Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if his Department will amend the Duty to co-operate to state that a council’s contribution to meeting another council’s employment need, or other development needs, affects an authority's contribution to housing need or vice versa.

Through the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill we are abolishing the Duty to Cooperate. The Duty has not achieved the level of co-operation that was intended and has become something of a bureaucratic exercise which, as a rigid legal test, has resulted in around 20 local plans failing at examination.

Instead, we will introduce a more flexible policy based requirement for local planning authorities to work together on local plans, through an updated National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The details of the new NPPF will be developed as the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill progresses through Parliament and will be consulted upon.