Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his view. I will come on to address that point substantially in my remarks.

We are modernising our planning system, putting local people at its heart so that it delivers more of what communities want. The reformed system will champion beautiful design in keeping with local style and preferences and ensure that development is sustainable and accompanied by the infrastructure that communities will benefit from.

The Bill further strengthens protections for the environment so that better outcomes are at the heart of planning decisions. I am pleased to be able to inform the House that we have reached agreement with both the Welsh and Scottish Governments on a UK-wide approach to environmental outcomes reports in part 6 of the Bill.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

May I welcome the amendment that the Government tabled in the other place that will have the effect of addressing the issues I raised on Second Reading about the propensity of developers simply to clear a site in advance, with no regard for the wildlife on it at all? We had a controversial case of that happening only last week. I think the amendment will make a real difference and stop that terrible practice happening. It is a good example of the Government’s commitment to wildlife and the environment. I am grateful to the Minister.

[Rachel Maclean]

I thank my right hon. Friend from the bottom of my heart for all the work he has done to protect wildlife both in his constituency and across the country. Hedgehogs will be a lot safer for his determined work—and not only hedgehogs but all other species of our beloved wildlife.

Nutrient Neutrality: Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I very much value the hon. Gentleman’s scrutiny of the Government’s record and I very much enjoy coming before his Committee. We have discussed this issue, and many others, with his Committee in the past. It is right that we are taking this action. It is a serious and complex issue, and we needed time to consider all the legal aspects of it. However, what I come back to time and time again is that we need to unblock planning permissions. We need housing all over the country. We are doing that at the same time as protecting the environment and I very much hope to have further dialogue with him about this in the future.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

It is always baffling to hear those who believe in environmental improvement saying that only the EU way works. Does the Minister agree with me that outside the EU we have been able to adapt our laws to what works for this country, and also make improvements such as marine protected areas and provide support to agriculture outside the common agricultural policy? To say that leaving the EU has meant a degradation in our approach to the environment is simply nonsense.

[Rachel Maclean]

My right hon. Friend speaks from vast experience on this issue. I can do no more than agree strongly with every word. Leaving the EU allows us to make the laws that are right for our country, most specifically in the area of building the homes we need across his area and across the whole country. The point here is also that the EU legacy judgment has not improved the quality of the water. That is why we are taking further steps to mitigate the problem at source. Everybody who cares about the quality of water should welcome that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I will give way one final time, and then I will make some progress.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman represents a seat in outer London, so he will understand that there are constraints on the ability of some areas to absorb development. The Government are simply saying that a local authority should use best endeavours but that there will be circumstances in which it simply cannot meet an arbitrary numeric target. As an MP for an urban area, surely that is something he should welcome.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis. We do not know precisely what the Government have in mind for local housing targets, but my reading of their announcement is not that local authorities will simply use best endeavours. Although local house building targets will remain as an aspiration, they will not be enforced and we will therefore see a hit to housing supply, with a resulting hit to economic growth.

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[Stella Creasy]

I am sorry, but I cannot give way, because of the time. The hon. Member will have her say too.

Amendment 2 would put childcare on an equal footing. Why are we making this form of infrastructure second best? Why are we debating the matter when it seems that there is common agreement? We all recognise, if we have dealt with local government, the need to clarify things and put them in legislation. The right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) talked similarly about waste and water infrastructure, and the Minister was happy to confirm that that was covered. We need to give councils a clear line, and that is what I am looking for from the Minister today, because I think she has actually muddied the water somewhat. We must ensure that we write things into legislation so that we put these debates beyond doubt.

Let us do this for the sake of our children and our economy, and for all the women sitting at home right now watching the debate because they cannot get the childcare they want to be able to get back to work and pay taxes. This is a cross-party issue, but it will divide the House, and it will send a clear message about whose side we are on when it comes to those parents. The amendment would mean the world to all those parents who are struggling to find affordable childcare places right now. I pay tribute to Pregnant Then Screwed for setting out so clearly the impact that it could have, because investment in childcare pays for itself.

I ask the Minister to rethink her words, to say clearly that childcare is infrastructure, and to write it down in the legislation in the way that she has for water and waste, so that parents and potholes get equal attention from us in this place.

[Chris Grayling]

I rise to talk specifically about new clauses 3 and 5, but first I should make a point on the broader housing issue. My constituency is the smallest borough in my county, and it is the most densely populated part of my county. It was never realistic for the centrally designed targets to apply to an area where we were being asked to increase the housing stock by about 25% to 30%. I praise Ministers for reaching what I believe to be a sensible compromise.

I am very much in favour of new homes in my constituency—I have argued for a number of new developments, and I continue to do so—but house building cannot be simply unrestricted. It cannot be at the level that a formula requires; we must apply common sense. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely), in negotiation with the Secretary of State, have come up with a sensible way forward that will deliver extra housing—I passionately believe that we have to have extra homes in my constituency—but in a sustainable way. We must remember that the national planning policy framework requires us to strike the right balance between three things: building new houses, looking after the local economy and looking after the local environment. I believe that what we have on the table now will deliver that.

I turn to the new clauses. On solar power, I have a simple message for Ministers. I cannot understand why we have not reached a point where it is mandatory to put solar panels on the roof of every new building in this country. Although I do not think new clause 3 will take us through the Division Lobbies tonight, I strongly urge Ministers to work across Government to deliver that. When I was Secretary of State for Transport, I argued that the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities should insert a requirement for a charging point in every house with off-street parking. I still believe that, but there is really no reason at all not to have solar panels on the roof of every property, whether or not it has parking space. It should be a central part of our future strategy, and I strongly urge Ministers to adopt it.

New clause 5, which I have personally pushed forward, is what I describe as “the hedgehog amendment”—I speak as the parliamentary species champion for the hedgehog—but it is much broader than that. It is about saying that it is simply wrong for a developer to be able to acquire a site and clear it without doing a proper holistic survey of the ecology on that site. It is absolutely vital that, as we are a Government who believe in strengthening biodiversity safeguards in this country, there should be tight rules for developers. They are obliged to do surveys for the presence of bats and newts, but there are a whole range of other vulnerable species that do not fall under that requirement. I want to see very clear legal rules that say, “You buy a site, you survey what is there. If you identify vulnerable species on the site, you have a duty of care to those vulnerable species to relocate them and provide alternative habitats.”

The Government have done good things on biodiversity net gain, but I want to see a situation where a vulnerable species on a site is not likely to be cleared away by a bulldozer. That does happen—there was an horrendous case in the west country recently. About 20 hedgehogs were killed by the reckless clearance of a site. We have all seen it in our constituencies. Developers do it to create the sense of, “Well, it’s a wasted site anyway. We cannot use it again, so you should give us consent to build houses on it.” My new clause provides a way to ensure that does not happen.

I want to pay tribute to the Minister. We have had some very constructive dialogue on this issue and I know she is pretty sympathetic to the aims I have put forward. What I ask of her today—I think she may have a clear sense of how we can go forward—is, in her closing remarks, to set a direction for the Government that will provide the actual protections I am seeking, which will reinforce the work we have already done to protect biodiversity and ensure the particular ability of developers to come in and clear a site is absolutely precluded in law. I wait with interest to hear what the Minister says in winding up. I praise her for what she has done so far on housing and on many other aspects to the Bill. I hope she will also be able to deal with this aspect, the biodiversity issue, in her remarks and as we go forward.

[Tim Farron]

There are a number of amendments in my name, but given the time we have I will focus on housing, including existing stock and new stock. Let me start by talking about new stock.

New clause 44 and amendment 22, in my name, would give local authorities, particularly in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty such as my own in Cumbria, the power to enforce 100% affordability in new developments. I am fed up of developments in my community where we have to build, say, 100 houses to get 30 affordables. That is 70 homes that are fundamentally a waste of bricks. We are building homes for demand, but not for need. We have thousands of people on the council house waiting list. Homes will, of course, fly off the shelves for handsome prices in a place like Cumbria, but they are houses we do not need. They do not add to our infrastructure and in many ways they undermine it by becoming more holiday lets or second homes. Give us that power, as local communities.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Chris Grayling Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

Areas can get consolidation of local transport funding. They can get a role in designing and delivering future employment programmes and access to something called a long-term investment fund, but only if they can clear the bar of the upper tier and only if they accept a governance arrangement that is imposed from Whitehall.

I went back to look at what the Prime Minister promised when he made his levelling-up speech last year:

“Come to us with a plan for strong accountable leadership and we will give you the tools to change your area for the better”.

Will the Secretary of State tell me why a kid in Barnsley should have to turn down an apprenticeship because of the lack of a functioning bus service while a kid in Bolton can take one up just because somebody hundreds of miles away in Whitehall, who has never set foot in either of those communities, decided that they liked the look of the local leaders—the local leaders we chose—in one area more than another? Why is there not a right in the Bill for every area to have democratic control over their bus services, if that is what they choose?

The Secretary of State said that the last Labour Government did not devolve power in England, but let me remind him of what can be done, and what was done, with the right level of commitment and imagination. It was the last Labour Government who set up the regional development agencies. In the north-west of England, which I call home, we had the foresight to bring Media City to Salford. That was not just about the economic regeneration of one of the most disadvantaged areas of the country; it was also a key measure that started to rebalance the national debate that determined who had a voice and who got a place and was reflected in our national story.

Under the last Labour Government, the regional development agency in Yorkshire was among the first to see the potential of wind in Grimsby—the Grimsby docks are the windiest place in Europe—and I have met those young people who, a generation later, are powering the world from the Grimsby docks through clean energy and life-changing apprenticeships. It is not just in Grimsby that the Yorkshire regional development agency saw potential; it looked for potential everywhere. It understood the legacy of skills, because of steel cutting from the steel industry, that made Rotherham an ideal location for one of the most incredible advanced manufacturing centres in the world. That is what real power and devolution looks like.

All that potential in our communities, realised by the last Labour Government, has now been collapsed into the spectacle of two proud cities that were at the forefront of the industrial revolution—Birmingham and Manchester —begging for the right to introduce a tourist levy on hotel bedrooms. When they have come to Whitehall, it is not just Ministers’ doors that have been repeatedly closed to them, but their minds as well.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

I am listening very carefully to the hon. Lady, who, to be frank, is painting a picture of doom and gloom in the northern part of the country over the past 10 years. Could she explain, then, why unemployment in her constituency is 30% lower than it was when we took office in 2010? Does she not think that that is a good thing?

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[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

I greatly welcome the change of tone from the Minister and Secretary of State in recent weeks; they have taken a step in the right direction, but I still want the Bill to address a number of points as it progresses.

I represent a constituency that is largely urbanised and the land that is not urbanised is green belt or parkland; it is simply not possible to meet the targets that were set out based on the 2014 census. So my first point to the Minister is that we must move away from that as being the basis for a calculation of housing numbers. We also need to move away from the inspectorate being able to simply impose national targets on a local authority; local authorities must have serious input into what the real housing needs are.

My second point is that in my area the housing needs assessments have been based on the salaries of people who work in the constituency, but in commuting areas such as mine a lot of those people do not live in the constituency; in fact many, many of my constituents work in central London and earn more. That is also a flaw in the methodology that needs to be changed.

I think there is general acceptance across these Benches that we need to set some pretty tight parameters for the inspectorate. There are too many cases of the inspectorate doing its own thing; Ministers have been pretty clear in saying, “This is what our national policy is” on, for instance, the green belt, but all too often the inspectors simply do something different. They are there to implement policy, not to run the policy. I hope the Bill will include clear measures to make sure the inspectorate has strict parameters to work within in the future.

I would also like the Minister to take up two points in terms of the environmental sections of the Bill, one of which he is aware of. I think we have all experienced situations where somebody looking to apply for planning consent just clears a site—they rip the whole thing apart before applying for planning consent, with no thought for the ecology of the site or, frankly, the surrounding area. In doing so, they pay no attention to whether there are any vulnerable species on that site or implications for the local ecology. That must change, and I will be pushing as the Bill progresses for a provision that requires developers to do a holistic survey of the ecology and wildlife of a site and, if they identify vulnerable species, to have a plan to relocate those species. That must be an essential part of the planning application; developers simply must not be able to clear a site before going for planning consent, and they must have duties to look after the wildlife, plants and animals on that site if they are going to develop it. The Minister knows I will be pushing for that, and I hope he and the Government will take it up and introduce such a provision themselves.

We rightly focused a lot last year on better environmental practices generally and requiring each area to have nature recovery networks as we must reverse the decline of so many of our species in this country, but that must not happen in isolation from the local planning process; there must be a link between the two. Local authorities shaping a local plan must also be mindful of their plan for a nature recovery network—what needs to be done to restore the wildlife in that area and reverse the loss of species. I ask the Minister to look carefully as the Bill progresses through Committee and Report at how we can create that link in this legislation so the obligation is clear and it is put in the local plan. Local authorities are planning for housing need and there is indeed a housing need; my constituency and others around the country need more homes and all of us have a duty to work to try to ensure that those homes are delivered in the best way possible, but we must not do that at the expense of the natural world with no reference at all to what we have all been debating over the past couple of years, namely having better conservation in the UK. I ask the Minister to make that a part of the Bill as well.

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[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is challenging me to expose my parliamentary expertise, but this is really in the hands of the Committee, so I would ask him to kindly lobby members of the Committee to help me get the Bill through, and I can help him with his aim.

Let me mention a key element that people have been raising, which is the issue of the five-year land supply. If an area has an up-to-date local plan, it will no longer need to demonstrate such a land supply, and that is so that we can stop speculative development.

[Chris Grayling]

Part of the problem we face—for example, in an area where there are small local district councils in charge of planning—is that, however much Ministers may say that targets are not targets, the local officers see them as such and see their task as being to implement a number that has landed on their desk. It is really important during this process that we break free of that. One of the reasons that councils are taking so long to form their plans is, frankly, that it takes so long for them to work out what on earth to do with the targets. Can my right hon. Friend please bear in mind, as he takes the Bill through, how we send clear messages to councils about what they are and what they are not expected to do?

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He knows—we have had a number of conversations on this very issue—that these are the things we are looking at. I look forward to bringing them forward as part of the Bill.

I want to touch on the issue of build out. I have heard loud and clear from colleagues, and so has my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, about the issue of developers seeming to take a long time from approval to build houses. These commencement orders and an agreed rate of delivery will, we hope, help us to get such permissions built out much more quickly.

A number of Members—my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) and others—have raised their concerns about the national development management policies. One of the key aims of the Bill is to reduce the administrative burden on local councils so that they can concentrate on delivering high-quality, locally-led plans. That is why, through this Bill, we hope to shift the onus of delivering on national priorities to central Government through introducing a set of national development management policies. These policies will cover the most important national planning issues facing the sector, including net zero, tackling climate change and making sure that we are also dealing with heritage issues and protections of green belt.

To those who are concerned that these provisions will somehow override local plans, I would say that that is not the intention. The intention is to produce swifter, slimmer plans to remove the need for generic issues that apply universally, which will help us to reduce time-consuming duplication, and to ensure that local plans are more locally focused and relevant to the local communities. I hope that, during the passage of this Bill, we will be able to give more assurance on that.

Planning Permissions and Unauthorised Developments

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Bacon]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. That is precisely the sort of abuse of the system that I ask the Government to address. Such abuses have a material and long-lasting impact on local people. When people are seen to get away with it, that just encourages more of the same.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

I might, if my hon. Friend will allow me, seek to catch the Chair’s eye momentarily after his remarks. As he moves forward with this and as he, I hope, encourages the Government to take up his proposals, could he ensure that they include commercial operations? I have experience in my constituency; it is not just residential developers doing this, but commercial developers and businesses. I echo the points that have been made, but that must be a part of what he does.

[Gareth Bacon]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the intervention and I agree entirely. The point is very well made and I can see the Minister on the Treasury Bench paying close attention. It is a subject that he and I have discussed on many occasions, and I look forward to hearing what he says in a moment.

The impact of all of this goes beyond local areas, as local authorities that pursue enforcement action against rogue developers have to spend significant sums of taxpayers’ cash on legal battles. When I introduced my Bill back in the autumn, I referred at length to a case in my constituency as an example of what can occur. That case is now subject to consideration by the courts, so I will not go into that detail again, save to make the observation that it has taken more than a year to get to this point and the end is still not in sight. However, it does not impact just my constituency—it is a national problem. Such incidents, as I have heard from my hon. Friends, are widespread.

In another example, in 2018, an unauthorised development was set up around Chelmsford on a Saturday morning, meaning that the planning enforcement team were able to visit the site only on the following Monday, by which time caravans, a digger and lorries carrying materials had all been brought on to the site in a pre-planned and co-ordinated attempt to build as much as possible so that it would become unviable for the council to dismantle the works. Neither of those incidents are easily resolvable. My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) has spoken in this House about procedural battles on development sites in Guildford and Leatherhead that have lasted between 14 and 18 years. Green belt land has been acquired and built over without planning permission in both locations.

So what solutions might there be? When I introduced my ten-minute rule Bill, I stated that I believed that the solution lay in legislative change to move unauthorised developments without permission from being a civil offence to being a criminal offence. I made the argument that that would prevent rogue developers from appealing enforcement action and block retrospective planning permission automatically. I stated that any change should not aim to remove certain permitted development rights for private households. Nor should it attempt to single out encampments by certain specific communities. Any fair planning system should recognise that developments could unintentionally stray from the approved plans when constructed. In order to avoid the danger of people who have inadvertently breached planning regulations being criminalised, for example, in cases where an extension is slightly too large or where someone implemented something erroneously, believing that they had permitted development rights, the Bill I drafted distinguished between more minor, accidental planning permission breaches, and egregious breaches where someone repeatedly attempted to bypass the planning system, or where the breach occurred on protected land such as the green belt. In such instances, the rules need to be flexible enough to consider the circumstances of the breach. However, I believe this should be balanced against the need to ensure the system is strong enough to close the loophole that rogue developers are currently exploiting.

There are a range of potential solutions. As I have stated, my solution was to change the law to make unauthorised development a criminal offence. An alternative might be to reform the pre-existing enforcement provisions, for example, by rapidly speeding up the process by which planning enforcement can take place, and perhaps vastly increasing the level of fines applicable and limiting the timescales and grounds for appeal.

Whatever solution we opt for, the case for change is substantial. I have seen at first hand local authorities’ difficulties in deterring and stopping rogue developers from building without permission. I have seen the damage that that can cause. I have witnessed the frustration of local residents who find their local areas threatened and I have heard from local councillors and their officers about the long drawn-out, inefficient and very expensive processes they are obliged to follow in attempting to deal with the problem.

We can strengthen councils’ ability to act, protect the green belt and ensure that communities get their say on local developments by changing the law. When the planning Bill comes to the House, it will be a golden opportunity to take steps to protect local residents, stamp out these abuses of the planning process and right a very clear wrong. I urge the Government to pay heed to the issue. I very much look forward to hearing the comments of my right hon. Friend the Minister.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

I am very grateful to have caught your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to have the opportunity to make a contribution to this slightly extended Adjournment debate. I promise my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) that it will be a brief one.

I have a dreadful situation in my constituency. Over the past 12 months, a local chalk pit on green-belt land, which has historically been a combination of an overflow for the local car dealers and a transfer site for local skip dealers, has been transformed by one operator—a local firm, NJB Recycling—into a full recycling centre without planning consent. It is now applying retrospectively for planning consent; I have opposed the application and hope that it will be turned down.

The experience of the past 12 months has highlighted an issue to which I hope the Minister will give some thought in discussion with his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Not only is there an unlawful use of the site, and not only is the operator applying for retrospective consent—I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that someone should not be allowed to set up a commercial operation without permission and get away with it—but the agencies involved do not have the powers to deal with a contravention of planning consent.

The facility is regulated by the Environment Agency, whose performance over the past 12 months has, I have to say, been lamentable. The site is causing massive noise nuisance to local residents; it is a few yards away from houses that are now being subjected to substantial noise all day long. We have had massive dust problems, and there have been huge traffic problems with the dramatic expansion in the use of the site. It is a shocking example of something that simply should not be able to happen.

Not only has the performance by the Environment Agency’s team been lamentable, but it has not used the powers that it has to try to restrain things. Frankly, it has not followed its own assessment of the scale of the problem: it carried out an independent assessment, found out that the operator was in breach and then failed to act on that breach. It has said all along that it cannot act to close down, or withdraw a permit from, an operator that is operating a site unlawfully, even though the operator has changed the nature of its work and is now operating in a way that is unlawful in planning terms.

We need a joined-up approach to regulation. We should not have a situation in which the planning authority receives a retrospective application for an unlawful use of a site, but the regulations that apply to the site’s use under the auspices of the Environment Agency do not permit the Environment Agency to say “stop.” My message to the Minister, to whom I am happy to speak in more detail as he prepares the planning Bill, is that two agencies should not have different enforcement powers and different abilities to intervene in a case of unlawful use and a retrospective planning application.

I would like the whole thing to be stopped. I would like all the agencies involved to act in unison and say, “You ain’t got permission to use the site in this way. It’s against planning law, you don’t have consent, you’re applying retrospectively—you should not be doing what you’re doing.” Everyone should have the power to step in and say, “You must stop.” I am happy to share more detail with the Minister; I have been talking to DEFRA Ministers as well.

I want a joined-up approach so that all the agencies have the same power to intervene when a site is being used unlawfully and when a retrospective application is made. Actually, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington that a retrospective planning application simply should not be allowed anyway, but at the moment we have a disjointed situation among the different agencies. I encourage the Minister to work with me to address it in legislation.

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[Christopher Pincher]

I appreciate and recognise my hon. Friend’s concern. We do want to ensure that the innocent are not caught up in a regime that pursues the guilty, but we also want to ensure that the system is more speedy and has much greater deterrent effects on those who attempt to gamble with the law, those who attempt to bend it and, indeed, those who choose to break it.

We all recognise that the reason why we need the important debate my hon. Friend has brought to the House today is that we believe—we genuinely believe—that there is more that we can do, and there is more that we shall do. As everyone in the House will appreciate, we are committed to improving our planning system and making it one that delivers better outcomes for people in all parts of the country. It is going to be the bedrock of one of our principal missions, which is to level up the United Kingdom and to help revive and regenerate those areas that have long felt forgotten by politicians of all stripes in Westminster. In our constituencies, however affluent they may be on the face of it, we all have areas of our constituency where there is deprivation and where residents feel left behind, and we have to fix that.

When it comes to pulling the handbrake on unauthorised developments in their areas, we want to make it even easier for local planning authorities to step in and make sure that retrospective planning permission is not exploited by those bent on gaming the system. Let me be clear: retrospective applications are only for individuals or businesses that have made a genuine mistake. As my hon. Friend alluded to, the enforcement process needs to work better. We make that happen by closing loopholes, and strengthening the existing powers and penalties at our disposal.

As we modernise our planning system in England, we plan to engage with communities and key stakeholders throughout the planning process. Our ambition is to ensure that the outdated system, which is essentially a relic of the post-war period, is now made fit for the 21st century, with proper digitisation of applications so that residents can easily see the proposed development in their area at the touch of their smartphone screen. As my hon. Friend and others have said, we have all seen and read about egregious examples of people bending the rules on retrospective planning applications. My hon. Friend mentioned the situation of the caravan park in Chelmsford, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell mentioned the situation faced by his constituents in Epsom. We see such challenges from individuals and commercial organisations up and down the country.

The simple idea behind retrospective applications is that they give people who have failed to seek planning permission prior to building a structure a fair chance to get the necessary approvals.

[Chris Grayling]

My right hon. Friend made the important point that a retrospective application should only be for somebody who has made a genuine mistake. May I press him a little bit on that? Should a local authority—and, crucially, the inspectorate—disallow a retrospective application that is clearly not based on a genuine mistake?

[Christopher Pincher]

Essentially, it should, but of course there are legal interpretations that need to be considered. Therefore, we need to ensure that any rule changes that we make are right, that they do not allow the new system to be gamed and therefore brought into disrepute, and that they do not lead to unintended and unfair consequences for, shall we say, the innocent.

Over the years, the system has been deliberately gamed by cowboy builders creating large structures or even whole developments before trying their luck with the local council to see whether they can get retrospective planning permission. There is one infamous case in Bedfordshire, which saw a local business owner who was originally granted permission to make a modest improvement to his 1960s bungalow end up building a three-storey mega-mansion, complete with a turret and sweeping balconies. That is just not right; it is the sort of egregious development that should not be allowed.

In other cases, we have heard of, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) has said, lorries and building equipment arriving on site in the dead of night or at the weekend, and people laying internal roads and hardstanding without planning permission. Retrospective planning permission is then sought soon afterwards, and wrongly so. Clamping down on such flagrant planning violations and abuses of the system is going to be a key focus of my Department. It is one of the reasons why we have made intentional unauthorised development a material planning consideration, meaning that local authorities can factor in intent behind the unauthorised development when considering a retrospective application. In other words, it is not enough for builders to plead ignorance when it is plain for all—not least the planning authority—to see that they were well aware that their structure needed planning permission right from the outset.

Legislation also states that retrospective applications must be assessed in the same way as standard planning applications, so that permission cannot be granted retrospectively if there was little or no prospect of it being approved in the first place.

People making small improvements to their own home or garden are human, like all of us. Our constituents might not always think that we are human, but, like them, we are, and we know that genuine mistakes can be made. They will happen, so it would be unfair, where someone built their rear extension a foot too high, for example, or erected a fence in the wrong place, to take a sledgehammer to that work when retrospective planning permission would do. We have to be fair, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington said in his remarks.

With that principle in mind, while also accounting for the natural frustration that people and communities can feel about unauthorised development, criminalisation for infringements that fall into the minor or unwitting camp would be disproportionate. That is why we need to make sure that any changes we make are right and do not lead to unintended and unfair consequences.

As the House will know, we are considering a whole suite of possible planning reforms. I reassure my hon. Friend that that includes consideration of whether the current scope of offences is fit for purpose. He mentioned some matters, including using such terms as “egregious” in the law. We would need to look closely at that to ensure that there is a fair and proper legal interpretation of that word. He mentioned the greater use of fines, and we will certainly look at that possibility. The fundamental must be that the system deters retrospective planning applications and also deters the activity that results in those retrospective applications—the building in the first place.

We recognise that these reforms will only be worth making if our local authorities and the wider planning sector have the right tools to implement them and are able to give our planning enforcement regime proper teeth. To that end, an additional £65 million was made available by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Budget last year. That will help build the skills and capability that we need at the local level to translate our words into deeds on the ground.

As we look beyond the here and now, our commitment in the long term is to digitisation. Digitisation will mean that local authorities and their planning officers have much more space and much more time to focus on the things that really matter, rather than the administrative bumf that goes along with the present planning system. By digitising the system, we can make it more effective, and we can also create the headroom for planning officers and other officials to be more effective in their own work.

I will say a few brief words on appeals, which I know are a bugbear for many communities that find themselves in protracted and exhausting disputes. We certainly want them speeded up. It is absolutely right that everyone should be able to make their case and to have that case heard. Our priority is to accelerate that process by closing loopholes through future planning reforms. We are undoubtedly making progress in that direction. In the 18-month stretch from March 2020—the height of the covid pandemic—the Planning Inspectorate issued some 3,300 appeal decisions on enforcement cases. However, as I set out, there is more to be done to improve how the fundamentals of our appeals process work, and that has to start with removing the incentive for those who set out deliberately to abuse the system to try to delay the appeals process. I will say more about that as we advance our planning reforms, and I am happy to discuss it further with my hon. Friend and other Members to ensure that we get this aspect of our reforms right.

I thank my hon. Friend for championing this issue on behalf of his constituents, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who contributed. The concerns raised echo through local authorities around the country, and I assure the House that they echo through my Department. They will have been heard loudly and clearly, and we are determined to act on them. I look forward to working with colleagues from across the House in the months to come to ensure that we get our planning reforms ready, right and on the statute book so that all our constituents are protected.

Question put and agreed to.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The hon. Gentleman asks what we are doing to speed up the surveying process. We are making more professionals available to undertake EWS assessments. We are spending something like £700,000 to fund the training of those assessors, and we will produce about 2,000 of them over the next six months, which should help to speed up the process.

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

In my constituency, the biggest concern for residents has been the inappropriate application of these rules and the EWS form to much lower-rise buildings than were ever envisaged and the resulting problems created for them in selling flats, moving flat and so forth. I welcome the announcements made by my right hon. Friend last weekend; I am grateful to him for that. Could I ask him to keep up the pressure on the different professionals and organisations involved, to ensure that this problem really does disappear? These homeowners should not be subject to pressures because of something that is not designed for their kind of property.

[Christopher Pincher]

My right hon. Friend can ask, and we will.

Planning and House Building

Chris Grayling Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

We were elected 12 months ago on a platform of building more houses, and we need to build more houses; there is no doubt about that at all. But we were also elected on a platform of rebalancing our economy, protecting our green belt and looking after natural England. I am afraid that although I praise many elements of what the Minister is trying to achieve, this housing algorithm is completely inconsistent with the promises we made a year ago.

If we go ahead with a housing approach of the kind that the Government are setting out in the algorithm, the reality is that economic growth, the brightest and best people in society, and opportunity will continue to be sucked into the south-east of England. That is exactly the opposite of what this country needs to achieve. If we are to be successful in the future, we need to be more like countries such as Germany, where the economic centre of the nation is not in one place, but is spread out over a number of successful and prosperous cities. If one walks around the cities of the midlands and the north, it is clear that there is not a lack of developable land and opportunity; there is plenty. There are endless relics of more prosperous times for those cities in the past that can and should be regenerated for the future. The solution is not simply shoehorning more and more into the south-east.

I represent one of the constituencies that will be directly affected if the Government go ahead with this policy. The Office for National Statistics says that our future housing need is around 250 new houses a year. The previous target, which was unsustainable, was already 579. This algorithm would push the number to over 600. I represent an urban constituency where the available land is either green belt or parkland, but there are some opportunities. I have myself put forward to the local authority a proposal to build several thousand new houses by remodelling the commercial areas. We can build on the strengths of the area, which has one of the finest creative universities in the country, and create new business premises in an integrated urban village environment where people can live close to work. We can develop a new generation of digital and creative businesses. It is a real opportunity, which we can deliver.

We can deliver new homes—new homes aimed at first-time buyers and at the right demographic to keep people in our area—but what we cannot do is build 600 new houses a year in perpetuity. It is simply not possible. Actually, it is possible: by tearing up the manifesto commitments that we made a year ago and building all over the green belt. Even then, we will still probably need to build lots of tower blocks, which goes diametrically against the commitments we made about protecting communities.

In a nutshell, this policy simply cannot work for a constituency like mine. It is impossible to deliver it and keep the promises that we made to the electorate, and it is the wrong thing to do. It will have the counterproductive effect I have described of sucking economic activity into the south. It will destroy the environment in the area I represent. It will congest already congested infrastructure. Of course, it is also based on so many false premises, because, as with many other constituencies in Surrey, the algorithm forgets altogether the income from commuters by focusing on affordability, so it misses altogether the incomes of the most prosperous people in my area, who work elsewhere and get the train into the City in the mornings. It only focuses on the incomes of those who live and work in the constituency.

I praise the Government’s ambition. I simply say that the mode of implementation—the route they are currently following—is the wrong one for the country and for the constituency I represent. I urge the Minister, who is a good man, to think again, because I regret to say that, even as a loyal supporter of the Government, I cannot support this policy in its current form.