I rise to oppose these three SIs. The planning system exists specifically to address and balance often conflicting demands: public versus private; local community versus national requirements; environment versus the economy; and financial capital versus human need. Every planning application is judged against clear policies and clear demands, and every planning decision considers quality as well as quantity. It is a transparent and accountable process that enables community involvement. Permitted development rights were introduced to reduce bureaucracy in specific, clearly understood circumstances, but these SIs put a coach and horses through the normal system of judging and determining a proposed development.
I had 30 years of involvement in the town planning system before being elected to this place, and these instruments give me a terrible sense of déjà vu. In 2013, the Government introduced an extension of permitted development rights; then, as now, there was cross-party and cross-sector opposition. Why? Because extending PDR created, and will create, new slums of substandard housing, over which local planning authorities have little or no control and there is little or no opportunity for community input.
Now the Government have come back for more, ignoring the conclusions of their Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. Although they have conceded, after a lot of pressure, on minimum light and space standards, there are still major concerns about issues such as neighbour impact, access, parking, play and amenity space, and of course the proposals remove section 106 contributions from larger developments to the community on things such as affordable housing, traffic and transport improvements. As a member of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, I also share the concerns of my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), and of the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) about the implications for leaseholders.
Where is the evidence that these SIs will deliver more homes? There are 318,000 homes granted planning permission between 2011 and 2018 that remain unbuilt. The Government say that these measures will provide affordable housing for younger people, but there is no evidence that suggests they will. In my west London constituency, even a substandard rabbit hutch would still be affordable only to a young person working on a City of London salary who has a chunky deposit from the bank of mum and dad. As usual, families on UK average and below-average incomes remain invisible to Ministers.
There is, of course, inconsistency between the high-falutin’ intentions in the White Paper about sustainability and quality, and what will actually happen when these SIs are implemented. Speculators and owners will be able to use these regulations to avoid all the normal conditions that are to be expected when someone goes through the normal application process, which are there to address the principles of planning that I listed at the start of my speech, and of course they will avoid community engagement.
If the Government think that we are worried unnecessarily about these issues around standards and that it will all be all right, why do this in the first place, when we have a perfectly adequate planning system? We will see yet more homes that are bad for those living in them now, bad for their neighbours, and bad for those living in them in the future.