Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

As the House will know, my constituency of Arundel and South Downs is the most beautiful in England— 250 square miles of Sussex countryside, with no large towns but only small villages and small market towns. Half of it is in the protected landscape of the South Downs national park.

Nevertheless, there is oil extraction in my constituency, and it is entirely uncontroversial. There are small oil wells, and I have never received any complaint about them. I assume that oil tankers visit regularly to take the oil off site, but because the wells are located sensibly the public do not get excited about them. My neighbour’s constituency of Chichester has an oil well in the national park itself. It is similarly uncontroversial because it is near a main road, not a community.

Public interest in the proposed fracking in West Sussex takes two forms. There is concern about below-the-ground activity: will it have an impact on local water sources, for instance? Then there is concern about the above-the-ground activity: what will the exploratory drilling and then any potential further drilling mean for future traffic movements that will affect neighbourhoods? My experience is that communities get particularly exercised about proposals when they fear that the countryside in which they live is about to become industrialised and that there will suddenly be significant lorry movements through otherwise quiet country lanes and villages—not just during the exploratory period, but potentially afterwards, if large sources are discovered.

It fell to West Sussex County Council, as the responsible local authority, to assess whether one proposal for exploratory drilling, near Wisborough Green, a beautiful village in my constituency, was appropriate. The council looked at the proposed traffic movements down very narrow lanes and was very unhappy about the impact. Ultimately, the council, taking no view on the merits of fracking or drilling otherwise and not having a policy of animus against the extraction of the mineral, nevertheless thought that the lorry movements were inappropriate. It rightly reflected the concerns of the local community.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Traffic is a concern not only at drilling sites: the Knostrop treatment works in Leeds is one of only three places licensed to treat fracking waste water, which would discharge into the River Aire. There is concern there about not only traffic movement, but discharge into local rivers. There is an issue not just at drilling sites but also at treatment works.

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. There are, of course, wider environmental objections; those might be addressed separately by suitable, strong regulation. My concern is whether it is appropriate for exploratory drilling and potential subsequent extraction of shale gas to be allowed by permitted development. I do not oppose permitted development rights in principle; it is sometimes appropriate for such rights to be applied. I support the application of those rights for the conversion of office buildings to residential premises because that has produced a large amount of housing that would not have been available otherwise.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

The 2017 Conservative party manifesto that Conservative Members stood on spoke about a revolution in shale gas and liberalising the planning regime.

[Nick Herbert]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We stood on many other manifesto proposals that have not seen the light of day. I gently suggest to the Minister, my good friend and near neighbour, that this is one proposal that it would be wise to keep firmly locked away in the bottom drawer. It would not be wise to allow that activity to come under the permitted rights regime, and that would not be an appropriate use of that planning procedure. It is appropriate for local authorities to be able to assess the impact of traffic movements and so on an activity in their area. Conditions can be put on permitted development, but that is not the same as having it looked at by the local authority.

All such issues are a question of balance, but I have discovered, in 14 years as the Member of Parliament for my beautiful constituency, that there is no non-controversial way to generate energy in our country. Yes, we all want more solar, but large-scale solar panels in beautiful countryside can excite just as much opposition as drilling. The question is whether activity is located appropriately. Some of the proposals that have been made in my constituency have been for inappropriate locations and the impact on local communities has not been thought through. Others are uncontroversial because they have been located more sensibly.

I do not have an in-principle objection to the extraction of oil or gas and I am not entering into the debate about the merits of fracking in particular. It is likely that there will only be oil, not gas, in my part of West Sussex in any case—although I may be wrong about that. I know that there is concern about the potential, random industrialisation of the countryside. We cannot allow that to happen through one tick in a ministerial box, and then find that we have no control over it subsequently except in protected areas of national parks. Local authorities have to have the ability to take a view about the impact of, for example, traffic movements, to decide whether levels are appropriate and, potentially, to impose conditions. That is why we should retain the existing planning regime for this activity, and why I would strongly suggest to the Minister that this is not a proportionate or sensible policy that he should pursue.

Rough Sleeping

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Sharma.

If hon. Members have not already been, I recommend that they walk a few hundred yards down Millbank to see the exhibition of Don McCullin’s photographs at Tate Britain. He is famous for his haunting photographs of war over the past few decades. However, I had not previously seen the pictures he took in 1970 of homeless people in Spitalfields in the east end. One of those photographs is one of his most famous. They are at least as haunting as the images of the ravages of war that he produced. It is shaming that decades on we are still grappling with this problem, which should not exist in a successful, modern economy. His photographs are a reminder that these problems have been with us for some time.

Other hon. Members have spoken about the importance of measures to prevent homelessness in the first place. It makes sense, of course, to try to direct the focus of Government policy in so many areas of social concern towards prevention, rather than picking up the problem after it has happened. However, that is easier said than done. Generally, Finance Ministers are resistant to generalised bids to increase money in preventive measures, for fear that they will end up picking up the costs twice. That is one reason why it has been so hard to shift policy towards preventive measures in areas of public health, for instance. However, it is essential that we do so in relation to homelessness, because it is preventable.

The importance of mental health services has been mentioned. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) was right to focus on housing supply. I have spent 14 years in my affluent constituency of Arundel and South Downs dealing with requests from local communities to prevent the building of new housing. In truth, much of that housing is for other relatively affluent people and only part of it goes to social housing. The concern about the impact of new housing—a genuine concern about the impact on the countryside, local services and so on—obscures the wider point, which is that there has been a systematic failure to ensure that housing supply meets demand.

This is not only a question of social housing provision, to which Opposition Members have rightly drawn attention. The failure to provide sufficient private housing also has a knock-on effect on rent levels: rents become higher because housing supply is too low. In turn, the state directs large amounts of money towards housing benefit in order to help people meet those rents, and we enter a vicious circle. It is important that we have determined measures to increase housing supply and that we try to deal with some of the problems and the objections that people have. That includes a mix of private sector and social housing.

[Ms Karen Buck in the Chair]

Hon. Members have rightly drawn attention to concerns about welfare policy. The five-week wait for universal credit has been mentioned. I know that the Government have taken some steps on that, but they need to go further, because it has clearly been a factor in homelessness.

Housing benefit is also an issue, particularly the shared accommodation rate, which has been frozen since 2016. The charity Depaul, which I will come to shortly, has pointed out that in one night, official figures indicated that 225 young people aged 18 to 25 were sleeping rough, but only 57 rooms could be found that would be available to them at rents within the shared accommodation rate. The support that is available to people has not and cannot keep pace with the level of rents, because it has been frozen, and the local housing allowance does not cover rents for 90% of areas in England. That welfare issue has to be addressed.

A related budgetary issue has affected Stonepillow, a local homelessness charity in West Sussex. West Sussex County Council has found itself at the receiving end of sharp reductions in local government funding, so it in turn has decided to nearly halve the housing-related support allowance. Effectively, that passes the burden on to district councils, with the knock-on effect that support for Stonepillow will be reduced by £300,000. If we are serious about tackling these problems, we should not penalise the important charities that do so much good work on the ground in providing help to people who become homeless and in helping to prevent homelessness.

As well as preventing homelessness and rough sleeping, we need to make sure that measures are available to help people who have become victims of it. I draw hon. Members’ attention to the charity Depaul, which I mentioned earlier, and its Nightstop service. On 10 October, World Homeless Day, I and several other hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester, for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) and for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) and the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), and Baroness Suttie and Baroness Grender, slept out at the Oval cricket ground at an event organised by Depaul. Some 100 volunteers raised money for Depaul that evening. I declare an interest, which is that my partner is a fundraiser for Depaul, so it is not so much a financial interest for me as a matter of domestic harmony that I take an interest in such issues.

The experience of sleeping out on the concrete ground for just a few hours was a tiny insight into the experience that people have when they are sleeping rough. The truth is that we were all looked after before we pitched our cardboard boxes for the evening and, a few hours later, we were able to return to the warmth of our homes, a hot bath or shower, a meal and a job. Most of us were seized by the realisation of how debilitating it would be if we had to pick up our cardboard box and move on without any of those things to go to. I hope that when Depaul organises its sleep-out event in central London next year, many more hon. Members will take part to help the fundraising effort, draw attention to the issue and share in that experience on World Homeless Day.

Depaul runs a good service, Nightstop, which I mentioned. It has been going for a few years and it is interesting because it is a good example of the shared economy. Private individuals open up their homes and provide a bed at night for a homeless young person. Of course, they have to be approved and thoroughly vetted. The introduction to that service is a reminder of the various forms of homelessness, but those young people are often vulnerable and need a bed, security and a meal for the night.

In 2017, the Nightstop service provided more than 11,000 bed nights to nearly 1,500 young people. There is a tremendous opportunity to expand that volunteer-run service, but that would require additional funding. Less than half the local authority areas in the UK are covered by the Nightstop service, but Depaul is keen to expand it.

Depaul would like the Government to invest just £2.2 million over three years in five new sub-regional Nightstop services. After four years, it will pick up the funding for those services itself; it merely needs the seedcorn funding—the Government do not often get that kind of offer. That self-sufficient service would provide up to 7,500 more nights of emergency accommodation a year for young people. I encourage my hon. Friend the Minister, who takes a strong interest in these issues and who has done so much in the last year, to meet Depaul, perhaps visit a Nightstop service, and consider that incredibly cost-efficient and worthwhile proposal.

The numbers of people sleeping rough have levelled off, but they are still too high. Underneath the global figures, there are some big regional disparities that we need to understand, such as the disparity between the numbers of homeless people outside London and in London. In London, half the people sleeping rough are foreign nationals—almost all EU nationals—and the welfare issues around them are much more complex.

We should also realise that although the numbers appear to have reduced only slightly in the last year and are still too high, there was a much bigger reduction—23%—in the 73 areas that were targeted by additional money as part of the Government’s rough sleepers initiative introduced at the beginning of last year. That suggests that targeted funding, which is carefully directed at measures that are integrated and can help to deal with the problem, will succeed and is worth pursuing. This is a problem that can be dealt with.

This issue should embarrass and shame us as an advanced economy. I welcome the Government’s ambition to halve the number of people sleeping rough by 2022 and end rough sleeping by 2027, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, the chairman of the all-party group, of which I am also an officer, that we need to do better than that. The Government should make the issue their highest priority, because no Government should want it to happen on their watch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

If I could just finish my sentence—it might help the hon. Lady.

We expect all local areas to conduct SARs according to guidance. We will also work with the LGA to ensure that lessons learnt from these reviews are shared with other safeguarding adult boards.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark raised the issue of female rough sleepers who have suffered domestic abuse. Domestic abuse is a devastating crime that nobody should have to suffer. Supporting victims of domestic abuse and violence is an absolute priority for the Government, and we need to do more to ensure that they are appropriately supported. We all agree that survivors of domestic abuse should have access to a safe home. Councils have a legal duty to provide accommodation to families and others who are vulnerable as a result of fleeing domestic abuse. The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 requires councils to take reasonable steps to help eligible homeless families to secure accommodation.

[Nick Herbert]

They are exactly the kinds of vulnerable people who the Depaul Nightstop service is helping in half of local authorities. Would the Minister agree to meet Depaul, and perhaps visit a Nightstop service, to see how important and cost-effective it is and to see the potential for the roll-out that I mentioned earlier?

[Mrs Wheeler]

Absolutely. My apologies—when I mentioned the fantastic reduction of rough sleepers in his area from 35 to 11, I meant to say that I would be delighted to meet Depaul.

Govia Thameslink Franchise

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The professor has helped us, and that is very useful.

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Some 2,400 trains have been cancelled at Hassocks, in my constituency, since the introduction of the new timetable. The interim timetable this week seems to have resulted in fewer cancellations, so it is an improvement, but trains are still being delayed. What it has not done is to restore the direct service from Hassocks to Clapham Junction, and Hassocks is unique among commuting stations in no longer having such a service. Will my hon. Friend undertake to look at the matter again and ask GTR to review that omission, with a view to putting it right in future timetable changes?

[Joseph Johnson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for recognising that there has been some improvement since the introduction of the interim timetable on Sunday. He has been a strong champion of his constituents and their rail services in Hassocks. He and I have discussed how we can restore the direct services that he has mentioned on several occasions, and we have had debates on them in the House. I assure him that I will continue to raise the matter with GTR.

Govia Thameslink/Rail Electrification

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

The Secretary of State has been clear that he is leaving all options on the table should GTR be found to have been negligent. He is clear that the operator of last resort will be ready to step in, should that turn out to be the case, but of course the Department wants to follow all the correct processes in this matter.

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

We are now into week seven of this Thameslink timetable shambles, and there is no sign of the service getting better. Never mind electrification—frankly, trains were more reliable 100 years ago in the age of steam. Will the Minister confirm that the compensation package that he is to announce will be generous and that specifically, it will be funded by GTR, because its shareholders, not the taxpayer, should bear the pain for this appalling performance?

[Joseph Johnson]

I sympathise with my right hon. Friend’s concerns. His constituents, including those who use Hassocks station, which we have discussed on a number of occasions, have endured an unacceptable level of service, and he has been a strong champion for them. They will receive compensation and we will be setting out details of that compensation plan in coming days. It will be comparable, as the Secretary of State has indicated, with the compensation that was given to passengers on Southern about a year and a half ago.

Rail Services: Hassocks

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered rail services in Hassocks.

I welcome the opportunity to raise the subject of the rail services provided for villagers in Hassocks in my constituency, and for others who use the station there, which is on the Brighton main line and which offers Southern, Thameslink and Gatwick Express services. Hon. Members may wonder why I am talking about rail services to a village. Although it has a population of only 7,700 people—making it the largest settlement in my constituency—Hassocks is nevertheless the 10th busiest rail station in west Sussex and is used by many people who do not live in Hassocks itself. It is a commuter village.

Many people move to Hassocks specifically because of the rail links that it provides to London and other places. In fact, 1.3 million passengers a year use Hassocks station. Therefore, my first and key point—I know that my hon. Friend the Minister has taken it on board, because he very generously met me to discuss this issue before the new timetable was introduced last month—is that this is not a small issue. A large number of people use the rail service from Hassocks in my constituency, and the Minister knows that they are very angry indeed. They have put up with two years of disruption because of the problems with the Southern service and the London Bridge upgrade. They fully accept that the London Bridge upgrade will ultimately be of benefit to passengers, but they are certainly not seeing that at the moment. Just as it looked as though we might be moving towards a steadier state for rail services in West Sussex, which over the past two years have been absolutely dismal, we have serious disruption again.

This all started with the introduction of the new timetable last month. I should say straightaway that I fully appreciate that the new timetable provides more peak trains to Victoria from Hassocks and the same number to and from London Bridge—theoretically; I will come to the actuality shortly. Theoretically there are more such services, but—here is the “but”—there are no longer any direct services to Clapham Junction, the busiest rail station in Europe, from Hassocks. Despite the size of the village and the numbers of people commuting from there, the direct services to Clapham Junction have simply been withdrawn, and I am talking not about the disrupted timetable, but about the new timetable, which was meant to offer an improved service to everyone.

Four peak-time morning trains to Clapham Junction have been removed, and Govia Thameslink Railway admits that three of those journeys will now be slower by up to 10 minutes because of the need for my constituents to change services. Six peak-time return trains from Clapham Junction to Hassocks have been removed, and GTR admits that four of the journeys will be slower by up to 10 minutes. GTR has told me that it appreciates that

“passengers will need to change trains,”

but

“the journey time is only increasing by an average of 7 minutes.”

Commuters dispute that: they say that changes at Gatwick or East Croydon are rarely quick or easy, because of overcrowding. I know that GTR is giving figures based on a four-minute change time at Gatwick. I defy the Minister, GTR executives or anyone else reliably to be able to change at Gatwick at peak time, even if the trains were operating properly, based on only a four-minute window.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for the work that he is doing. Many of us in West Sussex are working together on this; it is a huge problem across the county. On his particular point about a changeover time of four minutes and with crowded platforms and mass disruption, commuters in my constituency are very concerned about the safety aspect. I am sure that that is a concern for his commuters as well.

[Nick Herbert]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. We have indeed been working together in West Sussex and we have been working closely with our right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), who is also very concerned about the disruption to services on the line. We are all concerned about the unfeasible interchange times and the safety implications, the implications for disabled passengers and so on. It is no good producing figures that show a theoretical benefit or not much of a change or not much of a problem for commuters, because of course it is actually very disruptive for people to have to change when they had a direct service before. These are busy working people. They often cannot get a seat once when they have changed. Their working patterns are disrupted, and they are just very irritated by the claim that somehow the service is nearly as good as it was before. It really is not.

There is a mismatch between demand and train routes. Gatwick Express trains, which stop only at Victoria, are relatively empty, whereas Thameslink trains have been severely overcrowded. I have raised before with the Minister whether it makes sense for Gatwick Express trains not to stop at the busiest station in Europe, Clapham Junction. If they did, that would offer more choice to people flying to and from Gatwick. The demand that those trains run direct from Gatwick to Victoria is problematic anyway, but it is certainly disadvantaging my constituents at the moment.

The Minister will tell me that only 9% of journeys in relation to Hassocks are to, from or through Clapham Junction. It sounds like very few when we hear that only 9% of my commuting constituents are affected, but actually it is 9% of a large number. It is 9.45%, to be precise, of the nearly 595,000 journeys that are being made to London. That means that more than 56,000 single journeys a year from Hassocks to Clapham Junction, in either direction, have now been withdrawn, in terms of the direct service, so that is not a small impact. It is impacting on the village, and people are very upset about it. Hassocks is a growing village—the number of houses will increase by one third in Hassocks alone, never mind the surrounding area—so to pick on one of the biggest stations in West Sussex and withdraw entirely the direct service to Clapham Junction simply does not make sense. I would therefore be very grateful if I could repeat to the Minister the request that I have made to him, to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, to GTR and to Network Rail, in so far as it is a matter for that organisation: will they please reconsider the new timetable, which has withdrawn what was an essential service for a large number of my constituents?

All this would be one thing, and I might not even have raised it in this Chamber, if it were not for the fact that these are theoretical new services anyway, because the disruption that has resulted from the new timetable has worsened the service not just for the commuters who have seen their service withdrawn, but for hundreds—no, thousands—of others. Frankly, the service since the introduction of the new timetable has been completely intolerable. I said at the beginning of the debate that my constituents were angry about it—they really are angry. This disruption is happening on a daily basis. It is deeply ironic that before the new timetable was introduced, GTR told me:

“We hope that with the introduction of this timetable, we will be in a position to provide…much more reliable services for all passengers travelling on our network.”

That would produce a very hollow laugh indeed from my constituents. The Minister knows that there has been widespread withdrawal, cancellation and delay of services.

The important thing for the Minister to note is that the situation is not getting better; in fact, it is just as bad as it was when the new timetable was first introduced. In the week before the timetable change, to 19 May, there were 18 train cancellations. That was a “normal” service. “Normal” service in West Sussex appeared to mean that my commuters had to accept that level of cancellations. Can people imagine an airline being run on the same basis? But never mind; there were “just” 18 cancellations in that week. In the first week of the new timetable, 245 trains were cancelled, and I am talking about trains to and from Hassocks. In the second week, there were 267 cancellations, in the third week 312 and in the fourth week 290. We are now in the fifth week and still nearly 300 trains a week are being cancelled. Might we have expected that after one month of the new interim timetable, which is resulting in services being withdrawn altogether, there might be some improvement? I am afraid not.

On Monday morning I received an email from a despairing constituent, Mr James Read, who lives in Hurstpierpoint. He said:

“I feel I must write to express my dismay at the current situation which appears to somehow deteriorate further everyday. This morning for example, I have never seen so many people waiting for a London train on the platforms at Hassocks. This morning, the 0623 was virtually full before it reached Hassocks. Then there were additional stops at Hayward’s Heath and Three Bridges to compound matters. It is totally unacceptable for people to be standing on a train service at 0630!”

I agree with that. I have a simple question for the Minister: when will this shambles come to an end? We are now four weeks on and it continues to be appalling.

I have here a timetable for rail services from Brighton and Hassocks in 1905, well over a century ago. The fastest of three direct trains from Hassocks to London Bridge took just one hour and 17 minutes. Those were steam trains. Theoretically, we now have direct services from Hassocks to London Bridge that are 23 minutes faster, but the reality is that we have a completely unreliable service. My constituents would be grateful to be transported back to the days of 1905, when they had three reliable steam trains that took them to London every single morning, compared to the chaotic, shambolic, disrupted, withdrawn and cancelled services that they are facing now.

What will be done about this? There is the issue of redress. I am grateful to GTR for at last recognising that tickets that are valid on one of the services should be passported to the others. I specifically asked for that and am grateful that it has been introduced. If a passenger has a ticket for a Southern service that is cancelled, they should be allowed to use it on a Thameslink or Gatwick Express service, or whichever service is available.

Then there is the issue of compensation. Of course, we must compensate passengers, but the compensation system is simply not good enough. It is not direct enough, immediate enough or sharp enough. It is too complicated for constituents to use. It just increases their irritation even more. We need a modern, sharper form of compensation system that is better than delay repay, so that the rail operating companies feel real pain when they are providing a shambolic and shoddy service like this, and passengers are compensated on a much more immediate basis. We need that not just because it would be fair to customers, but because it would introduce greater accountability.

Who will be accountable for this shambles? We have seen the resignation of Charles Horton, the chief executive of GTR, but what about Network Rail’s responsibility for this matter? It has admitted that it has some responsibility for the problems with Thameslink services, because of its failure to deliver in the north, which meant that it did not have enough staff to manage the new timetable. GTR says that one of the reasons it was in such trouble is that it was not given enough time to introduce the new timetable. The blame game is being played a lot. Who is being held accountable at Network Rail for this shambles? Yes, other projects may have been delivered on time and London Bridge might be wonderful, but that is not the point. My constituents want to know that people are being held accountable for these problems, so that they will not happen again.

Those were unforced errors, frankly. This is not the same situation as we are seeing in the north with union disruption. It is not the same as the situation over the last two years with the disruption to Southern services, which, we all came to realise, were largely driven by the unions manipulating problems that already existed with the lack of track because of the London Bridge upgrade and the shortage of drivers. There were other responsibilities, but the unions were driving it particularly. That is not the case with these Thameslink services now. We cannot lay the blame at the door of the unions for this. The blame has to be laid with the managers, whether in Network Rail, GTR or the Department for Transport, who presided over this shambles.

Why was there not an early warning system or risk register? Why were red lights not flashing, because this was a major change and could result in problems? We were still being told right up to the introduction of the new timetable that it might have minor teething problems, but it would be all right on the night. I am afraid it has not been all right on the night. We have to learn the lessons. I know that there will be an inquiry into that.

I am being placed—as my hon. Friends are—in a position where we are constantly having to apologise for the performance of the rail industry in our constituencies. It is difficult to explain to our constituents why more drastic action has not been taken to deal with this franchise.

[Jeremy Quin]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is making a speech of great passion and he is spot on with every point. As he knows, we are facing the same issue in Balcombe. I have discussed it with the Minister before. Balcombe is a small village with a huge number of commuters who come into it. They pay a fortune every year in order to get to and from London. The least they can expect is to be able to do so reliably.

I like my right hon. Friend’s tone. Does he agree that an inquiry is one thing, but we simply need to know when these drivers will be trained and when the timetable will be working? Those are two simple questions, to which we need to have the answers as soon as they can be provided.

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He has made the point directly, and I am sure the Minister will have heard it.

We will have to look at the size of this franchise again. It is too big. It was meant to deliver benefits in economies of scale, but it has only given us problems from the moment that it was introduced. We also need to look at the franchise holder. I appreciate that that is a legal process, but my constituents cannot understand why GTR is still running this franchise. There are longer term questions about the level of investment necessary in these lines. Hon. Members representing West Sussex constituencies will be very supportive of an increased level of investment, but that does not deal with the short-term issues.

In conclusion, my constituents in Hassocks are paying in excess of £5,000 a year for their season tickets. They rely on these rail services. I would, therefore, be grateful if the Minister would, first, look again at the question of whether direct services to Clapham Junction from Hassocks can be restored and, secondly, if he can tell us when normal, reliable services are likely to be restored.

I am grateful to the Minister for his attention to these problems, and I know how hard he has been working on them. His door has been open to us, and he has been receptive to the points we have been making. I certainly attach no blame to him or his colleagues. He has been badly let down indeed. I am sorry to address him in such tones, but it is important that I do so, because it is important for him to understand just how angry our constituents are now about this perpetually bad service and how despairing they are that there seems to be no end to it. They just want a normal, reliable rail service. In the 21st century, is that really too much to ask?

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who, as we have just seen, is an extraordinarily powerful champion for his constituents, on securing this important debate on rail services in Hassocks. At the outset, I assure him that it is the Department’s No. 1 priority to ensure that his constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) get the rail services to which they have every right to feel entitled as soon as possible.

He is under the impression that services have not been improving in recent days. I am disappointed to hear that. I will look into the statistics and the picture he painted of performance to and from Hassocks. Passengers travelling on those services already should have started to see improvement in their performance since GTR started cancelling services in advance, rather than on the day.

During the week beginning 28 May—some time ago now—there were several days with just three morning services from Hassocks to London Bridge. The other scheduled services were cancelled on the day, meaning that passengers could not plan ahead. Last week, by contrast, there were no on-the-day cancellations and five services ran in each morning peak period. I grant that performance is still far from being at the level that my right hon. Friend or we in the Department would find satisfactory, but I hope that passengers seeing that change feel that improvement is starting to happen. It must now accelerate and that is the priority for the Department.

On the Hassocks to Victoria route there are still too many delays. I should add that in the morning peak last week, 12 services ran each day, compared with the seven scheduled services before the timetable change. Even if there is much more room for improvement on the Victoria line, even there we are starting to see things move in the right direction.

Network Rail and GTR are urgently developing and delivering plans to do more to reduce the disruption, and to give passengers the greatest possible certainty of train services so that they can better plan ahead. As I have mentioned, GTR is removing services from its timetable in advance, rather than on the day, and reducing weekend services to pre-May timetable levels. It is now updating journey plans on Fridays with the information about which services are being cancelled for the following week being all loaded up there and then, so that passengers can get a sense of what the travel patterns will be like for the coming week. That should bring about a more stable service than we have seen in recent weeks and will be in place, to answer my right hon. Friend’s question, until a full replanning of driver resourcing can take place. GTR also aims to publish an amended timetable across the whole network. Once that is in place, the promised improvements of the May timetable will be introduced incrementally, rather than as a big bang, to reduce the risk of further disruption.

Let me turn to the questions about the future timetable, once we are over this difficult period of disruptions following the implementation of the timetable. When it is fully implemented, the new timetable will deliver improvements to as many passengers as possible while balancing the competing and often contradictory demands of different passenger groups.

As my right hon. Friend noted, peak-time services from Hassocks no longer stop at Clapham Junction. That is because all peak services between Hassocks and Victoria are Gatwick Express trains coming from Brighton, which cannot stop between Gatwick airport and Victoria. However, there can be a single change at Gatwick airport. We can examine his view that a four-minute positive interchange was an unrealistic ambition; I will certainly go back to Network Rail and GTR to see whether four minutes is a realistic interchange time. However, if we assume for a moment that it is possible to interchange in that time, Hassocks passengers can make the journey to Clapham Junction with an average journey time that is roughly the same as before the timetable change, with some journeys being faster and, I grant, with some being slower.

It may be helpful if I explain the reasons behind the change. Since the end of the industrial action to which my right hon. Friend referred in his remarks, the main cause of disruption on the Southern network has been trains and train staff travelling on different lines during the day. That has meant that when disruption has occurred, it has often spread rapidly across the network because if a driver or a train were caught up in disruption on one route that can impact very quickly on their availability for the route on which they are next meant to be working.

The new timetable keeps trains and train staff working on the same route throughout the day, containing any disruption on that specific route. In addition, work has been done so that the timing of services does not conflict with that of other services on the network. This work has included separating Gatwick Express services and Southern services on the Brighton main line.

The net result is that Hassocks now receives a consistent four Gatwick Express trains per hour on the route from Brighton to Victoria during the peak, and two Southern trains per hour from Littlehampton during the off-peak. Previously, as my right hon. Friend knows, Hassocks was served by a combination of Southern and Gatwick Express services coming from Brighton or Littlehampton at all times.

I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s point that a considerable number of passengers are still being affected, but I believe that they are now in a position where they are able to choose between Southern and Gatwick Express services. Passengers from Hassocks will benefit from the performance benefits that will come in time from the full separation of Gatwick Express and Southern services.

I also emphasise that the vast majority of passengers travelling to London from Hassocks are being well served by the timetable change. None the less, I recognise that 9.45%, or somewhere under 10%, of weekday journeys represents a significant number of my right hon. Friend’s constituents who use services from Hassocks. However, it is also worth remembering that more than 90% of passengers using Hassocks are going to Victoria or are on Thameslink services. Overall, connections from Hassocks into London are much improved.

Hassocks now receives 12 direct services to Victoria in the morning peak, compared with seven before the timetable change. This provides a significant capacity increase for those passengers going to Victoria. As this is a Gatwick Express route during the peaks, it is run with new trains that have air conditioning, wi-fi and power sockets. On average, the journey from Hassocks to Victoria in the morning used to take more than an hour. Now it takes, on average, 51 minutes, which is significantly better than the amount of time that services took in 1905, the timetable for which my right hon. Friend produced and referred to.

[Nick Herbert]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Before he experiences the fate of politicians and other public figures in Sussex who have particularly infuriated us and is burnt in effigy, may I ask him to reconsider his comment that services are “much improved”? I think what he meant was that they might be much improved when the new timetable is finally introduced and works properly, but he cannot say, and nobody can say, that the current level of service is much improved.

[Joseph Johnson]

Indeed. I prefaced all my comments by saying that this was about what would happen once we are over this hump—the current difficulties—and once the timetable is fully bedded in and working to the levels that it should. Of course my right hon. Friend is right and I repeat what I said earlier: there has been improvement, as I hope he acknowledges, but there is significant room for further improvement, so that services are of the standard that his constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham have a right to expect.

On average, the journey times for trains into Victoria from Hassocks will be reduced by 10 minutes in the morning, when the service is operating at the level it should be operating at.

National Planning Policy Framework

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I do not think it is acceptable that developers do not meet the commitments they set out at the start. Particularly in London, we have seen too many examples of where a particular percentage of a development was set out for affordable housing and that was not met, based on the way in which the assessment process currently works. That is why I hope the hon. Gentleman will support the process we have set out today, which will have greater standardisation and much more transparency.

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

We need more housing, and neighbourhood planning has produced more houses than expected. Does my right hon. Friend agree that speculative development can undermine democratically agreed neighbourhood plans, and will his proposals ensure that the neighbourhood plans are upheld?

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend should be reassured that what we have set out today gives greater strength to neighbourhood plans. He makes a very important point. We have found with neighbourhood plans that when we give communities a bigger say, in many cases they actually accept even more development. So far, we have found that that is, on average, about 10% more development.

Homelessness

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan (Chichester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) and to co-sponsor the debate with the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran).

Homelessness touches every part of the UK, and we in this place need look no further than the entrance to Parliament, where tragically a Portuguese man died just two weeks ago. Figures released this year show an increase in rough sleeping of 169% since 2010, which means that on any one night, more than 4,000 people are sleeping on our streets. While those figures are shocking, they do not show the true scale of the problem.

When we think of homelessness, we imagine people sleeping in doorways or underpasses, or on park benches, but there is another type of homelessness: people living in temporary accommodation. In March last year, an estimated 77,000 families, including 120,000 children, were living without a place to call home. Those are people living in hostels and bed and breakfasts. They are not sleeping on the streets, but they are without a home.

There are countless others whom we do not hear about: the hidden homeless who are without a home and out of sight. I recently met a constituent who is a single mother of three and works part time. Her tenancy agreement ended after her landlady wanted to move back into the house, but when my constituent tried to find another home, she discovered she could not afford anywhere to rent, as the rental market had moved beyond her reach. Chichester District Council offered to put her up in a B&B 20 minutes away but, as a mother, she knew the destabilising effect that that would have on her children, and the long distance would make the school run challenging and expensive. Instead, she has had to split her family, with two of her children staying with her mother while she and her youngest are with her grandmother. That decision meant that her children could stay at their respective schools, unlike many others in temporary accommodation, who miss an average of 55 school days. That story is not uncommon, as the termination of private sector tenancy agreements is now the biggest single driver of homelessness.

Successive Governments have failed to build adequate quantities of housing and the right type of housing. The demand-supply ratio has forced up rents and house prices, especially around the south-east. Across England, rents have increased by three times the rate of earnings, and the average rent for a two-bed flat in Chichester is now £944 a month. For many on lower incomes in expensive areas, there is a likelihood of their being priced out of the market and, without family help, becoming homeless.

To tackle that, we know that we need to build more homes. I am pleased that the Government have announced a raft of policies to achieve that and have put house building at the top of their agenda. The multi-pronged approach is the right one, and just one of the measures that are being put in place is a change to planning law so that there are tougher consequences when planned homes are not built. For too long, developers have acquired planning permission and enjoyed watching the value of land increase while failing to lay a single brick.

Of course, investment is key. The £1.5 billion home building fund and £2.7 billion increase to the housing infrastructure fund will go a long way towards ensuring that houses are built in areas where there is great need. I am sure that we all welcome the further investment in the affordable homes programme to the tune of £2 billion, meaning that the programme expenditure will reach £9 billion by 2020-21.

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is surely right about the importance of a long-term solution and providing more affordable housing, including in our area of West Sussex. Does she agree that there is also an important role for schemes such as emergency hosting for young people who become homeless, which can be provided by volunteers? The brilliant Depaul Nightstop service—I declare an interest, as my partner works for Depaul—provides such a scheme, but in only half the local authorities in England.

[Gillian Keegan]

I do, and I am familiar with that fantastic scheme. We need to be more innovative to solve this problem. With a large number of people seeking permanent homes, house building measures are a step in the right direction, but building homes takes time, and many people’s needs are urgent, so such schemes are helpful.

The country has faced similar situations throughout its history. In post-war Britain, when the nation was struggling to house its people, my own grandparents, newly married with a baby daughter, found themselves homeless after both had served their country during the war. No facilities for families were available at that time, so their only option was to stay in male-only and female-only hostels while their young daughter—my mum—went into an orphanage. Their plight was resolved when they were offered a prefabricated house to rent. My nan loved her prefab and always talked fondly of her first home. It was not just a house; it was the key to her building a happy family life. I urge the Government and local authorities to think innovatively so that they can provide more social housing in high-price areas for rental quickly.

Housing, Planning and the Green Belt

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Yesterday I was at a planning inquiry in my constituency. It should have been a situation in which a planning inspector signed off a neighbourhood plan produced by a village, but the process has in fact been stopped because of incompatibility with the local plan. It has to be said that the neighbourhood plan had not started quickly enough; nevertheless, it has been stopped.

In response to views expressed by the planning inspector, Mid Sussex District Council has proposed a 500-house settlement to the north of the village of Hassocks. The cumulative effect of that new development and others would be to increase the size of the village by a third. There are huge local concerns about the adequacy of infrastructure, the decision to locate the settlement at the proposed site, the loss of countryside, the closure of a green space between two villages and so on, but the important point is that the parish council was preparing its neighbourhood plan, and it was proposing an increase in the number of houses. Neighbourhood plans have delivered more houses than expected. The parish council proposed a limited number of houses in that location, but 500 was completely out of kilter with the number it expected to produce, and the site of the proposed new settlement is not in the location that the parish council wanted.

During the inquiry, a huge number of members of the public were listening to the evidence given by not only elected representatives, but a vast array of QCs representing an equally vast array of house builders. Members of the public were not allowed to speak, but every time they just said, “Hear, hear,” or disagreed with a point in the way in which polite members of the public in West Sussex do, they were told to be quiet. They were silenced. A reform that was introduced under the Localism Act 2011 and that was designed to empower local communities—giving them the decision about where housing should be located—has suddenly regressed to the old-fashioned planning by appeal process, with decisions taken by the planning inspector and the public literally silenced. I suggest that we need to hold faith with the principle of giving communities more control over where housing goes.

In reality, more housing than expected was produced by the process of neighbourhood planning. I think that those on all sides can agree with the principles of empowerment, of taking responsibility and of putting decision making into the hands of the local community. Upsetting neighbourhood plans undermines those principles and this very powerful reform.

We should understand why this has happened: developers have been gaming the system, and continue to do so. Developers, by not using planning permissions, have driven down the five-year land supply so that we have a planning free-for-all whereas we should have a planned system. Developers have conspired—I use that word advisedly—in Mid Sussex, as they have in other districts in my constituency, to delay putting local plans in place so that they can maintain that free-for-all, yet cynically they have not built.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend refers to the power of the local voice. I am sorry that my voice has gone a little, but I will still speak up for local people. That local voice needs to be heard in planning. My area falls within the Stockport local plan area, but that, in turn, falls under the Greater Manchester spatial framework. For four years, one of my villages has been trying to set up its own neighbourhood plan. The community has done a lot of work, but it is now worried about how its neighbourhood plan will fit in, as two other plans are being put in place. There were indications in “Planning for the right homes in the right places” that this would be addressed through a different methodology. Does he agree that we need to keep that approach?

[Nick Herbert]

Where possible, we need to respect neighbourhood plans. Of course the local planning authority retains the position of a strategic planning authority, but we should not allow developers to bust neighbourhood plans by cynical means, which is what has been happening.

It is important to note that the housing that is now being built in West Sussex is far in excess of the level that was envisaged 12 years ago, when I was first elected to the House. The objectively assessed need for local authorities is now 61% higher than it was under Gordon Brown’s draft south-east plan, and it will be double that when the Government bring in the new housing need figures. New houses are being built. However, it is important that permissions actually translate into new homes.

I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) back to his place. I agreed with almost everything that he said. We can all agree about the importance of building more houses. He gave us his framing of the fundamental problem, and I agree that returning to the free market is not the answer, and nor is saying that we should hold to the current system, which is clearly not delivering. Somewhere in the middle, we have to identify a more radical reform that will allow us, as he suggested, to capture the uplift in the value of land between what it would be as ordinary land with an agricultural market value, and land with development potential, which suddenly becomes worth millions or tens of millions of pounds per acre. We have to think hard about how we do that.

I want to deliver a warning. Putting into the hands of local authorities powers of compulsory purchase that give them the ability to confiscate land at not the market value, but an assessed value that is far lower, might indeed have the effect that my hon. Friend suggests. While we must explore such ideas, that might also create wholesale property blight across the country, inconveniencing not just the owners of agricultural land, but communities more widely. I look at the effect of a proposed new town in my constituency, which is in the same district of Mid Sussex, but also falls into Horsham district. Neither local authority wants that, but it has been relentlessly promoted by a developer that does not even have an options on the land, against the wishes of the local community and the local councils. That has created an enormous blight on a large swathe of this part of Mid Sussex, because people are fearful that a new town might come and therefore the value of their properties is affected.

If we are to investigate such a reform, we have to be very careful to draw a distinction between previous powers exercised by the Government in relation to compulsory purchase for new towns such as Milton Keynes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford set out, and the idea that we could somehow translate those powers to local authorities in a way that was not carefully constrained. That needs much more careful thinking, but it is undoubtedly the germ of an important idea.

I agree with my hon. Friend that we will need new thinking if we are to increase supply in the way that is necessary. We are not France or Germany. We have a much smaller country, and there are huge pressures on infrastructure, but reform might help to deliver infrastructure for local communities.

We need to produce more affordable housing, but we should try to apply the principles we latched on to a few years ago with the Localism Act 2011, through which we gave communities the power to decide where they wanted housing and the responsibility to exercise that power. That yielded great results, because it meant that communities that had previously said no to developments started saying yes in a very positive way. We should be careful about principles that rely on such state intervention, control or indeed confiscation that they would be anathema to the public and many Conservative Members.

Town and Village Plans

Lord Herbert of South Downs Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

First, I say to the Minister that this is not about opposition to housing. In West Sussex as a whole, when I was first elected, the draft south-east plan proposed an amount of housing far below what is now being built under the new system. The objectively assessed need for West Sussex produces 66% more houses than the draft south-east plan, and the new formula will produce nearly double the draft south-east plan. It is placing massive pressure on local infrastructure.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) said so well, neighbourhood plans produce more houses by consent. If we allow neighbourhood plans to be bust, then we undermine the principle of consent, and in the end, fewer houses will be built by consent. That leads us to only one policy—the imposition of housing, which will be massively unpopular.

The Minister must understand that developers are gaming the system. They are ensuring that five-year land supplies are not adequate. Consequently, neighbourhood plans—either in draft form or, worse, when they are made and approved by large referendums—are being broken through. Some of the solution lies in his hands. The Government produced a helpful improvement to the situation last year, but his predecessor refused to entertain call-ins or appeals. When the Minister comes to take any decisions that might be in the balance, he must be mindful of the importance of supporting the neighbourhood planning process.

In the end, the Government face a fundamental choice. They can hold to the Localism Act 2011, a flagship policy that empowered local communities and gave them responsibility, including for decisions about where to locate housing. We are now in a difficult position; public faith in the policy of localism is being gravely undermined by people’s feeling that developers are simply overriding neighbourhood plans or that the Government apply rules that are too tight and do not recognise the power of giving local communities the control that they should have.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing (Dominic Raab)]

As ever, Mr Hollobone, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) on securing the debate. He spoke forensically about the issue and eloquently about his constituency. He highlighted the importance of neighbourhood planning, which has been giving people real power to shape the development of their communities since its introduction in 2011.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to points raised in the debate and take up the generous offer from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) to listen carefully to concerns. Hon. Members will know that, given the Department’s role in determining certain planning issues, I cannot comment on the detail of individual plans or planning cases. However, I can talk about the practice, the framework and the parameters that create the principles guiding the relationship between neighbourhood plans, local authorities and central Government strategy. I hope also to address the interesting points made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew).

I know that many hon. Members have been directly involved in encouraging and supporting communities in their constituencies to take up neighbourhood planning; I recognise the role that MPs play in the process. I assure all hon. Members that we continue to support the principle of neighbourhood planning and that we are already looking at teething issues and wrinkles to be ironed out. In September, we announced our largest ever support package for neighbourhood planning: a £22.8 million programme that will start in April and provide communities with the help and resources that they need to develop plans up to 2022.

Before I address the important points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk, it is worth reminding ourselves of the wider national context and the big picture on housing. In order to meet demand, we have to deliver 300,000 homes every year by the mid-2020s. We have to provide the homes that Britain needs, but we also have to make them affordable for real people on low and middle incomes. As hon. Members have said, we have to build a lot more of the right homes in the right places. I take that point. There were 217,000 net additions to the housing supply last year. That was the highest level in a decade—an increase of approximately 70% on what was achieved in 2009-10—so there are positive signs, but there is still a long way to go.

We need to be mindful of how we tailor the vehicle, both in the context of local democratic affairs—points were raised today about carrying communities with us—and with respect to the overarching national demand and our mission to build the homes that the next generation needs.

It is absolutely crucial that local authorities play their role by producing up-to-date local plans and identifying a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites. Local plans and a five-year supply of housing sites can provide clarity for communities and for developers who want to do things the right way regarding where new homes should be built. That means that development is planned and is not the result of speculative applications. I have taken on board the points made by my right hon. Friends the Members for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) and for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) about some developers. I emphasise “some” developers; let us not tar all developers with the same brush, because, as I think hon. Members have said, there is good practice, but there is some bad practice as well.

As of today, 26 authorities are still to publish a local plan and 131 local authorities have a local plan that is older than five years. So, the big picture is that overall we are doing quite well, but there are certainly areas and pockets where we need to do better. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has written to 15 authorities, giving them until the end of this month to justify why they do not have a plan in place and why the Government should not intervene. He has put other authorities on notice, explaining that a consistent failure to make sufficient progress in that regard cannot be tolerated indefinitely.

I turn to neighbourhood plans. They are, of course, voluntary. They rely on the enthusiasm and the hard work of local people, and, in the round, local communities. They are a powerful set of tools for communities to say where development—such as homes, shops and offices—should go, what it should look like, and what facilities should be provided. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who, as neighbourhood planning champion, has championed the cause of the right kind of local plans.

Neighbourhood plans undergo consultation, independent examination and the community referendum before coming into force as part of the development plan for their area. I take the point that was made by the hon. Member for Stroud about referendums, even though I was probably on a different side from him in our recent, bigger referendum. In this context, however, referendums are important, because they ensure that neighbourhood plans have genuine support and, as a result, some clout and some force. Their status as part of the development plan is very important, because planning applications must be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.

Since the introduction of neighbourhood planning by the Localism Act 2011, 2,300 communities have begun the process of shaping the future of their area. I think that about 17 of those are within the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk, and I recognise the local initiative that goes into such local plans. I also understand the point that he made about encouraging and not stifling that initiative, which is crucial.

[Nick Herbert]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the undermining of a referendum by failing to observe what the referendum has decided is, in its own way, just as damaging at a local level, in relation to a neighbourhood plan, as it would be at a national level if a decision made in a national referendum was not observed by the authority concerned?

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and he is tempting me to muddy the waters of this debate in a typically mischievous way. I will accept that if we argue for the principle of democracy through a referendum and say that the result of the referendum needs to be delivered, and we then put in place a system of local referendums—often, people care even more about the issues in such referendums than they do about those in national referendums, because the issues relate to people’s local environment or their quality of life—it is important to make sure that they are respected.

We endeavour to continue to make the neighbourhood planning process stronger and simpler, to ensure that it is attractive to even more communities. This week, for example, we are implementing powers in the Neighbourhood Planning Act 2017. Those reforms make it easier for communities to keep their neighbourhood plans up to date as local circumstances change—they will change from time to time—and ensure that neighbourhood planning groups are made aware of local planning applications.

Other important reforms set out in the Act came into force last July. Those reforms require decision takers to respect neighbourhood plans earlier in the process, following a successful referendum. There will be further reforms this July, requiring local authorities to set out their policies on supporting neighbourhood planning groups.

I take this opportunity to welcome another neighbourhood planning success. The 500th successful neighbourhood planning referendum has just taken place; they are clearly catching on, notwithstanding the point that the hon. Member for Stroud made. That is quite an important milestone, which was reached by communities in Leeds, Suffolk and Lincolnshire. Those three communities are very different from each other, to touch on the point that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), made. However, they all went to the polls on the same day, and between them they allocated land for employment, homes and local green spaces; those things can come together. Those plans are now the starting point for determining planning decisions.

Our planning policy is clear that where a planning application conflicts with a neighbourhood plan that has been brought into force, planning permission should not normally be granted. However, we recognised in 2016 that, in some cases, neighbourhood plans were being undermined because the local planning authority could not demonstrate a five-year land supply of deliverable housing sites, which is one of the key issues. That meant that even recently adopted neighbourhood planning policies were not being given enough weight in determining planning applications. I know that that is the crux of the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk, and the point that he wanted to make in this debate.

Communities who had worked hard to put their neighbourhood plan in place were left frustrated as decisions went against the plan, despite their having done everything that was asked of them. As hon. Members have argued, that can only undermine confidence in the referendum process and the localism agenda. Seeking to remedy that, we issued a written ministerial statement in December 2016 to ensure that national planning policy provided additional protection to precisely those communities. The change that was made protects neighbourhood plans that are less than two years old and that allocate sites for housing, as long as the local planning authority has more than three years’ supply of deliverable housing sites.

We will take forward that protection in the updated national planning policy framework, which will be published for consultation before Easter—I think there was a question earlier about its publication. I suspect that that will be the beginning of the dialogue and the debate, not the end of them.

The national planning policy framework will be amended to give local authorities the opportunity to have their housing land supply agreed on an annual basis, and fixed for a one-year period. I hope that that gives some reassurance. Through these new policies, alongside the tough action to get local plans in place, we hope to ensure that we get the right homes in the right places. That is the delicate line that we seek to tread here.

I should just say a few words about neighbourhood plan examinations, because of the significant legal weight afforded to neighbourhood plans. The plans need to be carefully examined in a fair and transparent way. If we had longer today, I would go into the matter in more detail. Effectively, the examinations are the check that, once passed, allows the referendum to proceed, which gives real force to the localism agenda in this sector.

I am conscious of the time that I must give my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk to allow him to wind up this debate. I appreciate that important issues have been raised today, whether they are in rural, urban or suburban constituencies, and I understand how deeply felt are the concerns about them. We will continue to protect neighbourhood plans in national policy, and decision takers—whether that is the local authority, the planning inspector or the Secretary of State himself—must respect that national policy.