I will try to draw on the work that the Select Committee has done in a number of reports over the years. First, I want to come back to the point I raised with the Minister about planning authorities having the right to take into account whether developers have fulfilled planning conditions in the past. That is a reasonable request and I am pleased that the Minister is going to consider it. I would be grateful if she could keep me updated on that. From the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) has mentioned the issue of ensuring that the change from 106 to an infrastructure levy does not reduce the number of affordable homes being built. Changing the present wording in the Bill, in which charging authorities must have regard to this, to make them ensure that it happens is a really important change that the Government need to think carefully about.
On the new clauses that I have tabled on skills and resources, one of the biggest challenges for planning authorities is the reduction in their spend and the reduction in the number of their planning officers. When the pressure is on to turn around individual planning applications, it means local plans get put on the back burner and do not get delivered on time. Also, as the Minister has said, too many local plans are out of date, and that needs to change. New clause 122 simply asks the Government to do a review and produce a plan for local authority planning staff and resources. We need a plan for staff and workforce in the health service and social care, and it is just as important in the long term that we have a similar approach to how we deliver our planning system. Currently that is not being done, and local authorities are struggling for those resources and that manpower.
I move on to the tricky issue of housing targets. In the end the Government cannot deliver their national target if they do not have a view about local targets. Their local targets have to add up to the national target if they are going to work. My new clause 123 says that the Government should produce a properly assessed housing need figure for each local area, that they should have discussions with local authorities about that in a transparent and open way and that, if the local authority agrees with that target, that should be the target set in the local plan. If the local council agrees with central Government, then put it in the local plan. If there is no agreement, the local authority should come forward with its own target, and that can be debated as part of the inquiry and the inspector will decide which is the appropriate
way forward. One of the problems with local plans at present is that they often get bogged down, not with discussions about where housing should go—