Mark Pawsey
Main Page: Mark Pawsey (Conservative - Rugby)(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Hilary Benn
That point has been raised by a number of organisations in response to the consultation, and I shall put a specific point to the Minister about it shortly.
Hilary Benn
I have given way a number of times already, and I am anxious to make progress.
Given the primacy of the sustainable development presumption in policy, given that so much flows from it, and given that no one in the House wants development at any price, the Government need to get the definition of sustainable development right. The Environmental Audit Committee has already made clear its view on which definition should be used. As the Minister will know, in a report published in March, it called for the inclusion of the five internationally recognised principles of sustainable development that were set out in the 2005 sustainable development strategy, which, as I recall, the then Opposition supported at the time, as I do now.
I listened carefully to the argument presented by the Minister today, and I hope that the Government will bear it in mind when they produce their revised draft, because there is a risk that in the absence of a complete definition, there will be more argument about what the term means. The last Government, with support from the then Opposition, replaced the original Brundtland definition with the 2005 definition, and I was not persuaded by what the Minister said about why that should not endure in time. If we stick with it, it will be well understood and enduring.
Hilary Benn
I agree with my right hon. Friend. I am sure that the revised draft will be a slightly longer document, but the existence of a bit more material sometimes assists decisions in the planning process rather than making them more difficult.
I do not know whether the Minister has seen the CPRE legal opinion, issued by a respected planning QC, but it addresses this very point about the definition of sustainable development. The QC argues that
“there is an ambiguity which permeates the NPPF, and which is likely to lead to uncertainty in its application, with a consequent increase in the number of appeals.”
None of us wants that. This serves as a powerful argument that the Minister should reflect on possible changes, as he has undertaken to do.
Mark Pawsey
The issue of sustainable development comes into play only in the absence of a local plan. Does the right hon. Gentleman therefore agree that Government and Opposition should come together to encourage local authorities to get their local plan in place early?
Hilary Benn
The NPPF says that in the absence of such a plan there should be a presumption in favour of sustainable development, but regardless of whether there is a local plan, someone must still decide about what constitutes sustainable development.
The second issue I want to address is the choice of land for development. There are many competing pressures, and we want to protect as much green space as possible. That point was made eloquently in this week’s Westminster Hall debate initiated by the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry).
Because of our heritage, we have a lot of previously developed brownfield land and, building on the foundations laid by a previous Conservative Government, Lord Prescott created the “brownfield first” policy. It was very successful. Last year, 76% of new dwellings were built on brownfield sites, up from 55% in 1989. We need only look at the centre of cities like Leeds and Manchester to see that it is working, or consider that in the last decade the proportion of new homes built on the green belt fell from 4% to 2%. It is estimated that there are almost 62,000 hectares of brownfield land in England that are ready for building on, which would be enough to build about 1.2 million homes.
The Minister appears to argue that a
“land with the least environmental or amenity value”
approach is the same as this “brownfield first” policy. If that is the case, why change it? If it is not the case, then we can understand why people are worried. Indeed, the Government’s own impact assessment refers to
“removing the target and the priority for brownfield development”.
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.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this important debate.
Elmbridge borough, which covers my constituency, is 57% green-belt land. I have therefore been inundated, like many colleagues, with letters and e-mails that seek reassurance and a degree of extra clarity about the draft national planning policy framework.
I endorse the Government’s principal aim of streamlining the bureaucracy of the planning process. Much has been made of the bureaucratic impact on developers and the economic cost, but it is worth bearing in mind how the planning system that we inherited from the previous Government also tied up local councils in that expensive bureaucratic process, at considerable cost to the taxpayer.
I also recognise the bigger picture. I am delighted that the Government scrapped the south-east plan, with its top-down targets for Elmbridge, which were bitterly resented locally. Rather than being forced to comply with diktats from a distant and faceless regional quango, Elmbridge borough council has replaced the regional plan with a local plan, after extended local consultation. Elected councillors will be accountable to residents for planning policy. That strengthens local democracy and I welcome it wholeheartedly.
I have a number of points and questions on the detail. My understanding is that once a local plan is in place it will govern the planning process for individual applications and will not subsequently be trumped by the framework. If so, that might be spelled out a bit more clearly in the draft framework. I would also be grateful if Ministers clarified whether the presumption in favour of sustainable development applies only where no local plan is in place. If so, it would be useful to be explicit on that point. If not, the relationship between the two needs further elaboration. I urge the Government to give primacy to local democracy.
I welcome the provisions in the draft framework that explicitly acknowledge that the green belt serves the purpose of preventing the merging of towns and wider urban sprawl. I note from the draft framework that there is a narrow list of exceptions to the general rule in paragraph 144 that it is inappropriate to build on green belt. Are those exceptions subject to the strictures in the local plan or can they override it, and with it the democratic credibility that the Government have so painstakingly built up by abolishing the regional plans?
Beyond the green belt, I welcome the exhortation in paragraph 122 for developers to work closely with communities affected by development. Many communities want a safeguard in case developers do not listen. If there is one criticism, it is that the draft framework is a little light when it comes to explaining how the democratic checks that we have built so carefully into local planning policy formulation will translate into the individual application process. I hope that the revised draft can be beefed up in that regard.
In my view, the developer’s right of appeal over the heads of our democratically elected councils should be curtailed and the balance shifted in favour of local communities and their representatives. In particular, I should like to see stronger safeguards—I am relaxed about whether they are in statute or guidance—enabling a major development to be blocked by the local council as a whole, a majority of local ward councillors or a local referendum, which would empower residents directly. That seems particularly germane to the practical operation of the principle of the community’s right to buy, which is set out in the draft framework.
The framework must not be viewed in isolation, and I welcome the new homes bonus. For too long, the last Government allowed untrammelled development in certain areas and creamed off the tax revenue from the sale of new properties, with communities seeing far too little of that money coming back to support local infrastructure. The new homes bonus will address that, which is crucial because development without the resources to provide the public services to accompany new residents creates considerable local resentment.
Even with the new homes bonus, however, it must be right that local authorities can take into account the costs that developments bring and the burdens on schools, councils, roads, GPs and other local services, in co-ordination with the providers of those services. If that is what is meant by sustainable development, it might go some way towards allaying fears if that could be spelled out directly. Likewise, there is relatively minimal guidance in the draft framework on the right to refuse development to mitigate flood risk, which is an important factor in my constituency. Perhaps that, too, might be spelled out a little more clearly.
I am confident that we can get the balance right in the framework. It is important, and the overarching aim behind it is sound. I am even more confident that Ministers will take due account of the points expressed by colleagues during the debate, and by the experts and other groups outside the House, so that we end up with a framework that both cuts bureaucracy and strengthens localism.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I say at the outset that it is important not to underestimate the importance of this afternoon’s debate, because we are talking about the development of land, and once land is developed it remains developed. There is no going back. When development takes the form of a building, the average life of a structure is 60 years, so it is very important that we get these things right.
What are the reasons for changing the system? I believe there are three. The first is the lack of public participation in the planning process. Local communities often feel that they have no power in the face of the development industry and are unable to influence what happens. They have things done to them, not by them. The second is the housing failures that we have heard about, with last year seeing the lowest number of peacetime house building completions since 1923. The third is the failed system of 1,000-plus pages of guidance.
It is interesting that the simplifications have been welcomed not only by the shadow Secretary of State but by the opponents of the Government’s proposals. The Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), drew attention to the evidence that we heard from Simon Jenkins of the National Trust, who said that
“everyone agrees the planning system needs localising and needs updating.”
I believe there are four positive reasons for accepting the framework with enthusiasm. The first is that it embraces localism and involves local people. It is only right that local people should have a leading role. The second is that it places the views of the broader community above those of narrow groups. For example, paragraph 167 states that authorities should
“give great weight to protecting landscape and scenic beauty in National Parks”.
Regrettably, there will always be those who oppose any kind of development, but I believe the Government have been courageous in dealing with that problem. Professor Sir Peter Hall, whose lectures I attended in the ’70s, has praised the Prime Minister for
“defying the extraordinary narrow lobby”
presented by those who support nimbyism.
The third reason for accepting the framework is that it will protect the environment. That view is supported by the Countryside Land and Business Association. The fourth is the economic argument that it will provide a system to get our economy moving.
I wish to mention the “town centre first” policy. I have great sympathy with those who argue in favour of retaining office use within that policy, because offices provide the consumers who support the retail and hospitality sectors, which we are defending in the framework.
In conclusion, the economy is stagnant, yet prime land for development lies untouched because in recent years our planning framework simply has not worked. Our reforms represent a fundamental step change in community power and provide a much better system for economic development. The Government should not be swayed off course by the lobby that has rallied against them in recent months.
Andrew Stunell
My right hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. I hope that he has encapsulated it in the representation that I know he has submitted to the consultation, and that if he has not, he will make a second submission.
The Government are keen to put matters right. The new planning architecture of the national planning policy framework and the local development framework—the core strategies that have been referred to so frequently today—and the neighbourhood and parish plans must be taken together and seen in context.
Mark Pawsey
The Minister refers to the importance of plans. Does he agree that the essential purpose of the NPPF is to put those plans in place, and that local authorities that fail should be urged do so by both Government and Opposition, so that there is a template against which development proposals can be measured?
Andrew Stunell
My hon. Friend is right. I shall deal with some of the specific points that have been raised in a moment, although several of them are quite detailed, and I shall not have time to respond to all 35 Members who have spoken. We will make a serious effort to write to those whom I do not manage to respond to today.