My Lords, I reiterate at the outset that I have a registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum.
Amendments 193 and 194 introduce this group. We are discussing the structure of plan-making in Schedule 7, which replaces Sections 15 to 37 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 as amended. With Amendment 193, I wanted to take the opportunity to explore some interesting changes—I do not know how significant they are and that is what I hope we can determine—between what is to be found in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act as it stands and what is proposed in Schedule 7.
The amendment would require that the strategic priorities of an authority for development in its area be identified. The key word here is “strategic”. Section 19(1B) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act as it stands says:
“Each local planning authority must identify the strategic priorities for the development and use of land in the authority’s area”,
and it continues in the next subsection:
“Policies to address those priorities must be set out in the local planning authority’s development plan”.
That legislation as it stands leads directly into the National Planning Policy Framework. We will talk about the relationship between the NPPF and the Bill on a number of occasions today. In this instance, when the Government published the consultation draft of the NPPF in December, they retained in it the distinction between strategic priorities and policies and non-strategic
policies. For example, paragraph 17 of the consultation draft on behalf of the Government—although we have not seen the final version—states:
“The development plan must include strategic policies to address each local planning authority’s priorities for the development and use of land in its area”.
Paragraph 21 states:
“Plans should make explicit which policies are strategic policies”.
The footnote to paragraph 21 states:
“Where a single local plan is prepared the non-strategic policies should be clearly distinguished from the strategic policies”.
So my starting point is that the NPPF distinguishes between strategic and non-strategic policies but the Bill does not—it just refers to “policies”. New Section 15C(3) in Schedule 7 states:
“The local plan must set out policies of the local planning authority (however expressed) in relation to the amount, type and location of, and timetable for, development in the local planning authority’s area”.
My purpose in Amendment 193 is essentially to ask the Minister the following questions. Why has the distinction between strategic policies and priorities and non-strategic policies been removed from the Bill? That being the case, will the National Planning Policy Framework be redrafted and revised to remove that distinction? My contention is that the distinction is important, not least because we are looking for the local plan to be strategic in nature rather than bogged down in detail.
Strategic policies are needed if the local plan is to look at these 15 years ahead. As the NPPF stresses, where large settlements and new settlements are concerned, this may be at least 30 years ahead, and strategic policies are required for that. That raises the question: why is the requirement for strategic priorities and policies being removed from the statute on which the NPPF should be based? Which way is it going to work? Is the NPPF going to change, or should we not adopt Amendment 193 and include the word “strategic” in the requirements on local planning authorities?
Amendment 194 is a little simpler. It would insert into the requirements for local authorities, when presenting their priorities, a requirement to recognise the importance of economic development. The NPPF as it stands does that but, when it talks about what is to be put into plans, it has housing, employment, leisure and so on but does not specify how important it is that the economic objective of sustainable development be accompanied by strategic policies to identify the need not just for employment sites but for businesses to grow, and the potential for inward investment into an authority’s area.
That is important and is often significantly overlooked in plan-making. To that extent, too great and exclusive attention is paid—not that it is not important—to the allocation of sites for residential and housing development, when often the starting point for whether housing is required in an area is its rate of employment growth. Determining the allocation and spatial strategy for the economy and employment in an area is at least as important as the requirement for housing. Amendment 194 would bring that firmly into the plan-making process as a strategic priority. I beg to move Amendment 193.