Housing and Planning Bill

Robert Neill Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I hope that I can trespass on the House’s time for a little while to offer perhaps a starter and a bonus as far as the Bill is concerned. I am talking about the discrete issue of nationally significant infrastructure projects, and in particular about clause 116 and amendment 78, which stands in my name. The bonus is that it deals with fairness in relation to land compensation, which is something that we have talked about on a number of occasions.

The particular issue is that under clause 116, the development consent orders, which are part of the nationally significant infrastructure project regime, are extended beyond the infrastructure projects themselves to related housing development. It can be housing development that is adjacent or linked to the scheme. Equally, it can be housing development that is physically very close to the scheme. I do not have a problem with that, and there will be a number of instances where the creation of a piece of infrastructure either opens up land sensibly for access to development for housing or may sever land that might be farmland or similar from the rest of the agricultural holding. In that case, it is more sensible then to use it for housing as it is not viable as an agricultural unit or some other type of business unit. There is no problem there.

The unique feature of development consent orders is that they combine both the granting of planning permission and the making of a compulsory purchase order for the acquisition of the land. The issue that amendment 78 seeks to deal with is that under current compulsory purchase law, land acquired compulsorily—be it for this purpose or whatever—is compensated at current use value. In the majority of cases, that is likely to be agricultural value. Under certain circumstances, it might be a business value, but it is highly unlikely ever to be housing value. If the land had permission for housing, it would be dealt with by private treaty and there would not be the need to seek a compulsory purchase order anyway. What we are seeking to deal with is the anomaly that, for perhaps perfectly good reasons, an acquiring authority—it could be a public authority or it could equally be a private developer bringing forward a scheme either on their own or in partnership with a public agency—could, by getting a development consent order, acquire land from a small business at agricultural value and immediately get a significant uplift to housing value.

Under current arrangements, there is no means for the landowner or the business person, who may have seen their holding or business disrupted, to acquire by way of compensation any of the uplift in that value that comes from the granting of housing permission. That seems to me and to many to be unfair, which is why it has been raised by the Country Land and Business Association. The amendment seeks to address that by requiring the guidance, which clause 116 already says must be put in place, to include specifically the payment of the proper land value compensation at housing value.

The Minister may say that there are other means of dealing with that matter other than by primary legislation, but I hope he will accept that this is a real issue. In fairness to many small businesses and landowners who are affected by these important proposals, which are broadly for the public good, there should be some means of enabling them not to lose out on the uplift in value, which will, in effect, be a windfall to the acquiring authority.

I would welcome it if the Minister looked favourably on this amendment. If he does not, I hope that he will at least be prepared to talk to those who are concerned about this matter and see whether there is some other way, short of primary legislation, to take it forward and seek to resolve it.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I understand completely where my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) are coming from, but I take a slightly different view. Let me start with finalised neighbourhood plans. I have some sympathy with their argument that there should be a community right of appeal in these circumstances, but when we looked at this in the context of the Localism Act 2015, we originally did not include it to avoid the situation where part of a community would appeal against something that the rest of the community had just voted on. I urge Ministers to look at the issue again in the context of the Bill to see whether that problem can be worked out.

On emerging plans, I take a completely different view. First, such plans already have protection. The closer they get to finalisation, the stronger that becomes. Secondly, if communities undertaking neighbourhood plans start off at the end point rather than at the beginning, they are likely to have lots of help along the way, including at appeals.