My Lords, this is probably one of the key groups of amendments on planning in the Bill, as it sets out the strategic framework under which local plans will be created and planning applications will be determined. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, started us on the right track by saying that we believe in a plan-led system; the question is, “Who leads the plans?” Which one is going to be most important —the national management development plan or the local plan? The local plan currently has primacy in planning legislation.
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At the moment, the National Planning Policy Framework is under consultation for an update. That provides guidance, but it is a material consideration in any local plan. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, who said that the Bill spoke about the folly, or waste of space and time, of having to repeat national planning policies in the local plan, so in the Bill the Government say, “Let’s create our own national policies in the NMDP, to which local planning authorities and councils will have to agree.”
The big difference of course is that, in their development, local plans can incorporate—I think that was the word used by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—issues from across the range of those raised in the NPPF. There are 17 key decisions in the NPPF, including the green belt, the supply of homes, making a stronger economy, the vitality of town centres, and heritage. Those will have a different weight in local plans depending on the locality. If you live in the Yorkshire Dales area, policy on the green belt and national parks will, I guess, have a far greater weight than it would in other parts of the country. If you live in York, I guess that heritage is very important. That is the flexibility that the current system provides for strategic planning. The Bill is proposing a definitive move away from a flexible system where local councils can reflect the needs of their area to one in which there is an absolute insistence that the policies within the NMDP must be followed.
The next question is “What is in it?”. There is a trend in the Bill of having a headline, such as that on the missions, and then a blank space. We have the same here: there is going to be a national management development plan, but then we have a big blank space. That is totally unacceptable. I think it was my noble friend Lord Shipley who quoted the Bill as saying that
“A ‘national development management policy’ is a policy (however expressed) of the Secretary of State … which the Secretary of State by direction designates as a national development management policy”—
and that is it. It could be anything you like. However, when a local plan is created, every one of those national planning policies within the framework is part of the debate, in which local people can take part, about the policy, plan and strategic plan for the council area.
This is a huge move away from localism—I thought that was what we were doing here, by the way. The levelling-up Bill was all about helping different parts of England to have a bit more control over, and involvement in, policies that affect them. Well, this is a very significant move in the other direction. The NDMP positively prohibits a local plan that is not in line with those national policies. This centralising move is unacceptable.
My noble friend Lord Shipley said that Clause 87 is an extraordinary abuse of power by the Executive, and I agree. If we live in a country where local democracy means anything, local planning must mean something. Currently, under these proposals in this Bill, that will be removed. After many years as a local councillor, I can tell you that the one issue that really stimulates big discussion and debate in a locality is planning applications. People get involved in neighbourhood planning applications, which cover a small area— I have just dealt with a very large one on which 2,000 people wrote individual letters of objection. Where people live matters to them. Pride of place is one of the missions in the White Paper, but how can you have pride of place when you take from the council the very tools that will create it? It is not just about whether a place looks beautiful; it is about whether people are engaged and involved in creating pride in the place where they live. As far as we on these Benches are concerned, the proposal to centralise to this degree is simply not acceptable.
I will say a few words about the revision of local plans, which has been raised by a number of noble Lords. It is important. It is not clear from the Bill whether there will be any change to the requirement to set out a plan that has five years’ worth of housing supply in it. It seems to me that revisions ought to take place more frequently. If it is every five years, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, says, it seems to me that you would only just get over the last one and start again. But there is merit in constantly having a look, because the parameters of a local plan change. If there were a significant economic development in an area and a higher demand for housing, a plan ought to be able to respond to that. If it were not revised more than, say, every 10 years, that would not be possible.
I agree with having more frequent revisions, but I have to say that one of the rules in local plans is that you have to have a five-year housing supply—in other words, enough houses in your plan to last five years—which is determined by a sort of government calculation. If you do not, developers can develop where they want to, so the incentive is there to revise.
To end, apart from the issues about the strategy, this is about public involvement in planning. I feel very strongly about this because there is a tendency to do to people; what we should do is work with people and listen to what they have to say. Planning is a really good tool to do that, because people can see how it will change where they live, for good or ill as they see it.
Another issue in the Bill, apart from Clause 87, is Clause 85 and Schedule 7. I thank Landmark Chambers for providing this information; I am not sure I would have been able to read through all the schedules as it has done. Schedule 7 states that a spatial development strategy must involve an examination in public, which is what happens now, unless the Secretary of State directs otherwise. It might not even go to the public to be looked at. New Section 15AC(6) states:
“No person is to have a right to be heard at an examination in public.”
So you have a local plan, it goes to a nominated planning inspector to be heard in public and no person is to have a right to be heard at an examination in public. Now then: what is the quickest way to aggravate people? It is that: taking away their chance to have their say. With those fairly stringent remarks, I leave it to others to further comment.