Housing and Planning Bill (Fifteenth sitting)

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The clause will enable some housing developments to be determined under the national infrastructure planning regime, if they are part of a larger mixed development that includes infrastructure. On the face of it, we have no objection to that in principle, but we are concerned about how the process for granting approval is going to work in practice. It brings me back to the discussions we were having this morning about whether there are going to be three or four ways in which applications for housing can be determined. We have come to an additional way, so perhaps we are now on the fifth way for applicants to get planning permission for new housing.

A number of organisations, including the National Infrastructure Planning Association, have written to the Committee to say that there is a need for greater clarity in the Government’s guidance. It is very welcome that we received the briefing note for the guidance relating to clause 107 before we came on to debate it. I do not know who is responsible for that, but they should be commended, because it is clearly much better that we get the documents that are relevant to a clause before we debate it, rather than afterwards, which has typically been the case with the Bill so far.

The briefing note states that the clause will

“minimise regulation and provide maximum flexibility”

and that

“more detailed issues relating to the inclusion of housing will be covered in guidance.”

It goes on to tell us about some of those issues, which include

“the types of infrastructure that housing could be included with; the two circumstances in which housing… might be built…; the location of housing in relation to the infrastructure; the assessment of housing proposals; and how the housing element of any nationally significant infrastructure project will be treated at each stage of the nationally significant infrastructure planning process and the considerations that will need to be taken into account by developers.”

I was reassured when I read that. I thought, “Good. We’re not exactly clear what the process will be and we’re not entirely sure what sorts of infrastructure projects it will relate to, but all we have to do is be patient and wait for the guidance, which will tell us all those things.” Unfortunately, the draft guidance does not do that job.

Taking the point about the infrastructure to which housing can be attached, the guidance just says:

“The Government does not propose to place limits on the categories of infrastructure project that may include housing.”

We are technically none the wiser and just have to assume that it could be any sort of infrastructure in almost any circumstances. Paragraph 20 outlines some of the restrictions that will be placed on the building of housing in certain areas and provides four examples, but it is unclear whether they are examples or the totality. The restrictions include

“sites protected under the Birds and Habitats Directives and/or designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest;”

That is a good thing. Also included are:

“land designated as Green Belt, Local Green Space, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Heritage Coast or within a National Park (or the Broads Authority);”—

again, we very much welcome that—

“designated heritage assets; and locations at risk of flooding or coastal erosion.”

Is that a definitive list or are they examples? The guidance is not clear whether they are the sorts of things that local authorities should take into account or whether they are the only things. Given the potentially extensive application of the clause, it is important that we get that information.

I will not detain the Committee any further on the guidance except to say to the Minister that I have been through it and cannot see where it sets out in detail how housing applications will be considered at each stage of the national infrastructure process. Will they have a particular designation, or will they just be considered as part of the overall scheme? Some clarification from the Minister would be extremely helpful.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Gray. I will be relatively brief, but I speak to raise concerns about clause 107 with a particular example from my constituency in mind. The Mayor of London and Transport for London are consulting on a nationally significant infrastructure project, the Silvertown tunnel, which is a road tunnel linking the Greenwich peninsula to Silvertown Way north of the river. It is a locally contentious proposal for a variety of reasons, but primarily due to its impact on the local road network and already dire air quality.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham, I see nothing wrong with the principle of allowing housing to be built and this mechanism to be used if it is functionally linked to the infrastructure project under consideration. However, I have particular concerns about new subsection (4B)(b) which states:

“‘Related housing development’ means development which… is on the same site as, or is next to or close”.

I hope that the Minister can reassure me on this. I am concerned that in an infrastructure project such as that road tunnel, where I can see no housing that is functionally linked, this clause could allow for housing to be built in a different part of the borough, bypassing local accountability and any community influence, simply because there is a nationally significant infrastructure project in the vicinity and we have no idea what that means. I press the Minister to reassure me about what

“or is next to or close to”

might mean and whether any guidance will be forthcoming, or, if not, whether he will consider clarifying that part of the Bill. It is important that the housing that might be delivered through this mechanism is functionally, or more directly, linked to the infrastructure we are discussing than it might otherwise be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Well, is not that interesting? We obviously have a convert to the cause in the Prime Minister, who will clearly join us in our efforts to get the pursuit of happiness built into the planning system. Let us hope he will send a quick text to the Minister so that we can get agreement on the amendment, because an excellent outcome to our deliberations would be to ensure that we got a planning system with some vision for the future built around sustainability principles, with wellbeing at its centre.

The amendment specifically asks the Minister to ensure that: urban development corporations have land value capture attached to them; there is community ownership of land and long-term stewardship of assets; there are mixed tenure homes affordable for ordinary people; there is a strong local jobs offer in the garden city; and there is high-quality, imaginative design and generous green space, linked to a wider natural environment, including a mix of public and private networks of well managed, high-quality gardens, tree-lined streets and open spaces.

The Opposition think it is extremely good that Ebbsfleet is being put forward as a garden city. The Labour party thought about that and put down the foundations for it about a decade ago. It is great to see that coming to fruition, but calling something a garden city does not make it a garden city. If it is going to be a garden city, it has to have high-quality gardens, tree-lined streets and open spaces, as well as

“opportunities for residents to grow their own food, including generous allotments”,

a strong cultural offer, and

“recreational and shopping facilities in walkable neighbourhoods”.

I do not think that we have touched on this so far in our deliberations, but if we are to produce and build truly sustainable communities, we have to think about how we encourage people to walk or cycle, or how we connect them through good, publicly accessible transport systems.

We need built into the legislation the principles of what will make up a garden city such as Ebbsfleet or any future developments that will come under UDCs. Otherwise, I am not sure—the Minister might know another way—how it will deliver a garden city as opposed to a UDC that will simply deliver new homes. Those new homes are very welcome—we are not against them—but we are concerned about the fact that there is nothing to ensure that a garden city emerges in any way at all.

The Minister seems to think I do not get out enough, so I just want to reassure him that I do sometimes go to see new developments and I did go to see Ebbsfleet. The developers are very keen to have good infrastructure underpinning that development. However, the urban development corporation that underpins Ebbsfleet does not require them to do any of this. That does not seem satisfactory. It is called a garden city, yet there is nothing that makes it a garden city.

If I have missed something in what the Minister is bringing forward for these new development corporations, I apologise and he can correct me, but as I read what is in clauses 109 and 110, I cannot see anything that aims to put into the Bill that these urban development corporations must address issues of sustainability. We want, for example, to see really good-quality houses built, but we also want to see zero-carbon homes. That is what was meant—I quote the Government expressly—when they said their aim for Ebbsfleet and garden cities generally was to provide

“high quality, attractive and sustainably constructed housing”.

How can the Minister be sure that that will be achieved without having something in the Bill about how these development corporations must address issues of sustainability?

Opposition Members feel strongly about this issue. We have argued long and hard for a new generation of garden cities. Many organisations, including the Campaign to Protect Rural England, have written to the Minister and to the Committee urging them to take on board what is in the amendment and to put more in the Bill so that we can ensure that we have the sort of development we want to see—an attractive environment with workable housing and social facilities, an amazing, visionary new place to live, an amazing regeneration of an area that we can all be proud of.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I support the amendment. We all welcome development and new homes, but I strongly agree that garden cities and corporations, when they are bringing development forward, need to put sustainability and place making at the heart of their plans. That has a particular resonance with something that I am very passionate about, which is climate change and energy efficiency.

New subsection (2B)(e) would ensure that, in building new homes, UDCs would have to ensure that those homes and that development

“contribute to mitigation and adaptation to climate change in line with the objectives of the Climate Change Act 2008”.

We know that homes are central to the UK meeting its climate change targets and that meeting our EU obligations of 15% renewables by 2020 looks ever more precarious; a leaked letter from the Secretary of State only a few weeks back showed that. Homes have a crucial role to play.

The context at the moment for delivering sustainable homes is not great. The Government have scrapped the zero-carbon homes policy that was starting to bear fruit in many areas. The London Mayor has taken a different view and sought to put some of the provisions of that policy back in place through the London plan, and I welcome that. The context for bringing forward environmentally sustainable, high-quality homes has become more precarious and the amendment would go some way, in relation to UDCs, to making sure that sustainable homes are at the heart of what is built. That is important.

It goes back to the debate we had earlier. The hon. Members for Peterborough and for South Norfolk, and others, bemoaned the socialist architecture of the 1950s—I would call it brutalist, though they may not draw such a distinction—when homes and places for people to live were built that have not fared well over the decades. We have an obligation because the cost of retrofitting homes that fall below environmentally sustainable standards far outweighs that of the measures we need to put in place. We want to build homes that last for generations and are fit for people to live in. For that reason I support the amendment.

[Helen Hayes]

I, too, want to speak briefly in support of the amendment. However the planning system is defined, it embodies a set of values and prioritises a series of outcomes. Garden cities of the past were so successful as communities, function so well and are such popular places to live in precisely because of the high aspirations and strong values on which they were founded and the extensive efforts to secure high-quality design and the long-term sustainability of the resourcing of those communities, in all sorts of different ways. That happened because their founders were thinking about long-term success and the values of the communities that they were developing and because they were established on strong principles.

In contrast, some of the early urban development corporations did not embody those same aspirations. The development that took place was, in many cases, far less attractive as a consequence and far less well served with open spaces and amenities. It was often unsustainable or lacking in things such as local school places and good public transport connections. Some of those lessons from the early urban development corporations have informed the way in which development has taken place in the last 10 years or so. We have seen an emphasis on bringing forward community infrastructure early in the development process, so that communities are not left stranded and ill-provided for.

So far, I have seen nothing in the Bill that will ensure that new development under the Bill will be built to a high quality or high standard of sustainability. That is of significant concern. That is what the amendment is seeking to ensure both for urban development corporations and garden cities, which can and should play a significant role in building the homes we need. We must ensure that those homes are built to the highest standards for the long term, that they become part of the heritage of this country and of communities we can be proud of for the long term. We will do that only if we get right the values and the aspirations on which they are founded. That is why I am pleased to support the amendment.