Alison Seabeck
Main Page: Alison Seabeck (Labour - Plymouth, Moor View)(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Rebecca Harris
I very much take that point. It is often much easier to argue that a very attractive, leafy, virgin greenfield or green-belt site can be brought forward in the early stages of the plan and it is always easier to argue that the previously developed or the brownfield sites, possibly in multiple ownership—
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I apologise for stopping the hon. Lady in mid flow. Does she accept that the Government’s new homes bonus policy militates in favour of councils providing and supporting greenfield development, because they will get more money back as a result of doing so?
Rebecca Harris
I am not sure that it does. The new homes bonus gives something new to councils to help them to bring forward brownfield sites, because they will have an incentive to do so through a reward—I will come on to discuss that.
The system has expressly driven greenfield and, in my area, green-belt development, almost irrespective of how much less environmentally sensitive land there is in a council area. That contradicts the previous Government’s boast that they had a genuine town centre or brownfield-first policy in the past decade. The system we have had could best be described not as a planning system but as an allocation system, with allocations made on the basis of the sites that best suit the business model of the developers, not the needs and aspirations of local communities. Despite two Treasury-led Barker reviews, it was comprehensively shown that that approach to planning failed to deliver the number of new homes that we desperately need, even during a housing boom. The added irony is that in practice land was often just land-banked for developers, as happened in my constituency, making a mockery of the stated objective of bringing these sites forward in the early part of the process.
The current draft national planning policy framework maintains a requirement on councils to show “deliverability” and “developability”, which means evidence that sites will come forward. I appreciate that the Government are clear about their intention to protect the green belt, and I wholeheartedly welcome that, as do my constituents. However, I strongly believe that their final document needs to make it much clearer to councils that they will now have a duty to work a lot harder to bring forward previously developed land first and will not be able to fall back on green belt land, as happened in the past. As I said, the new homes bonus now gives councils the confidence to invest in working harder to do that by aggressively packaging their brownfield sites and dealing with empty properties. I hope that it will be very clear to councils that they should take this much more proactive, positive approach to planning in the future. They should not just allocate sites and sit back and see what happens.
I want the Government to go even further: I would like them to drop the requirement to plan for so many years ahead. I appreciate that the industry will say that it needs certainty and possibly therefore needs to have certainty of supply for 16 or more years, but I can see that as being of benefit only for those who wish to land bank. Economic and social conditions in an area can change enormously over that time frame and the requirement to make decisions for so many years ahead may cause more consternation, opposition and planning blight needlessly. It paints a picture for communities of huge housing expansion, which may never happen. It is therefore perfectly practical, and in no way detracts from the emphasis on a plan-led process, to have councils working on a rolling five-year basis. They would then be working much more on the basis of evidence, and much less on the basis of supposition and what I consider to be argument. Plans would be based on fewer assumptions, could be much more responsive to local community needs and economic changes, and would certainly generate less suspicion and opposition.
I also appreciate that the Government have said that they will introduce some form of transitional measures to protect councils from speculative applications by builders while we are between the two planning regimes. The transitional arrangements will have to take into account the fact that a lot of local authorities have been working on their previous local plans and have a bank of published evidence that they have put together to meet the demands of those previous plans and the previous housing targets. I fear that that so-called evidence, which, as I have argued, is sometimes just argument, could be used by developers to try to prove a presumption in favour of sustainable development for their sites in future. So the transitional arrangements will need to protect councils from that risk during the period between the two documents. The draft NPPF rightly allows councils to re-evidence their proposed local plans and base housing need on relevant local factors. I hope that it will be made very clear to them that they also should do so.
In conclusion, I congratulate Ministers on wiping away this very damaging legacy from the previous Government’s planning regime and ensuring that, in the spirit of localism, local people have a chance to shape their neighbourhoods on the basis of accurate and true local need. There is a wider legacy left from the former planning regimes and the final document needs to be careful to address that.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
I draw Members’ attention to the interests of my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), in which I have an indirect interest.
The Government claim that we need a new national planning policy framework because existing planning rules are holding back house building and growth. That is a false claim, and I want to reinforce the points that have already been made very forcefully in the House and certainly by Members on these Benches.
In the five years to 2007, the last year before the global banking crisis, the credit crunch and the subsequent recession, there was year-on-year growth in house building, with more than 207,000 additional homes delivered in England in 2007 and the delivery of more than 250,000 additional affordable homes over the period of the Labour Government. That is over a third more than this Government hope to deliver over a five-year term. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) implied that 170,000 new homes is a substantial figure, but that is nonsense when we look at the need for housing.
Only last week, the Minister for Housing and Local Government had the bare-faced cheek to try to claim credit for the 60,000 additional affordable homes completed in England in 2010-11. The fact that those were planned for, paid for and started under the last Labour Government, under the existing planning regime, seems conveniently to have slipped his mind.
The reason house-building levels fell during the recession and remain low—indeed, they fell during this Government’s first 12 months in office—is not the old planning system. Planning is, of course, important to growth, but the Secretary of State’s unlawful meddling with regional spatial strategies last year has, according to some estimates, cost the country hundreds of thousands of new homes already, and in so doing seriously damaged growth. That is the direct outcome of Tory policies on planning and a very clear indication that the Government’s left hand does not know what their right hand is doing.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I remind the hon. Lady that the regional spatial strategy in Northumberland meant that authorities could build no more than about 20 or 30 houses. It was a very severe limit on the numbers that they could build, and its removal has given them freedom to build more houses, not fewer.
Alison Seabeck
I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but regional spatial strategies were set up to ensure that, ideally, houses were built where there was most need. Clearly, across the country overall, that need was starting to be met under the last Labour Government.
Developers are sitting on land. We have heard about the 300,000 existing permissions. What right-minded developer will build homes when nobody is able to buy them? Again, that is not due to the planning system. Instead of dealing with the critical issue of the economy, and the finance and confidence necessary to deliver the investment and pick house building up off the floor, we are having this smokescreen of a debate on planning. However, a debate has sprung up around the country, and it puts planning at the heart of the conflict between growth, the economy and the countryside. That point was very well made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) in his excellent speech. That is a false choice and it has unhelpfully polarised opinion.
It is important that we have clarity in the system—I do not disagree with hon. Members in different parts of the House on that issue—but this false debate is now proving to be a total distraction. The NPPF is a deeply flawed document that needs to be seriously amended, and I hope that the Minister is listening to Members in all parts of the House because the Government are committed to railroading it through.
Under Labour, the green belt was expanded. We pursued a policy of “brownfield first”. Brownfield expanded as a proportion of new build as we focused on developments and regeneration—a word that is sadly missing from both the Localism Bill and this document.
Alison Seabeck
No, not at the moment.
We focused on existing communities, and that is missing from the NPPF, and we will see more building on greenfield sites.
The need to protect gardens was not dealt with clearly in the Minister’s statement, although it was the driver behind the change in the “brownfield first” presumption. It is not clear exactly how an assessment will be made of land of the least environmental value, and I think that houses and gardens in some very nice areas will fall into that category. We need clearer definitions, and I am pleased that at least he is willing to rethink the wording of brownfield provisions. I urge him to speak to the Prime Minister and insist that when he answers questions on development in the House he should make it clear that there is no threat to the green belt. The Prime Minister should answer the question that he is asked. If he is asked about the threat to green fields—not green belt—he should deal with that. I have to say that the green fields that are going to be built on are in leafy Tory shires.
The NPPF is silent on affordable housing—a point made by my right hon. Friends the Members for Leeds Central and for Greenwich and Woolwich. When is the assessment of housing need going to be made, as there is just a cursory reference to it in the NPPF, and how will the evidence of that need be collated? Again, that is far from clear.
Finally, there was a glimmer of hope or common sense on transitional arrangements, which are vital. Without a transitional period, there will be fears on the one hand of a development free-for-all while, on the other, developers have concerns about the lack of such arrangements. When the Localism Bill is enacted, regional spatial strategies will disappear, and there will be a gap before the NPPF is introduced, with further losses of planned homes on a scale of the losses that have already taken place as a result of announcements by the Secretary of State. This is an incredibly important subject for people on both sides of the debate, and I am pleased that there appears to have been some backtracking.
In the Committee that considered the Localism Bill, the Opposition were asked to legislate without sight of the NPPF. The House, on Report and on Third Reading, was asked to legislate without sight of the document, and now developers and local communities are going to be asked, some time in the future, to plan without sight of the details that they will need, either to support good-quality local development, designed to meet needs, or to protect local areas of importance. Even today, we have had another statement on the abolition of RSSs that discusses the requirement to undertake a proper environmental assessment, albeit voluntarily. It says that the Government are undertaking another consultation on the matter. How can we legislate and make decisions about things as important as the planning policy framework without seeing the outcome of those consultations?
I welcome the fact that the Government have backtracked on their proposals on yet another ill-researched policy that has been introduced in haste. Along with my colleagues, I await the revised NPPF and the debate on it, because the wording of today’s motion is far from accurate. The House has not, in my view, considered the NPPF, and we should be allowed another debate on the revised paper, and a vote.