Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con) I
beg to move, That this House has considered reform of the planning
system. The housing shortage that we face in this country is the
great crisis facing the United Kingdom today. Since 1973, house
prices have more than tripled in real terms, with the average house
price today reaching over £284,000. Just in the last 20 years, the
ratio of house prices to incomes has more than doubled. The
average...Request free trial
Sir (Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered reform of the planning system.
The housing shortage that we face in this country is the great
crisis facing the United Kingdom today. Since 1973, house prices
have more than tripled in real terms, with the average house
price today reaching over £284,000. Just in the last 20 years,
the ratio of house prices to incomes has more than doubled. The
average household faces paying more than seven times their annual
income for a home to call their own; in 2000, it was three times
their income. For the average individual, the statistics are even
starker. The housing shortage means that the overwhelming
majority of our young people simply cannot hope to afford a home.
It means that people cannot move to be closer to work or to their
family, and that people are stuck in cramped, unfit and often
unsafe homes throughout the country.
The housing shortfall is strangling our economy and choking off
the growth that we need to restore our economic fortunes. Put
simply, the housing shortage is making us all much, much poorer.
The only solution to this crisis is to build more homes.
According to a Centre for Cities report, the UK has a shortfall
of well over 4 million homes. Even with the Government’s target
of building 300,000 homes a year, that deficit would take at
least half a century to fill, and sadly we are nowhere near that
number.
Evidence from around the world shows the power of home building
to make lives better for people right across the income spectrum.
In 2016, Auckland liberalised its planning system and
precipitated a boom in housing construction, which resulted in
significantly lower rents six years later. Across the Atlantic in
the United States, new buildings attracting more affluent
residents have freed up the homes that they used to live in,
lowering demand and rents for homes across the entire market,
even at lower income levels. A Swedish study found that the
benefits of new housing are evenly distributed among residents
from different income groups.
How we actually get to building more homes is clearly far from
simple, but what we do know is that the planning system is not
fit for purpose, so how do we reform it to get where we need to
go? There is growing consensus across the House that the planning
system is holding us back from delivering the homes that are
needed. Fixing our outdated, top-down and restrictive processes
must now be a priority for both main parties and, I hope, all
parties in the House. But how do we do that?
The first and most important thing is to make home building more
popular with the British public. When asked, people across the
country broadly support the idea of new housing. The 2020 British
social attitudes survey found that 58% of Britons want to see
more home building, with only 25% inherently opposed, and yet, as
colleagues will know, specific house building projects in one’s
own constituency always seem to attract far more opposition. Some
of that opposition is unthinking, knee-jerk nimbyism, and we
should have no time for it, but not all of it is unreasonable.
Despite the benefits of new homes, existing residents see very
little immediate benefit when development comes to their home
area. They do, however, experience real costs, ranging from
crowded roads to overburdened GP surgeries, and sometimes they
witness low-quality homes being unceremoniously dumped on the
edge of their town.
(Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I do not disagree with a number of my right hon. Friend’s points.
One concern that people have at a local level in Suffolk, and
more generally, about additional house building is that it very
rarely comes with the additional infrastructure that he mentions.
More houses are built, but more pressure is put on the local
infrastructure—on schools, hospitals, GP surgeries and the roads.
What does he suggest as a mechanism to change that, so that if
people accept more house building, they actually get the
infrastructure that is needed?
Sir
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have seen that in my
constituency, where a new GP surgery in Nunthorpe, a suburb in
the south of the town, has changed people’s attitudes to new
homes coming in. However, we need to institutionalise that sort
of offer to residents. The planning system must deliver a
worthwhile settlement that gives residents a reason to say yes to
extra homes.
The Government have legislated for one important potential
solution: community land auctions. CLAs allow local government to
see a substantial share of the profits from new development,
enabling local authorities to capture the uplift in value that
comes from planning permission being granted. The value of
agricultural land can rise by up to 80 or 100 times. The council
getting their fair share of that increase in the underlying land
value allows them to deliver benefits to local people, which they
can then spend on the new infrastructure that my hon. Friend
rightly says is essential to make new developments viable.
Residents then get to see their fair share of the upside, too,
while the country sees homes unlocked with more community
support. I hope to see the Government press on and make the most
of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 by getting trials
of CLAs moving quickly, because they have huge potential.
(Somerton and Frome) (LD)
“Decisions and policies are most trusted when the people making
them are representatives of the people affected by them”—that
quote is from a civil service training manual. Does the right
hon. Member agree that we need to ensure that localism remains in
the planning process?
Sir
I think localism as a principle of good Government is very
important. I am a strong believer in the mayoral devolution of
the kind that the Government have introduced in recent years. I
will come to the hon. Lady’s question about how we can best
address the balance between local and national Government. Local
government can be a very good thing, but it can also become an
obstacle to actually building homes anywhere at all, which is
something we need to try to balance.
(Strangford) (DUP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir
Of course—it would not be a debate without the hon.
Gentleman.
I commend the right hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate
forward. Planning rules on the mainland are slightly different
from those in Northern Ireland. The principles that he refers to
are important, so I sympathise with his comments, particularly
about the time that it takes for a planning application to be
granted fully. I have a close relationship in my area with the
local planners through the council and also with numerous
developers and builders, because there is a tradition of building
in my constituency. The frustration about timescales is
understood. Does he agree that one of the most pivotal ways in
which we could reform our planning system is by ensuring that
councils are funded adequately to ensure a more robust planning
approval process? Councils have a key role to play; let us make
sure they are part of it.
Sir
I totally agree. The hon. Gentleman is exactly right: councils
need to have the planning departments to process the
applications, and too often, as we know, good planners are
poached by consultancies when they are needed in our local
government system. The answer is to allow local authorities to
capture more of the upside financially from new homes being built
so that they can fund the requisite staff and expertise— I see
the hon. Member for St Albans () nodding—to do exactly what
the hon. Gentleman refers to.
(St Albans) (LD)
The right hon. Member will be aware that there is a
Government-imposed cap on how much money local councils can
charge big developers when they put in applications. That led to
a situation in St Albans where the constituents of a district
were subsidising big developers to the tune of £3 million a year.
The Government have increased but not scrapped the cap, and
councils can still not recoup the full cost of processing an
application. Would he support a measure to scrap the cap
altogether?
Sir
That is a very reasonable question. I would need to look at the
detail of the policy to see whether simply raising the cap
further or scrapping it would be the best solution to the
problem. Do I accept entirely that we need to make sure that
councils are not cross-subsidising the cost of development, but
are incentivised to welcome good development? Yes, I do.
Another important piece of the puzzle is leasehold reform, and I
thought that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Building
Safety spoke brilliantly on that issue in the House last week.
Although nominally owners, the relationship between leaseholders
and freeholders often resembles that of a landlord and tenant.
There is too little protection against drastically increased
service charges and few incentives for freeholders to properly
maintain a building.
Secure and fair property rights are a core Conservative
principle. The Government are making great strides with the
Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. It is absolutely right that
we fix the balance and ensure that once people get on the
property ladder, their home is truly theirs. I encourage the
Government to go further, and I welcome the commonhold system
whereby leaseholders all own a share of the common development,
but we must address the fact that leasehold reform is vital.
We should also address the fact that new homes in Britain are too
often of low quality. Poor-quality designs leave new and existing
residents feeling that new homes are too often nothing more than
ugly boxes, and we should look seriously at how design codes can
ameliorate that. For example, we could allow individual streets
or areas to vote on a design code for new housing. Establishing
pre-set and pre-approved design rules ahead of time would allow
everyone on the street to see a large share of the potential
uplift, while significantly increasing the number of homes built.
Design codes could also increase housing through densification,
rather than relying on outward suburban sprawl, which would also
reduce the potential dependence on cars and would allow more
green space to be preserved.
As we have discussed, even if the public are on board, local
authorities need to be as well. Councils are vulnerable to
particularly vocal activism, even if it is a minority opinion
among residents. Any reform will need to empower councils to take
long-term decisions in the interests of their area, giving them
the tools to get the right outcome from new development and
incentivising them to say yes where appropriate, while ensuring
that a few bad apples cannot shirk their responsibility to allow
more homes. As you know, Mr Betts, our councils really
matter.
I recently had reason to feel considerable frustration at my own
planning authority in Redcar and Cleveland, when the chair of
that authority made the baffling decision to delay the
consideration of the proposed new British Steel electric arc
furnace at Redcar. That reflects the power that councils can have
for good or for ill, and we certainly want to ensure that their
natural incentives are to welcome investment.
To do that, we need to ensure that development plans are brought
up to date everywhere. These plans allow builders a measure of
certainty when deciding where to construct new homes, but they
are often not up to date. Unfortunately, the consequences under
current law if an authority does not have an up-to-date plan are
often trivial.
One possible remedy comes from California—the so-called
“builder’s remedy”. Under that policy, if an area fails to plan
for enough homes, it must approve any housing project that
contains at least 20% low-income or 100% middle-income housing.
That solution can be extremely effective. A few weeks of the
builder’s remedy in Santa Monica resulted in more affordable
housing being approved than there had been in the previous seven
years. I certainly favour restoring a presumption in favour of
development wherever an up-to-date local plan is not in
place.
I would not be a Somerset representative if I did not mention the
phosphate levels on the Somerset levels and moors Ramsar
catchment area, caused by phosphates entering the water system.
It is stymieing the building of new homes in parts of Somerset,
so we no longer have that five-year housing land supply. That
means that the local plans are effectively suspended, and the
local planning authority is forced to approve inappropriate new
housing development in areas where it would normally be refused.
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that in those circumstances,
the local planning authority should be afforded better protection
from the five-year housing land supply requirements?
Sir
I confess that I think the issues surrounding phosphate and
nutrient neutrality need to be addressed—indeed, I commented on
this with my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark () this morning—by looking at
the underlying causes of the problems and allowing mitigation
measures to be put in place and counted forward so that homes can
still be built where appropriate. That would mean that we do not
end up in the situation where authorities either commission homes
where they are not appropriate or do not commission homes at all.
We need to resolve the Gordian knot of nutrient neutrality,
because it is an irrational obstacle to building new homes. It is
something that we have created through policy, and we need to
resolve it through policy.
The Government have rightly said that development plans ought to
prioritise building in cities. I welcome the exciting plans set
out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for major new
developments in east London and Cambridge. That is precisely the
kind of visionary development that we need and should welcome,
and I think it will command broad support. Demand is obviously
highest for homes close to city centres, where jobs are located,
so those new homes often contribute disproportionately to
economic growth. Building in cities also means that less money is
required to support the infrastructure needs of new residents,
and it is environmentally friendlier. Urban, dense communities
inherently encourage lower usage of energy, because living in a
smaller space means there is less to heat, and living in an
apartment building means that there is natural insulation from
other units, and so on.
Estate regeneration is also a win-win way to add more housing in
cities and to deliver social justice. Too often, our post-war
council estates are impractical and prohibitively expensive to
rehabilitate. However, redeveloping an estate with new private
housing that helps to cross-subsidise a wider improvement and
redevelopment of social housing can result in a plan to deliver a
really good outcome for all residents. Allowing tenants to vote
on these plans would ensure that their rights were protected
while providing new and renovated homes of a kind that is
desperately needed.
However, although the brownfield-first policy is sensible, a
brownfield-only policy cannot be, and no debate on planning would
be complete without my referring to the completely
uncontroversial subject of the green belt. The green belt was
intended to prevent sprawl, but I would submit that it has done
the opposite. Today’s green belt, which is three times larger
than London itself, causes a leapfrog effect, whereby individuals
wanting to live in London end up settling in distant commuter
towns instead, which increases transportation and climate costs.
Parts of the green belt—the disused car parks, the petrol
stations and the dreary wastelands that make up what the right
hon. and learned Leader of the Opposition rightly calls “the grey
belt”—are far from the natural paradise that some would have us
believe.
The green belt, in truth, has the best spin doctors around,
encouraging a widespread misapprehension that it is all beautiful
green land, when in fact 11% of the UK’s total brownfield land
lies within the green belt.
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Sir
I will give way, but then I should make progress.
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that some of us do not give
or accept that portrayal of the green belt? Some of us are very
clear that there are brownfield sites and there are developed
sites within the green belt, and most of our concern is about the
undeveloped green-belt sites that have natural habitats.
Sir
In response to the hon. Lady’s point, I am strongly in favour of
making sure that we can better enshrine the protections for the
areas of genuine natural beauty and community amenity, rather
than having a reductive debate that simply suggests that the
entirety of the green belt is an untouchable verdant paradise,
because it is not all like the front of a box of Yorkshire Tea;
we all know that it is a mixed area of land. It was a crude line
on a map drawn in the late 1940s, with good intention but adverse
consequences today, and I would argue that we need to have a much
more sophisticated debate about what is and is not tradeable in
that context.
My own party needs to stop pretending that all of the green belt
is valuable, which is bad policy and bad politics, and it is time
that we started to look at releasing some grey-belt land to
provide us with the housing that we desperately need. The hon.
Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame ), who is a fellow
PricedOut parliamentary champion and a friend, has done excellent
work in pointing out that some of the worst areas of blight in
her constituency are characterised as being green belt.
Of course, even where the planning system does allow developers
to bring forward new homes, regulations that are too strict can
still strangle supply and push up prices. Year after year,
conditions and requirements are added at every level, driving up
costs without necessarily delivering high quality. Perhaps the
most egregious example of this comes from the Mayor of London’s
London plan, where the dual aspect rules require every flat to
have external windows on multiple walls. Clearly, indeed
inherently, that is desirable, but it comes with a cost, and if
it restricts the number of homes built, that intervention needs
to be balanced against the wider social imperative of creating
homes where they are most needed.
Minimum space standards are another example. While young people
in other countries live on their own in flats of between 20 and
25 square metres, in the UK they are forced to live with
strangers in overcrowded houses in multiple occupation because we
have banned new flats of that size. Politicians need to be honest
with the public and with ourselves about the options that exist
in this area. In the middle of a generation-defining supply
crunch, we cannot afford these rules. People would be much better
off in small, modern and affordable flats of their own than in
ageing, chopped-up homes built over a hundred years ago. We need
to nuance this debate.
We also need to talk about tax. Our main real estate taxes often
feel to those priced out of home ownership as though they add
insult to injury. Stamp duty land tax and council tax both need
fundamental reform. Stamp duty, as it is currently constituted,
penalises people every time they move house, meaning that some
households remain in homes that are too small for them when
others remain in homes that are too large for them—in both cases
for too long.
Council tax is regressive and unfair, and fails to compensate
local councils properly for increases in land or property value,
undermining the incentive to add more housing. Given that all
parties are, frankly, terrified of the effects of a revaluation
politically, and given that there has not been a revaluation
since I was a child of seven, we need to look at fundamental
reform of local government taxation. That is a major issue—I do
not deny it—but at the moment it is worsening the planning system
as well as acting irrationally in terms of the tax system. I
submit that both those taxes should be replaced with a
proportional property tax, which would save households an average
of more than £500 a year and result in up to 600,000 extra new
homes over the next five years.
I hope that this morning I have highlighted some easy, sometimes
controversial but generally win-win solutions that we could use
to help soothe our housing crisis. In the long run, there is no
substitute for real root and branch reform of our planning
system. Ultimately, I favour a rules-based system along the lines
set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark when he was
Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
It was unfortunate that the Opposition misrepresented those plans
as a “developers’ charter”. If only they had been allowed to do
anything of the kind!
Housing has an impact on every facet of our lives. Rising housing
costs suppress productivity, increase wealth inequality, worsen
climate change and increase homelessness. People need to be
together. Bringing people physically together is a social good,
but people need homes to do so. This is not an abstract debate;
fixing the issue is a moral priority and it also ought to be a
top political priority for my own party, as it always was under
Prime Ministers as different as Harold Macmillan and Margaret
Thatcher. I do not know how we can make the case for popular
Conservatism when in too many areas of England people cannot
accumulate capital in their own lives. I certainly feel that is
why major political change may be brewing in parts of the country
that we have long called our heartlands.
One need only contrast the recent success of the Canadian
Conservatives to see the amazing difference that embracing
pro-home-ownership policies can deliver, even among the youngest
voters. The UK is falling behind in the quest for higher
productivity and better wages, and at the moment we are only
making ourselves poorer by refusing to meet one of our most basic
human needs—a place to live. The UK needs innovation, we need
infrastructure and most of all we need housing. We will not get
enough of it under the current system. That is why the time for
talking is over.
We have made too little progress on effective planning reform
over the last 14 years and it has become clear to me that
politicians are not holding ourselves sufficiently accountable on
the issue. That is why I am delighted to announce that PricedOut,
Britain’s largest campaign for affordable news homes, will
publish an index of Members of Parliament in England running for
re-election, ranking their performance on housing, planning and
infrastructure issues. That will serve as a guide to voters up
and down the country at the next election, showing just for whom
the issue is a priority. PricedOut has my support in bringing all
of us in this House to account. The country deserves a more
serious debate than the one we have had, and we need it soon,
before lasting harm is done to another generation by our
collective unwillingness to deliver the serious planning reform
the country needs.
9.52am
(Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your guidance this morning, Mr
Betts. This is an important debate and I pay tribute to the right
hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir
) for championing this issue
generally and for raising some interesting points today, many of
which I agreed with.
In my constituency the average house price is about 12 times the
average household income. So much of the existing housing stock
is not available for anybody to live in, make a home in and raise
a family or work locally. Over the last 20 years we have seen a
huge explosion in the number of second homes, owned by people
from away. It is nice for them that they can do that, but they do
not—bless them—contribute to the local economy to the extent that
those who live there full time do. More recently, we have seen a
real explosion in the number of short-term lets. That in itself
is not so awful; but it is awful when we see how they have
gobbled up the long-term rental market to get into that
situation.
We see a decline in the number of homes available for people to
live locally—wherever they are originally from—set down roots and
contribute to our community. Those are evaporating, and the
housing stock we already have is moving into usages that do not
contribute to maintaining a full-time economy. That is miserable
for families that are effectively expelled from the communities
in which they grew up. It is also economically stupid, with
hospitality and tourism being one particular sector we can list.
It is our largest employer, but 63% of hospitality and tourism
businesses in Cumbria are currently operating below capacity—not
meeting the demand that is there, which is criminal in a
difficult economic situation like this—simply because they do not
have the workforce to contribute. That has an impact on health
and social care. A fifth of care jobs in Cumbria are currently
unfilled. There are a number of reasons for that, but the
principal one is that the incomes that are paid in social care
are not enough for people to have a home anywhere near
communities in the lakes and the dales, in south and central
Cumbria.
The housing crisis is real, and it is particularly acute in
places like mine. We need action on both what we build that is
new and what we do with the existing housing stock.
I very much agree with the diagnosis of the problem by the right
hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, and with
some of what he said about potential remedies. I do not agree,
however, that a free-market approach is the answer. Housing is
not a normal market. To treat it like a normal supply-and-demand
market is to misread the situation. If we have targets for
additional housing, take away all planning controls, and allow
people to build what and where they want, we will simply have a
field day for speculators—people who buy homes not to live in,
but as investments. The people who have something will get more,
and people who have nothing will not get anything. We must
understand that the housing market is not a normal market, and
that the reason we are in this mess is in no small part down to
the fact that we have treated it like a normal market. The
problem is that, when it comes to the development of new housing,
we have an insufficiently fettered free market.
For example, in Appleby, new houses are being proposed and are
soon likely to be developed. As things stand, not a single one
will be affordable. As somebody who has actively fought for new
homes to be built—indeed, I have risked losing votes over it—that
causes me great concern. I see estates of 100 houses being built,
and perhaps 20 are affordable—although are they really
affordable? Yes, the other 80 will sell—there is demand for
them—but there is no need. I am happy to go into the trenches and
fight for new homes to be built if they are needed, and I am even
happy to be unpopular over it, but I am fed up of seeing
developments that are basically a waste of bricks. They are very
nice bricks, in a nice part of the country, but we do not need
them. They will end up being second homes, investments or Airbnbs
for somebody who does not need them.
Meanwhile, families who live locally are hanging on by their
fingernails. As long-term lets are turned into Airbnbs and people
are evicted, those families have to leave the area altogether,
which is totally miserable. I have seen that happen right across
my patch, from Kirkby Stephen and Kendal to Grange-over-Sands,
Ambleside and Windermere: local families are evicted and expelled
because of the move from long-term to short-term lets. When we
build new homes, they have to meet those people’s needs, not the
desires of people who have tons of money and live nowhere near
Cumbria.
It is important that we begin to redefine what “affordable
housing” actually means in planning law. Homes that are 80% of
market value can count as affordable, so we could build a house
just outside Kendal that is worth 500 grand, which goes for 400
grand. Well, I am sorry, but that does not help anybody—at least
not anybody normal—and it does not help our local economy. Let us
be clear that “affordable” should mean genuinely affordable;
otherwise, we abuse the term, and it means absolutely
nothing.
We need a rebirth of social housing. The right hon. Member for
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland talked about Harold
Macmillan, to whom we owe a massive debt for his support for the
building of council housing. Whatever we call it—social rented
housing or public housing—we need loads more of it. We need to
build it not in the drip-drip, bottom-up way that is permitted at
the moment; the Government have to act, not even as the developer
of last resort, but perhaps as the developer of first resort.
They need to start investing—backing local authorities and
housing associations with public money, so that we build the
homes we need in the places we need them. That would ensure that
we have viable communities, and that families in areas such as
mine can cling on—and not only cling on, but thrive and be
centres of communities in the future.
The answer to the problem is not the removal of planning powers.
Conversely, we need more. I am blessed to have three planning
authorities in my constituency: the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake
District and the other beautiful bits, not in either national
park, that are covered by Westmorland and Furness Council. We
have seen empirically over the years that where we are really
specific and prescriptive about the housing that we need in our
area, particularly in the Lake district and the Yorkshire dales,
we will get planners grumbling for months and years about the
fact that we will only allow affordable, social rented, shared
ownership or local occupancy housing to be built. Planners will
grumble, but then they will realised that this is the only game
in town, so they will build. That is how things work. The problem
is that the lack of certainty will often lead to more speculation
and land banking, actually achieving nothing.
Generally speaking, at any given time there are a million homes
with planning permission that are not built. We realise that it
is not the freedom in the planning regime that is an issue; it is
sometimes not being specific enough. We need some specific
powers. Local authorities should be given the power to enforce
100% affordability, particularly in areas such as ours, where
there is extreme pressure on rural communities.
It is commendable that the Government are now moving towards
turning short-term lets into a separate category of planning use,
so that we can ensure that we maintain long-term homes available
for communities such as ours. However, I urge the Minister to
look again at something I proposed when the Levelling-up and
Regeneration Bill was in Committee, and on the Floor of the
House, which is to make the same arrangements for second homes.
Second homes should also be a separate category of planning use,
so that we can have a limit on the numbers that there are in any
given community to protect full-time occupancy of other
housing.
As the hon. Member for Strangford (), who has just left the Chamber, said, new powers are
useless without a planning department that is well resourced.
Planners are important and gifted people, and we need more of
them. We do not need to be in a situation where they are
beleaguered and run ragged by people who know if they break the
rules they can get away with it. Enforcement is absolutely
vital.
If we are going to build the homes that we need—and we
desperately need to—we must be tight and clear about what homes
we do need. We need to ensure that we build the homes that
Britain actually needs—and that our community in Cumbria actually
needs—not the homes that there may be demand for, and that people
will speculate over and use as personal investments and land
banking. We need to provide the infrastructure first, so that
there is space for those homes.
Let us think of the communities that we most serve by building
new homes. I think of Hawkshead, which has a brilliant primary
school, but does not have the numbers that it should because we
have not built the affordable, social rented homes that the
community desperately need. I am committed to working with the
school, the local community and the local counsellor, Suzanne
Pender, to ensure that we achieve that in the coming months and
years.
When we do see development, let us also ensure that we build
infrastructure. Often we will see the water company saying that
it does not need to invest in any more sewage infrastructure or
additional capacity, and to just go ahead and build. Because
water companies are a statutory consultee, the planners have to
nod that through. We should hold the water companies to greater
account when it comes to planning processes, so that they are not
giving a green light to something that actually needed their
investment—which is why they give the green light, of course.
People need a home that they can rely on and afford, that is safe
and secure, and that is theirs for years to come; and in which to
raise a family, if they choose, and to work from and retire in.
That is an essential building block of being part of a civilised
society. Without that kind of secure home, we are robbed of our
basic freedoms. Communities are based on a range of people who
have those freedoms, and who live and work them out together.
Our communities in the lakes, the dales and the rest of Cumbria,
as beautiful as they are, will not survive unless we support the
building of new homes that are genuinely affordable and meet the
needs of local people. We also need to ensure that the homes that
are built are used for what they were built for, and not just
investments for those who will never live there.
10.03am
(Shrewsbury and Atcham)
(Con)
In May of this year I will have completed 19 years of service as
Conservative Member of Parliament representing my constituency.
Reflecting on those 19 years, the current planning system and its
ramifications are some of the greatest concerns for me and many
of my constituents.
I want to highlight a very important infrastructure project in my
constituency. As a Conservative, the thing that I am most
interested in is value for money for taxpayers. We have been
talking about Shrewsbury—a beautiful town in Shropshire with more
listed buildings than any other town in England. Tourism is
extremely important for us and is our No. 1 income generator, but
Shrewsbury is a historic town built hundreds of years ago, and it
is struggling to cope with the huge increase in house building
and people moving into our community. We have been talking about
completing the ring road around Shrewsbury for 50 years. I was
approached some years ago by the late Graham Galliers, head of
the Shrewsbury Business Chamber, who said to me, “The one thing
you need to do as the Member of Parliament is to secure the
funding to complete the ring road around Shrewsbury, because that
is at the very centre of economic sustainability for your
constituency.” I use my position in the House of Commons to lobby
for funding for the completion of the ring road. Basically, 9
o’clock to 12 o’clock of the ring road has been missing for 50
years. Completing that part will free up the whole north- western
segment of Shrewsbury, which is undeveloped, and its construction
will be the catalyst for massive private-sector investment in
that vacant north-western segment.
I was delighted when the then Secretary of State for Transport
came to see me in February 2019—I repeat that date: February
2019—slightly more than five years ago. He came to see me in the
Chamber and said, “Good news—you’ve got the funding for the
north-west relief road.” That was five years ago. I live in Coton
Hill in the centre of Shrewsbury, and I see the extraordinary
congestion in my town. We are a small county town, but it takes
over an hour to get from one end of Shrewsbury to the other
because of the huge amount of congestion.
As I have said before, there is also massive construction. There
is a huge flow of young professional couples leaving the Black
Country and moving into Shrewsbury. Working practices are
changing rapidly. Why live in Birmingham, Wolverhampton or the
Black Country, when you can live in beautiful Shropshire and
bring your family there and enjoy the countryside? People are
starting to move to rural areas like ours and then commute
intermittently to Birmingham and inner-city conurbations. That
flow of people will only continue into Shrewsbury and
Shropshire.
I secured the funding five years ago and, over the past five
years, I have watched the ping-pong taking place between
Shropshire Council—my democratically elected local Conservative
council, which is elected by and accountable to local people—and
the Environment Agency. Each side blames the other for the
extraordinary delays taking place in trying to get this project
through the planning process and for construction to start. In my
frustration at what was going on, I said nothing for the first
year, the second year and the third year, although I watched with
increasing desperation and concern. Eventually, I said, “I can’t
allow this to continue. I must intervene.”
I wrote to the new chief executive of the Environment Agency, Mr
Duffy, who had previously worked as a civil servant at the
Treasury. The Environment Agency shares the Home Office building
right around the corner. I asked him in a polite letter whether I
could meet him and bring some of my councillors and the portfolio
holder for highways. Initially, I was told that he would see only
me, that he refused to see my councillors. We went through a bit
of an argy-bargy to ensure that, ultimately, the portfolio holder
for highways and others were able to join me.
The discussions are all about the construction of a bridge over
the River Severn. There is a segment of the north-west relief
road where we need to build a bridge. Of course, as with many
other construction projects, there is no alternative. The bridge
comes relatively close to an aquifer from which drinking water is
taken for the people of Shrewsbury, which is why, I am told,
there are such significant delays.
I am going to say something controversial and a lot of people
will disagree violently with me, but then again, that’s politics
and that’s democracy. Do we need these quangos? Do we need the
Environment Agency? Yes, of course we do. I see some snorting and
guffawing from the Opposition Benches. We need the Environment
Agency to work with us and our authorities on mitigating
flooding. I chair a caucus of 38 Conservative Members of
Parliament who have the River Severn flowing through their
constituencies. We are working in a constructive way with the
Environment Agency and the River Severn Partnership to try to
lobby collectively for additional resources to tame Britain’s
longest river.
I see relevance in that work, but do we need such a level of
interference from an unelected, unaccountable organisation that
clearly lacks transparency, to scrutinise a democratically
elected council that is responsible for the people of Shrewsbury
and can be thrown out by the electorate if it makes an
environmental mistake? The council has hired some of the best
environmental advisers and construction companies to try to build
the bridge. Can we afford, as a nation, such a level of excessive
engagement between the Environment Agency and a democratically
elected council? I would argue that we cannot. I trust the local
council with all its resources and good intentions, and with
local councillors who are part of the community, who drink the
water that we take from the aquifer, who are elected and
accountable to the people. Can we entrust our councils to make
decisions and build essential infrastructure projects for our
constituents, or we do need this outside body?
What worries me more than anything else is that I secured £58
million for the road in February 2019. The end project will cost
about £140 million or £150 million, and that is just my project
in Shrewsbury. I think we will spend an extra £100 million on the
project as a result of the massive delays. If that is being
replicated across the United Kingdom, which I know it is—I have
spoken to other Conservative MPs who have serious concerns about
the lack of engagement from the Environment Agency—we really are
creating massive additional costs that will be difficult to
meet.
The lack of urgency is a concern. Mr Betts, I can show you a file
7 inches thick of my correspondence with the Environment Agency
over the last five years on that one project. I am very unhappy
with that, and I would like the Minister to know that I have
serious concerns about the impact on taxpayers—my local,
hard-working families who are paying their taxes. The lack of
urgency and accountability from Mr Duffy and his officials on the
matter is very disturbing indeed.
Last week, we had the positive announcement of an extra £244
million designated for transport projects in Shropshire, which we
have got because High Speed 2 has been cancelled. I was a great
supporter of HS2, because I was told that one of the reasons why
we did not have a direct train service between Shrewsbury—the
only county town in England without such a service—and London was
“lack of capacity” on the network. HS2 was going to free up and
build for future generations and increase that capacity. What the
Victorians did was fascinating. They built not for themselves;
they built for future generations. If we plant a row of trees, we
are not going to benefit from the shade ourselves. We will be
gone, but those who follow us will benefit from the shade. The
Victorians understood that, and they built for future
generations. The London metro system, which I use almost every
single day, is a classic example of building for future
generations.
I was very saddened that the Prime Minister ultimately decided to
scrap the project, but I was also cognisant that there was no
alternative, because the nimbys and people who campaigned against
various aspects led to massive increases in costs. We have now
benefited in Shropshire from an extra £244 million—thank you very
much, Treasury. I will be spending that £244 million as quickly
and as expeditiously as possible in Shropshire, but we have only
got it as a result of the destruction of a major national
infrastructure project by these environmentalists and nimbys.
The pendulum has swung too far away from Governments, councils
and Members of Parliament—from people who are elected and
responsible for delivering major essential infrastructure
projects. The pendulum in our society has swung too far away from
those in positions of responsibility and accountability. That
pendulum has swung towards the environmentalists, the Environment
Agency and the nimbys—we all have thousands of nimbys in our
constituencies. We need to recalibrate this equilibrium to ensure
that more power is brought back to engineers, architects,
designers, planners, councils, Governments and Members of
Parliament. Otherwise, we will sink—I want the Minister to
remember this—into a quagmire in this country, whereby we cannot
build essential infrastructure projects, and they will double,
triple and quadruple in price. That is simply unacceptable, and I
look forward to hearing what the Minister’s intentions are to
streamline and improve the planning process so that examples like
my north-west relief road do not occur in other constituencies in
the future.
10.18am
(St Albans) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I
thank the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland (Sir ) for securing this debate. If
I am perfectly honest, we have more in common that I thought we
might. That gives me great hope, and I hope that we might
continue to work together on the reforms about which we do
agree.
The Liberal Democrats are committed to overhauling this broken
top-down planning system. I supported amendments tabled to the
Levelling-up and Regeneration Act that would have given councils
the powers to force land bankers to build or sell. Unfortunately,
they did not go through. We also supported amendments that would
have given local councils the power to regulate Airbnbs,
something that is so important to my St Albans constituency. I
have also been running a campaign to get the Government to scrap
the cap on planning fees, as my constituents are subsidising big
developers, and our planning department has been left woefully
underfunded. It is really disappointing that those amendments
were not accepted for the levelling-up Act.
Today, I want to focus on the failed top-down approach to setting
housing targets. The Liberal Democrats have an ambition to build
380,000 homes a year, but by adopting a bottom-up approach we
would ensure that they were built in the right places and were
the right homes. We would require councils to start by addressing
their local housing need and identifying any local constraints.
The approach would include ensuring that 150,000 homes each year
would be truly affordable for social rent, and I am delighted
that that is supported by research from the National Housing
Federation, Crisis and Heriot-Watt University.
I want to interrogate recent reforms to the national planning
policy framework. I intend to challenge the Minister to clarify
whether the reforms her Government announced in December have in
fact been incorporated into the NPPF at all. I am sure it will
come as no surprise to Members or the Minister that I take a keen
interest in the proposals to update the NPPF. The Minister will
know that I have tabled scores of parliamentary questions,
secured debates, responded to various consultations and tabled
amendments to the levelling-up Act. I have been clear that the
current Government policy and the NPPF itself do nothing to solve
the housing crisis. What they do is incentivise developers to
destroy great swathes of precious agricultural land, natural
habitat and green open spaces on the metropolitan green belt.
The root of the problem is the Government’s top-down housing
targets, which are based on out-of-date population data and which
councils are required to meet irrespective of any local
constraints. There is no clear guidance in the new NPPF at all
about whether those top-down targets or preserving undeveloped
green belt space for future generations should take precedence,
and that is quite confusing.
Let us look at the history of this issue. In 2015, the then
Minister of State for Housing and Planning took steps to address
it in a written ministerial statement. On permitting development
on the green belt, he said that unmet need is
“unlikely to clearly outweigh harm to the green belt and any
other harm so as to establish very special
circumstances.”[—[Official Report, 17 December 2015; Vol. 603, c.
95WS.]](/search/column?VolumeNumber=603&ColumnNumber=95WS&House=1)
There was a very clear instruction in that statement to local
planning authorities and to the planning inspector that the
protection of undeveloped green belt should be given more weight
than meeting housing targets.
However, that ministerial statement was made nine years ago.
There have been 12 Conservative Housing Ministers since then, and
unfortunately not one of them has seen fit to incorporate that
statement and that principle into the NPPF. That remarkable state
of affairs has meant that the Planning Inspectorate has never
been able to give that statement any weight at all when deciding
on planning appeals. Nor has the Planning Inspectorate had the
ability to apply that principle to its examination of local
plans—in fact, the planning inspector said as much in a planning
appeal heard for an application in Colney Heath in my
constituency that has resulted in the wrong homes being built in
the wrong place. As a consequence, many councils are not able to
meet the top-down housing targets without surrendering
undeveloped green belt land for development.
The Minister will know that in St Albans, we unfortunately have
the oldest adopted local plan in England. Two previous drafts
developed under Conservative administrations were rejected by the
Planning Inspectorate. Since 2019, the Liberal Democrat
administration has prioritised the local plan process. It has
been put under the auspices of the leader of the council, and in
recent months the district council has made significant progress
by completing a call for sites, producing a draft local plan and
completing a regulation 18 consultation.
The Government’s top-down approach has a real impact in St
Albans, and that is the situation our district council now faces.
The Government’s standard method produces a top-down target of
approximately 14,000 homes that need to be built within the St
Albans district. The Government’s approach does not allow for any
reduction in that top-down target, even though we have been given
a Government-imposed strategic rail freight interchange the size
of 3.5 million square metres of green belt, equivalent to 490
football pitches, which could instead have potentially
accommodated between 2,500 and 3,000 homes. Following the
district council’s call for sites and the regulation 18
consultation, it is thought that only around 5,000 homes can be
accommodated on brownfield or grey belt sites. Around 9,000 homes
will need to be built on previously undeveloped green belt.
The district council is working at pace to put a plan in place,
but the combined failure of the Government to embed that written
ministerial statement into the NPPF and of previous
administrations in St Albans to develop a local plan now means
that the council is currently unable to defend itself and its
communities from inappropriate, speculative development. As a
result, developers have mostly won their cases by appealing to
the Planning Inspectorate.
St Albans City and District Council remains unable to prevent the
wrong houses from being built in the wrong place. For example,
just in the last year 2022-23, most of the housing built in our
district was four, five or six-bedroom executive housing, not the
three-bedroom homes that we desperately need. After months of
delay, hopes were raised that an updated national planning policy
framework would finally address the scandal of local plans being
required to meet those centrally produced, top-down housing
targets, as produced by the so-called standard method. In St
Albans, our council leader took the Secretary of State’s promises
at face value, saying that that if the new national planning
policy framework is changed, such that the protection of
underdeveloped metropolitan green belt takes precedence over
top-down targets, our draft local plan will change as well. But
it seems to me that the changes to the NPPF actually make the
situation worse.
The Secretary of State said on 19 December 2023 that the changes
provide
“clearer protection for the green belt…In summary, the new NPPF
will: facilitate flexibility for local authorities in relation to
local housing need; clarify a local lock on any changes to
green-belt boundaries…the Government are ensuring it is clear
there is generally no requirement on local authorities to review
or alter green-belt boundaries if this would be the only way to
meet housing need.”[—[Official Report, 19 December 2023; Vol.
742, c.
97-99WS.]](/search/column?VolumeNumber=742&ColumnNumber=97&House=1)
The Secretary of State said all of that, but I have read the new
national planning policy framework and I am afraid that it says
absolutely no such thing. Rather than softening the need to meet
those top-down targets, the changes to the NPPF actually
strengthen and reinforce the requirement of councils and their
communities to meet them.
There are at least five examples that I can find. Paragraph 15
changes the requirement from “addressing” the targets to
“meeting” them, which is a significant change in firming up the
requirement. Paragraph 60 adds a new requirement that the overall
aim of any local plan
“should be to meet as much of an area’s identified housing need
as possible”.
Again, that is a significant firming up of meeting that top-down
target. Paragraph 61 codifies the Government’s previous position
that
“the standard method is an advisory starting-point”,
but the meaning of “advisory” is not clarified. It is widely
understood in the planning sector that “advisory” does not mean
that it is merely a suggestion, but it is actually a warning. It
is a warning that, if that target is not met, the planning
inspector will almost certainly throw out and fail any local plan
that does not meet that target.
In paragraph 61, the accompanying footnote 25 restricts the
circumstances that might permit deviation from the standard
method to extreme examples, such as
“islands with no land bridge”.
It appears to deliberately stay silent on undeveloped green belt
constraints. Paragraph 145 had, in the version that the
Government put out for consultation, the strongest and clearest
indication that
“Green Belt boundaries are not required to be reviewed and
altered, if this would be the only means of meeting the
objectively assessed need for housing over the plan period”.
Inexplicably to those who expected that revision to strengthen
green belt protection, that change was scrapped altogether in the
final version of the NPPF. Indeed, there is not one single
statement anywhere in the NPPF—none at all—that indicates to the
planning authorities or the planning inspector that more weight
can or should be given to protect undeveloped green belt over
top-down housing targets.
Planning professionals agree that, at best, the new NPPF brings
nothing to green belt communities. It was reported that one very
senior and respected planning barrister, who attended a
Hertfordshire Infrastructure & Development Board meeting on
29 February, described the Government’s changes as nothing more
than “window dressing”. St Albans City and District Council has
proceeded with its local plan-making, in compliance with the
previous version of the NPPF, in the expectation that the
Government would honour their promise to give councils more power
and the ability to protect parts of undeveloped green-belt land.
It is clear that those promises have now been broken.
I am told that the Liberal Democrat administration has followed
the advice of the Local Government Association, the Planning
Advisory Service, the Planning Inspectorate, its own KC and
external experts acting as critical friends. In effect, they have
all told the council the same thing: “You must meet this top-down
target or you are at risk of your local plan being failed.”
Without a local plan, communities in St Albans will continue to
end up with our natural environment bulldozed over for
inappropriate and oversized executive homes, with no way for the
council to require developers to provide the three-bed family
homes that our district so desperately needs. Indeed, the draft
local plan that the district council has prepared has identified
that more than 50% of the new homes in the area have to be
three-bedroomed homes. Yet at the moment we have no way of
ensuring that developers build them. There is now a limited
window of opportunity for the Government to intervene and clarify
whether St Albans District Council can move forward with the
draft local plan that revises the top-down housing targets
downwards, in recognition of local constraints.
To sum up, I have three questions for the Minister. Will the
Minister confirm today whether the Government-imposed strategic
rail-freight interchange, the size of 490 football pitches, which
prevents the building of 2,500 to 3,000 homes, can be taken into
account? Secondly, on 9 January, the Minister for Housing,
Planning and Building Safety, the hon. Member for North East
Derbyshire (), responded to my written question on the issue of the
green belt to say that the Government would consider whether
updates were needed to planning practice guidance in due course.
Can the Minister today confirm whether that consideration has
been completed and, if not, when it will be? My third and final
question is will the Government urgently provide updated guidance
for local authorities and the planning inspector, making it clear
that the protection of undeveloped green-belt sites—not the grey
belt—can be considered an exceptional circumstance, which
justifies an alternative approach to assessing housing need?
Since the new year, I have tabled 12 written questions asking for
clarity on these issues. So far, not one of them has received a
satisfactory response. Instead, I have been redirected back to
the very statements on which I am trying to seek clarification.
My constituents deserve straightforward answers on the
Government’s intentions. I hope the Minister will take the
opportunity to provide substantive responses today.
(in the Chair)
We now move on to the Front Benchers. For Labour, .
10.32am
(Greenwich and Woolwich)
(Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I
congratulate the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and
East Cleveland (Sir ) on securing this important
debate, and commend him for the characteristic clarity with which
he set out his position in opening it.
I would also like to thank the hon. Members for Shrewsbury and
Atcham (), for St Albans (), and for Westmorland and
Lonsdale () for their contributions. I did not agree with all
their points, for reasons I may come to, but I certainly agree
with the need to focus the planning system on prioritising
genuinely affordable social rented homes, an issue the right hon.
Gentleman knows I have spoken about at length, not least in the
many weeks of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill Committee
stage. I also agree with the importance of properly resourcing
individual local planning departments, as was mentioned, which is
a huge challenge at present.
I think the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland would accept that on most matters there is a profound
political gulf between us. Yet, such is the mess that the
Government have got themselves into with national planning
policy, we have found common cause on a number of specific issues
related to it. The most obvious point of agreement between the
right hon. Gentleman and Opposition Front Benchers—although not
the hon. Member for St Albans, I am sad to say—is on the need for
enforceable housing targets.
The right hon. Gentleman recognises, as we do, that to get
anywhere near the Government’s target of 300,000 homes a year,
let alone the annual level of housing supply that England
actually requires, we must have mandatory targets that bite on
individual local planning authorities. As a result of the revised
NPPF, published on 19 December last year, it is an unassailable
fact that we no longer have such targets in England. Although it
is correct to say that a small number of the initial proposals in
the NPFF consultation were ultimately abandoned—for example,
damaging proposed revisions to the tests of soundness—many others
were implemented. Those include the softening of land supply and
delivery test provisions, the emphasis on locally prepared plans
providing for “sufficient housing only”, and the listing of
various local characteristics that can now be used to justify a
deviation from the standard method for assessing local housing
need. As a result, the standard method is now explicitly only an
advisory starting point.
The predictable result, as Ministers surely knew would be the
case when they made the concessions in question to the so-called
planning concern group of Tory Back Benchers in December 2022, is
that a growing number of councils with local plans at an advanced
stage of development, more often than not in areas of high unmet
need, are scrambling to reverse ferret and take advantage of the
freedom the revised NPPF provides to plan for less housing than
their nominal local targets imply. The Government’s manifesto
commitment to 300,000 homes a year thus remains alive, but in
name only. It is abandoned in practice but not formally
abolished, and no amount of protestations to the contrary by
Ministers will alter that fact.
As the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland has rightly argued in the past, the decision to
overhaul national planning policy in this way was, as he said,
“disastrous”. It was, as we know, a decision made not in the
national interest, but as a grubby concession to Government Back
Benchers who were threatening to derail the Levelling-up and
Regeneration Bill. It was nothing less than a woeful abdication
of responsibility, and it must be undone. A Labour Government
will act decisively and early to ensure that it is undone so that
we once again have a planning system geared towards meeting
housing need in full—that is absolutely a red line for us.
Where we respectfully part ways with the right hon. Member for
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland is on the issue of whether
the post-war discretionary planning system is beyond redemption.
As the right hon. Gentleman made clear in his remarks, he firmly
believes that it is, and that it should be replaced by a zonal
planning system of the kind proposed by the “Planning for the
Future” White Paper published in 2020, but eventually abandoned.
We might notice a trend here in the face of Back Bench pressure
from the Government Benches.
We take a different view; while we do not dispute that after a
decade of piecemeal and inept tinkering the planning system the
Government are presiding over is faltering on almost all fronts,
we believe that introducing an entirely new system is not the
answer. Instead, we believe a discrete number of targeted changes
to the existing system, coupled with decisive action to ensure
that every element of it functions optimally, will ensure we
significantly boost housing supply and deliver 1.5 million homes
over the course of the next Parliament.
As I do not have an abundance of time, I will give just one
example of the kinds of changes we believe are necessary to get
Britain building at the scale required. It is a change that I
think might solve some of the problems that the hon. Member for
St Albans identified in relation to St Albans. There is no way to
meet housing need in England without planning for growth on a
larger than local scale. However this Government, for reasons I
suspect are more ideological than practical, are now presiding
over a planning system that lacks any effective sub-regional
frameworks for cross-boundary planning.
The limitations of the duty to co-operate were well understood,
but it at least imposed a requirement on local authorities to
engage constructively, actively and on an ongoing basis to
develop strategic planning policies where needed. Its repeal last
year through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, coupled with
the fact that no replacement has been brought forward, leaves us
with no meaningful process for planning strategically across
boundaries to meet unmet housing need, given the inherent flaws
of voluntary spatial development strategies.
Indeed, the Government have now even removed from the NPPF the
requirement to help neighbouring authorities accommodate
development in instances where they cannot meet their areas’
objectively assessed needs. If we are to overcome housing
delivery challenges around towns and cities with tightly drawn
administrative boundaries we must have an effective mechanism for
cross- boundary strategic planning, and a Labour Government will
introduce one.
That is just one example of the kind of planning reform we
believe is necessary; others include finally getting serious
about boosting local plan coverage. It is appalling that we have
a local plan-led system where nearly three quarters of local
plans are now not up to date—that cannot be allowed to continue.
Another example is reintroducing a strategic approach to
green-belt release, rather than the haphazard free-for-all we
have had for the past 14 years.
The important point is that we should be focused on bold
evolution of the planning system in England, not a complete
dismantling of it. Not least because the painstaking creation of
an entirely new system, after four years of planning policy
turbulence and uncertainty in the wake of the 2020 White Paper,
would almost certainly paralyse housing delivery and further
exacerbate the sharp decline in house building that is now under
way. Reform of the planning system, rather than a revolutionary
reconstruction of it, is what is needed, so Labour remains
committed to an ambitious yet pragmatic and achievable overhaul
of the current system, and much-needed policy certainty and
stability once that overhaul is complete.
As much as the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East
Cleveland might wish otherwise, it is patently clear that the
Government have not only squandered the opportunity to make the
planning system work as needed but, in caving in to the demands
of their Back Benchers 15 months ago, have actively made things
worse, as the planning application statistics released last week
make clear. We need a general election so that they can make way
for a Labour Government who will do what is necessary to tackle
the housing crisis and boost economic growth.
10.40am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up,
Housing and Communities ()
It is a great pleasure to respond to this debate and serve under
your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank my right hon. Friend the
Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir ) for securing today’s
important debate and for his very eloquent presentation. I also
thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham () for his impassioned
pleas on behalf of his constituency, and the hon. Members for
Westmorland and Lonsdale () and for St Albans ().
Let me make it very clear that this Government are absolutely
committed to modernising our planning system and building more
homes. In our manifesto, we had a commitment to build 1 million
more houses, and we are on track to do that during this
Parliament. We have an advisory target of 300,000. We have not
achieved that, but—let me make this very clear—the highest four
years of house building in the past 30 years have been since
2018, so our performance is strong.
The Minister indicated that the new NPPF uses the word
“advisory”—the Government have always used that word. The hon.
Member for Greenwich and Woolwich () said that is a softening
of the targets, but the advice that my local council has received
from the Local Government Association, the Planning Advisory
Service, the Planning Inspectorate and its own KC is that
“advisory” is a warning that, if that number is not met, the
local plan will likely get failed. Will the Minister please
commit to provide further guidance on what the Government intend
by the word “advisory”?
We are very clear that we want 300,000 more homes to be built in
England every year. What we have said is that we have an advisory
starting point for each local authority. To answer the question
that the hon. Lady posed earlier, the framework sets out clearly
that, although changes to green belt boundaries may be made where
exceptional circumstances are evidenced and justified, there is
no firm requirement to do so. If there are exceptional
circumstances, there can be development on the green belt.
Will the Minister give way?
I really want to make some progress.
We are absolutely committed to modernising our planning system.
We introduced the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act to enable
radical improvements in the way planning works. There are
numerous measures in the Act, and future support in policy and
regulation, that will modernise the system, making it more
efficient, effective and accessible. Local leaders will have
greater powers and the necessary tools to regenerate town centres
and bring land and property into productive use. That will
support growth, the delivery of quality homes and environmental
improvements.
Underpinning that, the Government believe decisions about
development should be driven by sensible local decision making,
supported by digital tools to make engagement easier and bring
the current system into the 21st century. More local plans must
be in place—I agree with the hon. Member for Greenwich and
Woolwich on that point—to deliver the homes and infrastructure
that people need, in the places where they want to live and work.
In addition, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for
Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has set out his ambition
for planning performance. It is now up to those who make the
planning system work—local authorities, the Planning Inspectorate
and statutory consultees—to expedite delivery. We are committed
to building more homes, more quickly, more beautifully and more
sustainably, and we must build homes in the places where people
want to live and work.
The Opposition parties talk a very good game, but the proof is
all in the delivery. I am a London MP, and it really saddens me
that under the Labour Mayor of London, in 2022, London had the
worst delivery of new houses of any area in the country. We can
compare that with the west midlands under the Conservative : he actually exceeded his
targets.
I speak as an immigrant to this country—we left communist Poland
in 1978—but does the Minister agree with me that getting levels
of immigration down to sustainable levels will also help in the
crisis affecting housing, because a lot of the pressure on the
housing stock is coming from people coming from overseas to the
United Kingdom?
We have to acknowledge that a lot of the settlement in the UK in
the course of the last two years has been exceptional, whether it
is by Hongkongers or Ukrainians. I agree with my hon. Friend on
the arithmetic. If we have big levels of inward migration, we
need the housing to house the inward migration, so I agree with
him on the basis of the arithmetic—absolutely.
I am glad to hear the Minister recommit to the Government’s
housing target of 300,000 homes a year. She says that the
Government are committed to delivering that. Does it not concern
the Minister that in the wake of the changes to the NPPF,
councils across England—I think an example would be North
Somerset—are using the exceptional circumstances test in the
revised NPPF to determine lower housing targets than are defined
through the Government’s standard method? That is to say that the
NPPF will result in less housing than the standard method implies
and that there is no way the Government can now meet their
300,000 homes a year target on that basis. She surely must
recognise that.
We have been very clear that our target is 300,000, but we want
local communities to buy into it. It is very much an objective.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and
East Cleveland has laid out very clearly, we need the new
housing, and that is why Government are committed.
Will the Minister join me in challenging the Labour party? It
claims that it will come in on a white horse and resolve all of
this. In practice, we have seen how the socialist Mayor of London
has failed to build houses. Will my hon. Friend join me in
expressing a reservation about the Labour party’s silence about
that rather than questioning the failure of its Mayor of London
to provide essential homes?
I agree 100%. The proof is in the delivery, and London in 2022
was the worst performing region for housing delivery. An
independent review has been conducted of London housing delivery,
and that makes it absolutely clear that the Mayor has failed to
deliver housing. It is running at 15,000 new homes per year,
according to his own plan, but the actual need in London is
multiples of that. That is clear underdelivery, but let me make
some progress.
Will the Minister give way on that point?
I will take this as a final intervention, because I do need to
get quite a few things on the record.
I am incredibly grateful to the Minister for giving way again.
Recent interventions have shown that there is a huge amount of
confusion and contradiction about what the changes to the NPPF
actually mean. A cynic could say that the Government are saying
one thing and doing another, but I think that it is really
important for communities around the country that we have
clarity. Will the Minister please commit to the Government
actually producing further guidance on what they mean by
“exceptional circumstances” in relation to the standard method,
and will she please commit— I ask again—to providing further
guidance on the definition of the word “advisory”?
I think I have been very clear in what I have said about the
green belt. The green belt should be protected except for in
exceptional circumstances, as has been set out.
Let me make some progress. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act
2023 will speed up the planning process, delivering a faster and
more efficient system, and cut out unnecessary and costly delays.
It will ensure that local plans are shorter, more visual and
map-based, and built on open and standardised data. They will be
concise and focused on locally important matters, with repetition
of policies across plans eliminated. New mandatory gateway
assessments will reduce the time spent examining plans. To ensure
that plans are prepared more quickly and kept up to date on
matters including housing supply, there will be a 13-month
preparation timeframe and a requirement for councils to commence
plan updates every five years.
To respond to the hon. Member for St Albans, I must put it on the
record that St Albans has one of the oldest plans in the country.
It has been designated. To be honest, I do not know how the
Liberal Democrats can stand up and say they have a housing target
of 380,000 a year when they object to every single development on
the ground. I just do not get it.
Let me move on. We have had quite a lot of talk about nutrient
neutrality. I must say that I was hugely disappointed that the
Opposition in the House of Lords blocked the Government
amendments in the 2023 Act that would have made a targeted and
specific change to the law, so that there was absolute clarity
that housing development could proceed in areas currently
affected by nutrient neutrality. That was done at a cost of
100,000 new homes. It is unacceptable to talk the talk and not to
deliver, and the Opposition did not deliver in the House of
Lords.
Will the Minister give way?
No; I have made it quite clear that there are points I want to
put on the record.
The Government continue to work to unlock housing in catchments
affected by nutrient neutrality. To address pollution at the
source, the 2023 Act created a new duty on water companies in
designated catchments to ensure that wastewater treatment works
serving a population equivalent to over 2,000 meet specified
nutrient removal standards. Competent authorities are then
required to consider that this standard will be met by the
upgrade date for the purposes of habitats regulations
assessments, significantly reducing the mitigation burden on
development.
We are also boosting the supply of mitigation by making £110
million available through the local nutrient mitigation fund, to
help planning authorities in affected areas to deliver tens of
thousands more homes before the end of the decade. Funding will
be recycled locally until nutrient mitigation is no longer
needed, at which point it will be used for measures to help
restore the relevant habitat sites. The fund has already
allocated £57 million to eight local authorities, and round 2 of
the fund opened for expressions of interest last week. The hon.
Member for Somerton and Frome (), who is no longer in her
place, raised nutrient neutrality. I want to make it clear that
Somerset was allocated £9.6 million.
Building on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, we consulted
on a range of proposed changes to national planning policy to
support our objective of a planning system that delivers the new
homes we need, while taking account of important areas’ assets or
local characteristics that should be protected or respected. We
have revised the NPPF to be clearer about the importance of
planning for homes and other development that our communities
need. The revised NPPF provides clearer protection for the green
belt, clarity about how future housing supply should be assessed
in plans, and certainty on the responsibility of urban
authorities to play their full part in meeting housing needs.
We have removed the need to demonstrate a five-year housing land
supply requirement where plans are up to date, providing local
authorities with yet another strong incentive to agree a local
plan, giving communities more of a say on development and
allowing more homes to be built. To make sure that we maximise
the potential of brownfield sites, we are consulting on strong
new measures to boost house building while protecting the green
belt. Under those plans, planning authorities are instructed to
be more flexible in applying policies that halt house building on
previously developed land, permitted development rights are
extended, and the planning authorities in England’s 20 largest
towns and cities will be subject to a brownfield presumption when
they fail to deliver.
The Government are clear that having plans in place is the best
way to deliver development in the interests of local communities,
and the revised framework creates clear incentives for
authorities to get their local plans in place. Alongside that,
the Government remain on track to meet our manifesto commitment
to deliver 1 million homes over this Parliament. We have
announced a £10 billion investment in housing supply since the
start of this Parliament, to support bringing forward land for
development, creating the infrastructure and enabling the market
to deliver the homes that communities need, as well as supporting
local authority planning capacity. This includes the £1 billion
brownfield infrastructure and land fund, launched in July 2023,
that will unlock approximately 65,000 homes and target at least
60% of funding to brownfield land.
I want to give my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough
South and East Cleveland, who secured this debate, time to sum
up, so I will close by saying very clearly that the Government
are committed to housing delivery and we are on track to
modernise the planning system so that we can achieve that housing
delivery.
10.57am
Sir
I thank the Minister for her gracious comments about giving me
time to respond. This has been a very good debate and, despite
the proximity of an election, a remarkably consensual one about a
number of the issues that we know we need to overcome if we are
to build the homes we need as a country. Clearly, there are areas
of contention and big challenges that require significant
political courage to be addressed.
I will briefly give credit to those who have spoken. I agreed
with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale () about the importance of allowing local planning
departments to be sufficiently resourced to do their job. I have
more faith than he does in the ability of the market to fix these
problems, but that is probably not an unusual distinction between
us.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham
() for attending the
debate. I wish him every success with bringing forward the
Shrewsbury ring road—the 9 o’clock to 12 o’clock segment.
Although I concentrated primarily on housing in this debate, it
could equally well be extended to infrastructure. We must allow
ourselves to build what we need to succeed. The Government need
to address some of the obstacles that have progressively accreted
and stop us from doing things that we know are in the national
and often the local interest.
I welcome the ambition that the hon. Member for St Albans () set out for 380,000 homes a
year, but that needs to be underpinned by robust methodology in
terms of clear national targets. As the shadow Minister, the hon.
Member for Greenwich and Woolwich () said, local plans need
to be up to date and we need to make sure that they are resourced
appropriately so that they can be kept up to date. I count the
shadow Minister as a friend in this place, and he is right that
there are things that we need to do to give greater
accountability for local authorities when it comes to their work.
We obviously disagree on nutrient neutrality: I think Labour
failed to put their money where their mouth has been when it
comes to the importance of house building.
Finally, I thank the Minister. I welcome the fact that we are on
track for 1 million homes a year. I would clearly like to see
more of that home building and I look forward to discussing with
her, as we approach the manifesto-writing process, how we can
best deliver it.
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