Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Clark Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

10. What steps he plans to take to end regional spatial strategies.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

We committed in the Queen's Speech to abolishing regional strategies. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has written to all council leaders saying that he expects them to have regard to that as a material planning consideration in any decisions they are currently taking.

[Chris Kelly]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer and welcome him to his new position. Will he outline how the Government’s abolition of regional strategies will impact on the provision of Traveller sites of the kind that we already have in Dudley South?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s welcome, and I welcome him to the House. I know that he has always been a vigorous local campaigner.

The point behind abolishing the regional spatial strategies is that we believe that local communities should make decisions locally and should have the ability to put them into effect. It is, of course, important to make provision for Travellers, but such decisions should be taken locally.

[John Howell]

I welcome the Minister to his post. Will he confirm that, as I set out in our radical planning paper “Open Source Planning”, the expectation is that abolishing regional spatial strategies will reinvigorate our planning system and move us away from the historically low level of house building that we have seen, which has so badly failed us?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I half expected to find a note on my desk from the previous Housing Minister apologising for the fact that there were no houses, but he did not get round to writing it.

I am glad that my hon. Friend draws attention to his role in what I think will be an important paper. He wrote in that paper that the present system

“imposes too many one-size-fits-all rules…Tragically, the very idea that development can benefit a community has…become a casualty.”

That is the reality of the system that we have been labouring under—literally “Labouring” under. The system does not work in practice or in theory; what kind of bankrupt system is that?

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

May I welcome the abolition of the regional spatial strategies? I referred in the previous Parliament to the system being akin to Soviet-style planning, and it certainly put constraints on the development of housing in my North Durham constituency. However, what will the Minister be doing on guidance and, more importantly, funding to ensure that the housing that is desperately needed in former mining villages in County Durham will be forthcoming?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s welcome for our policy, which enjoys a degree of consensus throughout the country, if not among some of his colleagues. It is important to recognise that when things are imposed from the centre, people tend to react against it. We need to provide incentives, including funding, so that the communities that host more housing get some of the funding that they need to provide infrastructure and other things associated with it.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

With regional spatial strategies, did not local authorities at least have the chance to have some say about coming together on big strategic issues? Now, however, we presume that the hefty hand of the central controller at his expansive desk in Whitehall will be making all the decisions centrally.

[Greg Clark]

I will forgive the hon. Gentleman for that remark, because he has been absent from the House for the past five years, but if a central controller had been operating, they had been doing so from Whitehall under the previous Government. The fact is that we want to allow local communities to co-operate. Co-operation is something that people should do co-operatively, rather than by imposition. Although we will encourage co-operation, we will not tell communities what to do from the centre.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

5. If he will review the extent to which the local authority funding formula accurately measures the funding requirements of local communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

17. What timetable he has set for the ending of regional spatial strategies.

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

As I said in my answer a few moments ago, we and, I think, many people in the country regard regional spatial strategies as undemocratic, bypassing local authorities. They are based on artificial regional boundaries and, by imposing on local people, have increased antagonism towards development. In other words, they have not worked.

[Tony Baldry]

Regional spatial strategies were a stick that was used to beat local authorities, but what will my right hon. and hon. Friends do on incentives? Do Ministers on the Treasury Bench still intend to allow those local authorities that encourage housing applications and grant planning applications for housing to retain the council tax receipts in respect of that new housing for a period, thus giving local councillors and authorities an incentive to bring forward housing schemes and new housing?

[Greg Clark]

I could not put it any better myself. That is exactly our intention. This shows that if one works with the grain of human nature by, instead of bullying people and telling them what to do, allowing them to share in the success, then—miracle of miracles—we might have people who support development of all kinds in this country.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

19. What estimate he has made of the effect on the number of affordable homes of planned reductions in spending under the Kickstart and national affordable housing programmes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

T7. I very much welcome the ending of the regional spatial strategy. My constituents, who are fighting inappropriate proposed developments in Micklethwaite and Menston, would like to know more detail about how the Government’s new planning policy may enable them to fight off those developments. Will the Minister visit Shipley and meet local residents to discuss with them how the Government’s new planning policy may help them in those particular cases?

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Greg Clark)]

My hon. Friend extends an enticing invitation that I will be delighted to take up, so that I can meet his local community and tell them that they are now free to set community plans in accordance with their interests without any fear that those plans will be revoked by national, unelected officials.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The mantra that it is all down to the last horrible Labour Government that there is no money will not wash if this Government make the poorest people in our country pay. When the Secretary of State took office, he inherited one of the biggest council housing building programmes for 20 years. Will he guarantee that council housing will form part of his future affordable housing strategy?

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

T8. I apologise for asking this question earlier. On regional spatial strategies, what advice can the Secretary of State give to local authorities such as mine in Swindon about revising housing growth figures that now seem utterly outdated?

[Greg Clark]

My understanding is that, in the hon. Gentleman’s part of the world, the plan has not yet been submitted to the inspectors, so he should be able to go back and tell his councillors that they now have the opportunity to put forward plans that are in keeping with the needs of his area.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Can the Minister give Bolsover council an assurance that the plans concerning the 108 prefabricated Tarran bungalows occupied mainly by elderly people will receive the go-ahead? We already have the plans. There were plans to get rid of 20 in the first tranche, and to get rid of the lot in the future. We received a nice letter from the then Housing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). Surely, in a deprived area, this Government will not cut those plans to replace the prefabricated bungalows for elderly people in Bolsover.

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I welcome the answers given to questions 1 and 4 earlier. What advice and guidance will be given to local authorities, and particularly the Planning Inspectorate, when dealing with applications prior to the new legislation going through?

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has written to the Planning Inspectorate to inform it that the Government’s stated policy on such matters is now a material consideration when it reviews applications that have been made and gone to appeal.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

This morning, the Minister for Housing stated that he did not wish to overturn the use classes order changes concerning houses in multiple occupation, but that he would look at them in detail. During the election, he stated that Southampton city council should have all the powers it needed to deal with homes in multiple occupation. It has all the powers it needs as a result of those changes. Is it therefore his intention to water down those changes as a result of looking at them in detail?