Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether the nutrient neutrality policies of the local planning authorities around the Solent assist Southern Water in its efforts to control the effect of discharges of sewage into rivers and the sea.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Nutrient Neutrality, through the provision of mitigation, ensures that development does not contribute additional nutrient loads to the Solent catchment, avoiding additional harm and so adverse effects to habitats sites.
My department and DEFRA have established a cross-Government task force to tackle nutrient pollution and enable development to continue. The cross-Government taskforce continues to identify the range of options in the short, medium and long term. Defra having recently published the Strategic Policy Statement to Ofwat, making clear that Ofwat and water companies should consider nutrients pollution in line with their environmental duties, which include duties under the Habitat Regulations; working with wider stakeholders to support efforts to tackle nutrients pollution.
Defra together with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Natural England, the Environment Agency, the Forestry Commission and the Partnership for South Hampshire (PfSH) are working with EnTrade to develop a nutrient trading pilot project in the Solent region. The project aims to connect developers, who need to offset pollution from new developments, with landowners willing to undertake land use change to reduce pollution. This will help to unblock housing delivery whilst avoiding further harm to important protected wildlife sites and delivering wider environmental benefits.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what guidance has been issued to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors on the need for external wall surveys on buildings less than 18 metres high.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
An EWS1 form is not a statutory or regulatory requirement nor a safety ‘test’, it is a form used for valuation and was introduced by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), together with UK Finance and the Building Societies Association.
Government also supports the independent expert statement from July 2021 which was clear that there is no systemic risk of fire in residential buildings under 18 metres and that EWS1s should not be required on buildings under 18 metres. However, RICS announced in December that they will retain their valuation guidance including for buildings under 18 metres but committed to keep it under review. This is disappointing and we continue to work with RICS to address their disproportionate approach to risk. We must make sure that RICS are equipped to support a solution to this building safety challenge which is why we plan to legislate to allow the Secretary of State to conduct a review into their governance.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 13 January 2021 to Question HL11693, whether development on Crown Land is exempt from (a) the Habitats Directive and (b) all planning regulations.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
Since 2006, development by the Crown has been subject to planning permission under Part 13 of The Town and Country Planning Act 1990. This development is not exempt from the current habitats regulations.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, by what date he plans to bring forward legislative proposals on leasehold reform.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Government is taking forward a comprehensive programme of reform to end unfair practices in the leasehold market. This includes measures to ban the sale of new leasehold houses, restrict ground rents to zero for future leases, give freehold homeowners equivalent rights to challenge unfair charges, and close loopholes to prevent unfair evictions.
We are also working with the Law Commission to make buying a freehold or extending a lease easier, quicker and cheaper – and to reinvigorate commonhold to provide consumers with a choice of tenure and the Right to Manage to help empower those that wish to, to take on management responsibilities for their properties.
This is a long-term reform programme; it is complex with many interdependencies and will take time to get the detail right. Once it is enacted the effect will be felt for generations and so we are determined this work considers all the implications with care. We will bring forward leasehold legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, by what date the New Homes Ombudsman will be established and taking on cases.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The New Homes Ombudsman scheme will enhance consumer protection for new build homebuyers. Published on 20 July 2020, the draft Building Safety Bill includes provision for the New Homes Ombudsman scheme to resolve disputes between developers and consumers. The legislation has finished pre-legislative scrutiny and we are considering the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committees’ recommendations. Alongside introducing legislation, we continue to stay in touch with the industry-led New Homes Quality Board to consider the appointment of a voluntary New Homes Ombudsman scheme.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of suspending the five year Housing Land Supply for Councils requirement in the Solent Region in response to the need to establish a suitable nitrate mitigation regime.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government recognises the challenges local authorities in the Solent are facing, and officials from across Government and its agencies are working closely together to identify practical ways forward. However, it is important to keep the planning system moving so it can play its full part in the economic recovery to come. We will keep this matter under review.
In the absence of the 5 year land supply, the presumption in favour of housing development will not be at the expense of important protected areas, such as Green Belt, Sites of Special Scientific Interest and irreplaceable habitats.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has made an assessment of whether use of emergency development provisions under the Town and Country Planning Act override the need for nitrate mitigation measures in the Solent region.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Habitats Regulations apply to plans or projects which are likely to have a significant effect on a protected habitats site. All development, whether emergency or not is subject to this requirement, regardless of the legislation under which planning permission is granted.
Where a plan or project is likely to have significant effects on the environment the competent authority will need to undertake an Appropriate Assessment to determine whether development will have an adverse effect on the protected site. The competent authority may only grant consent where adequate mitigation of any adverse effect can be secured to enable development to proceed – such as nitrate neutrality.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether temporary overnight accommodation proposed in the Solent region requires the installation of nitrate mitigation measures before development can commence.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
Under the Habitats Regulations, it is for the competent authority to decide, through undertaking an appropriate assessment and considering advice from Natural England, whether a particular application requires mitigation measures and the adequacy of these proposals. It may be possible for individual proposals to advance mitigation schemes other than nitrate neutrality that are sufficient to demonstrate to the competent authority that an individual scheme would not have an adverse effect on the protected habitats sites.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on reducing the requirements for nitrate mitigation measures for overnight accommodation in the Solent region.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
I will be meeting the Minister for the Environment to discuss the effect that nutrient pollution is having on development. Officials from across government and its agencies are working closely together to identify practical ways forward across the country. In the Solent, we have committed £3.9 million of funding to pilot a nutrient trading process to secure nature-based solutions to nitrate pollution across the Solent area, and a loan offer of up to £5.7 million to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust to deliver mitigation to unlock stalled planning applications.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what progress he has made in tackling nitrate neutrality in the Solent.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
The Government has been working to understand the nitrogen pollution problems in the Solent, the impacts on housing delivery and the options for enabling growth whilst avoiding harm to important protected sites. In September, we announced £3.9 million of funding to pilot a nutrient trading process to secure nature-based solutions to nitrate pollution across the Solent area. We have also made a loan offer of up to £5.7 million to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust to deliver mitigation to unlock stalled planning applications.
We are aware of the challenges faced through nutrient pollution and are seeking to address the most common sources of polluting nutrients to water. Agriculture is now the most significant source of pollution in our rivers, lakes and seas. This Government is using a package of measures to combat this, including Catchment Sensitive Farming, regulation and incentives. We will use the flexibility achieved by leaving the EU to replace Common Agricultural Policy subsidies (CAP) with an Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme through the Agriculture Act 2020 which will pay farmers for taking action to reduce pollution and restore habitats which go beyond regulatory requirements.
This Government remains committed to bringing at least three quarters of our waters to as close as possible to their natural state as soon as is practicable. In support of this, a further legally binding target is being brought forward as part of the target setting processes set out in DEFRA’s Environment Bill. The Environment Bill will place a statutory requirement on water companies to produce drainage and sewerage management plans, and we will continue to press water companies to protect both people and the environment.