Neighbourhood Planning Bill
Public Bill Committee, 18 October 2016.
Oliver Colvile (Conservative, Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
I think I probably need to do so, because I still have shares in a company called Polity Communications, which gives advice to developers on how to get planning permission. I have in the past done work on opposing things with community groups as well.
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
I should mention that I employ a local authority council member in my parliamentary team.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
I should draw colleagues’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a shareholder in a business that provides finance for construction projects.
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
I am a councillor in Oldham.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am the majority shareholder of a company that provides finance for construction equipment.
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
I employ two local authority members in my parliamentary and constituency office. For the record, I should probably also say that one of the witnesses is the leader of the council in my local area.
Examination of Witnesses
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Thank you, Mr Bone. Good morning. It is a pleasure to see some of you again. We have been around the houses a bit on planning and housing Bills.Q
I will start with the most contentious part of the Bill for the Labour party, which is the changes to pre-commencement planning conditions. What evidence is there to suggest that pre-commencement conditions are overused and cause delays in planning processes? It would be helpful if you could give some examples to help us understand the issue.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q I am sorry to interrupt you, Andrew. You said there is evidence there. Actually, what you have collected is the opinions of your members. Did they provide examples to demonstrate what was actually causing the delays?
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q Are the measures in the Bill sufficient to speed up the whole pre-commencement planning conditions issue, so that you will get quicker agreement on what needs to be done by your members and in the discharge?
Oliver Colvile (Conservative, Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Q Thank you very much, gentlemen, for giving up your time to come and have a chat with us. Before I was elected to this place, I did a lot of work in the development industry, giving advice to developers on how to manage community consultations and stuff like that. A number of my clients would have said that every time the Government get involved in producing another piece of planning law, frankly, that delays everything. I would be interested in your comments.
Turning to preconditions, I am very keen to make sure that local communities are absolutely and utterly involved in the whole decision-making process and feel that they should have their say. How do you think we can ensure that the preconditions are also considered by local communities in the process?
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q Mr Whitaker, you mentioned a couple of times that it is best practice for conditions to be agreed in discussion between the local authority and the applicant, and I agree with you. The Bill proposes a much more formal process than that through an exchange of letters between an applicant and the local authority to agree the conditions. The mechanisms in the Bill for resolving a dispute, when that process can be resolved through an exchange of letters, are pretty blunt: the rejection of the application wholesale, and the developer is then left in the position of going to appeal. Notwithstanding what you said about the system not working so well at the moment, can you comment on whether this will help to further encourage best practice, or whether formalising the process in the way proposed in the Bill might have unintended consequences?
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q I am a member of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, and yesterday we heard evidence from a range of witnesses within the sector, including from the Federation of Master Builders and the Home Builders Federation, about the lack of resource and capacity in local authority planning departments. It was suggested in that evidence session that the reported overuse of pre-commencement planning conditions is a symptom of a lack of resource in planning departments, rather than a wilful misuse of pre-commencement conditions on the part of local authorities. Will you comment on your experience of the resourcing issues in local authority planning departments?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q I would like to continue the line of questioning on resourcing and planning departments that Helen Hayes started. Mr Dixon, you said earlier that the lack of resourcing in planning departments was the No. 1 impediment to getting more applications. Will you confirm that that was the case?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Mr Murray said that certainty of process was the most important thing. Would your members or the development community be willing to pay for further resources in local authority planning departments by way of higher planning fees if, in exchange, they had guaranteed service levels—that is, the extra planning fee would be refundable if the service level was not met? Are you willing to pay to remedy the problem you are highlighting?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
They would be willing to pay higher fees.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q It is relatively rare to find people volunteering to pay more money.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q What level of fee uplift, compared to today’s levels, would your members or the development community be willing to pay if a guaranteed service level—an application determined within x period—was associated with that fee uplift? Give us a feel for the quantum.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q So if the fee uplift was refundable if the date got missed, would that give comfort?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Am I right in thinking that the current planning agreements apply only to large applications? The planning agreements that can already be entered into do not currently help small applications, so one could also introduce that.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Are you satisfied that section 106 agreements, which are currently entered into after planning permission is granted, are adequate? It can take a long time to agree them. Are you satisfied that they are adequately addressed by the Bill or not? Do you think that they can still be a source of delay?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Should we make section 106 part of the main planning application so that the whole thing gets dealt with in an expeditious fashion in one go?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Yes, but dialogue can happen in pre-app.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q So if I pay a higher fee, then this is a service I get in return?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Without extra resources, there will not be any extra service, and extra resources mean more money.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Excellent.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Finally, on the question of pre-commencements, are there any particular conditions or parts of the planning process that you think are particularly onerous or absurd and would like to draw the Committee’s attention to? It might be anything to do with great crested newts, for example, without wishing to lead the witnesses.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q If the LPA breaks that, no consequence flows from it, other than a bad statistic in its report.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Which, of course, can only happen at a certain time of year.
Theresa Villiers (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)
I possibly take a slightly different view from my colleague of newts and bats. There is some anxiety about the Bill, probably based on a misunderstanding of what the changes on pre-commencement conditions actually involve, so this discussion is very helpful from that point of view. I have constituents who are keen to see local authorities retain the power to ensure that proper surveys are done in relation to wildlife and archaeological heritage. From what I understand from the debate on Second Reading and from what you have said today, the planning authorities will retain the power to impose conditions of that kind; there will just be a change in how that is done to ensure that it involves the developer at an earlier stage and does not necessarily have to happen right at the start, before the whole process has begunQ .
Mr Whitaker, can you explain, in simple terms, at what stage of the process surveys of that kind can be required? I can then reassure my constituents that the Bill will not prevent an archaeological survey if it is necessary, and that the aim is to ensure that it happens in a way that causes less delay and cost to developments. It is obviously important to ensure that such work is done before a final decision is made on a planning application.
Theresa Villiers (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)
Thank you. That is helpful.
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
I was pleased to hear that answer, Mr Whitaker, because that issue was on my mind as well. You suggested earlier that planners might focus on the essentials of preconditions. We have to be clear about who determines what the essentials are. For example, when is a bat more essential than a ditch? I think you have made it quite clear, and I do not think that those of our environmental colleagues who are listening will feel you are trying to steamroller over the environment. Can you just give me a yes or noQ ?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q You are not. Good. Then I would like to go on to my main question, which I put to Mr Murray first. If the local authority and the developer disagree on a pre-commencement condition, there is no recourse in the Bill other than to reject the application and to then appeal the whole thing. I wonder whether that puts off, in particular, rural folk from applying for planning conditions. Does the system put them off because it is too arduous if they fear being turned down the first time?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q They cannot just appeal on one of the small preconditions that was under debate, is that right?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q Do you think we would get more houses and more developments as a result of a small tweak like that?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q Shall we just put that to Mr Dixon? Do you think that would help small and medium-sized developers as well?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Yes; making it simpler, rather than have to go through everything.
Oliver Colvile (Conservative, Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Q Thank you for allowing me to have a second go, Mr Bone.
I have always thought very seriously that we should make sure we have master planning taking place at a very early stage as well, which would mean the local community could get very involved in it. I am also not going to miss an opportunity to talk about ecology and about making sure that we include hedgehog superhighways in the development, too. That is important, because it is something that does not often necessarily feature in the discussion that takes place with developers. It would be a really good thing if we could encourage that, in my view, because hedgehog numbers have declined by 50% over the past 15 years.
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q Thank you, Mr Bone.
There are just three brief points I want to make, picking up on what a number of you have said. The first is a request of Mr Dixon. You referred to the survey you had done of your members. First, can you tell us how many members you had surveyed? Committee members might find it helpful to see a copy of the results of that survey.
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q With all due respect to the HBF, I suspect there is a very strong consensus across the House that one of the things we want to do is to encourage more SME builders. If this is particularly a concern to that sector, it is highly relevant.
Mr Murray, if I understood you correctly, I think you were saying that you were not sure that these changes regarding pre-commencement conditions would achieve anything, because dialogue between applicants and planning committees was needed. I put it to you that surely that is what this change will require. Because it is going to stop local authorities imposing pre-commencement conditions without an applicant’s agreement, it will surely create the kind of dialogue you want to see.
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q Yes. I think we will go on to discuss this when we get to line-by-line consideration, but the difficulty is that when an inspector looks at a condition, it is difficult to judge it in the absence of the overall application, because the council would say that the condition is necessary to make the overall application acceptable. It is difficult to just look at one condition in the absence of the overall package.
My last question is for Mr Pinnock. I understand the point you are making that there will still be an issue if this Bill goes through as it stands. I want to challenge you on what you said, that people would be in no better a position at all. At the moment, as an applicant, if you do not like the conditions attached to your application, you can appeal. I would argue that there is a beneficial step here in that, now, authorities will not be able to attach conditions that you do not agree to. The authority would have to feel so strongly about one of these pre-commencement conditions as to turn down permission for the whole application. Do you not think that it is at least going to reduce the number of cases where there is a problem, even if it will not eliminate the problem altogether?
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q This follows on from the Minister’s point about how you compile an application with conditions to make it acceptable to the local community and the design elements within that locality. We have heard a lot about bats and newts, and a bit about hedgehogs too. There have probably been more discussions on those than on people and community. I want to explore a bit more the points you were making about the type of conditions being put forward and how reasonable or unreasonable they were perceived to be. Let us use the example of landscaping, which has been used to say, “This is how ridiculous the system is.” Following on from the Minister’s point, the idea that landscaping—planting a few plants here and there—will somehow delay an important development could be the difference between whether an application is acceptable to the local community or not. If a development is alongside your house, the screening and treatment of that could be critical to whether you support it.
Equally, the idea of phasing elements, whereby some conditions could be delayed or brought further into the application—drainage was mentioned—was predicated on the view that costing delays mount up, and that it is better to crack on, get the site done and resolve those issues later. The counter-challenge is that if you are applying for plant equipment or site security, but you cannot get an agreement on drainage, surely there is an inherent cost with that proposal. I want to challenge that to try to get some balance. We are in danger of going from one extreme to the other, and the truth is always somewhere in the middle.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q Thank you and welcome everyone. We are going to continue the discussion on pre-commencement conditions. It would be helpful to hear your views on whether they are overused, whether they do in fact cause delays in the planning process and whether you have evidence to support that.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q Do you think that the measures in the Bill change the balance of power more towards the developer, and what are the risks with that? We have not yet talked this morning of the risks, particularly in clause 7.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Good morning. One of the speakers briefly touched on this. What is the panellists’ opinion about whether planning departments in local authorities are adequately resourced to deal with the kind of issues we are discussing—pre-commencement conditions and the determination of applications?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Will other members of the panel comment on the resourcing question: do you think local authority planning departments are adequately resourced bearing in mind the demands being placed on them?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Sorry, can you say that again?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q The previous group of witnesses, who by and large represented the property development industry, appeared unanimously to support the idea of paying higher planning fees for some kind of guaranteed service level—for a determination within a particular time. If that target was not met, the extra planning fee might be refunded. Do panel members think that that might be one way of getting extra financial resources into local authority planning departments? If one proposed that idea, the Chancellor would probably say—I am putting words in his mouth—“The danger is that you put the extra money into the planning department, and the council reduces its subsidy, to spend it on something else, so the total amount of money stays the same; it just comes from applicants, rather than the subsidy.” If you do think extra planning fees for a guaranteed service is a good idea, how do you prevent existing resource being diverted to another part of the council’s activities? I suppose that is a question for Councillor Newman.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Would you support the specific idea of extra planning fees conditional on service delivery?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Do you accept that there is a danger that if you allowed local authorities to charge higher planning fees, you would at the same time have to stop them from simply diverting existing financial resources elsewhere, in order to make sure that you got an increase in total resource level in the planning department?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Can I invite other panel members to comment on that exchange?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Have you found them coming forward and saying that they would like to pay these higher planning fees?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q One of the challenges is that local authorities lose planning experts to private practice, because private practice can afford to pay more, and because local authorities are very stretched, so it is a slightly stressful and harassed environment to work in. The resource issue might partly address the brain drain to private practice.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Of course, you would still have the statutory time targets, and if you increased total resource levels, it may most directly benefit those paying more, but it might have wider benefits as well, even to applicants who were not paying the extra fees.
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q I have a question for Councillor Newman, and perhaps Hugh Ellis as well. Have either of you undertaken any assessment of the likely additional burden to local planning authorities from the new proposed process in the Bill? Supplementary to that, and following the discussion that was just had about the possibility of applicants paying for an enhanced level of service, might a better system be for local authorities to be able, on a transparent and consultative basis, to charge the full cost of their development management service through fees? One concern I have about the proposal that developers be able to buy in an enhanced level of service is that it is potentially quite difficult for local authorities to manage fluctuating demand, in relation to individual applications. Surely what we actually want is for local authorities to be properly resourced to do the job well for everybody, irrespective of who the applicant is.
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q I have a further question for Duncan Wilson. You mentioned concerns about archaeology. It seems there have been indications from the Government that some assurance might be provided around the question of archaeology, and we will wait to see what comes forward in that regard. Are there other areas of heritage about which you have potential concerns relating to pre-commencement planning conditions?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Obviously, the Government are trying to strengthen neighbourhood plans in the Bill. Do you think the provisions they have in there at the moment are likely to eliminate the erratic decision making from the Planning Inspectorate that we have seen with regard to neighbourhood plans?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q So in your view, even if this provision goes through and a post-examination neighbourhood plan is given full weight in a planning application, in the absence of an approved local plan, do you still think we are likely to see neighbourhood plans effectively upended?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q But if we do have a plan-led system, which seems to be the way that we are going, would you therefore support greater strength being given to local authorities’ ability to defend the five-year land supply?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Given that the overall objective perhaps ought to be certainty for resident, council and developer alike about what is allowed where over time, if you can get to a situation where you have a post-inspection neighbourhood plan and an approved local plan—in other words, you have got two of the pillars in place—with a five-year land supply available, do you think that the role of the planning inspector in that circumstance should be diminished or not?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q On that point, is it possible for a developer to obtain a large permission in an area, and then not develop it out, and then challenge a refusal on another site in that area on the basis that a five-year land supply has not been fulfilled? That happens, right?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q That does happen. Therefore, by being patient, they are able to blow a hole in the land supply and get a permission that they otherwise would not have done, and double up.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Presumably the Bill is designed to provide that incentive. The incentive is that if you have a neighbourhood plan and it is strengthened you are more likely to have certainty about what is going to be developed in your area, so if you are bothered about development you should have a neighbourhood plan. I am interested in what you say about local plans. We hear that neighbourhood plans deliver more housing than was otherwise predicted. Is that your experience?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Yes.
Oliver Colvile (Conservative, Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Q Thank you, gentlemen, for coming to see us. What a delight, Councillor Newman, to have you here, for the simple reason that I was the Tory party agent in Mitcham in the 1980s when Nicholas Ridley introduced the whole local plan process in the first place. I have been very interested in following all this.
You have talked quite a bit about resources. I am pretty aware that my council in Plymouth, for which I am the Member of Parliament, has similar issues. However, we have a university and a planning school. To my mind, councils could have a much closer relationship with their planning schools and try to use some of those resources. Is that something that you have looked at?
Oliver Colvile (Conservative, Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)
Q It seems to my mind that students, I keep being told, find it very difficult to make ends meet. They have tuition fee loans and all those kinds of things. It would actually be a way of trying to get them to have some practical experience in the planning world. Similarly, local archaeology people come to see me, some of whom are doing things at the university. Is that a resource that you might think about using and looking at?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
How many of these 500,000 unmet house planning consents are in neighbourhood development plan areas? Does anyone knowQ ?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q What is the average number of new house proposals that come from existing neighbourhood development plans?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q Nobody knows. What is the increase from what the position was in the same areas covered by neighbourhood plans, in terms of proposed new housing units in areas covered by neighbourhood development plans?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q You said that the five-year land supply for housing was critical for housing development. How do you know that?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q Correct. Am I right in saying that every neighbourhood development plan, in order to be in any way legal, has to incorporate new housing development?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
No, is it not the case that a neighbourhood development plan has to have an increase in housing supply?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q Is there a reason why English Heritage has not tried to initiate neighbourhood development plans using major historic buildings, such as cathedrals, as the core basis for defining urban communities?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q My final question: is not the strength of neighbourhood development plans also their weakness? The strength is that at the moment a plan lends itself perfectly to villages with parish councils, which can easily, and very ably and effectively, localise the planning process—in my area virtually every parish council has or is developing a neighbourhood development plan, all of them increasing the housing supply significantly, and they will be delivering on that housing supply significantly over the next five years—whereas the weaknesses are in urban areas, where defining what the community is actually requires a bit of original thinking; otherwise everything simply becomes one urban mass. Is that not the opportunity, be it for the English Heritages, the good planners or enlightened councils, to get urbanised neighbourhood planning to involve communities in exactly the way that villages have hugely successfully involved vast numbers of people in the development of the existing neighbourhood plans that have been agreed, or are currently rolling forward?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q Will the changes proposed to the pre-commencement conditions leave enough flexibility to deal with things that local communities are really concerned about? In my area of Taunton, the big issues are all about what Mr Ellis referred to: design quality, the look of the houses, vernacular character, flood resilience. Can we get all that cleared through the changes proposed, or are we relying utterly on neighbourhood plans to do that? Are there enough teeth for that to be taken into account when the planning consents are given?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q And it is one of the big bugbears locally, when you talk to people, in all neighbourhood planning.
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q But where would you put it? In the pre-commencements?
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q I have two quick questions for Councillor Newman. You felt that the planning conditions measures were a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I want to get a sense of the size of the nut. Among the previous witnesses, there was a consensus that the use of pre-commencement conditions has been growing over time. Does the LGA share that view?
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q It is not getting bigger, in the LGA’s view?
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q In its submission to us, the District Councils Network acknowledged that the discharge of planning conditions can be a factor in slow decision making and supported the Government in seeking to address conditions. Why did district councils take a different view on this from the LGA as a whole?
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Do I have time for one more question, Chair?
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q You made a very good point that in the year to 30 June, this country granted a record number of planning applications for housing, but that there is a gap between the planning permissions we are granting and homes being built out. If you do not think planning conditions are part of the problem—I would certainly say they are not the sole problem—what do the panel think are the reasons for that gap?
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Do the provisions of the Bill go far enough to support groups that want to undertake a neighbourhood plan and, in particular, does the Bill do enough to support groups in disadvantaged areas? Please address both parts of the questionQ 6868.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Dr Owen, you said that a lot of neighbourhood plans had been overturned, or that decisions on appeal have blown a hole in the neighbourhood plan—that certainly happened in my constituency—so do you think that the provisions of the Bill will iron some of that out? Do you think that the intervention point, or the point at which the plan has more weight post-inspection, is the right moment, or could it conceivably be earlier in the process?Q
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q What do you think it should be?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q But is it the case that, wherever you pick in the lifespan of the neighbourhood plan—from inception through to referendum—by picking a point at which you create weight, you also create a window for land speculators or developers to try to get in under the wire? Do you think the point the Government have chosen for the cut-off date—post-inspection—which is where this weight occurs, is too late? Of course, all the work is done pre-inspection. As you say, part of the mission is to make the process credible so people who are embarking on a two and possibly three-year, process do not feel their time is wasted because an application comes in just before inspection.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Thank you. You have both referred to the importance of the local plan. Obviously, a neighbourhood plan is hampered in the absence of an overarching local plan with a five-year land supply. That is not the fault of the area that has put the neighbourhood plan in place. Do you think there is scope in the Bill or elsewhere to create some kind of compulsion on local authorities to have a plan in place? Some of them seem to take their time.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q On that notion of having a neighbourhood plan and a local plan, probably the most feared organisation in my constituency is not the Inland Revenue or the police, but the Planning Inspectorate. When a neighbourhood plan that has been through a referendum is in place and a local plan has been approved and has a five-year land supply, do you believe that there should be some restrictions on the jurisdiction of the Planning Inspectorate in such circumstances?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Yes, I understand that. All MPs can, pretty much, point to inexplicable decisions by the Planning Inspectorate in their area. One of the things that alarms local communities is this notion that the decisions made seem broadly random. I guess what I am trying to fish for is whether there is some way for an area that can prove it is playing ball, is providing housing and has its plans in place, to have the planning inspector say to a developer, “Well, don’t even bother asking, because we are not going to participate”.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
But would you extend that—
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q When you say “everyone” should have the right to appeal, you do not mean the residents.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q I understand, but you said that was of democratic importance—
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q But obviously a lot of residents believe the system is one-sided, because they cannot appeal an appeal that is allowed.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Okay. My final question is on neighbourhood plans and the areas, to which you alluded earlier. Do you think that neighbourhood plans could be put in place by self-defined areas?
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
May I haveQ your views on the availability and level of resources to support communities that want to undertake neighbourhood planning? What more could be done to enable and encourage neighbourhood planning in more deprived communities and in areas of high housing need, for example, where there are voices that might not be heard in the planning process, but that might stand to benefit from the neighbourhood planning process?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Prince Charles’s Foundation for Building Community did the groundwork in my area to self-define an urban area around a historic church as a community. It is a coherent community, and it is a community that has not been defined as such for 300 to 400 years. In your position, would you say that there was far more scope for this? Imagine if it had been done for the St Paul’s neighbourhood plan 40 years ago. Things might be rather different. Do you see great scope in this, and do you see scope for your organisation in prompting this kind of thinkingQ ?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q Some would say great architecture defines communities and I hope you will give further thought as to how you might inspire people, particularly in urban areas and around our great cathedrals and other great buildings. Most of your member organisations were busy consulting vast amounts of local people over local plans, and then the Government changed the goalposts in March 2013. How many local plans have had to be redone because of the requirement to consult neighbouring authorities?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
No, not neighbourhood plans; local plans.
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
There must be a significant number, because councils like mine that had had all the consultation were informed that they had to start again entirely from scratch, which seems to me to be quite a way of delaying house building—albeit inadvertently—by the coalition Government.
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q The stability we have had? There has been no stability in all those councils that had to abandon their local plans—there is no plan there, so in fact there has been instability. Dr Owen, have there not been cases where small district councils, with the risk of adverse costs should they lose at appeal, have felt obliged to pass things that they do not want and their local communities vociferously do not want for fear of risking a quarter of a million pounds in costs from their budget? Does that sound familiar?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q Indeed. My own parish council had exactly the same experience. Vast numbers participated. A community plan was drawn up with huge engagement. It was environmentally sound and very forward-thinking on green technologies. Architecture was built into it, with what the new housing should look like to fit in with the feel and history of previous architecture, but that was overturned because of the five-year housing supply. Someone wants to build something that does not fit in at all, and that was not agreed by anyone, because someone in Whitehall says, “You’ve got to have this number of houses.” Will that inspire more neighbourhoods to have plans, or will that mean there will be even more cynicism about the planning system?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q The evidence, overwhelmingly, is that where there is a neighbourhood plan that increases the potential housing supply through land allocation, that housing will be built and will be built quickly. However, there is a bit of a time lag in proving that in huge numbers. Do you intend to keep providing that information on how successful neighbourhood plans have been in bringing forward new housing? Would that not therefore strengthen the argument that where there is a neighbourhood plan that has been formally adopted by one of your members in district council, after a referendum and a council vote, that should be the plan stuck to by everybody?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q Indeed. With more than 20 local plans either agreed or proceeding in my constituency, every single one brings forward new housing—more than any plan previously. Every single community is willing to have housing, but wants to have a great say on what kind of housing—what shape, what design—and where it should be. Seing as so many of them are in beautiful parishes such as the village where I live, is there not a danger that one part of society is going to benefit from this whereas in more deprived communities, in urban areas, there is the same desire for local control over neighbourhoods, but it requires a bit more imagination to create communities sufficiently robustly small to carry out this kind of planning? Should we not be giving far more incentive, encouragement and expert advice to those communities, on the basis that all politics is local as long as you are prepared to trust local people?
Theresa Villiers (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)
Part of this has been covered by John Mann’s questions, but just to be clear, it seems to me there are far fewer neighbourhood plans in big cities than elsewhere. It would be useful to understand from you what you think the main cause of that is. Is it because it is very difficult to identify a community small enough to be viable for a neighbourhood plan within a bigger urban areaQ ?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
One of the things so many communities want is to have an influence on how their communities look and feel, what nice places they are to live in and all of that. Do you think the changes proposed in the Bill will help that? Will people really feel that they are going to influence the places in which they liveQ ?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q Do you think that will be an incentive for people who are sceptical about the process we have been discussing? Would it really encourage them to do it?
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
I am interested in the powers providing the finance to deliver and get the expertise in, and so on. What about practical support beyond that, for instance toolkits, pro formas and websites that can generate content and formatting? Maybe I can use this opportunity to blow the trumpet of Greater Manchester, which is currently embarking on a project with the Cabinet Office to develop open data mapping. Would more projects like that help your parish and town councilsQ ?
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
The mapping, of course, could be provided by central Government. The technology platform could be provided centrally.
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q I am interested in the balance of the drive and ambition to build more homes with trying to protect the environmental standards, in particular around the green belt. I would welcome your views on that.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Welcome to Westminster. Do you think the way the local plan interacts with the neighbourhood plan could be improved in any way, particularly bearing in mind that the neighbourhood plan has been subject to local referendum? If you think that interaction could be improved, how would you suggest improving itQ ?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q On that point, can you think of particular examples of the type of policies or measures that might appear in a neighbourhood plan and that you think could or should trump a local plan?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q What is the definition of “strategic” in that context?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q As an example, let us say that the local plan specifies the total number of housing units in a five-year period to be built in a particular area—in a village or a particular neighbourhood of a suburb. Would it be reasonable to say that a neighbourhood plan could allocate different sites—that would take precedence—provided that the total number of housing units was the same as specified in the local plan?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
I am not sure that any public body has ever been financially liable for changing planning permissions.
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q May I ask Carole Reilly how many neighbourhood plans Locality has supported to date?
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q Of those, how many neighbourhood plans have been in urban areas and/or in areas of significant deprivation?
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q Have you done any work to understand good practice or the resources necessary to engage effectively communities that might not naturally have the capacity or inclination to engage in strategic planning?
Theresa Villiers (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)
Q I would very much like to ask Matt Thomson about one of the points made in your recent report, “Safe Under Us?” about housing development on the green belt. Obviously our planning rules say that such development should be made only in very exceptional cases, but I am alarmed by the research that CPRE and the London Green Belt Council have done, which seems to suggest that inspectors are now deeming general housing pressure and housing need to be sufficiently exceptional to justify green belt development. Could you expand on that?
Theresa Villiers (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)
Q Is there a legislative fix to this? Should we be thinking about adding something to the Bill to resolve the problem?
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q I want to try to get under the skin of trying to encourage planners to come forward in areas of deprivation. In previous sessions, we have heard about a conflict between identifiable neighbourhoods of scale. Planning tends to be easier where a village can be identified that is very defined in its own right, but a lot harder in urban areas. Is that partly because, in urban areas, local is extremely local—the street or collections of streets, rather than defined villages and towns on a bigger scale? Could more support be given even more locally so that people could have a say? Perhaps clusters of communities might be able to come together with a bit more support than is currently offered.
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
In urban areas.
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q In suggesting modifications that might be introduced to the neighbourhood plans, do you think that there will be enough chances to include and consider the environmental implications?
Rebecca Pow (Conservative, Taunton Deane)
Q If this was made very clear, perhaps with the guidance of the Bill, would that encourage communities to be keener to have development?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q On that point, before you spoke, Ms Reilly, I wrote down safe walk routes, including school routes, and road design and layout. Are there sufficient powers in neighbourhood planning in relation to those issues, or is that merely illusory? Separately, Mr Thomson, in relation to neighbourhood plans that specify explicit preference for forms of energy that should be used within the neighbourhood and state that preference should be given only to housing that uses those forms of energy—in other words, plans that define what the energy requirements should be and how they should and perhaps should not be delivered—is there more scope for that? Are the powers there?
Rupa Huq (Labour, Ealing Central and Acton)
Carole Reilly, I think you said that the five-year life spans of neighbourhood plans do not encourage long-term thinking, if I understood you correctlyQ .
Rupa Huq (Labour, Ealing Central and Acton)
Q Right. The Bill requires a local planning authority to review its statement of community involvement every five years. I wonder whether both of you think that is a suitable length of time. For a neighbourhood forum, do you think that five years is not long enough? In a constituency such as mine, there are a lot of transient people, and a lot of neighbourhood plans. People staying in urban areas do not get them, and there seems to be a mushrooming, with every street seemingly submitting one at the moment. There used to be a Central Ealing one, but now, even with that, everyone is coming forward with the whole impetus to localism. I wonder, for both of you, what those timeframes should be.
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q I will start with the planning conditions element but perhaps, with the Chair’s permission, return to the compulsory purchase powers element later. On the planning conditions, what evidence is there to suggest that pre-commencement conditions are overused? Is there evidence that they are unnecessary?
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q In order to allow flexibility—so you would not argue for a blanket rule to allow demolition in all cases, because there might be an argument to say that what is there now could be better than the alternative, depending on the final scheme presented.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q The draft legislation provides that the Secretary of State by regulations can prohibit the use of certain planning conditions entirely, should the Secretary of State see fit. First, do you think that is a reasonable provision? Secondly, assuming you do—or if you do—are there any particular kinds of planning condition that you, if you were advising the Secretary of State, would advise him or her to prohibit?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q So you think that is inappropriately broad.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q No, elaborate now, please.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q So are you in effect suggesting that what we currently refer to as a section 106 agreement should be integrated into the main planning consent to avoid having to then have a lengthy and uncertain subsequent negotiation?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Could I invite other witnesses to comment on that?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Are there any additional comments? Thank you.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q Can I move on to look at some of the compulsory purchase order provisions in the Bill? To what extent do you think the proposals in the Bill will free up more land for development and lead to the delivery of more homes in a speedier and more streamlined way?
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q Those were very interesting responses, but they did not actually address my question, which was, are the provisions in the Bill likely to bring more land forward for development and speed up the delivery of more homes, or are they too much at the margins to make any real difference? In which case, should we have a much bigger review of CPO to see whether we can get a better system?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q Should there be additional powers to encourage house building that allow planning authorities to more easily compulsorily purchase land from within the public sector?
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q That is interesting in terms of good practice. Are there any other countries that do CPO better than we do and that we could look at?
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q I want to probe a little bit more on the issue of temporary possession. You expressed a concern in relation to uncertainty about the length of time that temporary possession might last. In the Bill as drafted, acquiring authorities will have to specify the total period of time for which they are taking temporary possession, and owners—freeholders and leaseholders—can serve a countering notice placing limits on that. How are you suggesting the Bill needs to be developed further to give even greater certainty? We have tried to address that in the drafting.
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Q Can I just clarify one further point? The concern about both temporary and permanent CPOs is that one might be used and then another, which could create uncertainty over time. You might have a site where an authority needed permanent possession of part of it because it wanted to put, say, a goods yard on the second section and wanted part-temporary and part-permanent. Is your point about starting with one and then converting to the other?
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
Thank you.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q Thank you, Mr Bone. I accept absolutely what the Chair has said. Nevertheless, I am very impressed by the new Minister’s reading of the Lyons report that Labour produced a couple of years ago, because it is gradually being rolled out.
I want to get a few points of clarification from the Minister about what he has just said. I totally agree about the requirement for local authorities to produce a plan. Will he put a particular time on that? Will plans have to be in place by a particular date? Furthermore, as the Minister knows, the duty to co-operate has simply not worked in practice, so the Opposition very much welcome having a direction to a council on producing a plan, because that is something that has slowed up development. However, I will stop there and get some immediate feedback from the Minister before my follow-up.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
I suspect that we will come back to this issue in Committee, Mr Bone—
Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour, City of Durham)
Q I want to ask the Minister two further questions. We have heard from a lot of the witnesses about the difficult situation we are in with regard to funding infrastructure now. Infrastructure was in the Bill—or at least bits of stuff about the National Infrastructure Commission were in the Bill and have been taken out. I would just be interested to know whether addressing all the infrastructure issues is on the Minister’s agenda.
My second question is about the consolidation and review of CPO legislation, which also seems to be coming through from a number of witnesses as an issue that really needs to be addressed if we are serious about getting enough land into the system to deliver the homes that we need.
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q We have heard a lot—I think it was raised in almost every evidence session today—on the concern about resource in our planning teams. It is not only about the number of people to administer the process and existing applications but about the quality of expertise within teams as well, and reference was made to archaeological support and conservation specialities within those teams, too. This could be a significant new burden for local authorities at a time when they are struggling to keep their heads above water. What plans do the Government have to address that concern?
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q A point was also raised about how the profession is perceived and whether it is really attracting talent and new people who want to come through. The suggestion was made that we should work with local universities to try to bring that through. Have the Government got any plans to raise the status of that? When it works well, it is developers that want to build a great product and planners that want to build great communities, and together they find a way of making it work, and everyone benefits from that.
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q I have two questions. The first one is on neighbourhood plans. In my area, we have more than 20 under way. The vast majority of land proposed in them or agreed in them to be allocated for housing would be classified under the previous aborted local plan—the rules were changed by the coalition—as windfall sites. My estimate is that there will be approaching 1,000 units of windfall sites just in Bassetlaw, just from those neighbourhood plans. That is a huge number. Every single one of the urban neighbourhood plans that I would like to promote, for which there is a clear community interest and a definable community that, according to my subjective judgment, would be keen and easily engaged—and there are a lot of them—would also classify entirely as windfall sites, despite the fact that Bassetlaw is required to find around 5,000 housing plots in its local plan. That is a huge number in addition.
Bearing that in mind, first, what additional resource is going to be made available to allow the creation of new neighbourhoods and the required planning work where no existing infrastructure—such as parish councils —is in place? Secondly, you rather strangely suggested that you would have county councils taking over where district councils were failing to deliver. I am not exactly sure what the core competence in planning in county councils would be for that, but will that power also apply to city regions?
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Q That is not quite the same as intervening powers.
John Mann (Labour, Bassetlaw)
Yes.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q I am pleased by the comments you made earlier about the plans to consult on increasing planning fees to get resources into local authorities. Could you lay out, for the Committee’s benefit, the proposed timetable for replying to the consultation? How will you go about enacting that when you have considered the results?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q When is the White Paper due?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Is your decision implemented by regulations, by a circular or by primary legislation?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Okay. In the first session, we talked about giving planning authorities the ability to charge extra fees, which would be refundable if they failed to meet a certain level of service, such as the delivery of a decision by a certain time. Would that mitigate, in part at least, the concern you raised in your answer to Mr McMahon about money not seeping out through the back door?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q The Minister is quite right to say that any extra money raised by way of fees should fund incremental extra levels of resourcing, and not simply replace money from general subsidy. To that point, do you agree that we might learn some lessons from the way in which business improvement district funding works? Extra money comes in by way of the business rate supplement but the local authority has to agree the existing level of service provision in writing in advance, and it cannot reduce that. The extra bid funding provides for incremental service levels. Could a similar approach be adopted in this situation? You would agree with the council, before they levied extra fees, that there are 30 people working in the council’s planning department and that the extra fees must lead to incremental hires on a cost basis. Would that be a way of avoiding the problem?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q I am glad that the Minister mentioned section 106 agreements. As far as I can tell from the Bill, the pre-commencement conditions get folded into the planning application. If I have read correctly, section 106 agreements will still come after planning permission. Am I right about that?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q But sometimes you get section 106 agreements that are not agreed or signed until after planning is granted. Sometimes it can be sequential. It is better that it is simultaneous, as you described, but sometimes, currently, it does happen sequentially.
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q So in that case, might you go further than simply encouraging it, as you do now, and introduce a provision in this Bill to make it a requirement? Rather than simply encouraging, why not compel, if you think it is best practice?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q The Bill provides for the Secretary of State or one of his or her Ministers to proscribe certain kinds of planning conditions—to ban them from being imposed. Can you explain for the Committee’s benefit, Mr Barwell, what kinds of planning condition used currently you have it in mind to proscribe or ban using the new powers?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q But are there any specific planning conditions currently used that you have it in mind to outlaw, for illustrative purposes?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Thank you. Can Mr Barwell comment on neighbourhood plans versus local plans? Are there any areas where you think it may be possible to give slightly higher weighting to neighbourhood plans than to local plans, provided that the neighbourhood plan is consistent with the overall level of housing supply predicted or required by the local plan, given that they are more local and have a bigger democratic mandate?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q Where there is a large local authority—we were just talking about having a local plan that covers the whole of Manchester, which is a gigantic conurbation—or indeed a large London borough like our own, Croydon, a local community might have a different view on where housing can be built in their neighbourhood from that of the local authority or, in the case of Manchester, the entire metropolis. There might be a conflict between where the local plan thinks housing should be built and the local neighbourhood—the parish or whatever it might be. Provided that the neighbourhood plan has enough houses in total, would you not want to give priority to the views of the local community, particularly given that that is backed by a referendum?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Q I have a final question. One of the bugbears that people developing housing will have told you about are these wretched great crested newts, which apparently are endangered in Europe. The reason they are protected in the UK is due to European regulations, which of course will cease to apply relatively shortly. When the European regulations cease to apply to the United Kingdom, will you be minded as the UK or England and Wales planning Minister to remove or loosen the restrictions that the European Union has hitherto imposed on us?
Chris Philp (Conservative, Croydon South)
Those are words I never thought I would hear.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Minister, you will have gathered from my line of questioning that I am concerned about protection for neighbourhood plans. I am pleased to see what is in the Bill, but part of the genesis of the Bill with the previous Minister was, I think, a case in Oakley in my constituency where an appeal was allowed five or six days before the referendum on the neighbourhood plan, notwithstanding that even at that late stage, under existing planning regulations, the plan was meant to have been taken into account. Why will this be any better?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
No, before the referendum. It was post-examination.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Once this is in place, and hopefully it will go through—I do not know whether anybody has ever done any work on the consistency of decisions. Talking to colleagues, it is apparent that decisions about whether neighbourhood plans are given weight are a bit random, which is part of the problem with the rather wide definition of “giving weight.” It does not really mean anything and it seems to be at the whim of the individual inspector rather than a central policy. Once the planning inspector has had a look at the plan, it has been approved and gone through all the checking in Bristol, or wherever it goes, they should be broadly happy. That means it should be predictable that any appeal will not be allowed against the decision of what might be a different inspector, whereas in fact that is not the case. You get two different inspectors and they make different decisions.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q I understand that parallel, other than the fact that, obviously, in the judicial system each judgment is informed by the judgment before, whether or not it is taken by a different judge. Part of the problem with the Planning Inspectorate is that that common law aspect does not seem to take place.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q Would it be possible to find out how many appeals have been allowed—I know it is early days—in areas where there are neighbourhood plans and local plans in place?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Yes, so we can see whether, as you say, this is exceptional or whether it is happening on a fairly regular basis.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q That would be great. The second thing I want to ask about is the local plans. You are absolutely right about them being key. I think it is encouraging that you are going to be pushing for that in local areas. We have heard a lot of evidence today about the local plan, and the critical thing is the certainty of devising and defending a five-year land supply. There are two methods of calculation. Often you get challenged on one if you have used the other, so it might be helpful to have a single definition. I did not hear you talk, in your four things, about making five-year land supplies post-approval more defensible from a highly paid QC. Are you planning on including anything on that in the Bill?
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
Q The final question from me is on whether you might consider including within the Bill a general anti-abuse clause on five-year land supply and the situation we outlined, where you can have a developer who gets permission on one site, fails to develop and challenges on another site on the basis that the five-year land supply has lapsed.
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Croydon Central)
We can certainly talk about those issues. There is a fundamental thing that we need to address in the White Paper. I am sure that one of the difficulties we will have as a Committee is that the Bill is going through Committee at the same time as we are developing some of the policy responses. I will do my best within the constraints I am under to try to keep Members informed about where we are going in policy terms and what we believe needs to be done through legislation and what can be done through changes in policy.
One of the fundamental questions that we have to apply ourselves to is that the changes that the Government have made to the planning system over the past six years have had a profound effect on the number of applications that have been granted. In the year to 30 June, our planning system in England granted permission for 277,000 homes. That is the highest figure since we started collecting the data in 2007, at the height of the boom before the great crash. The planning system in most parts of the country is granting lots of planning permissions, but there is an increasing gap—people cannot live in a planning permission—between the number of planning permissions that we are getting out of the system and the number of homes actually being built. We need to understand the cause of that gap.
My view, a few months into the job, is that there are a number of things here. Planning conditions are a factor, which is why we are trying to deal with them in the Bill, but I would not say to the Committee that they are the sole or even the dominant factor. There are issues around our utility companies and the time it takes them sometimes to put in the basic infrastructure on site that the developer needs before they start building. There are some real issues about developer behaviour, essentially.
I am interested in looking at policy vehicles that can ensure we speed up the rate at which applications get built out. One of the things that I am saying to the Home Builders Federation is, “You give me all the things that you say are slowing you up, and I will look into them. If I think there is a problem, I will deal with the problem, but once I have got through your list, I expect you to raise your game.” I am definitely interested in looking into that area, and perhaps as the Bill goes on we can talk about what the vehicles might be.
Kit Malthouse (Conservative, North West Hampshire)
That is encouraging. It is certainly the case that it is possible to make more money holding land and trading it than it is developing it. The other area to look at, I suggest, is developer finance, because none of them have got any balance sheets that they can use to expand their operations beyond where they are. I am grateful for the answers, Minister.
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q I have two quick questions. Can you address the concerns that Carole Reilly raised about neighbourhood forums and their lack of accountability, lack of infrastructure and resources and lack of clear identifiability to local communities? There were also issues raised—I have raised them on a number of occasions—about the intensity of resource you need genuinely to engage a diverse community in a deprived area.
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q Thank you. I have a second question. The issue of permitted development rights continues to be a cause of concern. I appreciate that it is not within the scope of the Bill, but it has a direct bearing on neighbourhood planning, so it is essentially a way in which development can take place that is not allowed for in a local plan and that has not been discussed by the local community, who have not been consulted about it. It is under the radar, without anybody having any say about it at all. I wonder whether the Minister has any plans at all to address the concerns that have been raised about permitted development rights.
Helen Hayes (Labour, Dulwich and West Norwood)
Q So you do not have any further plans at the moment, either by way of additions or amendments to this Bill, or within the White Paper—?
Jim McMahon (Labour, Oldham West and Royton)
Q During your introduction, you said that part of the reason why the amendments were so late in coming was actually change of positions and looking at the Bill with a fresh pair of eyes, and that was the result. Given the tone of the contribution, I take that at face value, and I appreciate the comments that you have made.
When you were looking at the Bill and at opportunities to enhance it further, did you consider the roles of listed buildings in that? In my constituency, we have a very old mill—apparently one of the oldest mills with a concrete floor, if anyone is interested in those kinds of things—but it is a blight on the local community. Last year, there was the death of an 18-year-old, who fell through the floors, because the mill is so unsafe. The fire service, the council and the police have all put a notice on the building, because it is absolutely liable to cause another death very soon, but its heritage value for the experts in London, who do not have to live in its shadow, maintains that it should stay there. It is scuppering development on the site—a £248 million tram system runs alongside it, with a station there ready for development. Did you consider that the process is stifling the development of what should be attractive places to live?
Craig Tracey (Conservative, North Warwickshire)
I want to pick up very quickly on something that Mr Thomson from the CPREQ talked about, which was about councils having to chip away at the green belt to deliver the provision. He mentioned that often they do not feel that they are getting the backing of the Secretary of State. I am aware that several local authorities in my area have jointly commissioned a report to grade areas of green belt, based on the extent to which they make all five functions in the NPPF. They are basically suggesting that some areas do not have as much value as others, and they are planning to use the report to recommend parcels that can be used to facilitate building. So there still seems to be a lot of confusion in local councils about how the green belt rules are applied. Is there any provision in the Bill to strengthen that? The former Housing Minister was great and came to my constituency to explain to one of the councils how things needed to be implemented, but it still does not seem to be filtering through, and I am guessing that that could be the case in a lot of councils.
Craig Tracey (Conservative, North Warwickshire)
Q As a quick follow-on question—where a constituency like mine comes under pressure, because we are a rural constituency surrounded by big areas we are having to co-operate with, what are the mechanisms for challenging their assessed need? That is where the calculation figures are often seen to be well away from what we would expect.
Theresa Villiers (Conservative, Chipping Barnet)
Q Obviously the key concern that has been raised by some of the campaign groups, such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is that local authorities are being driven to propose green belt development because they cannot meet their targets and they cannot make the duty to co-operate work. So in order to avoid the risk of having their local plan rejected altogether they are putting forward green-belt or greenfield developments. What is the incentive on a local authority—on the other end of a duty to co-operate —to accept somebody else’s housing targets? I do not see how the duty to co-operate can work effectively if you are saying that local authorities have to somehow persuade their neighbours to accept their housing needs. I would be grateful if you could explain how the duty to co-operate is supposed to work.