Oral Answers to Questions

Brandon Lewis Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

4. What guidance his Department has given to local authorities on steps they can take to increase the rate at which new homes are built.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

We have just extended the affordable homes programme—a total of £38 billion-worth of public and private investment, together ensuring that 275,000 new affordable homes will be built between 2015 and 2020. Council housing starts are at a 23-year high, and we expect the independent review into councils’ role in housing supply to report very soon.

[Mr Cunningham]

Does the Secretary of State agree with me that greenfield sites can be very highly valued by local residents and are important for protecting natural habitats and heritage? As we look to build the much-needed houses, will he take steps to assist local authorities to make sure that brownfield sites and inner-city spaces are fully exhausted before any greenfield sites are built on?

[Brandon Lewis]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right that local authorities should be looking to develop brownfield sites first. In fact, we are looking at that with the new starter homes programme that the Prime Minister announced today. We have also put in more money over the summer to encourage local authorities to develop those brownfield sites first and to make them more viable.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, Mid Sussex is making a great attempt to cope with the extraordinary demand for housing in the south-east. Does he agree that a rule allowing the Planning Inspectorate to accept housing development only when there is adequate housing infrastructure to support it would make a great difference to building in the south?

[Brandon Lewis]

That is a very good point. It is important for local authorities and developers to ensure that the infrastructure is there to support housing development, and authorities will seek to do that as part of the planning process and, indeed, as part of their own local-plan process. That is another example of how important it is for local authorities to have local plans in place.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (UKIP)]

If Medway council had acted properly in approving the building of 5,000 houses in a bird sanctuary at Lodge Hill, would the Minister have needed to write to the council offering his guidance on the need for an evidence base to be submitted to him by 12 January?

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman has stood in the House in the past and argued in favour of that development, but he has now changed his position. He and I have not had a conversation about the matter, and I think that that is the right approach, given that it involves a quasi-judicial planning process and the application is still live.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Although both unemployment and homelessness are at an extraordinarily low level in North Wiltshire, we are being told that we must have thousands of unwanted new houses—particularly in the Chippenham area—followed by factories to give jobs to the people who will live in those new houses. While it is fine for houses to be built where they are needed, surely central Government should allow areas such as mine, where housing and jobs are roughly in balance, not to have them.

[Brandon Lewis]

As my hon. Friend will no doubt appreciate, this Government ended the top-down approach adopted by the Labour Government, getting rid of the regional spatial strategies. It is now entirely for local authorities to make evidence-based assessments of local housing development needs, and then to consider how they can provide for them. Decisions should be locally driven, with local people in mind.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

If what the Minister has just said is correct, why did his own planning inspectors suggest to Knowsley council that it should consider using up green-belt land for future housing development as part of its local-plan process?

[Brandon Lewis]

I have not seen the details of that case, but if the right hon. Gentleman forwards them to me, I shall be happy to look at them. In my experience, planning inspectors tend to challenge local authorities about their evidence bases. The national planning policy framework makes it clear that green belt constitutes an environmental constraint, and local authorities can use such constraints as evidence bases when it comes to what they can actually provide. It is for them to do the research, build those evidence bases, and make their case.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

The Minister recently suggested that councils did not need local plans, and that there was no role for central Government if they failed to adopt one. As he knows, however, without local plans communities have absolutely no say in where new houses are built. If he is really serious about local people deciding, why does he think that councils do not need local plans, and why will he not back our proposals to make it a statutory requirement for every council to have one?

[Brandon Lewis]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady has got the planning process slightly wrong. Obviously local authorities in all circumstances have a say in planning, which is a quasi-judicial process. Planning applications go through local authorities. As I have said, there is no need for a statutory rule, because it is in authorities’ own best interests to have local plans, which mean local involvement and local decisions about what development should be allowed and where it should be allowed to take place. If there is no local plan, those matters will fall within the national planning policy framework.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

6. What assessment he has made of the effect of his Department’s demand for a repayment from Social Enterprise North West on local businesses and services in the North West of England.

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[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

18. What progress he has made on delivering large-scale housing sites.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

We are making excellent progress in helping to deliver large-scale housing sites. Through long-term loans for infrastructure, capacity funding and brokerage, we have helped unlock or accelerate more than 90,000 homes to date, and a further 200,000 homes could be unlocked or accelerated on sites shortlisted for investment and wider support.

[Mr Sheerman]

There are so many hard-working people in this country, including many firefighters, who would listen to that reply and not be able to believe the complacency. We have a Department with no leadership, no vision and no ambition, when we need a million new homes for our elderly people and for our young people, who have no chance of a home. This Government will face the wrath of those people at the next general election.

[Brandon Lewis]

As before, I am sure there was a question in there somewhere. [Interruption.] And the audience agree. I find the hon. Gentleman’s follow-up point slightly bizarre, in the sense that this Government have provided roughly 700,000 new homes in the past four or five years, including more council houses than were built in the entire period of the previous Labour Government.

[Mrs Hodgson]

But the truth is that the Government are simply not building enough affordable homes. The number of homes built for social rent over the past year is the lowest it has been for 20 years, so it is little surprise that the waiting list in Sunderland has increased on their watch, whereas it more than halved under Labour. Thankfully, these Ministers have less than five months left in post, but may we have a little more action from them, even in those five months, and a lot fewer re-announcements of yet more empty announcements?

[Brandon Lewis]

I simply point the hon. Lady to the facts: we have now delivered around 220,000 affordable homes in this Parliament, and there will be 165,000 over the next three years. It will be the fastest rate of building we have seen in more than 20 years, having inherited from the last Labour Government the lowest level of building since 1923. It was an absolute disgrace what was left by the last Government.

[Alex Cunningham]

My constituents are concerned that if more houses are ever to be built on Teesside again in substantial numbers, more farmland could be swallowed up even though countless brownfield sites are available. Many of these already have planning permission, yet developers have left them derelict for donkey’s years. What steps is the Minister planning to take to get action from such developers? What will he do if they refuse to bring these kinds of sites, many of them close to our town centres, back into use?

[Brandon Lewis]

As I said earlier, we have in fact put some money in over the course of the summer—a few hundred millions pounds—to encourage brownfield development. We are also now looking at the housing zones, and we will be making some announcements on that fairly soon to make sure we get these sites unlocked. When local authorities are developing their local plans, they are making sure that they are delivering viable sites to provide the houses we all want to see built.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

Leeds city council has divided the city into areas in order to set the house building targets, and in Aireborough the vast majority of the sites being considered are in the green belt. I am aware that the use of green belt can happen only in “exceptional circumstances”. Will the Minister confirm what the definition of “exceptional circumstances” is?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about protecting the green belt, which is something that we always seek to do. The Secretary of State and I have outlined some further guidance on that in the past few months to make it clear that building on green belt land is something that we do as a last resort. Indeed, it is one of the exceptional circumstances to be taken into account against development to make sure that we protect our green belt. Obviously, every planning application has to be taken forward and adjudged on its merits by the local authority, planning inspectors and the Department.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that one challenge in bringing forward large-scale housing sites is the failure of local authorities to allocate sufficient land for housing in their local plan? For example, the Labour-controlled Nuneaton and Bedworth borough council has failed to bring forward a local plan, whereas Rugby borough council has had its local plan in place for some time, and has brought forward a site for 6,000 new homes at the Rugby radio site.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Rugby is an excellent example of a good, well-run council, which seeks to support growth and to provide homes for local people. It is important that local areas, in conjunction with the community, work out their housing need, make provision for it, and take advantage of the £1.5 billion that we are putting in to help unlock those kinds of sites.

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

The coalition came to office promising localism whereby locally elected councillors would decide on large-scale housing developments. In Tendring, the Government have now insisted on an extra 12,000 houses. How is that localism?

[Brandon Lewis]

That is not how the system works. We do not have top-down targets. We got rid of the regional spatial strategies. It is up to the local authority to work out its housing needs and to look at the evidence base to see what it can provide locally, taking into account any environmental constraints.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The recent designation of Bicester as a garden city brings not a single new home to the table, as Bicester had already planned for and started to build 13,000 new homes as outlined in its local plan. Is it not time that the Government thought seriously about how to deliver our much needed new settlements rather than simply repackaging existing developments?

[Brandon Lewis]

With respect, I think the hon. Lady has missed the point. Bicester itself came forward and wanted to develop on garden city principles. When I was there last week, officials showed me around the excellent work that the local authority is doing to release some of the land, including looking at the infrastructure to see how they can make it possible. We are not following a top-down approach. I appreciate that the Labour party wants to have a suit in Whitehall deciding who builds and where, but we believe in localism. Local areas should lead on garden cities. They should come to us with the outlines of what they want to do. I am talking about local decisions, by local people and for local people.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

13. What estimate he has made of the number of small firms and shops in (a) England and (b) Derbyshire local authority area which will have a reduction in business rates in 2015-16.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking on the case on behalf of his residents. He is absolutely right that we should ensure that taxpayers’ money is well spent and that residents should be protected from any erroneous or over-the-top charges, as Florrie’s law, which was introduced in August, seeks to do. I would go further and say that, if those Wolverhampton residents do not feel they are being dealt with properly or appropriately, I would encourage them to go to the Leasehold Advisory Service, which can consider the first-tier tribunal to review their cases.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State recall that I asked him during the previous Question Time to give an early decision on the Coventry gateway project and that I followed that up with a letter? I have not received a reply to either request. I am sure he means no discourtesy, but could he tell us when we might expect a response, because a lot of jobs, business rates and development in the south of Coventry depend on it?

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

T8. The Secretary of State has made localism his thing and he has come across very strongly as the champion of the people. Will he ensure that the people’s voice is heard and listened to when the first wave of hydraulic fracking applications go through, and will he insist that the Government follow the precautionary principle so that all environmental and health concerns will be addressed before an application is granted?

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for standing up to make sure that the process is followed correctly. Obviously, the planning process is quasi-judicial and planning authorities must go through the full process. I will make sure that the chief planning officer keeps an eye on what is happening and ensures that the process is followed, and I will keep an eye on the case myself.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

As I understand it, we will get an announcement later this week about the local government financial settlement for next year, which could involve a 10% reduction in local authority spending. That is as big a cut in one year as central Government Departments have faced throughout the whole of this Parliament. Will the Secretary of State, in the interests of transparency, give an assurance that he will come to this House and make an oral statement, rather than hide behind a written statement as he did last year?