My Lords, I am delighted to be opening this important debate on the Second Reading of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill. Few of us here would disagree that our country is suffering from a serious shortage of housing. It is not a new problem, nor an unexpected one. We have not built enough homes in this country for a very long time. Between 1969 and 1989, more than 4.5 million homes were built in England; between 1992 and 2012 it was fewer than 3 million.
Every year that we build fewer homes than we need, the challenge becomes greater and the burden that we place on our children and grandchildren grows larger. Some 50% of today’s 45 year-olds were home owners by the time they were 30, but for those born 10 years later the figure is just 35%. Only 26% of those who are 25 today are projected to be home owners in five years’ time. Millions of young people are living with their parents until well into their 30s or struggling to save for a deposit while they rent. Too many cannot afford a roof over their head at all.
This is not just an economic headache but a profound social failure: a country divided between the haves and have-nots, where younger generations are denied the aspirations and standard of living that many of us took for granted. There is no single or simple solution to this complex and long-standing problem. However, one thing is clear: we must build more homes in the right places. This will require a planning system that is efficient and effective, and that helps communities plan for the homes they need. This Bill is a small but important step to help achieve this.
The good news is that we are not starting from scratch. Over the past six and a half years we have laid some foundations for a better planning system: local people have been given a much greater say over new development in their area; planning policy has been radically streamlined; and the planning system is faster and more efficient. The results are obvious. The planning system granted planning permission for 277,000 new homes in the period from 1 October 2015 to 30 September 2016—9% more than in the previous year—and 900,000 new homes have been delivered in England since 2010, with housing starts now at their highest level since 2008.
The Government are prioritising huge investment for housing, with a further £5.3 billion set aside in the Autumn Statement, bringing our total planned spend to more than £25 billion during this Parliament, and we will shortly publish a housing White Paper, which will set out radical plans to boost housing supply in the coming years. I will certainly ensure that there is a briefing for Peers as soon as the White Paper is published. Both the Secretary of State and the Minister of State have indicated an intention to come along to that briefing to help explain some of the intentions.
Perhaps I may give an overview of the Bill. It is part of the plan to deliver more housing and it has two key aims. First, it aims to help identify and free up more land to build homes on, and to give communities as much certainty as possible about where and when development will take place. Secondly, it aims to speed up the delivery of new homes—in particular by reducing the time it takes from planning permission being granted to building work happening on site and, most importantly, new homes being delivered. The Bill also provides a focused set of measures relating to planning and compulsory purchase. These measures will support the Government’s ambitions to boost housing supply while protecting those areas that we value most, including the green belt.
The Bill has two main parts. Part 1 relates to planning and includes measures on neighbourhood planning, local development documents, planning conditions and the planning register. The second part relates to compulsory purchase. The provisions have been subject to rigorous and constructive debate in the other place, and I would like to take a moment to thank my right honourable friend Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my honourable friend the Housing and Planning Minister, Gavin Barwell, and Members in the other place, who fulfilled significant roles in shaping and scrutinising the Bill during its consideration there.
The Minister for Housing and Planning in the other place committed to look in more detail at various issues raised on Report in the Commons, such as matters relating to neighbourhood planning and planning for the housing needs of the elderly and people with disabilities. I will keep the House updated on progress on those matters, but the intention is to bring forward a handful of targeted government amendments at the earliest opportunity during the Bill’s passage in the Lords.
I will speak briefly on the two parts of the Bill that I have outlined. I turn first to Part 1: neighbourhood planning. The first five clauses further strengthen neighbourhood planning and will ensure that communities have a stronger say in the planning of their area. The Localism Act 2011 laid the ground for neighbourhood planning—one of the Government’s great success stories. It has been instrumental in giving real power to local people to shape their area and play their part in delivering the housing and other development that they need. I know that many in the Chamber today can legitimately share in the successes of neighbourhood planning, having spent many tireless hours helping to improve that legislation when it passed through this place. This Bill will build further on that.
Since its inception, more than 2,000 communities have started the process of neighbourhood planning, in areas that include nearly 10 million people. Indeed, recently updated analysis suggests that neighbourhood plans in force that provide a housing number have on average planned for approximately 10% more homes than the number for that area set out by the relevant local planning authority. For example, the award-winning Newport Pagnell neighbourhood plan illustrates the vital contribution that neighbourhood plans make to housing supply. The judges at the 2016 planning and place-making awards highlighted,
“how proactive planning can secure community support for the significant increases in housebuilding that will be required across the country if housing need is ever to be met”.
That plan allocates 1,400 new homes to the area between 2010 and 2026—three times the number that were required by Milton Keynes Council’s Core Strategy, which was adopted in 2013. Furthermore, it was backed by 83% of local voters in a referendum held on 5 May 2016. That is good news indeed.
The Bill will ensure that planning decision-makers take account of well-advanced neighbourhood plans. In practice, this means that where a neighbourhood plan has been drafted by a parish council or neighbourhood forum, independently examined and found to have met the relevant conditions, local planning authorities and other decision-makers must have regard to policies in the plan where this is material to a development proposal. The Bill will also bring forward the stage at which a neighbourhood plan has full legal effect. Following a successful referendum, the plan will become part of the statutory development plan for the area immediately, along with any adopted local plan. The measures on neighbourhood planning will also introduce a streamlined procedure for modifying neighbourhood plans as local circumstances change, and facilitate the modification of neighbourhood areas where a plan is already in force for that area.
The proposals will also encourage more communities to consider neighbourhood planning by requiring local planning authorities to make their duty to support neighbourhood planning groups more transparent. This will be achieved through the inclusion of local planning authorities’ policies on giving advice and assistance to neighbourhood planning groups in their statements of community involvement. These provisions, alongside policy changes, will make the neighbourhood planning process fit for the future. Moreover, they will make it even more accessible to everybody.
Also in the first part of the Bill are provisions on local development documents, to which I now turn. Every community deserves to have an up-to-date plan in place. These are the instruments through which local planning authorities can set out a vision and framework for the future development of an area and engage with communities in the process. They are important documents as, once adopted, they become part of the statutory development plan for an area. The development plan is the starting point for determining planning applications in an area. Indeed, producing local plans should be a shared endeavour, led by the local planning authority but in collaboration with local communities, developers, landowners and other interested parties.
Currently, 89% of local planning authorities have published a local plan and 74% have an adopted local plan. But this is not enough. More than a decade since the existing system was introduced, over a quarter of local planning authorities still do not have an adopted local plan. The measures in the Bill relating to local development documents seek to strengthen the plan-led system by ensuring that all local planning authorities in England identify the strategic priorities for the development and use of land in their area and have policies to address these in an up-to-date plan. The Bill also supplements the powers already available to the Secretary of State to intervene in a plan, for use as a last resort where local planning authorities have failed to prepare a plan that they have committed to prepare or revise.
Also in Part 1 are provisions relating to planning conditions. If we are going to expedite the delivery of new homes, it is crucial that work starts on site as soon as possible once permission has been granted for a development. As many of us well know, I am sure, a cause of delay during the interim period between the granting of planning permission and the start of work is the use, or rather the misuse, of pre-commencement planning conditions. Such conditions prevent any development taking place until detailed aspects of the development have been approved and the condition has been fully discharged by the applicant. Issues such as the full details of utility boxes, lighting and roof tiles, for example, are all important matters, but ones which can be discharged at a later stage of a development. The Bill will therefore ensure that pre-commencement planning conditions are used by local planning authorities only where they have the written agreement of the applicant.
The Government’s recent response to consultation on the Bill’s provisions regarding conditions, published just a month ago in December of last year, supports our proposals. By building on existing good practice, the Bill will ensure that mutual agreement to certain conditions before a planning decision is made should become a routine part of discussions between the applicant and the local planning authority. I make clear that, of course, conditions fulfil a significant role in planning and the clause relating to this will not restrict the ability of local planning authorities to impose necessary conditions to achieve sustainable development.
The second element of Clause 12 is a power to allow the Secretary of State to prescribe the circumstances under which certain conditions may be imposed, and the descriptions of such conditions, to ensure that they are in accordance with the National Planning Policy Framework. Oral evidence given during the Commons Committee stage, and a multitude of case studies submitted as part of a recent Home Builders Federation report, provide evidence of conditions being imposed which either fail to meet the policy tests in the National Planning Policy Framework or are unnecessarily restrictive. I intend to write to noble Lords participating in this debate with evidence of that so that they will be well appraised of how that has been operating.
Also in Part 1 of the Bill are provisions relating to the planning register. Clause 13 is a small change relating to the use of the planning register and, more specifically, the monitoring of the use of permitted development rights. Permitted development rights are a national grant of planning permission which allow certain types of development to proceed without first making a full planning application, helping to speed up the planning system and release more land for residential use. In some cases—for example, for change of use from office to residential—prior approval of the local planning authority is required by the applicant before the proposed development can commence. This would allow local consideration of certain specific matters, such as the impact of the development on transport and flooding risks or the external appearance of the proposed development.
The permitted development right allowing change of use to residential is playing an important part in supporting the delivery of additional homes. At present, data provided by local authorities indicate that almost 12,400 applications for change to residential use have received prior approval since 2014. However, we do not currently have data on how many new homes these applications may deliver. The Bill, therefore, will provide the Secretary of State with powers to enable information relating to permitted development rights applications for prior approval, such as proposed housing numbers, to be placed on the planning register to provide us with that additional information.
This measure will not require local authorities to undertake additional or burdensome tasks. It is intended simply to increase transparency by making information about prior approval applications and notifications available to the public. This information has already been given but is not on the register. Doing so will create parity between these types of applications and those for planning conditions, enforcement notices and so on, all of which already appear on the public register.
Part 2 of the Bill deals with compulsory purchase. The effective regeneration of areas, and therefore the delivery of large amounts of housing and accompanying infrastructure, can often require the compulsory purchase of land in the public interest. Compulsory purchase is, however, used as a last resort where land cannot be obtained by agreement. Reforms to the compulsory purchase system are being undertaken in two stages: the stage 1 reforms are mostly in Part 7 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and the stage 2 reforms will be delivered through this Bill. In particular, the measures on temporary possession of land will clarify the options and rights of owners and occupiers when faced with temporary possession. These provisions will protect them from extended periods of uncertainty as to the occupation of their land by defining the scope and operation of temporary possession powers. This means that acquiring authorities will need to set out for how long and for what purpose the land is needed and, in addition, they will have to provide a robust justification for their need for temporary possession, as is currently the case for compulsory purchase in general.
In addition, the compensation measures in the Bill will achieve a clearer way to identify market value of land by establishing the principle of the “no-scheme world”
fairly and effectively in the valuation process. This has been widely welcomed. It introduces a clear definition of a scheme that should be disregarded in assessing compensation and a clear basis for assessing whether the scheme forms part of a larger underlying scheme that should also be disregarded. These reforms are needed in order to make the process clearer, fairer and faster for all—and, in turn, speed up the delivery of more homes.
I know that many noble Lords will speak on the Bill and have exhibited great interest in meeting the challenges we face as a country. I thank them for engaging in the process hitherto and I look forward to a debate among people who know and care a great deal about planning and related issues.
It is very clear that we have a nationwide shortage of housing that people can afford. Any delays in tackling this problem will simply make it worse. The Bill will build on the improvements we have made since 2010 to build more homes and give greater responsibility to local communities to decide what gets built and where. It will remove red tape that delays construction, provide better information about the planning system and ensure that we have a compulsory purchase system that is fit for the 21st century. The Government are determined to make progress and the Bill is a vital part of our strategy. I commend it to the House.
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