitheatre, our mediaeval roads or our Georgian townhouses simply because they are old. We insist on their protection because they are what make Chester Chester. Planning is much more than a tool to cater for short-term demand. It must always consider the long-term consequences. Our heritage and historic environment are unique and irreplaceable, so I welcome the statement in the NPPF that

“Local planning authorities should set out in their Local Plan a positive strategy for the conservation and enjoyment of the historic environment”.

Also, when determining planning applications, developers and local authorities will have responsibilities to ensure that the development does not adversely impact on heritage assets or their setting. That protection will be particularly welcome in Chester, where almost every development will have an impact on our unique historic environment. The Minister and his colleagues have worked closely with English Heritage throughout the formation of the framework, and I am delighted with the importance that it places on conservation and the enjoyment of our nation’s heritage.

I welcome the importance the framework places on the need to provide quality homes. Building homes is vital to the sustainability of our country, but of equal, if not greater, importance is the type of home we build. As the Minister wrote in the forward to the NPPF,

“confidence in development itself has been eroded by the too frequent experience of mediocrity”.

All too often, both in the private and the social housing sectors, the temptation has been to cram as many homes as possible into as small a space as possible. Blocks of flats have come to symbolise housing development in Chester and, I am sure, in many other parts of the country, but that is not what people want or need. What is required and wanted are good quality family homes, yet these are the types of properties in least supply.

The statement in the NPPF that local authorities should objectively assess the need for market and affordable housing in the housing market is hugely significant. However, that is one area of the framework that could be difficult for the Minister and his Department to monitor. I encourage him to keep his sights keenly focused on the housing developments that local authorities are providing, to ensure that the housing needs of any particular area are being assessed and subsequently acted on.

As I have said, planning is a sensitive issue. The national planning policy framework lays the foundations for sustainability, growth, protection and preservation, but most importantly, it provides clarity. The NPPF is an excellent document. The consultation on which the final document was based was carried out to a standard to which all consultations should aspire. The Minister is to be congratulated, and the framework should be welcomed by all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

This week, we heard the extraordinary statistic that only 56 affordable homes had been built in the entirety of London in the past six months. As a result, Newham council has been trying to entice housing associations across the country, including in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), to take families on housing benefit off its lists and into different parts of the UK. All that points to the major housing and planning crisis that the UK faces.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am looking forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s speech on planning policy, but may I say that the problem that Newham council has faced is not only the lack of affordable homes, but the housing benefit changes that have been forced on it by this Government?

[Tristram Hunt]

I am very grateful for the intervention, which highlights exactly what we warned of: such changes need to be managed properly. In that context, what we hoped for from the Government was a considered and rational strategy for planning reforms to safeguard our great towns, cities and countryside, while ensuring economic growth. Instead, what we received was a botched draft planning policy framework, complete with ugly denunciations of such great English institutions as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and of anyone else who dared to question the Government’s damaging proposals. We expected more from the Minister. Instead, as Fiona Reynolds, the director general of the National Trust, put it, the Government’s statements were “arrogant”. She said:

“The language exposed some of the Government’s failure to connect with how people feel.”

We now have the finished document, and I am happy to support some of the major U-turns the Government have adopted, such as the explicit recognition of the value of the countryside as a whole; the strengthened protection for the green belt; and the more balanced, if still ambiguous, definition of “sustainable development”. Those are all to the good, but there are some worrying omissions.

Part of the great urban regeneration story of the past 10 years, under Labour Governments, has been a specific programme of encouraging brownfield development. Last year, some 76% of new dwellings were built on brownfield sites, which is an increase on the 55% in 1989. The figure for Stoke-on-Trent was 90% and the one for Liverpool was 91%. It is therefore worrying that the final draft of the NPPF talks only of “encouraging” the effective use of brownfield land, rather than, as Labour did, “prioritising” it. That does not amount to a robust “brownfield first” policy and is a weakening of the guidance in previous regulation. Hon. Members who are concerned about their towns and city centres would do well to reflect on that: an encouragement is not an obligation. As a result, and with no explicit brownfield development targets, there will be serious scope for legal battle involving developers, who will appeal to sections of the NPPF that emphasise economic viability and deliverability over sustainable brownfield development. That is all the more frustrating given that there are almost 62,000 hectares of brownfield or previously developed land in England ready for building on.

I am glad that the Government have taken on board the Labour party’s criticisms of the draft framework in relation to the sequential test on all large retail development. I make a general point about policy development by this Government when I say that we are here to help: if they listen to us at an earlier stage, they can get rid of some of these complexities. I met my local planning officers at Stoke-on-Trent city council last week, and they were adamant that we would not see the kind of urban regeneration we want in Hanley without a proper system of sequential testing.

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Given what the hon. Gentleman has said, will he join me in urging Labour councillors in Broxtowe not to accept a housing target that would result in 4,000 houses being built on green-belt land?

[Tristram Hunt]

I am very grateful for the intervention, as I am an adamant defender of the green belt; almost like an Israeli settler. I believe that we should not take any parts of it.

To complete the point I was making before the intervention, in view of the number of high street shops that are unoccupied, we want to see a much greater focus on the regeneration of our high streets.

All of this debate points to a broader truth: the Government are underwritten by an ideological aversion to state regulation. Because of the monstrous failure of their economic policy, sadly revealed this week with a double-dip recession made in Downing street and £150 billion of extra borrowing, they have been thrashing round for excuses for economic decline. The Treasury stumbled on the idea that planning was stopping growth, but we know that good planning is no impediment to growth. Poor planning and a lack of planning as in Ireland and Spain have not resulted in the kind of economic growth that we would like. The Government would be better advised to devise a decent strategy for sustainable economic growth, rather than blame the planning system.

Secondly, the hostility towards proper regulation has turned a planning document into a lawyers’ charter. For all the clever wheeze of cutting down more than 1,000 pages of guidance, the end result might be far more paperwork than the Minister imagines, thanks to law suits, legal cases and casework. Indeed, we know that a survey of town planners revealed that lawyers are expecting much more work from the framework than they have had previously.

Finally, I welcome the explicit recognition given by the planning policy framework that the historic environment makes a positive contribution to society, the economy, our culture and our environment, but where does the Budget’s plans to slap VAT on approved alterations to listed buildings fit with that? May we please have some joined-up government? If we believe in the historic environment, may we not have this ridiculous addition to the Budget?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

The ultimate test of the NPPF will be the outcomes it delivers, not the remarks made by people who were so relieved that the latest draft was less bad than its predecessor that they provided those quotes that the Minister enjoyed giving us the other evening.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) made the point that we are debating this framework in the week in which the economy has gone back into recession, which in large part reflects the poor state of the construction industry, within which the housing sector is particularly badly affected. I shall come on to that. Two days ago, the Minister of State sought to deny the disastrous state of house building in Britain, which has been seriously aggravated by the uncertainty and confusion that have existed since the Government began to tinker with the planning system in summer 2010.

The Minister claimed that there has been a 25% recovery in housing since the recession. Let us look at those figures. He is right in that there has been a recovery from the depths of the recession. What he needs to bear in mind is the fact that that recovery took place throughout 2009 and in the first six months of 2010.

[Tristram Hunt]

Will my right hon. Friend reflect on Ministers’ approach to information and statistics, given that this week we heard an extraordinary account from the Minister for Housing and Local Government, who thinks that rents in London are falling?

[Mr Raynsford]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I was going to say that I hoped that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), for whom I have considerable respect, does not go down the same path as his colleague, the Minister for Housing and Local Government, who shows a certain levity with regard to his respect for the truthfulness of statistics.

As I was saying, there was a recovery, and the second quarter of 2010—which, as the Under-Secretary knows rather well, is the period in which there was a change of Government: in the first part of that quarter we were under a Labour Government, in the second part, we were under a Conservative Government, although I do not think that even he would claim that the Conservative Government were responsible for the figures in that quarter—was the high point. The recovery reached a peak of 30,880 units in that quarter. Since then, the housing market has been static or falling. The best output of new starts in any quarter was 26,980 in the third quarter of 2010, going down to just 20,900 starts in the last quarter of 2011—the last quarter for which figures are available.

That, I am afraid, is the record. Since the Government’s changes to planning policy and their disastrous cuts in investment in social housing, we have seen a collapse in confidence and poor output figures for housing. Planning consents—the lead indicators—are equally bad. Figures compiled by Glenigan for the Home Builders Federation show that in calendar year 2011 only 115,000 new homes received planning permission, which is the lowest level since the survey began in 2007. The figures for the end of 2011 are particularly bad—the Home Builders Federation itself highlights the extent to which the number of homes that received consent in the fourth quarter of 2011, 27,000, was down on the third quarter and down on the previous year’s equivalent quarter. The figures are seriously bad.

The Federation of Master Builders reminds us that the figures for new social house building in the first three months of this year are

“the most negative balance since the survey began”,

and work loads in the private new build housing sector are also declining, with 55% of firms indicating work loads smaller than in the fourth quarter of 2011. It is a bleak, bleak picture. The Minister should reflect on that and recognise that the current framework provides no incentive for new house building.

We are seeing in many cases uncertainty in the planning system. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) rightly highlighted the degree to which uncertainty and potential litigation will be a damper on development in the coming months. We also know that a number of councils are quite openly seizing the opportunity to cut back housing consents. Against that background, I have to say to the Minister that his Government will be on record as producing the lowest number of new homes of any Parliament since the 1940s—far, far lower than the figures during the previous Parliament, 2005 to 2010, which included the depths of the recession, when 750,000 new homes were started. The present Government are on course for, at best, 600,000 homes, and the total may well be fewer than that. I urge the Minister to reflect on the consequences of his planning policy.