Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to increase local control over planning policy.

This Government has abolished the Labour Government’s top-down Regional Strategies, such as the South East Plan, and closed down the unelected Regional Assemblies. We also stopped proposals, being implemented by the then Labour Government, to hand more planning power to the unelected Regional Development Agencies and Regional Assemblies.

The Localism Act has strengthened the role of Local Plans, allowing local councils – in consultation with local residents – to draw up plans and determine where new development should and should not go. 80 per cent of councils now have a published Local Plan, and we are working with the remaining local councils to help them deliver up to date plans.

In National policy, we have safeguarded environmental designations such as the Green Belt which were under threat of deletion from the Regional Strategies; given councils new powers to tackle unwanted garden grabbing; and allowed councils and neighbourhoods to introduce a new planning protection for valuable green local spaces.

Localism should involve decentralising power to the lowest appropriate level. So neighbourhood planning now allows local neighbourhoods and parishes to shape planning in their local area: over 1,200 communities are so far developing neighbourhood plans. We are funding a £63 million package of support to help local people take up community rights, and we have been consulting on practical ways we can strengthen the neighbourhood planning process based on the experience we have learnt to date.

Decentralisation also involves empowering individuals – so we have extended permitted development rights to allow households and local firms to make small changes (such as small extensions and change of use) without the need for full planning permission. We have been consulting on further common sense reforms in our consultation published in July.