Neighbourhood Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-10
Topic: Housing
Teresa Pearce (Labour, Centre-left): I am afraid I need to move on because many hon. Members wish to speak and the hour is late. [Interruption.] There are lots of Government Members The Bill makes provision for permitted development to be recorded on the planning register. Given the existing pressures and further commitments in the Bill— I have mentioned the wider question of resourcing—I should like the Minister to consider the funding of planning authorities. When local authorities are pressed for resources—they must decide, for example, between child protection and adult social services—planning is often squeezed. The Bill attempts to streamline compulsory purchase powers, and includes temporary possession of land to enable schemes to store equipment and machinery so that they can be delivered. The temporary possession of land has been used widely in my constituency under the Crossrail Act 2008. The proposed changes to compulsory purchase orders would enable councils to capture the value from increased land prices to invest in the local infrastructure needed to complement and facilitate new housing schemes. While that can accelerate development, CPOs still require approval from the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, it is hoped that those measures will help to encourage development Perhaps the most striking thing about the Bill is what is not in it. Along with the Local Government Association and others, we welcome the news that the Government have not included the planned privatisation of the Land Registry. Will the Minister clarify whether the initiative to privatise the Land Registry has bitten the dust? Has it been kicked into the long grass or is in the rubbish bin The Bill is quite different from the measure outlined in the Queen’s Speech earlier this year. The Prime Minister said in her conference speech last week, "something…we need to do: take big, sometimes even controversial, decisions about our country’s infrastructure." However, in the Bill, the Government’s proposal to place the National Infrastructure Commission on a statutory footing has been withdrawn. I hope that the Government will think again The Bill aims to build houses, but it does nothing to build communities. The failure to provide the commission with statutory powers to enable strategic decision making on infrastructure is a missed opportunity to tackle the housing crisis. The House Builders Association, which represents small and medium-sized builders, said that the Bill was unlikely meaningfully to increase supply This is the sixth piece of legislation in the past six years to make provision for planning. Another Bill passes and the Government fail adequately to resource planning departments, which have faced a 46% cut in funding over the past five years. A recent survey by the British Property Federation identified under-resourcing as the primary cause of delays to development. Another Bill passes, and the Government fail to increase the transparency of viability assessments, which many people believe is the key to ensuring that there is sufficient and appropriate affordable housing. Another Bill passes and we are no closer to developing garden cities and new towns, which we need to build to ensure that our children and our children’s children can find a home of their own The Bill will not deliver social housing and the genuinely affordable homes that are desperately needed. It will not provide facilities on new housing developments that are required to build communities, and it is unlikely to facilitate opportunities for the struggling SME builder, or tackle the growing skills crisis in the construction sector. The Bill has failed to tackle those issues, but I am interested to hear the Minister say that there is an appetite to look at the Bill and perhaps amend it in Committee. If it is not amended, the missed opportunity will manifest itself in a continued housing crisis until the Government can step up and match their rhetoric with substance.