To ask Her Majesty’s Government how their proposed changes to the planning process will ensure that the public is supportive of new housing developments.
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
We know that the planning system has a poor record of community engagement and can often be adversarial. That is why our reforms have effective engagement at their heart. By ensuring that communities are meaningfully involved in preparing plans and local design codes, they can have real influence over the location and design of development. This will be supported by digital transformation, with new tools to make planning more transparent, accessible and engaging.
I thank the Minister for what he said, but could he explain how involving the public only every five years when a plan is drawn up, alongside so many sites under the new reforms having automatic permission in principle, will restore trust and confidence in the system? As a former council leader, how does he think this will work in reality years later, when work actually begins?
My Lords, it is not just involvement in the local plan that happens every five years but producing the design codes. But, importantly, communities will have a say in detailed aspects of planning applications.
My Lords, I declare an interest as an honorary fellow of the RIBA. People, if consulted, often prefer smaller and lower-rise developments. What steps will Her Majesty’s Government take to promote such developments and secure public approval of ecological measures to reduce carbon emissions from them?
My Lords, the drive for development does need to take into account the need for sustainable development. Planning will take on board a zonal approach, with some of the positives of the existing system, and will divide areas into growth areas, renewal areas and protected areas.
I am sure that the Minister will agree that neighbourhood planning has been very successful in involving communities, delivering approximately 18,000 more houses than were contained in local plans. So can he confirm that neighbourhood planning will remain after the Government’s planning reforms are introduced and that they will remain a material consideration when decisions are made?
My Lords, I do not want to presuppose what will be in our response to the planning White Paper, but I recognise the important contribution that neighbourhood plans provide to delivering homes.
How are the Government intending to ensure that there is full community involvement in planning and a strong focus not just on housing numbers and speed of delivery but on developing sustainable communities, with a much wider remit?
My noble friend is right that we should focus on sustainable communities, not just the drive for volume and more housing. It is important to strike a balance between enabling vital development, including building the homes we need more quickly, and continuing to protect and enhance the natural and built environment.
My Lords, the Town and Country Planning Association has raised concerns that bypassing meaningful input from local bodies, councillors and the public, and delivering homes through permitted development rights, undermines public support for new housing. Does the Minister agree that, by continuing to expand the delivery of homes through PDR, the Government are undermining their own stated goal of making the planning process more democratic?
My Lords, I point out that permitted development rights have enabled us to deliver a net additional 72,000 homes in the last five years and make an important contribution to the planning system. Our planning reforms are all designed to get effective community engagement at the front end of the process.
The expansion of permitted development rights is taking away the voices of local communities in the planning process and handing them to Whitehall’s appointed boards of developers. Are the Government consulting local government representatives about these changes? If so, what representations have they received?
My Lords, at this stage of the planning reform process we have had 44,000 responses and have continued engagement with the Local Government Association and other important stakeholders, and we will be responding to those responses in due course.