National Planning Policy Framework

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

That was more hope than expectation, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will finish shortly. I did not think anything more interesting would happen today than our discussion of the national planning policy framework, but I was clearly mistaken.

The Government have not revoked the sustainable development strategy of 2005. Members of the Environmental Audit Committee who interviewed me last week asked some questions about it and it is the subject of one of the suggestions that have been made in the consultation. Let me explain why it was not included in the draft as it stands. As I say, it has not been revoked or repealed in any way. It is simply a matter of whether a document produced in 2005 has the timelessness of the Brundtland definition.

It was necessary to update the 1999 strategy in 2005. Six years on, there are some respects in which thinking on sustainability has progressed. For example, there is the idea that the separate pillars of the economy, the environment and the social aspects of sustainability can be traded off, one against the other. Some people argue—and I think there is some merit in doing so—that that is a rather defensive position and that one should be looking for positive improvements to the environment, not simply to trade-off. That is very much the thinking in the Government’s natural environment White Paper, which talked of a net gain for nature. In response to the consultation we could listen to such representations, but let me say simply that our intention was to make sure that we are not stranded in our thinking when we might have a more progressive approach to sustainability.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

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[Mr Raynsford]

First, I have given a number of facts. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should advise his Front-Bench team to be rather more respectful of the facts. Secondly, when I was the Minister for Housing and Planning in the early years of the Labour Government I inherited a position in which the reforms of the previous Conservative Government had resulted in large numbers of councils not having up-to-date plans in place. The main thrust of my work as Planning Minister was about getting the existing system to work better, rather than about imposing radical changes. I have advised the current Minister and his colleagues that they would do far better to try to work with the existing system than to seek a radical overhaul, which would be likely to create confusion and uncertainty and lead to paralysis in the planning system—which I am afraid is what we have got.

That leads me to the national planning policy framework. The problem with that document is that the Government have confused brevity with clarity. They have assumed that by reducing the volume of existing guidance they are producing a clearer and simpler statement, but that simply is not the case. The reality is that in many areas, some of which we have discussed today, sufficient care has not been taken with the definitions in the NPPF to give certainty and clarity. Sustainable development is one such area, and I endorse the views that have been expressed about the need for greater clarity.

Secondly, there is the “brownfield first” issue, another area where the Government have blundered and will need to change. Thirdly, there is not a single reference to new settlements and urban developments. There is no mention whatever of the principles that should apply to those. It is extraordinary that that should be entirely overlooked.

[Heidi Alexander]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on an excellent speech. Does he share my concern about the absence of the word “cities” from the national planning policy framework? I find it remarkable that we can have a planning framework for our country that makes no reference to our cities.

[Mr Raynsford]

My hon. Friend makes, as always, a very telling point. This is the problem: the NPPF has been put together in a hurry, and the Government’s objective has been brevity rather than clarity, and as a result it is wanting in many areas and will have to be rewritten.

The fourth area I want to highlight where the NPPF is defective is in respect of mixed developments to ensure that we have balanced communities with affordable and social housing as well as market housing. The NPPF’s statement is very inadequate, as the Minister knows only too well. There is a loose reference to “larger scale residential developments” benefiting from mix, but no definition of “larger scale”.

The problem, as the Minister knows perfectly well, is that in the absence of clear definitions and documents such as those that existed under the previous regime—the planning policy guidance statements—individual developers, local authorities and communities will form their own judgments, they will be in dispute with each other and there will be a rise in appeals and litigation. It will be the lawyers who determine the outcome rather than the Government, the local authority or the local community. That is the real risk of the position in which the Government are putting themselves and our planning system. In the absence of transitional arrangements, the need for which the Minister now belatedly accepts, people will reach for the lawyers to try to determine what should happen because plans are not fully prepared and in place in time to be referred to.

In summary, we have a planning system that plays an absolutely critical role in mediating between competing interests, which requires carefully considered judgments based on experience built up over decades. Against that background, it was unwise of the Government to proceed in a hubristic way with a year zero approach of trying to rewrite the rules. I am glad they are now beginning to recognise their mistake and to row back. I hope they will now apply rather more intelligence, thoughtfulness and consultation to preparing their revised NPPF, which should be a better document than the current one.

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[Jason McCartney]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comment. Obviously I can only talk knowledgeably about my local council. We are working hard in Kirklees to get a Conservative-run council, and then we will be able to compare them.

Fourthly, let us accept that relaxing the rules on development will not necessarily help the economy—a point that has already been made. Houses are not being built because home buyers cannot get mortgages as a result of the huge deposits required, not because of a lack of available land with planning permission. The only reason houses are not being built is that builders cannot sell them. Across the country thousands of newly built and older homes are currently unoccupied, as I have already pointed out, and developers are sitting on hundreds of thousands of unimplemented planning permissions. In Kirklees alone there is land equivalent to 5.1% of the existing housing stock or about 16 years' supply of building land at current levels of house building activity already with planning permission, but it has not been built on yet.

Fifthly, although the framework offers some theoretical protection to green-belt land, for example for sites of special scientific interest and heritage sites, it also gives local authorities and developers the freedom to override those protections if development can be shown to offer significant economic benefit. It offers no protection to other greenfield land. That is wholly inappropriate in semi-urban areas, and we are really worried in my part of the world, particularly with provisional open land, that the net effect might be that the villages will end up sprawling together. These are all points that my local community groups have been talking about.

As I have said, people in my neck of the woods are between a rock and a hard place. On one hand there is the presumption in favour of sustainable development if no local plan is in place, and local people are interpreting that as a developer’s charter. On the other hand, there is a Labour-run local council that is trying to shove through the plans for 28,000 new homes by massive green-belt release. We have either a flawed local plan or that presumption; no wonder people in my area are so worried.

[Heidi Alexander]

I am genuinely interested in the hon. Gentleman’s answer to this question: are community groups in his constituency coming forward with an alternative plan, through neighbourhood forums and their own neighbourhood plans, for areas where they could accommodate new housing growth?

[Jason McCartney]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. That is why I have given those groups details about the neighbourhood planning front-runners scheme, which can assist them in developing neighbourhood plans and provide funding of up to £20,000 to help that. The groups are very well organised and I have pointed them in the right direction. They have come forward and are working with other local groups, such as civic societies, town trusts and parish councils, to come up with a neighbourhood plan, which is a very positive side of our localism structure.

In summary, we should of course simplify the planning system, but let us prioritise developments on brownfield sites, bring empty homes back into use and protect what is left of our countryside by ensuring that local plans genuinely reflect local wishes.

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[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I speak today as someone who has spent four years of my life dealing with the planning system in London. Before becoming an MP, I was a councillor in Lewisham and had responsibility for regeneration. I worked with planners, with developers and with the community, and I can say that in some ways it was the best job of my life and in others the worst.

I know how controversial planning applications can be, and I know how fiercely people will defend their own interests. There is nothing wrong with that, but someone, somewhere has to take a decision about the wider interests of the community, and indeed the wider interests of the country. Sometimes that will fall to councillors, but sometimes the responsibility will stop at the door of the Government. I have a real concern that on the evidence of the past 18 months this Government are not up to the task. They want to wash their hands of the task of setting out a vision of where in the country new homes will be built and where new jobs will be created. They talk about sustainable development but fail to provide an adequate definition. They hide behind a smokescreen of empowering communities through neighbourhood plans, but then use the planning system as a political football to justify the lack of economic growth.

In my view, the planning system is a vital tool in helping to create places where people want to live.

[Henry Smith]

Will not the hon. Lady concede that during the last decade and a bit of the previous Government, despite the massive top-down, centrally planned housing targets, house building fell to its lowest level since the 1920s? How does she reconcile those two things?

[Heidi Alexander]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has not been here for the whole debate. We have heard convincing evidence from a number of hon. Members about how house building and, most importantly, the building of affordable houses increased over the last decade.

I was setting out why I believe the planning system is so important. It is one of the only ways in which we can determine where to locate the things that we all need but perhaps do not like, such as places to deal with our rubbish and noisy hospitals with lots of traffic. It is also one of the only ways in which we can start to change how we live in the future. It is a simple fact that we need fewer cars on our roads. That will happen only if the jobs of tomorrow are located in places where public transport is good and if new homes are built in places where people can walk to the shops. That is what sustainable development is about. It is not just about shiny bits of eco kit on buildings; it is about how we live our lives. It is about investment in our town centres, making the most of brownfield land in our cities and protecting those parts of the countryside that we all hold dear.

The Government tell us that the planning system is a brake on economic growth and that planners are the enemies of enterprise. That is rubbish. In 2010-11, 86% of planning applications were approved, and 90% of commercial applications were approved. In London, planning permission exists for 170,000 homes on which work has yet to start. It is not the planning system that is stopping those homes being built; it is the availability of developer and mortgage finance.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

The hon. Lady speaks of 86% of planning applications having been approved, but does she have information on how many times those applicants have been round the block? In my experience, what tends to happen is that people apply once, get refused and have to apply again, having changed something. That is what we mean by a brake that is slowing the process.

[Heidi Alexander]

I do not have the figures that the hon. Lady requests, but I was about to go on to say that we need to look at more than planning policy; we need to look at the planning process. That may address one of the issues that she touches on.

I accept that it can take a long time to get planning applications approved, but we have to make sure that there are enough resources in council planning departments to deal with applications speedily and sort out, at the outset, some of the problems to which the hon. Lady refers. We all know that council and, indeed, planning department budgets are coming under huge pressure as a result of the Government’s austerity programme.

We also have to look at perceptions of the planning system and do more to encourage developers and planners to work more collaboratively. I say this as a politician: one of the biggest frustrations for developers is the politics in all this, such as the planning application that gets stuck in a council a year before an election and is not decided. A whole range of issues impact on problems with the planning system. The Government are wrong to look at planning policy on its own, and it is wrong to assume that a slimline version of the NPPF is the answer to the country’s economic woes.

It is wrong to assume, too, that just because the NPPF is much shorter than previous planning guidance it is any clearer—a point that has been made in our debate. There is a real danger that the NPPF is a blank cheque for planning lawyers. As Simon Jenkins pointed out when he gave evidence to the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government this week, the document is littered with adverbs. On the basis of the NPPF, developers can argue for “acceptable” returns. Acceptable to whom? Something that is acceptable to me is probably very different from something that is acceptable to the chairman of a big house-builder. The document refers to the fact that councils can refuse applications where the adverse affects “significantly” and “demonstrably” outweigh the benefits. If ever there was a word for lawyers to fight over, surely “significantly” is it. The document is sloppy and ambiguous, and it could have a raft of unintended consequences.

My other main concern about the NPPF relates to whether it does enough to address some of the big challenges that we face as country. Let us take the example of affordable housing. The framework does away with previous targets for the amount of affordable housing that should be provided by developers when they are building schemes where the majority of homes are for sale on the open market. It is left to councils to decide whether they have such targets. It is the same for the threshold for when any affordable housing requirement must kick in: local councils can decide. That is not to mention the issue of what constitutes “affordable housing”, or how housing requirements are properly assessed.

[Mark Pawsey]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

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[Heidi Alexander]

I have given way several times, and I am conscious that many Members wish to speak.

The housing needs of my constituents in Lewisham are not going to be met in Lewisham alone. If every house built in Lewisham over the next 10 years was an affordable home—and I mean genuinely affordable—we would still not solve our housing crisis. There has to a Government plan to deal with this. There is not, and on the basis of the NPPF, I fear that the problem will just get worse.

I question the usefulness of a document that contains stronger stipulations about the habitats of birds than it does on, say, housing for the elderly. There is a one-word reference to the way in which councils should take into account the housing needs of older people, compared with a very clear statement about sites protected under the birds and habitats directives. I am not against the inclusion of clear guidance on bird habitats, but I am against the absence of clear guidance on planning for the enormous demographic challenges that our country faces.

Before I conclude, I should like to touch on the apparent contradiction between the NPPF and the Government’s supposed commitment to giving local people more say over what happens in their neighbourhood. During our deliberations on the Localism Bill, I said that neighbourhood plans would serve to stoke up communities’ expectations about their ability to say “no” to development in their area—a nimby’s charter. However, according to the Government, the default answer to development should be yes. How can the two be compatible?

I put it to the Government that they have over-hyped localism. Neighbourhood plans have been sold on a false prospectus. They will not deliver power to communities to define the sort of development that they want to see in their area, as neighbourhood plans have generally to conform with the council’s strategic plan, which in turn must be consistent with the NPPF requirements on meeting housing need. The only way neighbourhood plans will work is if communities ask for lots and lots of new homes to be built. They may well do so in Tunbridge Wells, but that is not my experience in Lewisham.

In conclusion, the Government appear to have a laudable “consensus” view of planning. They believe that local people, working with local authorities, will ultimately deliver plans that meet the needs of the nation as a whole. I am not so sure that they will. Planning is ultimately a mechanism to resolve fierce competition over a finite resource. Judgments must be made in a balanced way, and consideration must be given to the environment and society, as much as to the economy. Planning policy and guidance has a role to play in setting out how those decisions are taken. Yes, planning policy could and should be streamlined, but let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater. As a local civic amenities society in my constituency, the Culverley Green residents association, stated in an e-mail to me this week:

“Revision is a reasonable option but a bonfire is not.”

[Several hon. Members]

rose—