Neighbourhood Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2016-12-13
Topic: Housing
Gavin Barwell (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady is entitled to hold that view, but I take a slightly more localist one. Local authorities should decide whether they want to publish that information. Commercial confidentiality makes that difficult in some cases. To a degree, her proposal recognises that, because it would not mean access in every single case. However, I am not persuaded of the need to legislate In the two or three minutes available, I want to address planning conditions, which my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset mentioned in his excellent brief speech. It is not the Government’s approach to blame the planning system or anybody else for the housing problems the country faces. For 30 or 40 years, we have not built enough homes, and a range of people are responsible for that. Governments of different political colours have not done enough on infrastructure funding. There are problems in our planning system, but that is not a personal attack on planners. We need to reform that system to make it easier to release land and to speed up the process of building homes. We need to change the local house building politics in our communities. To a degree, that is what neighbourhood planning is all about. We need to diversify the market so that a far bigger range of people build our homes The Prime Minister has given me a very clear brief, however. We should look at anything that makes it more difficult to build the homes that we desperately need in this country. There is very clear evidence about this, and that is not just from developers—hon. Members might say, "Developers would say that wouldn’t they"—but from the District Councils Network. In its evidence, it acknowledges that an overuse of planning conditions means that it takes longer to move from the point at which we get planning approval for housing to the point at which spades go into the ground In the year to June 2016, the planning reforms that the coalition Government and this Conservative Government have enacted led to the granting of a record number of planning applications for housing in this country—for 277,000 homes. Rather than being complacent about that, I take the opposite attitude. People cannot live in a planning application. It is all very well reforming the planning system and getting consent for more homes, but we need to turn those planning consents into built homes around the country. That involves looking at a range of issues, one of which, as the hon. Member for City of Durham rightly said, is the resourcing of planning departments, and their ability to deal with this work and to conclude section 106 agreements quickly. We will do something about that. Another problem is the performance of our utility companies in some parts of the country, and we will do something about that. Another is the performance sometimes of our major developers, which are too slow to build out, and we will address that There is clear and compelling evidence, however, that one of the factors that leads to this problem is the overuse of planning conditions and, in particular, the use of pre-commencement conditions—when a local authority essentially says, "Before you can even get a spade in the ground, here is a long list of things that need to be done." In some cases, such conditions are justified, such as for archaeological works, when things need to be done before building starts, but there is plenty of evidence, as presented to the Public Bill Committee, that such conditions are being misused in many cases, and the Government are determined to put a stop to it. We are determined to get the homes that we desperately need in this country built, and the Bill is a first step in that process. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.