Planning and Housing Supply

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and my hon. Friends the Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) and for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing the debate.

The issue of planning also fills my postbag. I represent the thriving, beautiful constituency of West Worcestershire, which has one of the highest ratios in the west midlands of house prices to average earnings. It is also the birthplace of Elgar, and its countryside inspired much of his music.

Despite all the valid concerns colleagues have raised, I think we are in a much better place on planning than we were under the Stalinist diktats of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), and I agree with colleagues who have welcomed the abolition of the regional spatial strategy.

Shifting local planning decisions to councils, which makes so much democratic sense, has raised a range of issues. I particularly welcome the Government’s introduction of neighbourhood planning. In the Malvern Hills district, the parishes of Kempsey, Clifton upon Teme, Leigh and Bransford, Alfrick and Lulsley, Martley, and Knightwick and Doddenham have all had their neighbourhood areas approved.

When we discuss planning, however, one thing that strikes me is that the beautiful villages we all love—in my area, I have the villages around Bredon Hill, the town of Pershore and the towns and villages of the Malvern Hills district—all grew up without our current planning regulations. Ironically, however, we would not be able to build those communities under today’s planning rules. Their growth tended to be more organic and more bottom up; people built their own homes on their own land, which they had bought for that purpose. When the Victorians became concerned that Great Malvern was encroaching far too much on the Malvern hills, they established the world’s first conservation area by Act of Parliament in 1884. Since then, the hills have been owned for the common good by the Malvern Hills Conservators charity. That organic approach has worked well for this country for the thousands of years there have been settlements in Worcestershire and elsewhere. That is why I am so supportive of the recent changes to the planning system, which move us back in the direction of the village and the neighbourhood, while embodying the countryside protections pioneered by the Malvern Hills Conservators.

In south Worcestershire, we may be a bit further ahead on our local plan than other colleagues are on theirs. Our three local councils—Worcester City, Malvern Hills and Wychavon, which my hon. Friend the Minister visited recently—have been working in partnership for many years to develop an ambitious and sound local plan. After the 2010 election, they presciently commissioned expert projections of population growth and perhaps got a head start on some other council areas. Their evidence base is now more up to date and fresher than those in some other parts of the country.

All three local councils democratically agreed the plan last December. I can assure hon. Members that that was not without a great deal of controversy, but one factor that encouraged councillors to vote in favour of the plan was that it would allow them to be in control. The south Worcestershire development plan has much more up-to-date and adequate five-year land supply numbers and such ambitious plans for employment land that we are getting complaints from Birmingham councils.

When I say the plan was democratically agreed last December, people complain that a bit of whipping was involved. Well, I hate to tell my local councillors this, but Whips are often involved in democracy here in Westminster. However, despite the vote last December, it took a further five months to send the plan to the inspector for the examination in public and another few months for him to decide on his inspection plan and timetable. The inspection has just got under way, and I would not be surprised if it took the inspector well into 2014 before he recommends adoption.

I want this period of uncertainty to be over, so that we can move forward with the construction, growth and jobs embodied in the plan. A delay of 18 months to two years is too long, and it undermines the local democracy of the vote in December. As the Minister knows, I and the leader of the council in my area have written to him. I have also written to the local planning inspector urging him to respect the local plan unless there are actual factual inaccuracies in it. The inspector has written a helpful reply, assuring me that he will seek to complete his inspection as soon as possible, subject to the legal requirements on him. The Minister has also responded constructively.

Here is my wish list of four things I would like to ask the Minister for. First, as he finalises his latest national planning practice guidance, which will set out the exceptional circumstances in which a refusal may be justified on the grounds of prematurity, will he try to ensure that the democratically agreed plans that have emerged will get almost full weight in any decision making, allowing the fresh evidence base and the numbers in the plan to be used, unless the inspector sees actual errors of fact, rather than just a divergence of opinion? Surely the future of the area should be entrusted to south Worcestershire councillors, rather than shaped by contesting opinions—they will only be opinions—from Birmingham and elsewhere?

Secondly, may I ask the Minister for his thoughts on how we as MPs can best support emerging neighbourhood plans? I love neighbourhood planning, which is an excellent way of giving power to local people and bringing back an organic approach to planning, reducing the need for vast swathes of land to be swallowed up by urban extensions. Thirdly, can we reassure villages that, once they have agreed their neighbourhood plan and won a vote on it in a referendum, it will take precedence over the local plan, even if that has been adopted?

Finally, what can the Minister say to the octogenarian farmer in my local area who lives in a draughty five-bedroom home and who wants nothing more than to build a bungalow in the field next door for the final years of his life? Under today’s rules, such building is prohibited in open countryside. If there is a neighbourhood plan, will my farmer have any hope that he can build his bungalow?

Once again, I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on securing the debate, and I thank you, Mr Brady, for allowing me to pass on the concerns of my constituents in the glorious area of West Worcestershire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. I understand what he is saying. It is difficult and painful, especially in an area of high demand, to produce that local plan. Many local authorities have been making excellent progress, which is why the number of local plans has risen from about 30% when the national planning policy framework was passed to more than 50% now, and many more will be adopted over the next few months. The difficulty is that there are cases—I am afraid that some of those cases are represented in the Chamber—in which the local plan, despite what the local authority might have said, does not meet the requirements of the Localism Act 2011 and of the national planning policy framework, and does not provide a five-year land supply.

In some cases, that is because local authorities put too many eggs in one basket. They identify one big site to which they attach a lot of hope value, and which might make a fantastic development, but which, in reality, has no immediate prospect of being developed. It therefore cannot count as a site in a local plan. Sometimes, they make estimates that a site will build out over two years, when it clearly will not do so in less than five. It is not surprising, therefore, that the inspector sometimes says, “I’m sorry, but that is not a robust plan, because the sites you have identified will not deliver what you say they will deliver in the established time frame.” Then he asks the local authority to go back and revise the plan. That is happening in many local authorities represented in this Chamber, and is causing some of the frustration.

[Harriett Baldwin]

What, in the Minister’s view, is the appropriate time between a council democratically agreeing a local plan and the plan finally becoming set in stone, as there is a very protracted period of inspection by a scarce national supply of inspectors?

[Nick Boles]

In general—I cannot comment on any particular case—one would hope that that would happen in about nine months. If it could be six, that would be great. It certainly should not be more than 12. In some cases—I am not suggesting that it is happening in West Worcestershire—the inspector, rather than saying that the plan will not meet the requirements, says that the authority needs to do a bit more work on it and then suspends the plan. That can be a good thing, because we do not want to see a lot of good work thrown away because one part of the plan has not been properly completed. That is sometimes what causes it to be delayed beyond the time frame. If everything is in order, it should be done within six to nine months.