Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) Order 2016

Brandon Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 General Committees

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. I look forward to hearing other colleagues’ contributions in the next few moments, and I also wish the hon. Member for City of Durham a speedy and full recovery. For many weeks, not too long ago, we enjoyed a good debate in this Room.

I welcome the opportunity to set out our case for the statutory instrument. As hon. Members have said, it is an important instrument that continues our vital work to simplify and streamline the planning system, to support the delivery of new homes and to support our wider economic growth. I will deal with the questions posed by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead, but I find it intriguing to hear her say that she is not against change of use to provide new homes and then spend the next 10 minutes opposing everything to do with change of use, which will deliver the new homes this country needs. That is something we see regularly from the Opposition. At some stage we need to hear from them what they are in favour of, rather than continually hearing their ways to stop us from delivering the houses that our manifesto was very clear we would deliver for people to increase housing supply and home ownership, following the fall in home ownership after 2006 under Labour and the lowest level of house building since 1923 that it left us with.

I thank hon. Members for their contributions on the statutory instrument; I know some Members are going to make them shortly. Statutory instrument No.332, the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) (Amendment) Order 2016, came into force on 6 April 2016. I want to be clear and entirely transparent about the fact that permitted development rights are an important part of our approach. They reduce bureaucracy and delays and provide greater planning certainty, while recognising where specific planning issues require local consideration.

The hon. Lady talked about local voices. We have made sure they are heard in the process. Local authorities, when they have specific issues, can bring forward an article 4 direction. She outlined how that can be difficult and cumbersome; it is actually quite the opposite. Five hundred articles 4s have been brought forward across the country, with 24 specifically on the change of use to housing. Councils can do that. In terms of how the Government will deal with that and the Secretary of State will look at applications, we have a track record over the past couple of years with the temporary permitted developments, where we have worked with local authorities to see article 4s come through. We have specific exemptions for the City of London and certain other London authorities. We think those exemptions are important and should be there. We have structured it in a way that gives the authorities time to put their article 4s in place to overtake those exemptions; they get that full legal protection. Therefore, I think we have a good record of working with local authorities to deliver those article 4s.

The hon. Lady also touched on noise issues, which we rightly discussed and debated during the passage of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. We have brought forward changes to that, which the industry is happy with and warmly welcomes, to deal with the specific issue that she outlined. We do not want the problem—she makes a fair point; it is why we made those changes—where, if somebody takes on permitted development rights and puts a residential development in, the new residents cannot complain about a music venue or venue business that was there before them. That is absolutely right.

On the light industrial changes, article 4 can still apply there. Local authorities will look at that and applications can be put forward. The light industrial changes come in from October 2017 specifically to give local authorities plenty of time to put article 4 requirements in place, if they feel they need to. We are giving them more than a year to ensure that there is no question of any compensation issues. However, nobody has ever had a successful compensation issue.

Article 3 is a requirement under the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 and is required in all regulatory statutory instruments. That is why it is included. It is intended to ensure that the measures remain appropriate.

Article 5 specifically only covers the change of use of shops to financial and professional services. I have previously been the high streets Minister, so I support and want to do that to allow our high streets the flexibility to continue to develop. The high street should change and develop; the industry is telling us that it needs to. We need to provide the flexibility to do that. I want to be very clear that the order does not allow new buildings such as new car parks or anything like that. It is about the change of use of a property.

The permitted development right for the change of use from office to residential is an important part of our ongoing reforms, which will ensure that the right continues to play a valuable role in helping to tackle our housing challenges while reducing the pressure to build on greenfield and green-belt sites, which is something that we and the people of the country care passionately about. Where there are specific local issues, the local planning authority may bring forward an article 4 direction.

The permitted development right for drilling boreholes will enable the drilling of boreholes to carry out specific monitoring and appraisal activities, and the provision or assembly of structures connected with those investigatory works, as precursor actions to inform any potential oil and gas exploration proposals. The early collection and assessment of monitoring information that may be done through the exercise of the permitted development right will inform the environmental considerations for any future planning application for any proposed oil and gas exploration.

The right is subject to similar exclusions and restrictions that have applied to the operation of similar permitted development rights allowing the drilling of boreholes for mineral exploration. Under class KA of part 17 of the order, that includes the power, in the case of development that continues for longer than 28 days, for the mineral planning authority to issue a direction under article 5 of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 to require an application for planning permission for the proposed development in some circumstances. The permitted development rights will not allow the drilling of wells for oil and gas exploration. Any proposed development involving shale exploration will need to be the subject of the planning application process.

The statutory instrument brought forward important legislation that is vital to the delivery of the additional housing that the country needs, and to allow environmental monitoring information to be obtained earlier in the planning process, which is logical and can inform any potential proposals for oil and gas exploration. For the reasons I have set out, I commend the order to the Committee.

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[Brandon Lewis]

I will respond briefly to a couple of points. I tried to limit my contribution by intervening on the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth. She may not be aware that 97% of homes now have their own washing machine, so she will appreciate that that is why it is important that we maximise the use of facilities. It is important to note that the order contains an important safeguard that allows local authorities to consider their local area and the impact of the loss of a laundrette on local services and their key shopping areas.

I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North for his kind remarks, but I fundamentally disagree with his premise. I make no apologies for the fact that we care passionately about housing. I am happy to be here today to make the strong case for why it is important that the Government pull every lever that we possibly can to deliver the homes that people need across our country. I am happy to make the case publicly about the importance of the order in terms of the thousands of homes that it has delivered, many of which would not have been delivered without it.

The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth said that her local authority would have given planning permission for every single application. I do not think that I have met a local authority that has ever done that, but it is very good if her local authority does so. In that case, the order does not have an impact on it other than to help it to get things going much quicker. The planning process can take many years, but the order gets homes moving much quicker. Of course, the councils then benefit from the council tax receipts and the new homes bonus.

If there is a healthy supply of homes in Nottinghamshire, market forces will mean that the terms of the order will be less attractive to developers. That is why the order is important, because it is delivering homes in those core areas where we need them most. My hon. Friend the Member North Dorset described how local authorities deal with land. Thanks to the Housing and Planning Act 2016, we will also now have brownfield registers, which means that information about the land will be in the public domain. That initiative is an important addition to planning permission in principle and gets public sector land out there for development.

The order, which is an important part of our policy to deliver housing, has made an important contribution in the past couple of years. Article 4 offers protection to local authorities but it also means that we can deliver housing through every opportunity available to us.