Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will take steps to ensure local authorities are able to require standards in excess of legal minimums as conditions for planning approval.

Planning conditions attached to the grant of planning permission can be used to require development to meet certain standards.

However, as the National Planning Policy Framework states, such conditions should only be imposed where they are necessary, relevant to planning and to the development to be permitted, enforceable, precise and reasonable in all other respects. They should also not duplicate the role of other regulatory regimes.