Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Pritchard and Kit Malthouse

Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

This policy area actually falls within the purview of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. I know, having been Minister for Housing until recently, that as part of the review of building regulations, the matter of sprinklers is under consideration.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Shropshire has suffered widespread and dangerous flooding over the past few days, affecting thousands of people. Would the Home Secretary like to join me in putting on record her thanks to West Mercia police and all the people from Shropshire fire and rescue services?

Housing Need: Shropshire, and Telford and Wrekin

Debate between Mark Pritchard and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)]

It is a great pleasure to appear before you for the first time, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) on securing the debate. Having felt the breeze on my face and heard the skylarks atop the Wrekin, and sung in Ludlow church as a boy chorister, I can appreciate why my hon. Friend and his county colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), are quite so assiduous in seeking to curate that beautiful part of the country as carefully as possible.

As Members will know, the Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role in the planning system, so I am sure they understand that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the detail of individual decisions or plans. However, I can talk more broadly about the issues raised by my hon. Friend. Like him, the Government fully recognise the need to plan for and build more homes. We are committed to enabling the housing market to deliver at least 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s. We need to make sure that homes are supplied that meet the diverse needs of our communities, such as homes for first-time buyers, homes suitable and accessible for older people, high-quality rental properties and well-designed social housing.

Each and every part of the country has its role to play in ensuring that these homes are delivered. The vital first step in the process is to bring forward local plans that give communities certainty about where development will take place. The planning system should be genuinely plan-led, with up-to-date plans providing a framework for addressing environmental, social and economic priorities for every area, as my hon. Friend mentioned. Local plans should be prepared in consultation with communities. I hear exactly what my hon. Friend says about consultation and I urge all local authorities to ensure the public are fully involved in the planning process at every level. Local authorities play a key role in delivering the development and infrastructure that is needed in the right places, and community participation is a vital part of that.

The best plans are those that have been developed through effective engagement with communities throughout the process. Having an up-to-date plan in place is essential to planning for housing, providing clarity to communities and developers about where homes and supporting development should be built—and where it should not—so that development is planned for, rather than the result of speculative planning applications. The two local authority areas over which my hon. Friend’s constituency spans should have regard to that. I am aware that Telford and Wrekin Council adopted its local plan last year, for which it should be congratulated. I understand that Shropshire Council is undertaking a partial review of its site allocations and management of development plan at present—I emphasise how important that is for the communities those councils serve.

Through the revised national planning policy framework, we have made significant reforms to make it easier and quicker to get a plan in place. We have introduced flexibility in how plan-making happens, with a new, more flexible plan-making framework and an expectation that plans are kept up to date and reviewed at least once every five years. We have also introduced a standardised approach to assessing housing need locally. When it was published last year, the revised NPPF introduced a standard method for assessing local housing need. After extensive consultation, it was introduced to speed up and reduce the cost of the plan-making process and to make the process more transparent and accessible. It was introduced to help ensure that we meet our commitment to deliver more homes, which have been better designed, faster.

In practice, all councils should make a realistic assessment of the number of homes their communities need, and they should use the standard method as the starting point, not the end point, in the process. The starting point is used to identify the minimum number of homes needed every year. What the standard method does not do, however, is provide a maximum number of homes needed, nor does it provide a target that must be planned for. It would be wrong to think that this is just a numbers game; we need to make sure that communities are fully on board through local plans. We need to make sure that constraints, such as green belt, are considered and that we find the right places for homes, within those constraints. We also need to ensure that the right infrastructure is in place and that we underpin all development with good design principles.

Development should not be progressed at any cost and local circumstances should be taken into account. Local authorities are best placed to do that and should plan how to meet the housing needs of their communities, considering land availability and relevant constraints, including green belt and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and whether need is more appropriately met in neighbouring areas.

[Mark Pritchard]

Does the Minister agree that the relationship first between the West Midlands combined authority and Shropshire Council, and secondly between Shropshire Council and Telford and Wrekin Council, whether it be commercial and/or financial, should be transparent? It is in the public interest that documentation relating to those relationships should be published.

[Kit Malthouse]

I agree with my hon. Friend. As he will know, under the plan-making process, all local authorities have a duty to co-operate with their neighbours in seeking to allocate housing need most appropriately in their region or area. Where those plans are put in place and there is co-operation about the allocation of housing, of course it should be completely transparent for local communities to see how their democratically elected representatives are disposing of the required housing need in their area.

I want to talk about environmental protection. The NPPF carries forward into planning the basic principle of the 25-year environment plan that we must leave our environment in a better condition than when we inherited it, and plan and design developments accordingly. The area which both my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow represent is particularly sensitive in environmental terms, and should be protected as much as possible.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, the green belt is a key feature of our natural heritage and fundamentally aims to prevent urban sprawl by keeping land permanently open. It is a national policy, but applied locally with green-belt land defined and protected by local planning authorities. By providing strong protection for the openness of green-belt land the NPPF prevents inappropriate development. He is right that local authorities have a duty to look at brownfield land first before they consider green-belt sites.

[Mark Pritchard]

Does the Minister share my surprise that my constituents were informed in the last few weeks by Shropshire Council that the west midlands appears to have run out of employment land?