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The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Apologies if I delayed proceedings during the Divisions.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on securing this important debate. I am delighted to be able to respond to the points she raised, not least because I, too, represent a beautiful rural constituency and they are close to my heart. It is clear from everything she said that both the green belt and green spaces are important to her and her constituents. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak about those issues and to underline the Government’s commitment to maintaining strong protection.
I should first point out that, as Members know, the Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role in the planning system. I am sure they understand that it therefore would not be appropriate for me to comment on the detail of individual decisions or plans. However, I can talk about the broader issues raised. I shall set out what more we are doing to protect our natural environment while building the homes we need, as well as our national policy on the green belt and green spaces.
The Government are committed to protecting our precious environment and place great importance on striking a balance between enabling housing and commercial development, and continuing to protect and enhance the natural environment, minimising the impact on biodiversity. In particular, our planning reform package, which includes the revised draft national planning policy framework and reforms to developer contributions, is fundamental to ensuring that we are improving the environment at the same time as delivering the homes we need. The revised NPPF will be published shortly.
One of the key ways we are continuing to protect the environment is through the provision and protection of green spaces, which are part of our natural heritage. They provide balance in urban areas and improve the quality of life for all. Safe and accessible green infrastructure can play an important role in addressing health and wellbeing needs, which is particularly needed in our local communities, and indeed, in modern society generally.
The Government recognise the development pressures that areas such as green spaces face, particularly in the current housing crisis, but we are committed to their continued protection. To do that, the NPPF sets out that planning policies relating to open space, sports and recreation facilities, and opportunities for new provision should be based on robust and up-to-date assessments of need. That means that existing open space, sports and recreational buildings and land should not be built on unless an assessment has been undertaken. The assessment should show that they are surplus to needs, or that there the loss will be mitigated by making equivalent or better provision in a suitable location.
The framework also encourages communities to use their local and neighbourhood plans—an issue that is important to me, too—to identify green areas of particular importance to them. They can then be given special protection by designating them as local green spaces, which means that they cannot be affected by development. Hon. Members will be pleased to know that the draft revised NPPF maintains those protections.
Angela Smith
The point I made in my speech is that in one community in my constituency, the Government’s planning inspector attempted to override the provisions made in the neighbourhood plan.
Kit Malthouse
The hon. Lady may not know, but as a Back Bencher, I, too, had that experience in a village called Oakley in my constituency. As a result, the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017 strengthened neighbourhood plans in the considerations of planning inspectors, particularly prior to referendums. One pledge that I can make to her is that in my tenure in this job, however long that may be, I will do my best to promote, enhance and strengthen neighbourhood plans. I agree with her that they enable local communities to feel that planning is done by them, not to them; that very often, they result in more housing, not less; and that we should use them more across the country.
The green belt is another key feature of our natural heritage that fundamentally aims to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open. It is a national policy, but it is applied locally, with green-belt land defined and protected by local planning authorities. By providing strong protection for the openness of green-belt land, the NPPF prevents inappropriate development. It makes it clear that most new building is not appropriate there, and should be refused planning permission except in very special circumstances. That sets a high bar for developers, and is part of the reason why protection of the green belt has proved so effective over the past half century.
The draft revised framework remains committed to that protection. It states that changing green-belt boundaries is possible only in exceptional circumstances, using the local plan process of consultation and rigorous examination by the Planning Inspectorate. It proposes a clarification of the exceptional circumstances test and sets out that a strategic plan-making authority will be able to alter a green-belt boundary only if it can show that it has examined all other reasonable options for meeting the development needs it identified. That means that an authority’s strategy should take into account several different factors.
For example, planning policies and decisions should give substantial weight to the value of using suitable brownfield land in settlements for homes and other identified needs, and support opportunities to remediate degraded or underused land. Another factor to be considered is the optimisation of the density of development, to ensure that authorities have significantly raised minimum densities in towns and city centres, and in other locations well served by public transport. Furthermore, the authority’s strategy should be informed by discussion with neighbouring authorities to see if they can take some of the necessary development.
Sometimes, exceptional circumstances may require land to be removed from the green belt. However, that does not mean that we are concreting over the beautiful landscapes for which England is known around the world and to which the hon. Lady referred.
Angela Smith
The Minister’s words are very welcome. He is being very generous with his time, and is very well-meaning, but the point is that 425,000 new homes are proposed on the green belt in local plans as things stand now. How can that represent exceptional circumstances?
Kit Malthouse
Proposed they may be, but the point is whether they will make it through the inspection procedure. It still remains the right of the Secretary of State, of course, to call in proposals where they are of national importance. There are particular safeguards.
I would point to the fact that the decisions are made by local democratically elected politicians. The hon. Lady raised an issue about engagement and the decisions that are made. I urge her to take that up with her confrères and colleagues on the councils concerned. She should be raising her concerns with them as well, as I hope and assume she has.
She asked about local housing need. A further consideration to green-belt policy is the calculation of local housing need. House prices are simply unaffordable in many places, meaning that too many people are unable to get on the housing ladder. Each local authority should assess local housing need and plan to meet it in full where possible. As part of the package of planning reforms, we have introduced a more transparent standard method for calculating housing need, which aims to make sure that we take the crucial first step of planning for the right number of homes. Although green belt acts as a constraint, the draft revised framework sets out that the calculation should be carried out before assessing where the need could be met. That is because constraints such as green belt are relevant when assessing how to meet need, rather than when assessing the scale of need.
Once again, let me thank the hon. Lady for securing this valuable debate. Before I close, I want to raise one issue she talked about. Local wildlife sites are of particular importance to me. The revised national planning policy framework will clarify protections for local wildlife sites. My predecessor as Minister for Housing met with the Wildlife Trusts and wrote to MPs confirming that. We can dig out a copy of that letter for the hon. Lady.
Finally, I emphasise the importance to me personally of neighbourhood plans. In my own constituency, I have been at the forefront of promoting those plans as a way of controlling and directing the right kind of development, in the right place, which suits local people and is responsive to their needs. As I say, I will do my best in this job to try to promote them in the future.
Question put and agreed to.