Housing Targets: Planning System

Debate between Gordon Henderson and Wendy Morton

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Henderson]

Yes, and I am pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman make his contribution. If he were not present for my Westminster Hall debate, I would fear that the world had come to an end; Parliament certainly would have.

It is noticeable that nothing has been done to address the problems faced by so many local authority planning departments. They face onerous new burdens with no increase or improvement in the resources available to them, partly because of a shortage of qualified planning officers. Planning resources are also inadequate at many of the statutory consultee organisations, such as the Environment Agency, Natural England, Historic England and National Highways, and that is leading to delays in providing the necessary input into local plans.

On the subject of National Highways, the agency is blocking housing developments in my patch for which planning permission has already been granted, by submitting objections on the grounds that the local road infrastructure is inadequate. However, it is inadequate because National Highways has delayed making the necessary improvements, and those planning objections are forcing Swale Borough Council to allow planning applications for other sites, because National Highways’ blocking action is suppressing delivery numbers. It is a typical Catch-22 situation. Ultimately, our local infrastructure, which includes roads, needs to keep pace with the delivery of housing, but statutory undertakers are simply failing to ensure that that happens.

The Government have also failed to prevent developers from land banking. I know of several housing developments in Swale where permission has been granted but no work has been started, and developers often sit on allocated land and then try to get permission for other sites based on the delay in housing delivery, for which they are responsible. The scandal needs urgently to be addressed, with a time limit placed on the implementation of approved schemes. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, too many loopholes allow developers to avoid delivering sufficient affordable housing because of supposed unviability.

Swale Borough Council believes that regional or sub-regional planning, such as at county level, would address cross-boundary issues, including reaching agreement on strategic planning matters such as infrastructure and housing, which the legal duty to co-operate, introduced in the Localism Act 2011, has simply not delivered. The council also believes that the way to solve the country’s housing needs is by building a new generation of large new towns across the country. The current policy is to deliver garden communities at a local level on a small or medium scale, but they are simply not large enough to deliver the major infrastructure improvements needed to sustain those communities, such as new roads, hospitals, schools, town centres and low-carbon transport systems, such as trams.

In the council’s view, eight or so major new towns across England would not only support the Government’s levelling-up agenda, but would address housing shortages, including affordable and social housing, deliver genuine place making and see developments take place at a level that benefits the whole country, without degrading locally important assets and landscapes, or placing additional burdens on already creaking local infrastructure.

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing forward this debate. In Aldridge-Brownhills, we are faced with a huge number of houses being built across the constituency. He makes a powerful argument why we should abolish housing targets. Local councils know best; they know what is needed and the pressure on the infrastructure. Does my hon. Friend agree that one challenge is that the construction companies that start to develop often withhold the section 106 money and the planning gain money right until the end, so local communities feel a lot of the pain before they see any gain?

[Gordon Henderson]

My right hon. Friend is right. Whoever sets the targets, whether at national or local level, when it comes to planning permission for development, there should be an insistence that the infrastructure is put in place before the housing is started. That can be done, but too often is not. I can give an example: we had a major development on the Isle of Sheppey many years ago, which subsequently led to 2,000 houses. At the time, permission was granted for only a couple of hundred, until such time as a new bridge and other new infrastructure was put in place. That has to be done far more often.

I have raised a number of issues today that are of concern to Swale Borough Council. However, the biggest collective grievance is the imposition of mandatory housing targets and the five-year land supply rule.

[Gordon Henderson]

I do agree. It is critical that local people have a say and set the targets, because unless there is local support for something, it will never work. Looking at it cynically, we might say that many local authorities are deciding to build houses in inappropriate places because they can blame the Government for the fact that they have to meet housing targets. If it was up to local people, that would not happen. From a purely cynical point of view, it would be better to let local people do that.

[Wendy Morton]

I genuinely feel that there is a tendency to go for the green belt and greenfield sites. I hope that, as part of pushing targets down to a local level, we can put a duty on Ministers to ensure that we explore every possible brownfield site first and that those are built on before we touch the precious green belt.

[Gordon Henderson]

My right hon. Friend is perfectly right. I mentioned a number of developments in my area, one of which is on a brownfield site. We should be pressing to make sure that is done first, before we allow any other planning applications to be approved.

In thinking about mandatory housing targets, I urge the Minister and her colleagues to look sympathetically at new clause 21 to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which will be debated on Report, which would prohibit mandatory targets.