I have to admit that I did not expect to be stirred by the statements of the shadow Secretary of State, but her remarks about clause 7 would strike anyone who has been engaged with the planning system over the past many years as quite extraordinary. Pre-commencement conditions imposed by local authorities are a major cause of delay and also distract the officials who she complained were underfunded. One reason why they are over-occupied is that they are too preoccupied issuing absurd pre-commencement conditions that are not properly enforced and lead to massive delays in the process. I warmly welcome clause 7, and hope that the regulations introduced by the Secretary of State will be extremely strong on that issue and will be accompanied by measures to enable us to do in parallel what is currently done in sequence. It takes about two years on average from the time of the first application to the actual completion of homes. Other countries manage that in a year or less, and we could too if processes that are currently done repetitively and in sequence were done in parallel and singly. I hope that we will see those regulations as the Bill proceeds.
Those of us who have been involved with neighbourhood planning since the Conservatives first introduced the proposals—amazingly, nine years ago—are conscious of its huge success. We were told at the beginning that it would be a nimby’s charter, as the Secretary of State rightly mentioned. We were told by others that it would never grip the nation and that there would not really be any neighbourhood plans, but we find that they have been introduced in some 2,000 places. Judging by my constituency, that is the beginning of a tidal wave: more than half the villages of West Dorset intend to engage in neighbourhood planning, and that is increasingly the case for the towns as well. There is no doubt, as the Secretary of State rightly said, that the measure is far from being a nimby’s charter, but as communities engage in neighbourhood planning they wrestle with two conflicting issues: their desire to preserve the look and feel of the places in which they live, which is a reasonable human desire, and the desire that their children and grandchildren should be able to find a home in the locality. I do not know whether the Secretary of State has experienced this, but people have come to my constituency surgery in tears because they could not get a foot on the housing ladder. I cannot remember another subject that has provoked that kind of emotional intensity. For families who have grown up, in some cases over hundreds of years, in small villages where they simply have not been able to build, this is liberation. It has been brought about by neighbourhood planning, because the community feels that it can control the shape and character of what is built so that it is appropriate to the location. That is not something that can be judged from miles away: it is judged on the spot by the locals, and it is a huge success. I therefore warmly welcome clauses 1, 2 and 5, which are the guts of the Bill.
I want to make a few observations about things that I hope can be developed in Committee and on Report. Clause 5 deals with assistance for neighbourhood plans. I had hoped that it would be a little stronger and meatier. It simply requires local authorities to produce an explanation of what they will do to support neighbourhood planning. That is fine—there is nothing wrong with that at all—but I know local authorities,
and I suspect that the Department does too, that will write any number of plans and do absolutely nothing. What is needed is the ability for neighbourhoods—in some cases, hard-pressed neighbourhoods that do not have much money; in other cases, neighbourhoods that are small parishes that do not have much money—to get on with the job of neighbourhood planning. I do not think that anyone can expect the public purse to meet those costs, so we need to examine the proposal introduced by the National Association of Local Councils for more of the community infrastructure levy to be devoted to neighbourhood plans, at least when they introduce local development orders, which are extremely effective. We should also look at the possibility of a loan arrangement, in which money from the community infrastructure levy for a neighbourhood plan is used to repay or defray the costs of engaging in the exercise.
It is not a simple exercise. In most neighbourhoods that I have visited up and down the country, and in my own constituency, hundreds of people get involved and it is quite a management exercise. Neighbourhoods can only do it if they employ one or two people who can put the vision up on the board, explain what is proposed, and go through the detailed process—the examination, the referendum and so on—which requires up-front funding. I hope that that can be looked at.
Finally, clauses 1 and 2 are long overdue. In retrospect, we should have introduced them right at the beginning, in the 2010 legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and I were both involved in that, and it is great to see weight being given to post-examination, as in clause 1, and it is absolutely right that post-referendum neighbourhood plans should go into local development plans even if the local authority does not, for one reason or another, complete the task of introducing them. That is an excellent provision in clause 2. However, my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) made a point that is highly relevant. As the Secretary of State said, there are too many local authorities that have not yet introduced new-style local development plans. Unless the neighbourhood plan is couched in terms of a new-style local development plan with a proper strategic grip it is impossible to formulate the right kind of neighbourhood plan, which must conform to the strategic considerations of the local development plan. In some cases, I fear, local authorities have discovered that they can stymie the ability of neighbourhoods to produce neighbourhood plans simply by being recalcitrant about producing new-style development plans.
Given that, in clause 7, the Secretary of State is rightly taking powers to make regulations relating to pre-commencement conditions, I think he should at least consider the possibility of taking further powers to force local authorities to produce new-style local development plans, or else simply to allow a neighbourhood plan to stand in as the development plan for that neighbourhood, sui generis. Either would do, but I think that something must be done to address the problem raised by my hon. Friend.
Having said that, I will end by saying that the Bill is a progressive piece of legislation which should be welcomed throughout the House and throughout the country, because it may help our children and grandchildren to have the homes that they need.