Neighbourhood Plans: Planning Decisions

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the role of neighbourhood plans in planning decisions.

When we come to this place as representatives of our communities, it is our job to hold the Government to account for things that really matter. I must admit that when I entered Parliament I never thought that planning would be something I would lead on, but for my community it is so important because it impacts their daily lives all the time. I do not go through a week without someone raising a planning concern with me, so I thought it would be useful to have a debate yet again on the importance of neighbourhood plans. First, I will say a little about the national context of neighbourhood plans and their roles and why they matter to me and my community.

As a country, we know we need to deliver more housing—both sides of the House believe that. The Conservatives and Labour pledged 150,000 houses in their manifestos and Liberal Democrats pledged 180,000. But the Liberal Democrats who campaigned against me locally have blamed the Government under both the Conservatives and now Labour for a build, build, build agenda, campaigning against local housing despite the figure in their manifesto being far higher. Here is where the national divides from the local, which is really important.

Before the Minister makes his prepared speech about 14 years of what the last Government could or should have done, I should say that since I was elected I have raised many planning issues, had debates on this topic and lobbied from the Back Benches to try to deliver change, because the planning system does need to change. Despite a change in Government, we are still struggling to deliver the houses—we have only to look at what the Chancellor said in her Budget speech:

“Changes to the national planning policy framework alone will help build over 1.3 million homes in the UK over the next five years, taking us within touching distance of…1.5 million homes in England in this Parliament.”—[Official Report, 26 March 2025; Vol. 764, c. 951.]

I am no mathematician, but that is 200,000 short and deals only with the UK when the Labour manifesto was to deliver in England.

On top of that, the Government have brought in changes, but they make my community feel hard done by. The national statistics and changes to the national planning policy framework show that Hinckley and Bosworth’s housing target has to rise by 59%. With the boundary changes, I take in some of north-west Leicestershire, which has to rise by 74%. We are prepared to build our fair share of houses, but it sticks in the throat when we see Leicester city dropping by 31%.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point because that is not just happening in his local community. Does he agree that we see the same thing right across the country? The same is happening in Birmingham, where the housing target is going down, yet in places such as Aldridge-Brownhills it is going up by some 27%, with no infrastructure and no brownfield remediation funding to support it.

My right hon. Friend is spot on. That is why I wanted this debate, and many colleagues are here to raise that exact point.

Is my hon. Friend aware that in the south-west the house building target for Somerset has risen by 41%, but in nearby Bristol, recently controlled by the Labour party, it has gone down by 11%?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising yet another point. I am sure we could go round the House and get examples of city areas having housing targets go down, whereas countryside areas have them go up. We know we need more houses, and everyone must take their fair share, but we have brownfield sites that need redevelopment and already have the infrastructure in place. The last Government chose to prioritise those sites for housing, because they are connected and have the amenities that the local population needs. That makes a lot of sense. I look forward to this Government explaining their decision.

Neighbourhood plans were brought in under the Localism Act 2011, to give local communities the chance to shape what their community looks like.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing such an important debate. Neighbourhood plans give local communities a voice. They know their areas better than anybody else. With this withdrawal of funding, the Government are basically saying that they know better. People will no longer have a voice or a say in their area, which is devastating for local communities.

My hon. Friend is spot on. In the planning system, there is a constant feeling that things are being done to people, not with them. The idea of localism and neighbourhood plans was to fight that. We know that local plans deliver more housing with neighbourhood plans, because the neighbourhood chooses where it goes, so it is in keeping with what the local village or parish wants. I will come on to that, because that is the key point.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. I told him beforehand that I am not speaking today and will only make an intervention because neighbourhood plans specifically apply to England. In Northern Ireland, community planning partnerships bring together public services, residents and businesses, but they do not directly determine specific planning decisions. Does he agree that planning applications could be passed quicker through greater integration with the public and that we should look at a UK-wide strategy? He has lots of wisdom and knowledge, and he has explained this issue for all our benefit today. Does he agree that that might be a way forward?

Can I check the hon. Gentleman’s wellbeing, as he is not making a speech today? Is he fine and dandy? [Laughter.]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. For someone who is not speaking, he articulates his point very well. He makes a really important point: different parts of the UK have a different approach, and there should be shared learning. Joining up community hubs is really important, especially in rural areas, where there are limited numbers of sports fields, doctors, shops and schools. The ability to bring businesses and the community together is good not only for the Government, so that they can deliver the housing, but for the local populace, to better understand and buy into what is being delivered. That is the whole point of neighbourhood plans.

At the end of March 2025, the Government were aware of 1,800 neighbourhood plans being in place. The Locality website states that over 2,400 communities have initiated neighbourhood plans and over 1,000 plans have been successful at referendum. CPRE says that 5,800 local green spaces have been designated in neighbourhood plans, showing that local communities are deciding what is best for them. That is all well and good, but why are these plans important and are they making any tangible difference? An assessment of the impact of neighbourhood plans in England for the University of Reading in May 2020 showed that

“Neighbourhood planning’s contribution to housing supply can be significant. Neighbourhood plans which are allocating housing sites are providing sites for an average additional to local plan allocation 39 units per neighbourhood plan.”

I like to think of this in terms of percentage gains, as the Sky cycling team did. These are huge percentage gains in local communities, which go on to choose to have this housing. We know that these plans will deliver about 11% more houses, and they have community buy-in, which is fundamental to getting people on board to say they will take more housing. That is why we need these plans. However, the Government announced last month that the funding is stopping.

The village of London Colney in my constituency is under siege from top-down housing targets, with a huge development being dumped on the border by the neighbouring local authority and an enormous rail freight terminal the size of 480 football pitches. My local residents in London Colney want their voice to be heard on the location and type of homes, but after three years of having access to the locality budget in developing a neighbourhood plan, the parish council has been told that there is no funding left to finish that plan. Does the hon. Member agree that where local parishes have made significant progress, funding should be reinstated so that they can complete those plans?

The hon. Lady makes a vociferous defence of her area; actually, she could have been speaking about my constituency in Leicestershire, which suffers all those things. The only thing I would say is that in my constituency we fought the national rail freight hub, won and pushed it back. The population was very pleased about that, but that speaks to people’s engagement and what they can do. The concern that we have to raise with the Government is about what happens when the funding stops. As I will say later, we need to understand where the Government stand on neighbourhood plans. Do they support them? Do they want them to be taken away? Do they want to see them wither? Will they strengthen them? The Opposition’s argument is that strengthening them would deliver the housing that people want in the way they want it.

On the funding that is stopping, Locality—the membership organisation that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government commissioned to deliver support services to neighbourhood forums to prepare their neighbourhood plans—has announced that it cannot proceed with new neighbourhood planning support services from 2025, and it has until the end of March 2026 to complete all existing technical support packages agreed with MHCLG. It believes that

“it will be difficult for some groups to progress their plans…we are not able to support the Champions Network and other learning and development opportunities”.

The National Association of Local Councils said:

“We are bitterly disappointed by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) decision to stop funding for the neighbourhood planning support programme…This decision is a significant setback for localism and the highly successful neighbourhood planning initiative”.

CPRE nationally says that that it is

The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the housing debate is about not just the number of homes but who determines where they should be built. He continues to point to the Liberal Democrats, but I gently remind him that our policy is not just about numbers, but about having a bottom-up approach whereby local authorities work out the homes they need in their local area, in contrast to the top-down approach pursued by his former Government and the current Labour Government.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing that out; I hope she will get in contact with her colleagues in the Liberal Democrat-run Hinckley and Bosworth borough council to make that exact point. They could take more control if they had an up-to-date local plan and learned from their neighbours in North West Leicestershire—part of which is now in my constituency—which does have a five-year land supply and an up-to-date local plan, and is making the best of that because it is able to take in business rates and turn that into a positive. The community chooses where development goes and has control over it. The mechanism is there, and I have been raising this issue with the last Government and this Government.

I am keen to ensure that the Government are able to kick local decision making in the right direction to prevent failings. Neighbourhood plans are the protective mechanism that can deal with that. I argued with the last Government, and will argue with this Government, that neighbourhood plans should have more weight, especially where there is no up-to-date local plan, because that would do exactly what the hon. Lady is asking for. They allow communities to have infrastructure and amenities, in keeping with the their heritage and environment, without top-down speculative developments that place 100, 200, 300, 500 or 1,000 houses on top of them. Communities just will not swallow that. That is the key and why I secured this debate.

Let me continue with the example of my constituency. We now have the prospect of devolution, with 21 councils getting a legal invite to change the way in which they structure themselves. I am not sure about other Members, but if I got a “legal invite” from the court, I would not ignore it. This is being imposed on local governments. In my area, we have at least three different versions of what devolution will look like. This will have a drastic impact on planning, yet we have no idea of what the neighbourhood plans or planning authorities will look like, especially if we are divided into one, two or three different unitaries.

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. On the devolved issue, which is slightly different in Northern Ireland compared with the rest of GB, there has been a planning proposal in my area for about seven years to develop a good-quality hotel close to where the Open golf championship will take place next week. That has been delayed not by problems, complaints or objections from local residents, but by a politically inspired complaint extraneous to the constituency. Does the hon. Member agree that we need to address the issue in a more holistic way, to try to get development that most people can agree with and want to see progressed as quickly and effectively as possible?

The hon. Member makes a fantastic point. It is about getting that balance. There will always be nimbys, but I find that many of my constituents understand that we need more housing for the young and for older people to downsize into, and more businesses and infrastructure for jobs and creating wealth. The question is their involvement and the understanding of the community, and being plugged into decision making.

The whole idea of localism is that local communities know best. The Government cannot do everything, so we should empower the people at the bottom to make choices, and they will do. The evidence backs that up, which is why I would like to know why the Government seem to be reneging on localism. In response to parliamentary questions, the Government’s answers have been ambivalent:

“Government remains of the view that neighbourhood plans can play an important role in the planning system. Communities can continue to prepare neighbourhood plans where they consider that doing so is in their best interests.”

The Government believe:

“Support for neighbourhood planning groups should be possible without further Government funding.”

They also state:

“The Government has no target for neighbourhood plan take-up.”

This is why I secured this debate: do the Government want to scrap neighbourhood plans, or simply phase them out? If they believe in neighbourhood plans, why are they taking away the funding? How do they expect volunteers to deliver the change that the Government and the Opposition want to see, without the means to deliver it?

What protections can be put in place for villages and parishes that are using neighbourhood plans, especially when there is no up-to-date local plan? How can we hold to account local councils, such as Liberal Democrat-run Hinckley and Bosworth borough council, for not delivering a local plan? The plans were almost designated under the previous Government, but that would be a big step to take. Fortunately, we have seen progress in planning improved, but at the end of the day we are open to speculative development, and there does not appear to be a mechanism to hold local councils to account.