Neighbourhood Plans: Planning Decisions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Evans]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. For someone who is not speaking, he articulates his point very well. He makes a really important point: different parts of the UK have a different approach, and there should be shared learning. Joining up community hubs is really important, especially in rural areas, where there are limited numbers of sports fields, doctors, shops and schools. The ability to bring businesses and the community together is good not only for the Government, so that they can deliver the housing, but for the local populace, to better understand and buy into what is being delivered. That is the whole point of neighbourhood plans.

At the end of March 2025, the Government were aware of 1,800 neighbourhood plans being in place. The Locality website states that over 2,400 communities have initiated neighbourhood plans and over 1,000 plans have been successful at referendum. CPRE says that 5,800 local green spaces have been designated in neighbourhood plans, showing that local communities are deciding what is best for them. That is all well and good, but why are these plans important and are they making any tangible difference? An assessment of the impact of neighbourhood plans in England for the University of Reading in May 2020 showed that

“Neighbourhood planning’s contribution to housing supply can be significant. Neighbourhood plans which are allocating housing sites are providing sites for an average additional to local plan allocation 39 units per neighbourhood plan.”

I like to think of this in terms of percentage gains, as the Sky cycling team did. These are huge percentage gains in local communities, which go on to choose to have this housing. We know that these plans will deliver about 11% more houses, and they have community buy-in, which is fundamental to getting people on board to say they will take more housing. That is why we need these plans. However, the Government announced last month that the funding is stopping.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The village of London Colney in my constituency is under siege from top-down housing targets, with a huge development being dumped on the border by the neighbouring local authority and an enormous rail freight terminal the size of 480 football pitches. My local residents in London Colney want their voice to be heard on the location and type of homes, but after three years of having access to the locality budget in developing a neighbourhood plan, the parish council has been told that there is no funding left to finish that plan. Does the hon. Member agree that where local parishes have made significant progress, funding should be reinstated so that they can complete those plans?

[Dr Evans]

The hon. Lady makes a vociferous defence of her area; actually, she could have been speaking about my constituency in Leicestershire, which suffers all those things. The only thing I would say is that in my constituency we fought the national rail freight hub, won and pushed it back. The population was very pleased about that, but that speaks to people’s engagement and what they can do. The concern that we have to raise with the Government is about what happens when the funding stops. As I will say later, we need to understand where the Government stand on neighbourhood plans. Do they support them? Do they want them to be taken away? Do they want to see them wither? Will they strengthen them? The Opposition’s argument is that strengthening them would deliver the housing that people want in the way they want it.

On the funding that is stopping, Locality—the membership organisation that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government commissioned to deliver support services to neighbourhood forums to prepare their neighbourhood plans—has announced that it cannot proceed with new neighbourhood planning support services from 2025, and it has until the end of March 2026 to complete all existing technical support packages agreed with MHCLG. It believes that

“it will be difficult for some groups to progress their plans…we are not able to support the Champions Network and other learning and development opportunities”.

The National Association of Local Councils said:

“We are bitterly disappointed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) decision to stop funding for the neighbourhood planning support programme…This decision is a significant setback for localism and the highly successful neighbourhood planning initiative”.

CPRE nationally says that that it is

“concerned about the government’s decision to end support for preparing and updating neighbourhood plans, as this is likely to lead to planning decisions becoming less responsive to the needs and aspirations of local communities.”

That is the rub: it feels like a slap in the face for local communities that want to take on the responsibility of making change. That is often done by volunteers who do not have technical experience but aspire to change their area for the better. That is why it hurts.

This is not just some nebulous concept that we discuss down here in Whitehall and Westminster. My constituency is a primary example that is living this out. We do not have an up-to-date local plan under the Liberal Democrat borough council—this has been ongoing for six years—or an up-to-date five-year land supply. The Liberal Democrats’ local campaign says, “Stop building,” but the national campaign says, “We need to go even further than the Labour and Conservative pledges.”

[Daisy Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the housing debate is about not just the number of homes but who determines where they should be built. He continues to point to the Liberal Democrats, but I gently remind him that our policy is not just about numbers, but about having a bottom-up approach whereby local authorities work out the homes they need in their local area, in contrast to the top-down approach pursued by his former Government and the current Labour Government.

[Dr Evans]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out; I hope she will get in contact with her colleagues in the Liberal Democrat-run Hinckley and Bosworth borough council to make that exact point. They could take more control if they had an up-to-date local plan and learned from their neighbours in North West Leicestershire—part of which is now in my constituency—which does have a five-year land supply and an up-to-date local plan, and is making the best of that because it is able to take in business rates and turn that into a positive. The community chooses where development goes and has control over it. The mechanism is there, and I have been raising this issue with the last Government and this Government.

I am keen to ensure that the Government are able to kick local decision making in the right direction to prevent failings. Neighbourhood plans are the protective mechanism that can deal with that. I argued with the last Government, and will argue with this Government, that neighbourhood plans should have more weight, especially where there is no up-to-date local plan, because that would do exactly what the hon. Lady is asking for. They allow communities to have infrastructure and amenities, in keeping with the their heritage and environment, without top-down speculative developments that place 100, 200, 300, 500 or 1,000 houses on top of them. Communities just will not swallow that. That is the key and why I secured this debate.

Let me continue with the example of my constituency. We now have the prospect of devolution, with 21 councils getting a legal invite to change the way in which they structure themselves. I am not sure about other Members, but if I got a “legal invite” from the court, I would not ignore it. This is being imposed on local governments. In my area, we have at least three different versions of what devolution will look like. This will have a drastic impact on planning, yet we have no idea of what the neighbourhood plans or planning authorities will look like, especially if we are divided into one, two or three different unitaries.