Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-23
Topic: Housing
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am pleased to be discussing these amendments today, particularly in the light of the conversation that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and I had yesterday. For a horrible moment I thought that my daughter actually lived next door to his friends. Thank God that she lives across the road. Nevertheless, it was a very weird conversation. The noble Lord’s wife and I went to the same school, and we found out yesterday that in so many things, in terms of our background, we were far closer than we thought. My daughter is indeed one of those pesky individuals who votes Conservative I also get the broader point about the changing face of communities. Jesmond has over the years changed remarkably as the community has become fuller of student properties. The local authority and the university are making huge moves to create more purpose-built accommodation for students and to ensure that Jesmond starts to restore to itself the very nice community feel that it once had. The Government recognise this need as well, encouraging local authorities to provide much more purpose-built student accommodation While I fully support the intention of the amendment I do not think it is necessary, because we already have in place the mechanisms to deliver it. Our NPPF is clear that local planning authorities should have a clear understanding of housing needs in their area. It encourages local authorities to identify the accommodation needs of different groups within the community and to plan proactively to support them. This includes recognising the needs of students. This is supported by planning guidance. In March 2015 we strengthened our guidance to re-emphasise to local planning authorities their duty to plan for sufficient student accommodation, whether it consists of communal halls of residence or self-contained dwellings, and whether it is on campus The amendment would also require local planning authorities to give higher priority for student housing than other groups in society. There is no need to adopt quite such an approach. It is important that local planning authorities plan for a mix of accommodation, including for the student population as well as for the needs of all residents and different groups in the community. That is what the NPPF expects. If they do not make adequate provision, they risk having an unsound local plan Amendment 102C on planning and community development seeks to ensure that local authority funding is available for community developments and is taken into account when carrying out its duty to promote starter homes. The noble Lords, Lord Palmer and Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, drew attention to the need for funding to be made available for community developments and I thank them for doing so. I do not disagree that local authority funding should be used for new community developments As a key objective of national planning policy, local planning authorities need to plan positively for the infrastructure needs of their area, which would include community development projects. I reiterate what I said earlier in Committee that nothing that we are doing to promote starter homes will fundamentally change the importance of having good infrastructure in place to support new development. Planning decisions for all developments, including those that contain starter homes, will still need to be made in accordance with local planning policy, subject to the starter homes requirement and other material considerations. Infrastructure considerations that can be taken into account as part of the decision-making process will clearly need to be issued The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, mentioned the community infrastructure levy. The Section 106 agreements and the community infrastructure levy provide mechanisms for local authorities to secure funding for infrastructure, including community developments. As I have mentioned, we intend to exempt all starter homes from the community infrastructure levy. However, for the starter home element of any new development, local planning authorities will still be able to secure Section 106 for site-specific infrastructure improvements that might be required. Where there is a proposed development involving market housing and starter homes, the local planning authority is still able to use the sale on the market homes element to help fund the infrastructure required to support the development, assuming of course that it has a charging schedule in place With those comments, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.