Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Twenty Fifth sitting)

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

New clause 16 is relatively straightforward. It addresses an issue that arose from talking to Conservative and other councillors up and down the country in areas where rogue development—build now and seek to apologise or get retrospective planning permission later—has caused significant issues. The new clause would give the planning authorities the ability to take into account an applicant’s character, such as whether they have previous form on rogue or illegal development, when considering any fresh applications. It is relatively straightforward and aims to give our planning authorities more ability to protect their communities from rogue development.

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

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Mark. New clause 37 in my name and that of my hon. Friends, is, like new clause 16, a simple amendment. I will not devote too much time to making the case for it.

We all agree that it is essential that the integrity of the planning system is upheld, not only to ensure that unauthorised development cannot blight local communities, but to maintain public trust and confidence in the planning decision-making process. When considering chapter 5 of the Bill, we had a number of debates about how planning enforcement might be improved as well as better resourced. A number of members of the Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, have spoken at length about the impact that rogue developers can have on communities across the country.

New clause 37 seeks to probe the Government on a specific issue of concern. As the hon. Member for Buckingham has just made clear, at present it appears that it is entirely permissible for an individual developer to consistently breach planning control, with the only risk being that they face enforcement action in respect of that specific breach. We believe that it is right that enforcement of planning law and regulation is based on the principle of proportionality and that when it comes to cases of alleged unauthorised development, local authorities have discretion to determine how the breach can be remedied. However, we also believe there is a strong case for changing the law so that certain categories of proscribed persons, in particular those who breach planning control and make no efforts to rectify those breaches, can be prohibited from carrying out development of any kind.

New clause 37 would allow that sanction to be applied to those who persistently offend when it comes to contraventions of planning law and regulation. Its objective is the same as new clause 16, on a character test and the prior record of an applicant. Adopting new clause 37, or a version of it, would reduce the burden on local authorities that are attempting to deal with the minority of rogue developers of this kind, and would also strengthen the integrity of the system overall. I hope the Government will give it serious consideration.

[Lee Rowley]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham and the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich for their new clauses. I am extremely sympathetic to some of the concerns. I agree with the hon. Member that ensuring the integrity of the planning system is paramount. We will all have examples from across the country of where development does not occur in the way that is sanctioned, or before it is sanctioned, and then an attempt is made to gain planning permission retrospectively by those who are not necessarily following either the letter or the spirit of the rules as set down. It is extremely frustrating.

By the same token, we have to tread extraordinarily carefully here. There are a set of principles, which my hon. Friend and the hon. Member acknowledged in their speeches—that the planning system is based on a specific application, which should be judged accordingly on its merits. It is challenging to bring forward a form of character test within those principles, although I recognise that there is an issue here that many communities up and down the land are seeing.

As those who have debated it for longer than I have will know, the Bill already includes a significant package of measures that will help tackle persistent abuses of the system. Those will speed up the enforcement process, restrict the circumstances in which an appeal can be lodged, increase fines for non-compliance and discourage intentional unauthorised developments that rely on a slow enforcement timescale. The Government acknowledge some of the concerns and are trying to find appropriate levers with which to approach them.

While offering a commitment to continue to talk about this issue, although wanting to be being clear that it is extremely difficult in terms of legislation, as my hon. Friend and the hon. Member acknowledged, the Government are not minded to accept the new clauses. I therefore ask both Members not to press them.

[Greg Smith]

I welcome the commitment my hon. Friend has just made to carrying on the conversation. I accept the complexity, in a system that looks at individual cases, of bringing in a more universal test. However, there are other areas of life where people—for example, those with particular criminal records—are barred from doing certain activities—particularly where children are involved. If we could extend the principle and precedent whereby somebody who has form with rogue development—that is, turn up, build now and apologise later—which blights communities up and down the land, is barred through legislation that is practical and that does not undermine the planning system, I am up for carrying on that conversation. If not through the exact wording of this new clause, then perhaps by another means, we could find a happy solution that protects our communities from those who, I am sorry to say, continue to blight them by building out schemes that they do not have planning permission for.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I thank the Minister for that response. I agree that we have to tread very carefully in this area; the principles that we have all spoken about, in terms of planning system proportionality and judgment on individual applications, are important. The Minister was not on the Committee at the time, but the Opposition broadly supported the measures outlined in chapter 5 of part 3, which strengthened enforcement. I welcome his commitment to continue the discussion outside the Committee, but I hope he gives the issue some serious thought.

I accept what the Minister said about the difficulties, particularly in terms of a character test, but at the same time it does not seem beyond the talents in this Committee Room—I will put it that way—to come up with a system that proscribes certain categories of person. Even if it was a threshold of a certain number of planning breaches in the past, beyond which someone cannot bring forward applications, there must be some way of doing it. A minority of rogue developers are causing havoc for communities and lots of work for planning departments in local authorities. We think the Government should give further thought to making progress on the issue.

[Greg Smith]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 17

Community right of appeal

“(1) The Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is amended as follows.

(2) After section 78 (right to appeal against planning decisions and failure to take such decisions) insert—

‘78ZA Community right of appeal

(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision—

(a) enabling communities to appeal against a decision to grant planning permission or permission in principle for a development, and

(b) about such appeals.

(2) The regulations may require a certain number or proportion of residents of a local area to record objection against a decision for such an appeal to proceed.

(3) The regulations may, in particular, make provision the upholding of such appeals and the revocation of permission if—

(a) the development is inconsistent with a relevant neighbourhood plan, or

(b) due process has not been followed in relation to the planning application.

(4) The first regulations under this section must be laid before Parliament before the end of the period of six months beginning on the day on which this section comes into force.’” —(Greg Smith.)

This new clause would introduce a community right of appeal against the granting of planning permission.

Brought up, and read the First time.

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As we go for localism, community control and a system that genuinely puts communities in charge of planning, we need a mechanism to ensure that we do not shut people out of the planning process by demanding that they travel great distances to attend meetings. That applies as much to the councillors who sit on the planning committee as to the residents or interested parties who have a right to be heard in the process. As much as I hate the virtual environment, I think that it is necessary to allow councils to meet in that way to ensure that everyone can have their voice heard.

[Matthew Pennycook]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Buckingham. I think that hate might be too strong a word, but I certainly share his preference for in-person over virtual meetings, where possible. However, there are circumstances where virtual meetings have become necessary or useful, and that is what these new clauses both seek to address for the planning system.

While there are significant points of disagreement between the Opposition and Government Benches on the question of whether the Bill, in the round, will enhance or discourage community engagement in the planning process, there none the less exists a broad consensus that that objective is a worthy one. Whatever one believes the causes to be, there is general agreement that it is a problem that, as things stand, less than 1% of people engage with the local plan-making process, only around 3% engage with individual planning applications, and—of particular concern to the Opposition—particular segments of society typically have no voice whatsoever on planning decisions that will have a huge impact on their communities and their lives.

We therefore think that reducing barriers to engagement with the planning process would be beneficial for a variety of reasons. Chief among them—this is a point that I return to again and again—is that, in some ways, we think it would address the extremely low levels of trust and confidence that the public has in the planning system as a whole.

New clause 69, which, in many ways, is similar to new clause 28 in the name of the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, seeks to increase public engagement in the planning process by allowing local authorities to hold planning committee meetings virtually or in a hybrid form. That proposal is obviously not novel. We know from the experience of local authorities during the pandemic that allowing for remote participation both worked effectively and had a number of benefits, including—as the hon. Member for Buckingham said—reduced travel times for councillors and the public, and greater transparency and openness.

What attracts us to this proposal is the fact that virtual meetings facilitated an increase—in many cases a dramatic one—of resident engagement in decisions, in part because remote participation made it far easier for a broader range of people, including those with disabilities, caring responsibilities and work commitments, to take part in meetings for the first time. New clause 69 simply seeks to ensure that those benefits, particularly increased public participation in planning decisions, can be enjoyed on a permanent basis.

However, it is important to say that it does not seek to do so prescriptively. While the language used is drawn from section 78 of the Coronavirus Act 2020, we would expect any regulations to follow to provide for local authorities to determine for themselves whether any given meeting is virtual or hybrid. That is on the basis that councils and councillors are best placed to decide how and when to use different meeting formats in particular circumstances. We feel strongly that it is important that they are given the freedom to do so.

There is widespread support for putting remote meeting arrangements on a permanent footing, including from the Local Government Association, Lawyers in Local Government, and the Association of Democratic Services Officers. As the Minister may know, the planning inspectorate already enjoys the freedom to offer virtual or hybrid meetings, at the discretion of a lead inspector, relating to hearings and inquiries.

To conclude, as every hon. Member knows, online meetings are now commonplace not just for work but for many other forms of social interaction. The public rightly expect that kind of accessibility for council meetings as well, and we are convinced that the freedom for local authorities to hold virtual or hybrid meetings will be welcomed by all our constituents.

We hope that allowing planning committees the option of meeting virtually, or permitting virtual participation in physical meetings, is an uncontroversial and common-sense measure. I hope that the Government are minded either to accept the new clause or, if they feel that it is defective in some way, to table one of their own that achieves the same aim.

[Ben Bradley]

I support the principles of the new clauses, although I will suggest a way in which they might need to be amended so as to apply not just to planning meetings, but to all council meetings. Throughout the pandemic, councils were allowed—and therefore invested in the technology—to permit members of the public to engage in council meetings through those mechanisms, and the public did. As the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said, engagement in many of those conversations was much higher during the pandemic. People were able to engage with them more easily from their own homes, and they probably had “Coronation Street” on in the background. The more something allows people to take part in a much easier way, the better.

As officers and councillors increasingly work in a more hybrid way, we are encouraging our staff in Nottinghamshire to work from home more, not least because of the practicalities—staff expect that these days. Financially, we do not want, and cannot afford, to run as many buildings as we currently have. Fewer people are in the office. Every time we have a face-to-face meeting that does not need to be face to face, that requires people to trek across the county. It requires councillors to do a three-hour round trip, sometimes for a 20-minute meeting. It is a waste of resources.

Through the pandemic, we also found that we saved thousands of tonnes of carbon—never mind the travel expenses—by not trekking around the county for meetings. I struggle to get opposition councillors, never mind members of the public, to attend some of our governance and ethics meetings. Accessibility is not an issue in that sense.

If there is to be a change to the new clauses, I ask Ministers to make them broader, to include all council meetings. Our full council meeting will always be an in-person public meeting; it is the exciting, set-piece event at the heart of our council calendar. However, many other meetings need not be. Giving local government that flexibility would be very welcome.

There has been a process to review this issue. There was a consultation a year or so ago, I think, and local government was asked to submit views. I can confidently imagine that the broad consensus was, “Give us flexibility, please, to make those decisions locally.” We have done it before, and we can very easily do it again. When Ministers consider the new clauses behind the scenes, I ask that they make them broader still and give us the scope to make those decisions locally.

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[Rachael Maskell]

I rise to move new clause 43 and to support new clause 68. They mirror one another and therefore emphasise the need for a review of permitted development rights, which are a major issue in planning.

New clause 43 calls for a change in the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015. It would require a review to be published, within a year of the Bill becoming law, on the effectiveness of permitted development rights in achieving housing targets. Much planning permission is granted on the basis of balancing the economic viability of a site in favour of developers. Planning authorities may stipulate the framework around that, but it is not uncommon for developers to come back to authorities pleading that the site does not hold viability and seeking to change the tenure of units planned for it.

Furthermore, we have a housing crisis. The Government are right to want to fix it by setting targets for the number of units to be built, but if those units are unaffordable to a local population, or if they are sold as investment properties—as assets—and remain empty or are converted into short-term holiday lets, the housing demand is not addressed. Worse, property prices can heat up the market, resulting in a greater pool of people who are unable to access housing, which is making things far worse.

By allowing such a liberalisation of planning, not least for developers, the Government are creating a worsening situation. Rather than resolving the housing situation, they are pushing people out of their localities, as people cannot afford to either buy or rent. Now, with the economic crisis, they cannot get a mortgage either, but cash buyers can scoop up properties and then drive revenue through holiday lets. In York, we are seeing that in spades. York Central promises to be such a site of investment properties rather than homes, with the wrong housing in the wrong place heating up the market and exposing our city to even greater numbers of short-term holiday lets. This has to stop.

My new clause would enable a review, which would include an examination of the quality of housing delivered. I cannot tell hon. Members the scale of shoddy workmanship that we are witnessing. Developers hand their properties over to property management companies and then deny responsibility. Water ingress is common. Sinks are fitted just with silicone, and not properly plumbed in. Wiring is half done. Bin stores are turned into inaccessible bike shelters. The list of unresolved complaints is endless.

York is naturally concerned about its heritage and conservation sites, and we want to ensure that its archaeology is preserved, too. On the environment, we know that new developments help to solve the carbon crisis rather than add to it. If measures are not reviewed and taken seriously, we know that transport planning can be poor, as we are seeing on the York Central site. That will have an impact on the rest of the city. I have already mentioned the thorny issue of the cost to local authorities of the mess that is being created.

Reviewing permitted development rights, as the new clause seeks to do, is about addressing all the consequences, foreseen and unforeseen, of rushing planning through, not least at a time when planning departments across our communities are significantly under-resourced and under-powered. The new clause seeks a review, which is needed, and we want to see action following on from that. If the Government committed the resources and time needed to carry out a review of a such a significant issue, they could make such a difference to communities up and down the country. The review would ultimately be of real value to the Government, by ensuring that the planning system is working effectively for the purpose for which it is designed.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I rise to speak to new clause 68, in my name and those of my colleagues, and to speak in support of new clause 43. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Central on tabling new clause 43 and on her powerful remarks, not least about the contribution of the extension of permitted development rights to the affordability pressures in urban parts of the country such as hers.

It is a matter of public record that the Opposition have long-standing concerns about the detrimental impact of the liberalisation of permitted development rights on local communities. The Government have always justified the progressive liberalisation of those rights on the grounds that it removes unnecessary administrative impediments to development in the planning system. There is no doubt that the extension of PD rights since 2013 has boosted housing supply; estimates suggest that it has led to a net increase of around 100,000 dwellings. However, the increased supply secured as a result of deregulatory measures over recent years, and the significantly reduced control of rural and urban land that they entail, has come at the cost of a loss of affordable housing and infrastructure contributions, and an increase in poor-quality housing, with obvious implications for public health and wellbeing.

Evidence of the negative impact of the extension of permitted development for the conversion of office, commercial and industrial units to housing is now ubiquitous. A report published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in July 2020—at the same time, incidentally, that Ministers were setting out plans for a further extension of PD rights—found that, in comparison with schemes created through planning permission, permitted development schemes were far less likely to meet national space standards and far more likely to have reduced access to natural daylight and sunlight.

Members may well have come across some of the more well-publicised examples of poor-quality PD schemes. Those include the Wellstones site in Watford, which involved the conversion of a light industrial building into 15 flats, seven of which had no windows at all; 106 Shirley Road in Southampton, a former electric and gas fire shop, which was converted into six studio flats, each roughly the size of a single car parking space; and Terminus House in Harlow, a former office block converted into hundreds of homes, many with just one openable window, which has rightly been described as a “human warehouse”.

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[Rachael Maskell]

I listened carefully to the debate, and I am grateful for all the contributions to it. The Minister will know that we are not putting forward a plan to tear up the whole PDR framework; we are simply calling for a review, as we believe is appropriate. After a scoping review, we would determine which points to drill down on, to ensure that we are looking at the parts of the system that are simply not working. That is the intention behind the new clause. Although it has a broader scope, it homes in on some of the challenges in the system. I therefore do not think that the proposal to put a scoping exercise in the legislation is unreasonable. I welcome the Minister’s offer of dialogue on these matters, which clearly are significantly impacting our communities. Dialogue will be really important. I will not press my new clause to a vote, but I will certainly take up that offer.

[Matthew Pennycook]

As I think the Minister will expect, I am naturally disappointed by his response. There are times when hiding behind the fact that there are trade-offs in balancing problems is appropriate; there are times when it is just a fig leaf, and not doing anything about a glaring problem. His own Department has produced evidence that it is not just a problem at the margins. I encourage him to go and see some of the sites being allowed on appeal because of national planning policy. It is not a problem at the margins; it is endemic, and intrinsic to the liberalisation of PD rights that has been allowed over the past nine years.

It is a straw man for the Minister to say, “We can’t do this, because it’s reviewing all PD rights.” Uncontroversial elements of PD can be dealt with very quickly; we are talking about the problematic aspects and the expansion of PD rights over the past nine years. It is causing a huge amount of human suffering, if nothing else. For that reason, not least to signal the Opposition’s intent to deal with this matter if and when we form the next Government, I will press new clause 68 to a Division when the time comes.

[Rachael Maskell]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Nigel Huddleston.)