Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) I beg to move, That this House has
considered the matter of planning policy. It is a pleasure to see
you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I will not talk for too long, but I
want to raise some issues relating to planning policy, especially
after the productive and fruitful discussions that my right hon.
Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and I had
with the Government. For years, we have needed a planning system
that...Request free trial
(Isle of Wight) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of planning policy.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I will not
talk for too long, but I want to raise some issues relating to
planning policy, especially after the productive and fruitful
discussions that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping
Barnet () and I had with the
Government.
For years, we have needed a planning system that is community-led
and environment-led, and that drives regeneration. For years, we
have not quite had the opposite, but we have certainly not had a
policy that is as focused as it should have been on community,
the environment or, frankly, levelling up and spreading wealth
around our wonderful country. Indeed, in many ways the definition
of “sustainability” has been the opposite of what it is in
reality. Much development has been truly unsustainable, as many
communities involved in bitter battles against distant developers
know. There are residents’ groups on the Isle of Wight, in the
constituency of my right hon. Friend and across Britain that have
despaired at the top-down, developer-led process, which seems so
often to have ridden roughshod over the wishes of local people
and the genuine needs of communities.
That is why last year we built an alliance of a hundred
likeminded Conservative colleagues and tabled 21 amendments to
the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, as well as negotiating
with Ministers and officials over a one or two-week period to
secure what I hope is a workable change, and indeed what I think
will improve planning considerably in this country. These are
some of the things that I would like to touch on for the Minister
today.
I will just say what we are against, because it seems to me that,
unless people want a free market in housing, which in reality we
have not had since world war two, they are described as nimbies.
I find that level of argument pretty depressing, shallow and
empty. I think what we were against—certainly, what I was
against—was a couple of things.
First, there is the planning or development industry’s addiction
to greenfield, soulless, low-density, car-dependent, out-of-town
development. Those sorts of developments —we see them a bit on
the Island, but we see them especially in the home counties and
counties such as Cambridgeshire—are socially bad, as they are not
designed around communities. Effectively, they are soulless
housing estates, plonked down in the middle of nowhere, or where
the developers can get planning permission. They are also
environmentally bad from a transport point of view, because they
are almost entirely car-dependent. These isolated, car-dependent
developments are truly unsustainable, because we know that
detached houses are the most un-climate friendly form of housing.
They are land-banked by large developers and are often built
against the wishes of local communities.
The second thing that we found really difficult was the structure
of the industry. There is sometimes a more sustained approach in
the industry towards keeping share prices high than there is
towards actual development. That is one of the problems. Because
we have become over-dependent on private developers, we have
effectively become hostages to their agenda. Yes, they build
houses—that is their business model—but it is also their business
model to keep prices high, to keep the value of land high and to
limit the supply of land, because that is how they keep their
share prices high, their profits high and, frankly, their bonuses
high.
We have not had enough in the way of council-led affordable
housing. I am a big fan of affordable housing and council
housing, and I very much want the Isle of Wight Council to get on
and develop its own council house company again. But because we
have been dependent on private developers, we have something like
1 million outstanding planning permissions, including over
400,000 planning permissions on brownfield sites, which are just
land-banked by the big companies, because then they can plan for
profits for years to come. If we want to build more, we need a
slightly different system from the one we had, or at least one
where councils and housing associations can build more and have
access to more land. I will come to that in relation to Camp Hill
on my patch.
As a result of so much of the pressure for housing moving down to
the south-east—in places such as the Isle of Wight, but it is
perhaps even worse in the home counties—we have skewed
infrastructure spending away from the north and towards the south
and the south-east. Again, because the infrastructure is there,
that drives jobs and growth. We have a never-ending funnel—a
never-ending hoover—of people from not only city centres to the
suburbs but from north to south. That is bad for our country.
To give a snapshot of the £866 million allocated by the housing
infrastructure fund up to 2018, half of it was directed to
London, the east and the south-east, while the combined
authorities of Liverpool, Manchester, Tees Valley, the West
Midlands and the West of England received only £124 million. That
is about a quarter of what was given to London and the
south-east. At that time, over three quarters of the £2 billion
allocated went to projects in London and the south-east. Up to
April 2020, it was estimated that the same fund spent up to £700
million on roads for garden communities.
There is a problem in that, because so many of the planning
permissions are given in the south-east on greenfield sites, that
skews investment and the infrastructure spend. The reality is
that that makes levelling up and investing in the great cities of
the north and the midlands much more difficult. I will come on to
that, because there are some fascinating pictures of declining
populations.
After intensive negotiation with the Secretary of State and the
Minister—it is a pleasure to see her here—we now have a much
better deal that puts planning in a much better place. Before I
turn to the wider issues of what I think we achieved with that, I
will raise three issues with the Minister in relation to the
Island. First, we would love more compulsory purchase powers. I
know that the Minister will tell us that there is a compulsory
purchase review out with the Law Society, which is looking at how
we can make compulsory purchase more efficient.
In coastal communities, and maybe in levelling-up communities—if
I dare describe them as such—we need that compulsory purchase
power. It is way too difficult for us and our councillors,
whether they are Conservative, Labour or independent, to do the
right thing. There are too many buildings on the Isle of Wight
that stand empty for years, especially those that have an impact
on our communities, for example in Sandown—funnily enough, I was
talking to the Mayor of Sandown less than an hour ago about post
offices.
The Grand Hotel in Sandown has been empty for years. It is a
gorgeous art deco building next to what used to be Sandown zoo—it
is opposite the beach and next to the dinosaur museum. It should
be a really important site for us. That building has stood empty
for years. The Royal York Hotel in Ryde is owned by the same guy.
Those buildings stand empty, and there are many others. With the
Ocean Hotel I will be careful what I say; I do not think there
are proceedings live at the moment, but at the very least there
has been extraordinarily unethical behaviour in relation to that
building—it may indeed be criminal. It is empty and, because of
the legal disputes surrounding it, it may well lie empty for
years. It is slap-bang in the middle of what should be Sandown’s
tourism high street.
The more help that Government can give us, the better. They
should give compulsory purchase powers to councils such as the
Isle of Wight, so that it can force the sale of the Grand Hotel,
the Royal York Hotel in Ryde or the Ocean Hotel—so that it can
say to the owners of those hotels: “You have six months to a year
maximum to develop, otherwise we force a sale.” We would use
those powers to put those properties on the market, to be bought
by people on the condition that they put forward planning within
a specific timeframe and start realistically developing and
completing within a specific amount of time. That problem is
replicated across coastal communities and in some of our most
deprived communities, up and down the country.
Secondly, I know the Minister will say that this is not her
responsibility anymore, but I plead for quicker decision-making
powers by Government. I give the example of Camp Hill—the third
of our prisons on the Isle of Wight. The Minister was formerly
Justice Minister, so she is probably bored of hearing about Camp
Hill. I am bored of raising it. It has been nine years without a
decision. The Americans put a man on the moon in less time than
it has taken the Government to decide what to do with Camp Hill.
I was thinking, half in jest, that if I set up as a squatter in
Camp Hill, I would probably have ownership rights before the
Government decided what to do with it, and if I could claim
ownership of it, I could give it to the council. Can we please
have a decision on Camp Hill?
We do not have many brownfield sites on the Isle of Wight—I think
we have about half a dozen. Hopefully, the Minister will have
some news about the greenfield funds, which I think she may have
announced or will announce, but we will certainly be putting in
for more money to clean up brownfield sites, because we have so
few. Camp Hill is a really big potential brownfield site for us,
and we would love to get access to it. I know the Minister is the
Minister for housing and not a Justice Minister, but if the
Government can sell that site to the Isle of Wight Council at a
price that we can afford—in much the same way as they did for the
Columbine Building, which is the hub of our shipbuilding industry
in East Cowes—we can do good things with it. It is a brownfield
site near Newport, and we can use the land to build decent,
affordable housing for Islanders young and old, rather than
having to rely on speculative greenfield sites outside our towns
and villages. I urge the Government collectively to have better
and quicker decision making.
Thirdly, and specifically for the Island, the Secretary of State
and his adviser kindly suggested that they would write to me to
confirm two things as part of our negotiations last year. The
first is that, from now on, there is an expectation that
exceptional circumstance is assumed for islands. My understanding
from the negotiations is that exceptional circumstance for
islands would be specifically mentioned in the footnotes of the
national planning policy framework, or NPPF, and that that would
be almost the expectation. We do not have a bridge—we are not
Anglesey; we are separated by sea—and it costs 30% more to build
a home on the Isle of Wight than elsewhere, because of the cost
of getting material over by ferry. We have a restricted industry
on the Island that builds between 200 and 300 homes a year. A
target of 500, 600, 700 or 800 would be crazy and unachievable,
because we have only ever built that sort of number on two
occasions in the last 50 years, so it would be incredibly helpful
if we could see the letter on exceptional circumstance.
That was my understanding—it was very accurate, I hasten to
add—of the conversation that we had. The letter was also going
set out what emergency powers the Government have to deal with
unscrupulous caravan park owners and the planning lawyers who
advise them, who game the system to build caravan parks and
concrete over sites of special scientific interest on coastal
islands, in very special areas of the Island or the country, and
in areas of outstanding natural beauty and national parks. I
think there was going to be some suggestion about what the
Government could do on that.
Those are three very specific issues, which I hope the Government
should feel positive about. First, we want the Government to be
ambitious on compulsory purchase, because it is so important to
so many parts of the country that when property developers do not
do the right thing, we can force the sale of sites, especially
high-value sites that have a significant impact on our
communities and our economy. Secondly, can we please have quicker
decision making, specifically on Camp Hill? The council and I
really want to build affordable homes on that site for folks on
the Isle of Wight. Thirdly, I remind the Government of the letter
they promised me on exceptional circumstance and caravan
parks.
More generally, I thought we had some great discussions at the
end of last year, and we still have targets. I am just so fed up
of hearing that Back-Bench MPs are docile sheep who trot through
and vote for anything, or that we are an ungovernable rabble.
Actually, the planning debate that we had showed this place
working at its best. We respected the Government’s agenda, the
Government listened to Back Benchers, we had a negotiation, and
we reached a better state afterwards than we had before. We were
vocal about what we believed was right, the Government were vocal
about what they believed was right, and we negotiated our way
through. The Government avoided an unnecessary rebellion; we
respected the Government’s position, and the Government listened
to us. That is neither MPs being docile sheep nor MPs behaving
like some rebellious rabble; it is Back-Bench MPs, especially,
doing their job, and Government Ministers doing theirs. I
actually thought it was a pretty good process.
Anyway, the housing targets remain, but they will be advisory,
which I think is where they should be. We need to take a
pragmatic, reasonable approach to examining the true housing
numbers, and where there are genuine environmental constraints,
councils will be able to propose a reduced housing number. Again,
I point to the Isle of Wight as a really good example of that,
because we have finite space. By way of example, I remind the
Minister that in many areas of the south and south-east, the
population has increased dramatically—I know that is happening in
her patch. Over the past 60 years on the Island, we have
increased our population by nearly 50%; it is about 50% in 50
years.
At the same time, there has been a decline—not a relative
decline, but an absolute decline—in the populations of Newcastle,
Sunderland, Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Stoke. We
have had two great trends over the past 50 years: a move from
city centres to suburbs, and a move from north to south. A lot of
the pressure in constituencies such as mine is due to the
decades-long lack of investment, or lack of an attempt to drive
prosperity, in many of those great cities. Newcastle is a
fantastic and exciting city, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool
likewise, yet they have all had declining populations since the
late 1950s and 1960s. If we could reverse that trend and make
those cities hubs that people will want to go to, because that is
where the jobs and prosperity are, that would take pressure off
communities such as ours, as the Minister knows.
The more we can get levelling up right, the better it will be for
all of us, and the less pressure it will put on our communities.
That means that more infrastructure money then goes back to
northern communities and midlands city centres, which is where it
should be in the first place. It seems entirely obvious to me
that if one is developing a brownfield site in an existing
community, the infrastructure spend is probably going to be
lower. Widening single-track Victorian lanes in the east and
north-east of the Isle of Wight—which is what is having to be
done in my patch—costs a lot more than if it were happening in
Liverpool and Manchester, because the infrastructure is there
already. The more we invest in inner-city centres that have
high-density populations, the better it is for those city
centres, for Government services, and for communities such as
mine.
The Government are also going to modify the existing five-year
land supply rule to pretty much get rid of it. They are going to
kill off the tilted balance, thank God—I think that is an
incredibly pernicious thing. Again, rebalancing the economies of
greenfield and brownfield use to regenerate empty buildings,
disused sites and town centres seems to me economically, socially
and environmentally important; it just seems to be an incredibly
sensible thing to do. If there is more money for brownfield site
clean-up, Isle of Wight Council will be very excited to hear it,
so if the Minister has anything to say about that today, she is
very welcome to say it.
I have gone on for a little bit longer than I thought I would, so
I will wrap up.
Mr (South West Hertfordshire)
(Con)
More!
More or less?
More.
I think we are in a good place regarding all the things that we
negotiated. Obviously, we need to see them in the national
planning policy framework, so I just want to check—I am sorry; I
have been doing so much in the past week or so—is the new NPPF
out now, or is it going to be out? We were promised that those
changes would kick in come the new year. Have the changes in the
NPPF happened yet, or is there going to be a date by which they
will happen? Clearly, the Isle of Wight is now making its Island
plan, and wants to use the exceptional circumstance assumptions
that have been confirmed to it by Government, for which it is
grateful.
We look forward to supporting the levelling-up agenda and the
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, so that we make sure that we
get housing where we need it in the United Kingdom while
respecting communities such as mine. We need housing for local
youngsters and other local people. On the Isle of Wight, that
means housing for Islanders of all ages. Some people are
downsizing, and a lot of people are first-time buyers who are
looking for affordability criteria of 60% of local rates, rather
than 80%.
As much as is possible, we need to get housing associations on
the Island building. I would pretty much rule out private sector
housing estates. If we are to build housing on the Isle of Wight,
it needs to be affordable, and for Islanders. If people want to
move to the Island, they are very welcome to; that is what the
back of the Isle Of Wight County Press is for, where there are
all the ads for property. There is lots of property for them to
buy on the Island. We do not need to build for people moving to
the Island; we need to build to make sure that there are homes
for young people. We need to engage housing associations. The
more support there is for housing associations, and for building
in existing communities, on brownfield sites, the more we can
keep everybody happy. We can then build for our young people
while respecting communities, who will not feel under attack from
the threat of settlements being built on the greenfield around
them.
The deal that we struck with the Minister and the Government is
not perfect, but it is much better than what came before. I look
forward to working with the Government on making a success of
it.
(in the Chair)
I see that I do not need to remind Back Benchers to bob if they
wish to speak.
3.21pm
Mr (South West Hertfordshire)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I
congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight ()—my good friend—on bringing
forward this really important debate. I commend him and my right
hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet () for the excellent work
that they have done on the issue for a significant time. Most of
that work was done behind closed doors, as critical friends of
the Government. It allowed me, as a Government loyalist, the
space to contribute positively, in a small way, to making sure
that the legislation was exactly as we wanted, without been seen
as disruptive or disloyal.
As I have said many times in this Chamber, I come from a local
government background. I was a councillor for 17 years before
being elected to this place. Actually, there was a bit of overlap
because of the pandemic. In that time, I spent many years on
planning committees. Most recently, I was chairman of a planning
committee in Epping Forest. I was a dual-hatter: I was also a
county councillor in Essex. During my tenure as county
councillor, I was responsible for strategic planning. In all
those years in local government, I thought that local plans were
better than what preceded them: the regional development
agencies, which were part of a clunky, top- down model imposed on
our communities from Whitehall. Although the local plan process
remains emotive and, I would argue, quite difficult, it is part
of a journey, and part of the future legislation, which will
improve the process.
I commend the Government for listening to the constructive
criticism and feedback that people such as my hon. Friend the
Member for Isle of Wight have put forward. Top-down numbers are
helpful, but they should not be a stick with which to beat local
authorities. I am happy for provisions on the five-year land
supply to be removed. I always thought that they were a tool that
unscrupulous developers or applicants could use to put
development in the wrong place. I think I speak on behalf of the
whole House when I say that politicians are always conscious of
unintended consequence. No politician, whatever their party,
wants to put forward bad laws or policies. When it comes to
encouraging councils to ensure a pipeline of future development,
a hard five- year deadline would open up a massive can of worms;
unscrupulous developers from around the country would get
involved. Both my authorities’ planning departments were a bit
under-resourced, through no fault of their own, which meant that
they were in some ways swimming against the tide, and finding
that increasingly difficult.
My constituency of South West Hertfordshire is a beautiful part
of the world. The Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty is
to our west, and we have the border with London to the south. We
have the best of all worlds: we have very good transport links
with London, but we retain that village feel. We are about 80%
green belt, so pretty much wherever we look, we see prime green
belt, farmland and trees. Part of the joy of representing South
West Hertfordshire is that, waking up in the morning, I am more
likely to hear a bird than cars. That is not to say we do not
need further investment in transport—and I will continue to bang
on about the train network and the tube in the south—but it is a
nice place to live. As a conservative with a small C, part of my
role as the elected Member of Parliament is to retain what we
love about the community. Pressures that we experience in the
home counties and London, particularly pre pandemic because of
the draw for better-paid jobs, mean that we will continue to have
these debates on local planning issues.
It is great to see the Minister in her place. My plea to her is
to try to future-proof the local planning process. With the way
people live their lives post pandemic, the south-east is less of
a draw, because they can have a well-paid, good job with future
career prospects without moving down to South West Hertfordshire
or London. My generation, including a lot of my friends from the
midlands, was drawn down to London. As chair of the all-party
parliamentary group for regeneration and development, I had a
meeting with Birmingham City Council yesterday. After hearing
about the exciting plans in that part of the world, I think that
if I were an 18 or 20-year-old from there now, I would not
necessarily see the bright lights of London as the real draw.
People can still have a good quality of life, with reasonable
house prices and a good work-life balance, and live in a vibrant
community with lots of future plans.
I represent half of the area covered by Dacorum Borough Council
and most of the area covered by Three Rivers District Council.
The two councils did a poll back in 2020, asking residents to
name their favourite thing about living in South West
Hertfordshire. Over three quarters of respondents across both
council areas said it was the parks and open spaces. The silver
lining of the pandemic is that people have really appreciated
what is on their doorstep.
As someone who still commutes into London every day, I may be a
rare breed. A lot of people are still getting back to working
full time in their office space, after being perfectly set up
over the last couple of years to work from home. Avoiding a
two-hour commute there and back, which I have to do most days, is
a draw. However, as well as saving on the commute time and
transport costs, the quality of life aspect is important.
Planning, by its very nature, should be focused on the health and
wellbeing of communities. As a Conservative councillor, my view
was that when planning is done badly, not only does it create an
eyesore, but the negative aspects of poor development lead to
unhealthy outcomes, which mean an additional burden on the state
in future years. As a Conservative, one of my values is offering
value for money. Where we can reduce the cost burden for future
generations, we should be proactively doing that. The way we do
planning is very much part of that mix.
Apparently, 1.2 million homes are lying dormant on brownfield
sites. I referred earlier to the significant green-belt aspect of
my community. Although there is always a draw to do what is
easy—that is, if there is a piece of grassland, build on it—that
does not mean it is the right thing to do. My hon. Friend the
Member for Isle of Wight spoke about renewed emphasis on getting
brownfield sites back into use. That is absolutely the right
theme, which I hope my Government will continue to push.
Some of the regeneration in our communities is to do with not
necessarily new homes, but the quality of what people see outside
their windows. For someone driving to the local shops, being next
to a derelict site where nothing looks to have happened for five
or 10 years has a subconscious bearing on how they feel for the
day. Although new development is a pain in the short term, people
feel the benefit of those brand new hospitals or schools, or
additional classroom space. That is what the planning process is
meant to do. It is meant to make the next generation living in
that area have an easier life than the previous one.
Strategic planning is absolutely required. We have had piecemeal
planning, which we see occasionally from planning application
appeals. Inevitably, those have led to a can of worms, with
developments in the wrong place. They might make a lot of money
for the developer at the time, but they have a significant impact
on local authorities, especially when trying to offer a support
network such as social services or NHS nurses, which have to go
to out-of-the-way places that can be the wrong sites for such
developments.
From January last year to September, across all the Hertfordshire
councils, about 12,000 applications were received, with about
11,500 decisions taken and, of those, 85% granted. The planning
application process therefore does not seem to be the issue or a
bottleneck. Planning remains complex, which it needs to be, with
a lot of expertise required—I applaud the Government’s drive for
digitisation, because more people will engage in the process—but
there should be more motivation to do the right thing, although I
do not yet know how to do that. Putting in an application just to
increase the property value, without developing it—I know loved
ones who have done the same—might be helpful in the short term,
but it is a false economy as regards what is available or in the
pipeline to be developed.
In the south of my constituency, Three Rivers District Council is
Liberal Democrat-controlled. For many years, since I was elected,
I have pushed it to continue the momentum to get a local plan in
place. As the constituency Member of Parliament, I would argue
that the council is probably using the change in the forms in
planning legislation that we are looking to make as an excuse not
to get on and do it. In the north of my constituency, Dacorum
District Council is Conservative-controlled, and it is just
getting on with its plan, as my right hon. Friend the Member for
Hemel Hempstead ( ) said at Prime Minister’s
questions. While that is difficult, it is absolutely the right
thing to do.
My plea to the Minister is that where we think councils are using
the situation to do the wrong thing, we need, whether by a quiet
word, threats of sanctions or whatever—I do not know what tools
she has in her armoury—to encourage such councils to get on and
do their plan, because sitting one’s head in the sand is not the
solution for planning. We need to have those mature, if typically
emotive, conversations and for decisions to be made. Politicians
are elected to make decisions, even when they are sometimes
difficult to make.
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is in a good place. There
is more to do, but I would not expect that to happen in this
piece of legislation. I am sure future legislation will be coming
down the pipeline through the Department for Levelling Up,
Housing and Communities.
The demand for housing in this country cannot and should not be
ignored. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight spoke about
start times, and that is a big issue in my part of the world.
While people will remain emotive about new development, typically
such new homes are for the local community. When people move out
of mum and dad’s home, where will they live? In my part of the
world, it means they have to move significant distances away.
Brownfield land is very much there, and we need proactively to
get it back into use, even more so than now. The counterpart to
that is some green-belt land. The Government should encourage
regular reviews of green belt, because it has various
spectrums—if it is prime arable land, absolutely we should retain
it in the green belt, but if a site is on the edge of settlement,
has been dilapidated for 20 years and is of no help or
environmental benefit, we should identify it and make better use
of it. With the right plan and policies in place, we can maximise
the benefits of planning and keep our green spaces safe.
3.34pm
(Keighley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Vickers.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight
() on securing this important
debate. It is important because planning policy impacts on
everyone, and everyone has a view on it, whether that is negative
or positive. Generally, it impacts on everyone’s life.
I will pick up on some of the absolutely valid points made by my
hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire () about the fact that a lot of planning policy has to
be community-driven. Sometimes, it has to be generated at the
grassroots level, rather than top-down. As has been said, it is
incredibly important that planning policy is community-led. It
has to consider the environment and relate to the needs of what
is required within a specific community. It is important that we
develop houses that meet and enhance the health and wellbeing of
the communities we all represent.
I take a keen interest in planning policy because I studied
architecture at Newcastle University and, in my year in industry,
worked for a great company up in Newcastle that was involved in
master planning exercises for housing regeneration schemes. One
of the schemes we got involved with was in a deprived area of
Sunderland, Southwick, and looked at how we could enhance a
community through the quality of build of houses being developed.
Indeed, I remember when I was at university, I did my
dissertation on Byker and how the built environment can support
communities. That is absolutely what planning policy should be
about.
There are a few issues I want to cover in my contribution. I will
consider local plans and how we can ensure that the
infrastructure we all like to talk about—whether that is roads,
GPs, schools or parks—is supported and there to enhance people’s
quality of life with regard to housing. I will also touch on
affordable housing and what an industrial strategy looks like
when we are talking about employment use, and I will finish by
talking about telecom masts.
My constituency of Keighley and Ilkley is going through a review
of its local plan. Our local planning authority, Bradford
Council, is looking at the local plan and will be putting it out
for its second consultation in the not-too-distant future—I have
been informed that that will happen shortly. One of the
inevitable challenges is the drive to increase housing numbers
across the whole of the Bradford district, which contains many
different settlements, including not only Bradford city itself,
but Keighley and Ilkley, which as towns are very different from
the city. The complexity lies in the different make-up of those
settlements and where the need is in those settlement areas.
Through the first consultation on the local plan, it became clear
that the local authority seems to have an incredible will almost
to offload some of those housing numbers to the easy wins—the
easy wins being most of the outlying areas in the greenfield or
in green-belt areas where it might be easier to get those
planning applications through at a later date. The local plans
are being developed at the moment that will create the next
15-year housing strategy, which will, we hope, be adopted later
this year.
The concerns I have raised constantly are that the plan does not
focus enough on prioritising brownfield development. We must
refocus on those brownfield sites. Yes, they are more complex to
develop—they may have contamination issues, issues with highways,
challenges from some of the old mill settlements and so on—when
trying to create a clean slate to drive that private inward
investment into some of those sites. However, that has to be
looked at because, unless we actually have a brownfield-first
priority, we run the risk of not only reducing the soul of a
settlement where those brownfield site holes in a settlement have
been identified, but not actually developing houses where that
need is identified.
My concern is that, in several of the towns I represent, the
housing numbers that have been proposed are dramatic. They are
way over and above the need identified for those settlements. In
some of the discussions I have been having with the local
authority, I hear that it has allocated the housing numbers to
those settlements based on the deliverability factor—that is, it
knows it can deliver x houses in those settlements because can
build it on greenfield or take green-belt land out of the green
belt for housing, rather than having a proper focus on brownfield
first.
I will give some examples. There is Silsden—I should declare an
interest, because that is the town that I live in. It is in the
middle of the constituency, and it has had a proposed increase in
housing numbers of about 580. Silsden is a relatively small
settlement that has grown and grown; as we speak, we have an
application from Persimmon Homes for 140 houses, to which I have
put in an objection. We have had a Barratt Homes development; we
have had Countrywide looking at putting in a development; we have
Linden Homes currently building on site; and Skipton Properties
has recently built a housing development.
My hon. Friend is making a great speech, and I thank him so much
for being here. Is not one of the problems with these big
property companies, apart from the fact that they land bank, that
they are interested only in really big sites? Since the great
crash 10 or 15 years ago, a lot of the medium-sized and smaller
building companies have gone out of business. We need to motivate
smaller companies, or find financial incentives for developing
smaller sites in a way that is much more acceptable to smaller
towns and villages. That is better than Persimmon Homes, which,
apart from anything else, has a dreadful reputation for the
quality of its build, just plonking down 100 homes here or 500
homes there, and almost taking over and swamping the village.
That is exactly the point that I want to come on to, because
Silsden is being inundated with houses. A live application for
140 houses is being considered by Bradford Council. I am
completely opposed to it, but it is one of about six planning
applications made over a period of time, and some of those houses
are still being built. The point is that there has not been a
sensible conversation about the impact on infrastructure and, as
my hon. Friend pointed out, the quality of the build.
The road infrastructure going through Silsden is not great at
all. I drive through Silsden weekly, and the roads are tight and
narrow. The pavements are not wide enough, let alone the roads.
There are no conversations about the school, the GP services and
the other facilities that the town needs in order to stay
vibrant. Settlements sometimes need to grow organically; growth
must be driven by the requirements of individual settlements.
There sometimes needs to be a focus on brownfield sites first, or
on development of niche, smaller sites, which could be grown at
an organic speed and delivered in line with settlements’
need.
In Ilkley, the average house price is somewhere around £420,000.
That is very high, but local plan proposals suggest that Ilkley
needs to grow by another 314 houses. I am constantly pushing
back, because the community and I need to see the requirement for
Ilkley to grow by that number of houses over the next 14
years.
Just down the road, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the
Member for Shipley (), Burley in Wharfedale has
grown hugely recently—by about 700 houses. The implications for
the GP service are huge. It has been a real challenge to unlock
money, whether through section 106 or the community
infrastructure levy, to improve the infrastructure. I have been
helping out my hon. Friend with that.
I will come on to the quality of the build, which my hon. Friend
the Member for Isle of Wight made a really good point about. I
have mentioned Harron Homes in this Chamber before; the quality
of its build has been shocking, and it is not great to say that.
I will give another example. About 50 houses were built—again, in
Silsden. Other Members from across West Yorkshire have made this
point in this Chamber before. The site was finished, in the
developer’s eyes, yet there were huge snagging issues. The road
was not even sorted out; in fact, sewage from the site had to be
disposed of by a lorry that came in and emptied the tank, because
the connection with Yorkshire Water were not sorted out. How can
we ensure more enforcement against property developers when build
is not of the quality that residents, and we representatives,
expect? What can the Government do to put more pressure on
developers to enhance the quality of houses, and of the master
planning of the community that is being developed?
That brings me to industrial strategy. Inevitably, when it comes
to planning, everybody likes to talk about houses, because that
is quite an emotive issue, but I agree with the points that my
hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight made about the use of
compulsory purchase powers. On North Street in Keighley, there
are many empty buildings with fantastic architecture. How do we
use compulsory purchase powers to unlock those sites, and force
the owners to change them into housing, or get them into some
sort of community use, so that they do not sit empty year after
year? Those sites could be used by the town.
Mills is a fantastic building. It
is an old mill—one of the biggest in Keighley—that has been
redundant for many a year, although “Peaky Blinders” was filmed
there. The quality of the site has deteriorated over many years,
and last year there was a big fire— 100 firefighters and 21 fire
engines came. The building unfortunately suffered a huge amount
of fire damage, although the façades seem to be structurally
sound. It is a unique site just outside the centre of Keighley,
but we are unable to unlock it because the landowner seems
aloof—we cannot get in touch with him. We cannot get traction
with some of these key sites. How can we unlock them, in planning
policy terms, using compulsory purchase powers?
Let me turn to the speed at which local authorities operate. In
order to drive growth and job creation, we want light industrial
units in appropriate places, but it takes too long to get the
planning applications through the system and get those units
built. I have been shown many examples in Keighley. About four
years ago, a planning application was submitted to the local
authority for eight or 10 light industrial units. It did not get
any traction from the local authority until the early in the
covid period. During the covid period, the units got built and
occupied, and now those businesses are flourishing. The demand is
there; we just need to increase the speed.
Of course we want to drive better connectivity, but telecom masts
have to be in locations where they do not have an adverse impact
on the beauty of a village, and they must not be too close to
residential units. There needs to be a mechanism for putting
pressure on organisations such as Clarke Telecom that drive some
of the applications. We must ensure that they look at where the
best sites are. I will give three examples.
Unfortunately, a telecoms mast was approved in Addingham. It has
a huge impact; it does not look good on the drive into the
village. There would most definitely have been a better site for
it. Putting it elsewhere would not have affected connectivity.
All the residents of Addingham are impacted when they drive into
the village and see that ghastly telecoms mast. An applicant
applied to put a telecom mast on a site in the middle of Ilkley
that was not even part of the public highway; they just thought
they could get away with it. They had to withdraw the scheme,
which will now be reconsidered. I put a lot of pressure on them.
There was an application for a mast on a roundabout in the heart
of the beautiful village of East Morton. We want to drive
connectivity, but we do not want random applications for masts
all over the place, with applicants seeing what they can get away
with. That is not acceptable.
We have covered loads of points. I thank my hon. Friend the
Member for Isle of Wight for securing this debate, because
planning policy without doubt impacts all our constituents.
Everyone is incredibly passionate about it.
The Government are absolutely going in the right direction, and I
commend them for listening to the many concerns that I have
raised about housing numbers. The key point that I want to
reiterate before I close is that planning policy has to be driven
by need. What we need, rather than local authorities aiming
policy at quick wins, is to create housing where it is needed,
and a “brownfield first” policy.
3.50pm
(Greenwich and Woolwich)
(Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I
congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight () on securing this important
debate, and on the clarity with which he set out his position. I
thank the hon. Members for Keighley (), and for South West
Hertfordshire (), for their contributions.
The Opposition are in complete agreement with the hon. Member for
Isle of Wight on the need to reform planning. After a decade of
piecemeal and largely inept tinkering, the planning system that
the Government are presiding over is faltering on almost all
fronts. It is failing to meet the housing, amenity and
infrastructure needs of many, if not most, local areas; failing
to play its full part in addressing various national challenges,
from the climate and environment emergency to improving public
health; and failing to sustain what little public trust and
confidence it still enjoys. There is no question but that it
needs to be overhauled.
The hon. Member for Isle of Wight will not be surprised to learn
that the Opposition agree that action is required on several of
the planning issues that he identified—indeed, I would say that
action is long overdue. Let me address a number of those in turn.
The first issue is land banking. We appreciate that developers
require a pipeline of planning consents to manage capacity in the
face of inherent uncertainty, and that reference to 1 million
outstanding planning permissions is therefore an overly
simplistic and, in some ways, inaccurate critique, but Labour
agrees that developers regularly make use of current and
strategic land banks to game the planning system. That represents
a serious problem, and robust measures are required to address
it, as well as build-out rates more generally; certainly, we need
much stronger forms of intervention than the useful, but
ultimately inadequate, set of measures in the Levelling-up and
Regeneration Bill.
The second issue is brownfield land, which has been alluded to a
number of times. Labour recognises that there are simply not
enough sites on brownfield land registers to deliver the volume
of homes that the country needs each year, let alone enough that
are viable and in the right location. However, we absolutely
support the prioritisation of brownfield land development, and
agree that much more could be done to facilitate good brownfield
development, not least by overhauling and repurposing Homes
England.
The third is compulsory purchase. We are in complete agreement on
the need for local planning authorities to have greater
compulsory purchase order powers, and we have been clear at every
stage of its passage that we support the CPO provisions in the
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, including those introduced in
Committee on compensation in relation to hope value. Indeed, we
have repeatedly urged the Government to go further and implement
the proposals outlined in the second part of the compulsory
purchase compensation reforms consultation, namely to disapply
section 17 of the Land Compensation Act 1961 in certain
circumstances and enable local authorities to acquire land at or
closer to existing use value in order to increase the number of
financially viable developments and expedite regeneration schemes
on them.
The fourth is community participation, which has also been
mentioned several times. Labour absolutely agrees that meaningful
public participation in the planning system is essential. We
believe that where it takes place, it helps to improve outcomes,
and we want to see much more of it, particularly when it comes to
engagement in the preparation of local plans. The problem is that
the legitimacy of the planning system has been severely damaged
in the eyes of the public over the past decade as a result of a
series of changes, not least of which is the progressive
extension of permitted development rights since 2013, and the
slum housing—putting it bluntly—that it has so often been used to
create. That has left communities with much less say over
development in their area than they previously enjoyed. Various
measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill undermine the
status and remit of local planning, and deny or frustrate the
right of communities to be heard, and that will only compound the
problem. It was regrettable that members of the Conservative
planning concern group ultimately chose not to join us in
resisting them.
Where we fundamentally part ways with the hon. Member for Isle of
Wight and his colleagues in that group is on the importance that
we attach to, among many other laudible objectives, ensuring that
the planning system is explicitly focused on meeting objectively
assessed housing need. For all the rhetoric about seeking a
fairer planning system, in recent months, what the hon. Gentleman
and his group have convinced the Government, in their weakness,
to adopt is a proposed national planning policy framework that
will provide local planning authorities with myriad different
ways of avoiding delivering the homes that people need. Whether
it is the emphasis in the revised NPPF on locally prepared plans
providing for “sufficient” housing only; the softening of land
supply and delivery test provisions; the ability to include
historical over-delivery in five year housing land supply
calculations; or the listing of various local characteristics
that would justify a deviation from the standard method, taken
together, the proposed changes will give those local authorities
that wish to take advantage of it the freedom to plan for less
housing, irrespective of whatever target nominally remains in
place.
It is true that the proposed changes to the NPPF are only being
consulted on, but we know that they will almost certainly be
enacted. The effect of the signal that they have sent, as was
surely intended, is already evident; numerous local plans have
been paused, explicitly on the basis that the proposed changes
justify a review. Local plans have been mentioned at several
points in the debate, and in her response, the Minister will no
doubt highlight the need to bring forward more. We absolutely
agree. It is an indictment of this Government’s performance that
after a decade of plan making, 59% of the country still does not
have an up-to-date local plan. Although the proposed changes to
the NPPF may well increase local planning coverage across
England, they will almost certainly do so on the basis of
numerous development plans that will not meet the needs of their
given housing market areas in full. The Government are making the
entirely arbitrary figure of a 35% uplift to urban centres policy
by placing it in the NPPF. They clearly hope that it will mean
that England’s largest cities and urban centres will do the heavy
lifting on housing supply, but most of the cities that it applies
to cannot, or will be unable to, accommodate the output it
entails.
The hon. Gentleman agrees with us on some things, and disagrees
on others; that is fair enough, but does he accept that the UK
has some of the least dense cities on the planet? We are a very
crowded, small island, and we need to increase density in our
cities. The most attractive places in our inner cities tend to be
those with the highest density, so high density is not a problem
in itself. Actually, forcing higher density creates
better-quality services, because it builds a market for those
services. This is an incredibly sensible thing for the Government
to do.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Let me be
clear: I take no issue whatever with the drive to densify already
developed urban areas, but as I argued, the cities and urban
centres to which the uplift applies are pretty clear that they
cannot, or will not be able to, accommodate the levels of housing
supply that it entails, not least because of the constraints
imposed on them by a number of the proposals in that NPPF
consultation—I do not know whether he is aware of that, or how
involved he was in the negotiations that he mentioned—and the
absence of any effective means of managing cross-boundary housing
growth.
The net result of all these changes, as I think everyone here
knows full well, is that the Government have consciously accepted
that fewer houses will be built in England over the coming years.
That decision entails a deliberate shift from a plan-led system
focused on making at least some attempt to meet housing need, to
one geared toward providing only what the politics of any given
area allow, with all the implications that entails for the
housing crisis and economic growth. These latest politically
driven changes leave national planning policy, and the planning
system as a whole, more confusing and contradictory than
ever.
Local planning authorities remain under-resourced, overwhelmed,
demoralised and consequently unable in large part to process
applications at pace. England’s planning structures remain
dysfunctional; they are utterly incapable of managing housing
growth at a strategic scale. Not only does the system as a whole
lack a clear and overarching purpose but the unifying thread that
ran through the 2012 NPPF—namely, the presumption in favour of
sustainable development—has now effectively been jettisoned.
So I conclude by returning to my original point of agreement with
the hon. Member for Isle of Wight. The planning system is indeed
crying out for reform, but not the reform that he and his
colleagues are pursuing and the Government have conceded to.
Instead, it requires reform that the present Government are now
incapable of delivering. It is high time that we had a general
election, so that the present Government can make way for a
Government who are serious about ensuring that the planning
system and national planning policy are designed to meet housing
need and boost economic growth.
4.00pm
The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and
Communities ()
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Vickers.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight
() on securing this debate on an
incredibly important topic, which I know Members from across the
House feel very strongly about. It touches all our constituents;
indeed, it makes a significant difference to their daily lives.
It is an issue that we have debated extensively in recent months,
both in the main Chamber and outside it, and I am very pleased to
have had a number of conversations with my hon. Friend and other
colleagues who are here today, as well as with many other Members
who are not present, in order to hear all their views and take
them into account. I think that has left us with a much better
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which will secure the futures
of our constituencies in terms of building houses that people
want, and in the right places.
It has been a pleasure to work with colleagues from across the
House, and I think that what we now have is a system that is
shaped around the interests of communities, whereby we will have
beautiful designs in keeping with local styles and the character
of an area, and developments and buildings that people want and
welcome.
It is really important that we have local plans in place. The
shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich
(), talked about these
plans and he quite rightly said that at the moment only 40% of
areas have a local plan, which means that speculative
developments are imposed on communities. What we seek to do
through the Bill is to secure a significant culture change in our
areas, so that people do not resist development but seek it and
indeed want it because it brings benefits to their area. I do not
accept what the hon. Gentleman said, namely, that we are damaging
the system; in fact, we will enhance it.
Many Members talked about community buy-in, which is at the heart
of our Bill. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for South
West Hertfordshire () got it absolutely when he said that it was
important to retain our local communities, that we had vibrant
communities across the country, that we had green spaces and that
people recognised that these open areas were important. Indeed,
they are essential to people across the country. He also quite
rightly highlighted the issue that has developed in relation to
the five-year land supply and the speculative development that
has come from that.
All Government Members talked about community buy-in. My hon.
Friend the Member for Isle of Wight talked about the bitter
battles among communities and my hon. Friend the Member for
Keighley () talked about the need for
development to be community- led, which is at the heart of what
we want to do at the moment.
Indeed, two words sum up what we want; they are “local consent”.
If we want a planning process that can endure, communities must
be at the heart of it. We must hear their voices; we must listen
to what they say; they must be involved in the process; the plans
need to be shorter; and the documents need to be more accessible.
And at the same time as communities shape local plans, we are
clear that communities will retain the right to comment on
individual applications.
We want all of this to be done more in digital form, so that
people can access plans and engage with them, including
commenting on them. We want to harness social media and digital
channels such as email, so that we can increase visibility of and
access to plans, and that is what we are doing through the
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill.
I just want to make clear my point about commenting on planning
policy. It is really important, in terms of transparency, that
people can see, as a planning application is lodged, what other
people are commenting on. Does the Minister agree with me that it
is frustrating that Bradford Council, my local authority, has
decided to take the step of removing from public view any
comments that the public make on a planning application? It will
not allow members of the public to see those comments and is
using GDPR, as the reason for doing so. Yet other local
authorities enable all their residents to see all comments that
are made on planning applications. I wonder whether the Minister
might comment on that.
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I do think that, as a
generic point, it is important that people feel involved in the
process and, therefore, can comment on it and understand the
views of the local community.
The Minister is being generous with her time. In terms of the
drive towards digital viewing, can she reassure me that, for
those constituents who are not digitally enabled, there is still
alternative provision for them to look at plans and offer their
feedback?
Of course. This issue always crops up when we talk about
digitalisation. Of course we need to ensure that access is
available for anyone when we digitalise. This morning I was in
Buckinghamshire looking at a programme to digitalise its planning
processes. It is very concerning that some statistics show that
50% of planning applications are invalid. This is a significant
waste of councils’ time and of people’s time. It is blocking up
our system and making sure that local planning officers cannot
concentrate on getting things through the system.
I would like to turn to the question of the character of an area,
because that is something that we have set out in the NPPF and
that needs to be carefully considered. I did not know and was
very interested to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for
Keighley was an architect. I am sure that his skills will come to
the fore as we introduce our design codes around the country. We
are bringing them in to ensure that development is appropriate
for the community, is well designed and looks good, so that
people welcome the development that comes into their area.
Many Members, but particularly my hon. Friend the Member for
Keighley, also mentioned infrastructure. It is absolutely
critical that we get infrastructure into communities, so that
they see that development is not just about housing; it is about
schools and GP surgeries and might be about other infrastructure
as well. Some of the measures in the Bill will ensure that we get
infra- structure faster. People might have an ability—will have
an ability—to borrow up front. They might have an ability to ask
for instalments—I am talking about funds from the developer up
front. They might—they will—have the ability to ensure that they
get an uplift. What happens is that the land value is x and, once
planning permission has been given, the land value increases
significantly, to x plus y. Why should the local council not get
the benefit of the uplift as well?
Many Members talked about brownfield. Brownfield is extremely
important. The Government encourage the reuse of brownfield land.
National policy sets out that planning policies and decisions
should make efficient use of land and give substantial weight to
the value of using suitable brownfield land within settlements.
We have taken a number of measures to support the redevelopment
of brownfield land. For example, we require every local authority
to publish a register of local brownfield land suitable for
housing; we have introduced permission in principle to speed up
housing-led development; we have revised permitted development
and use class rules, to make the best use of existing buildings;
and we have uplifted housing need in our most populated cities
and urban areas.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight talked about
brownfield land funding money. We have introduced a number of
funding initiatives, including the £550 million brownfield
housing fund, the £180 million brownfield land release fund 2 and
the £4.3 billion housing infra- structure fund.
I am also pleased to say—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member
for Isle of Wight knows this—that three sites in the Isle of
Wight were successful in their bids to the brownfield land
release fund in October 2021. They were awarded nearly £950,000
to release local-authority-owned brownfield land for 71
homes.
I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley
talk about the brownfield land that should be developed in his
constituency. As someone who grew up in Leeds, I am familiar with
many of the areas that he mentioned. Of course, local authorities
must think carefully about the land that they are proposing for
development, with a particular view to, and eye on, brownfield
land.
My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight mentioned compulsory
purchase orders. He will know that we have already taken some
steps in that area, with the Government’s high street strategy,
which was published in July 2021, and through further measures in
the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. He rightly mentioned the
Law Commission report and foreshadowed my reference to it. The
Law Commission is undertaking an exercise to consolidate
compulsory purchase law, to make it easier to understand, and to
review CPO powers.
The shadow Minister talked about land banking. That is something
that we are absolutely tackling in the Bill. He will know that we
have set out measures so that developers have to set out
trajectories of when they are going to build. He will know that
we are taking steps to enable local authorities to take into
account further planning permissions that are put forward on the
same site. They can take into account, as a matter of discretion,
whether the first set has been built out or not, and we have also
already said that we will be going further.
I will touch on the discrete measures that my hon. Friend the
Member for Isle of Wight mentioned. He raised some specific
planning decisions in his constituency. In view of the
quasi-judicial role that the planning Minister has, I will not
comment on any particular applications, but I completely
understand his general point about the importance of Government
acting speedily.
My hon. Friend also mentioned the NPPF consultation. He asked
what stage we were at, and asked about exceptional circumstances.
I would just reassure him that we launched the consultation on 22
December, and, within that, there is reference to the Island in
the exceptional circumstances test. We will make it clearer that
the outcome of the standard method is set out as an advisory
starting point. However, we will also give more explicit
indications on planning guidance and the type of local
characteristics that may justify the use of an alternative
method, such as islands with a high percentage of elderly
residents or university towns with above-average numbers of
students. Those are part and parcel of the consultation, which we
will be considering in due course.
On the issue of caravans, I know that officials are looking into
the points that my hon. Friend raised, but I think there are some
particular issues relating to the planning permissions under
which they were originally granted. However, I am very happy to
discuss that matter further with him.
I will reiterate the overarching point about the planning
measures that we have taken, which I touched on at the beginning
of my speech. We still have a commitment to building homes and
are still working towards a target of 300,000 homes a year. It is
absolutely essential that young people get on to the housing
ladder. However, we are trying to change the nature of planning
to ensure that people get homes where they want them, that they
are beautifully designed so that people want them, and that they
are surrounded by the infrastructure that communities want and
need. If we change that culture in our planning system, people
will start to welcome development and we will not have this
constant resistance to new housing.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight again for
securing the debate, for using it to press home his individual
and national concerns, and for his constant engagement over the
last few months. Building homes is central to how we level up the
country, and we need to build them in the right places—in the
south, but absolutely in the north. It is how we create economic
growth, and we need to do this in the right way. I and my
Department, together with the Secretary of State and hon. Members
across this House, are continuing to work towards a planning
system that we can all be proud of.
4.14pm
I thank everyone for taking part in this debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of planning policy.
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