Town and Country Planning — House of Commons, 2020-09-30
Topic: Housing
Clive James Charles Betts (Labour, Centre-left): The planning system is there so that individuals and organisations can develop sites and buildings appropriately. It is also there to protect the community from inappropriate development. Permitted development rights confer rights on some individuals but take away rights from others to have their say on developments. They take away community rights to object and to have an application turned down. That is a very important and serious issue that we all ought to be addressing I want to talk about space standards. Shortly after the Government produced their independent review of conversions under permitted development, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) drew attention, I asked the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions whether it was reasonable that flats of 16 square meters were allowed to be built, which was 1 square metre larger than the footprint of his car. Clearly, it is not a reasonable size for properties. The Prime Minister’s response to my question, which was welcome, was that the Government will "give people the space they need to live and grow in the homes that we will build."—[Official Report, 22 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 2149.] Given that response, I wrote to the Housing Minister on behalf of the Select Committee on 4 August to ask what he was doing to put the Prime Minister’s commitment into effect. I have not had a reply to that letter. I thought the Minister had either forgotten about it or was waiting to reveal a significant change of policy. It appears that it is the latter. At least on that issue, we now have some recognition that local authorities can take into account the issue of space standards, along with the right to light and the impact on the wider environment from permitted development applications. That is welcome, because properties of 16 square metres or even smaller are nonsensical and not fit in the modern age for anyone to live in. In terms of section 106, this is a serious matter. If the Government are seriously going to allow more development without 106 commitments, that will simply mean we have fewer affordable rented homes built, because the reality today is that the majority of affordable rented homes come through 106 commitments. That will have a significant impact on communities up and down the country. Why are the Government excluding permitted development from that obligation? I have not seen any justification for that. That is what happens, and it is important, so we ought to take account of it The Select Committee produced a report in 2019 on the future of the high street, "High streets and town centres in 2030", which we are going to update in the light of the covid situation. We looked at permitted development. There are some odd properties that had been for retail use and can be converted for residential use perfectly reasonably, and those should be encouraged and helped. That can be done through the planning system now, if the development is appropriate. The problem is that some of our high streets and town and city centres need more radical reconstruction. They need to be redeveloped significantly and cleared. That is why we called for improved compulsory purchase order powers for councils in our report. However, we can find in a couple of years’ time that the local plan proposing the clearance of a derelict and underused retail area is made more difficult to construct and implement, because it seeks to get a CPO and demolish derelict retail properties that have just been made into residential homes. Trying to put together rights to convert—and properly convert—in the light of wider local planning situations simply is not taken account of Our 2019 report therefore said: "The Government should suspend any further extension of PDRs, pending an evaluation of their impact on the high street." Other organisations have gone further. The Town and Country Planning Association, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Institute of British Architects, and the Chartered Institute of Housing have all called for an impact assessment of the PDRs that have been allowed and changed over the last few years and those proposed for the future. Indeed, the Select Committee first called for an impact assessment back in 2012. If the Secretary of State and the Minister believe there are just benefits and no disbenefits from expanding PDR, why will they not commit now to do a full impact assessment of the changes made previously and the changes proposed now?