Communities and Local Government

Duncan Hames Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey). I thank everybody in the House who has looked after us over the year and wish them a very happy Christmas and a happy new year. I hope that this Christmas gig will become as popular as the “Doctor Who” Christmas gig.

I want to raise some planning issues that have upset my constituents, because I do not like to see my constituents upset, and then to discuss the national planning policy framework, which the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) will also mention. I am a member of the National Trust and have dealt with planning litigation. I have had to read planning policy guidance and planning policy statements, so I understand why some people want to streamline them. However, that should not be done to the extent that they are non-existent. They are comprehensive and, together with the local plans and unitary development plans, they came about as a result of careful consultation. Word is already out that the national planning policy framework will be a lawyers charter. Lawyers are rubbing their hands in glee.

Turning to Walsall South, I hear stories in my surgery of intimidation, threats and broken windows, all because some people oppose an application. I had many specific cases to raise, but sadly time has been cut short, so I will deal with just two. In my constituency, the green belt is already under threat. For example, officers said that the proposal for the Three Crowns inn site would involve unacceptable development in the green belt and there were no special circumstances to outweigh that. However, the planning committee let it go through, so three detached houses have been built on the green belt. That is a great cause for concern. My constituents told me that a substantial amount of time was taken up by speakers in favour of the development, but that they were allowed only three minutes.

That brings me to the long-suffering folk who live around 1 Woodside close. All previous applications have been refused by the inspector on the basis that development would have an adverse impact on the character of the local area. My poor constituents have had to put up with six applications of a similar nature. Of the last two applications, one for the construction of 13 flats was dismissed on 28 October 2010 and one for the construction of 14 flats was dismissed on 20 August 2011. Still the applicant persists without any response from the council. Clearly, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 needs to be revisited by the council. The residents in Cottage Farm residents association feel that their views have not been taken into account. I will present a petition to the House at the end of the debate this evening on behalf of those residents. I admire their resilience and stamina.

That brings me on to the national planning policy framework. The Government want to promote well-being, but they put it at risk by putting the green belt under threat. The Chancellor wants to use planning to stimulate growth, but town centres are crying out for development. The Government appointed Mary Portas to look at what is wrong with our town centres and she has told them to make explicit in the wording of the NPPF a presumption in favour of town centre development. In Walsall town centre, 15.8% of shops are empty—an increase of 20% since February.

The NPPF will weaken the test that is applied to town centres. Under the sequential test, developers have to show that there is no suitable alternative site in the centre, but that does not apply to offices. The NPPF will relax brownfield targets; relax the requirement to plan for the efficient and effective use of land; reduce the protection of the green belt; remove the direction to direct offices to the town centre; and reduce sustainable economic development. The combination of those things will push development away from where it is most needed.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Valerie Vaz]

No. I am sorry, but I do not have time.

Walsall has a history of protecting employment land and has a sustainable settlement pattern. Manufacturers who are experiencing growth have not asked me to raise planning issues; they have asked for money for apprentices so that they can train them and fill the skills gap. This is not about housing either, because the Home Builders Federation holds more than 280,000 units with planning permission that are ready for development. Planning permissions do not deliver new homes. The problem of there being not enough homes is more to do with the stagnant property market, banks not lending and the boom in overseas investors investing in housing, not affordable housing.

Paragraph 16 of the NPPF states that the development of sites protected by the birds and habitats directive would not be sustainable. However, in the autumn statement, the Chancellor said that he wants to relax the habitats directive. I am on the side of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Trust, the Prince of Wales, the campaign by The Daily Telegraph, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the people of Walsall South. Whose side are the Government on? With respect to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have a special phrase: this is not about being a nimby, but about being a NIGEL—“Not In the Garden of England”. We are all NIGELs now.

Finally, once land has been sold and developed, it is lost for ever. That is our heritage. That is what we leave to the next generation. I urge the Minister to think again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

May I wish you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and all the staff of the Houses of Parliament a very merry Christmas?

I speak today in support of increased local decision-making in the planning system. Specifically, I would like to encourage the Government to ensure that the neighbourhood plans made possible by the Localism Act 2011 give local people enough power to have a real say over what development takes place in their area, where it takes place and, crucially, whether it meets the sustainable development test.

There are many cases in my constituency that illustrate not only the ways in which people currently feel disengaged from the planning system, but the great potential in communities when they get organised. A great number of my constituents have contacted me about large housing developments proposed near Birds Marsh woods and the Avon floodplain in Chippenham. They have emphasised the importance of preserving the countryside around the edge of the town, and many have expressed their frustration at their apparent inability to affect the decisions being made. One lady made the point that,

“the voice of ordinary residents does not seem to be heard, and decisions are made by people for whom this is not their home”.

Similarly, the expansion of an edge-of-town Sainsbury’s superstore has recently been approved by the council, leading to the resignation in dismay of the chair of the Chippenham Vision group.

Earlier this month, I asked the Minister with responsibility for decentralisation what advice he would give to councils that face such developer interest in out-of-town sites. He assured me that the “town centre first” policy remains firm, but that development in Chippenham would suggest otherwise, as Wiltshire council felt free to ignore it. There will be no public confidence in a "take it or leave it" attitude to planning policy, with some councils proceeding with development that is neither sustainable nor what local people want, for fear of paying for expensive appeals by developers.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I intend to speak on much the same issue later in respect of wind farms. Does the hon. Gentleman take the view that when the Government impose massive development on an area where the people simply do not want it, it poses a huge threat to people’s faith in democracy?

[Duncan Hames]

The imposition of development plans that are not owned by the local community was exactly what we had in the regional spatial strategies—the grand regional plans left to us by the previous Government —and I applaud this Government for abandoning them. The RSS in the south-west of England never actually took legal force, and I am glad that it will never do so. It is important that people feel that decisions are made locally and democratically.

In Wiltshire, the council has not yet adopted its core strategy—its local plan—and we of course await the final version of the national planning policy framework in the spring. In the interim, our system is not robust enough to balance the competing interests in the planning process, and development too often seems inevitably set to proceed.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

For the hon. Gentleman’s information, I was born in Chippenham, thus I have an interest in it. I applaud what he is trying to do. Out-of-town developments not only disfigure beautiful landscapes in a beautiful area; they also create vastly increased traffic and environmental consequences for everyone else, as well as a complete hollowing out and destruction of the town centre, which becomes the home for charity shops and banks—and very little else.

[Duncan Hames]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I am delighted to learn of his interest in Chippenham. In fact, it was that very concern about the hollowing out of the town centre that prompted the resignation last week of the chair of the Chippenham Vision group, who had sought, in a voluntary capacity, to work with different parts of the community to build a vision for the future of our town centre. However, that was fundamentally undermined by the decision to grant a dramatic increase in the retail floor space of an edge-of-town superstore, which will no doubt be expanding into non-food items, threatening the businesses in our town centre, to which I shall return later.

Given the Government’s new presumption in favour of sustainable development, and given the record of other councils in agreeing permissions on unallocated “white land”, which does not benefit from the protections in the draft framework, I see a need for robust mechanisms to ensure the rigorous application of that presumption according to clear tests. I was encouraged by a recent response that I received from the Under-Secretary of State, Baroness Hanham, who, without pre-empting the consultation responses, acknowledged that the meaning of “sustainable development”, as well as its application, was an area where the Government needed to look again more closely in the consultation. I would suggest that a crucial part of any mechanism for deciding whether an application qualifies for that presumption should be input from the local community. The question should not end up being decided in the courts through case law, or by planning inspectors. If that happens, the Government will not achieve their objective of greater localism.

Instead, I suggest that we should look to the examples offered by communities in Wiltshire that are working with the Government’s framework for neighbourhood plans in the Localism Act 2011. Woolley, in Bradford-on-Avon, and Malmesbury, in north Wiltshire, are two communities that are seizing this opportunity. In their impressive document, “Plan for Woolley 2026”, residents have come together in an entirely voluntary capacity as Friends of Woolley to draw up a framework for Woolley’s physical, community and economic development for the next 25 years. Meanwhile in Malmesbury, Councillor Simon Killane is spearheading the neighbourhood planning pilot scheme. That includes a neighbourhood forum, which will bring residents and community organisations to meet potential developers to discuss their plans and what they might mean for the local community and the infrastructure it needs. Those plans will be assessed against the neighbourhood plan, based on residents’ own aspirations and ratified by a local referendum.

I was pleased to read Baroness Hanham’s assurance that such neighbourhood plans will have to be “given a fair hearing” against other local authority plans or, indeed, the national planning policy framework. The 2011 Act gives neighbourhood plans statutory force. As she points out, such plans will have to be

“in general conformity with strategic policies in the local plan”.

However, the word “general” is very important. It reminds me of the old planning policy statement 12, whose definition stated that

“the test is of general conformity and not conformity.”

That means that it should be possible for a neighbourhood plan to conflict with land allocations in existing core strategies or local plans, as long as the general aims of development can be achieved, perhaps by bringing different land into use. The Government need to be clear about what “sustainable development” is taken to mean in that context. In my view, sustainability encompasses the impact of development on carbon emissions, travel-to-work journeys, the conservation of wildlife and the preservation of our countryside.

I would not oppose housing development, but I believe that local plans need to propose development that accommodates the needs of the local population and the understood demographic changes that are envisaged, and not be about accommodating outflow or overflow from other towns. To do so would be to allow a council’s settlements to become dormitories, which is something that we are vigorously fighting against in Wiltshire. Members should be aware that the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government is due to publish its report on the draft national planning policy framework tomorrow. I look forward to reading its recommendations and contributing to further debates on this subject, so that we might harness the power of genuinely local decision making in our planning system.