Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

I beg to move,

That this House believes planning works best when developers and the local community work together to shape local areas and deliver necessary new homes; and therefore calls on the Government to protect the right of communities to object to individual planning applications.

It was only last month in the Queen’s Speech debate that we warned the Government that they would reap a political whirlwind if they went ahead with their plans to silence communities and hand control over planning to developers. They felt the first blasts of that whirlwind in Chesham and Amersham, but it will not finish there because it is fair to say that the Conservatives’ planning reforms are not popular with voters. That is not because voters are nimbys, as Ministers rather offensively like to brand them, but because residents rightly want and deserve a say over how their own neighbourhoods are developed.

Under the Conservatives’ proposals, planning decisions will be taken away from democratically elected local councils and handed to development boards appointed by Ministers in Whitehall. These new quangos will help zone areas for development. Residents living in areas zoned for growth will find that they no longer have an automatic right to object to individual planning applications on their own doorsteps, no right to object to oversized blocks at the end of the street, no right to object to concreting over precious green space, and no right to object to new developments that overburden local infrastructure such as roads, doctors’ surgeries, schools or public transport.

I can quite understand why the hon. Gentleman wants to make a doomed bid for prosperous Tory voters in the south-east, but will he answer the question, on behalf of my children, young professional people working in London and the south-east: how on earth are they going to get on to the property market?

The point the right hon. Gentleman makes is important. If he listens to my speech, he will hear me go on to talk about the 1 million consented homes that have not been built, which all those people could be living in if the Government would address that issue, rather than tackle the wrong issue, which they seem intent on doing, despite the backlash from their own political supporters against their proposals.

Under the Government’s proposals, residents will be gagged from speaking out, while developers will be set loose to bulldoze and concrete over local neighbourhoods pretty much at will. These proposals are nothing less than a developers’ charter that silences local communities, so developers can exploit local communities for profit.

The hon. Gentleman talks about the Government’s proposals. I think that he should bring them here and table them in this House, because all that we on the Government Benches have seen is a White Paper. We have not seen the Government’s response to that. Perhaps he has.

It is pretty fair to say that a White Paper is Government proposals.

Why would the Government do something so desperately unpopular with their own voters, let alone with all the rest of voters? Well, since the current Prime Minister took office, donations to the Conservative party from major developers have increased by nearly 400%, according to analysis by openDemocracy. That money was an investment in expectation of a return, and here it is. The Prime Minister is paying back developers by selling out communities.

The Government’s proposals have been criticised by the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Town and Country Planning Association, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Local Government Association, the Countryside Alliance and even the National Trust, but they have also been criticised by Members on the Government’s own Benches. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), a distinguished former Prime Minister, says:

“We need to ensure that that planning system sees the right number of homes being built in the right places. But we will not do that by removing local democracy, cutting the number of affordable homes that are built and building over rural areas. Yet that is exactly what these reforms will lead to.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 1051.]

That was the former Conservative Prime Minister speaking about the Government’s proposals. The right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) says:

“Increasingly, it looks like the Government are not interested in what local people think at all. I urge the Minister to think about the impact of showing contempt for local democracy.”—[Official Report, 8 October 2020; Vol. 681, c. 1063.]

That was a senior member of the Housing Minister’s own party accusing the Government of showing contempt for local democracy. The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) puts it like this—

Does the hon. Member agree that this is not about the number of houses, but about the whole infrastructure around housing applications —accessibility, connectivity, access to schools and green places? The planning system is not just about building the number of houses, but about building them in the right places with the right infrastructure around them.

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, and certainly new homes need appropriate infrastructure to allow communities to thrive. That is one of the important reasons why local communities need a say over planning and development—a say that the Government are intent, unfortunately, on taking away from them. Regeneration cannot be something that is done to communities; it must be done with them. The current planning system does not work well enough, that is for sure, but the answer cannot be to carve local communities out of a say over their own neighbourhoods. It should be to incentivise developers to build the homes they have approval for.

The motion before the House is a modest proposal that simply invites Members to vote for what many Government Members say they believe in. It simply asks the Government to guarantee that residents will retain the right to a hearing over individual developments on their own streets, in their own neighbourhood or on their own local green space. We are asking for nothing more than what Government Members have already said they want. Their own Front Benchers clearly are not listening to them, so here is the chance for them to make the point more clearly. Members’ constituents would be astonished if their MP failed to vote for something that they say they support, so I urge Members in all parts of the House to come together this afternoon. Let us work cross party, across the Chamber, and take a stand for the communities that we all represent.

Order. It will be obvious to the House that a great many people wish to speak in this debate and the next debate this afternoon, so we will have to begin with a time limit of three minutes, which will be immediately imposed.

I am sure that the entire House enjoyed the performance of the hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), the shadow Housing Minister, although I have to say that the closest he came to accuracy, Madam Deputy Speaker, was when he addressed you as Madam Deputy Speaker. However, at least he gives me the opportunity to put the case for a transparent, engaging and modern planning system that will help to deliver the homes that we need, to give everyone in our country the chance, if they want to, to get on to the housing ladder.

Our planning reforms are a sensible set of proposals to address the failures of the English planning system, which was conceived almost three quarters of a century ago and which many accept is now too slow, too difficult to navigate and too off-putting for the broad mass of communities. Right now, it can take up to seven years to adopt a local plan. Only 41% of local authorities have an up-to-date plan and some have no plan at all, all of which puts much of their communities at risk of speculative development.

Talking about councils that have no plan, I refer the House to my Labour-led council in Bury. Does the Minister agree that while we want democratic engagement, the worst thing possible is to have that engagement and not listen to the people, as my council is doing to the over 10,000 people who want protection of the green belt, every single one of whom is being ignored?

I hope that my hon. Friend’s council does listen, and I also hope, for that matter, that the Greater Manchester Mayor listens. We have given them £75 million of public funds to invest in brownfield remediation. Let him use it effectively for his constituents in Greater Manchester.

Individual planning applications can take up to five years to determine, in addition to plans potentially taking up to seven years. The system is not fast enough and it is not consistent, nor is it clear or engaging enough. We are committed to improving the system, because our reforms will protect our valuable and beautiful green spaces, with vital protections for the green belt.

The Government’s Environment Bill rightly protects environmental net gain. How can that possibly work within a zonal planning system?

We are determined to bake in biodiversity net gain of 10%. We are determined to look at recovery networks and also to ensure that we introduce a future homes standard. We will make sure that, baked into these plans and beyond, the environment comes first and foremost. I shall say a few more words about that in a moment.

Will the Minister allow me to intervene?

I will allow my hon. Friend very briefly.

In Wycombe, in the especially treasured area of Gomm Valley, there was public consent for a plan to put in some houses that actually increased environmental amenity. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the public need the opportunity to say no, but the incentives to say yes, because they can see the gains for their community? May I also invite him to look at plans that I put forward in 2014 that would do just that?