Neighbourhood Planning Bill — House of Commons, 2016-10-10
Topic: Housing
Geoffrey Robert Clifton-Brown (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend has taken the words out of my mouth—I would do exactly that. We need to simplify neighbourhood plans, as we have done in this Bill. We need to give them greater weight, as we have done in the Bill However, there are problems even where there is a local plan in place. Stroud District Council has a local plan in place. I have a village in the very south of my constituency, which is huge—65 miles long—that has an advanced-stage, very professional neighbourhood plan, and there is also a local plan in place. However, a developer took the district council to appeal over an area right next to the cricket pitch and the village hall. The village was desperate not to develop it, but the decision was overturned on appeal. I would just say to my hon. Friend the Minister that, where there is a local plan and a neighbourhood plan in place, it should be de rigueur that the Planning Inspectorate does not overturn those plans on appeal, except in wholly exceptional circumstances. I warmly welcome the powers to look at pre-commencement orders. As a chartered surveyor, I have advised, on an unpaid basis, on a very big development in East Anglia. Although it was designated in the local plan from the beginning, the process took five years because of the over-zealousness of the local authority. Think of all the houses that could have been built by now if the over-zealous pre-commencement conditions were not in place Finally, I want quickly to move on to compulsory purchase because nobody has said much about that in this debate. I spent many months sitting on the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill Select Committee, and I have seen how HS2, as a major public acquiring authority, works. Some of the compulsory acquisitions, of which there were a very large number, were in my view over-zealous. We need to be careful about large acquiring authorities being over-zealous I am grateful for the provisions in the Bill on temporary acquisitions, but, equally, the requirement for such acquisitions should be tempered by what the acquiring authority needs to do on them. If it needs to demolish somebody’s house, proper compensation should be paid I am concerned about the provision to do away with the 10-year disturbance payment. Where there is an uplift in the value of the land, even subsequently, the person whose land has been acquired gets some benefit from that uplift. I heard what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said about the no scheme world. In theory, that is an ideal way of valuing a property—as a chartered surveyor, I know about these things—because it ignores the uplift, or indeed the fall, caused by the scheme itself. The danger is that the acquiring authority will acquire properties too cheaply, because there will be no allowance for any hope value for potential planning permission. Given that a lot of the big schemes are near centres of population, where the land will—if not immediately, at least in due course a few years down the line—get planning permission, it seems to me that the acquiring authority is getting an unnecessary advantage However, I warmly welcome the provisions for compulsory purchase whereby interest can be paid and payments in advance can be made. As we saw on the HS2 Bill, all these things are desperately necessary. With those few words, I warmly welcome this Bill.