argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Kathryn Jane Parminter (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am a strong supporter of brownfield first when it comes to housing, but I have a particular concern that the PIP proposals do not exclude brownfield sites that have very clear benefits for biodiversity and, by extension, to society—namely, land of high environmental value. That could be SSSIs, heathland, local wildlife reserves or habitats for some of our most precious species, such as red squirrels, water voles, or bluebell forests, you name it—some really special areas of our country The coalition Government put together some very strong safeguards for such land. I quote the NPPF, paragraph 111: "Planning policies and decisions should encourage the effective use of land by re-using land that has been previously developed (brownfield land), provided that it is not of high environmental value" The planning practice guidance goes on to say that brownfield land can have high ecological value and that, "planning needs to take account of issues such as the biodiversity value which may be present on a brownfield site before decisions are taken" My concern with the PIP proposals is: how can those very strong safeguards in the NPPF and the planning guidance, which make it clear that those decisions have to be looked at right at the early stage, be taken into account? The Minister said earlier that if something was not compliant with the NPPF, it would not happen. It seems quite clear to me that the NPPF is saying that land of high environmental value is not compliant and it should therefore be excluded These sites are important, but they are not a huge number. My understanding is that English Nature has assessed the figures and we are looking at a total of between 6% and 8% of all brownfield land. They are important sites, but they are only a small number. Therefore, it would be difficult to argue that, by removing them from the PIP provisions, they would somehow prevent use of brownfield sites for housing overall. Clearly the number is quite contained They are a small number but they are vital. Most of our species—some 65%—particularly those of most concern, are declining. We need to take account of that, not only for the effects on nature and biodiversity, but for the impact on quality of life as well. Therefore, there is a strong case for land of high environmental value to be excluded. I beg to move.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Kathryn Jane Parminter (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank the noble Baroness for her comments and her acceptance that this is an important issue. It clearly is, given the strength of feeling in the Committee, and I am grateful to colleagues for rowing in on it. The Minister seems to be saying that it is up to local authorities. If one is being charitable, it is a belief in the spirit of localism: it is okay for local authorities to do this because they can look back to the planning guidance that we have already provided. However, the words "need not", which the noble Lord, Lord Deben, picked up, are critical. If they need not allocate this land, it means that they can allocate it. However, that is clearly contrary to the provisions set down by the coalition in the NPPF, which says that this should be excluded. Colleagues in Committee have shown that this designation is, in principle, too important not to be included in the Bill. I will withdraw the amendment now, but I am sure that we will return to it on Report.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Graham Norman Tope (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 96A. I begin by raising a couple of issues, in the hope that by the time I finish—which will not be long—clarification may have arrived. The Housing and Planning Minister in the other place stated that the mayor will be consulted on, and have the power to call in, applications of technical details consent where they are for schemes of strategic importance, and gave the assurance that the mayor will have an opportunity to influence the process of boroughs identifying sites of strategic importance. I hope that, when she replies, the Minister here can clarify exactly what that means in practice and how the mayor’s strategic planning powers which exist now will be taken properly into account in the new system. For instance, "an opportunity to influence the process by providing his views",—[Official Report, Commons, Housing and Planning Bill Committee, 3/12/15; col. 548.] is significantly weaker than the current power to take over an application. Although the mayor may still be able to take over an application at technical consent stage, the principle of the type of development will already have been set. That highlights why we are moving these amendments today Amendment 92B would give the mayor power within Greater London to grant development orders. Amendment 96A sets out the detail that he or she would have to follow in doing so, including a fairly full consultation process with a duty to respond to that consultation. That would directly correlate with the power of the Secretary of State elsewhere in the country. It is appropriate to an authority which has had a directly elected mayor, with a strategic planning role, for 16 years Many times during the progress of the Bill we have said that London is different. It is different in that respect and in terms of having a particularly high level of housing need. It has a strong economy and competing pressures for available land and high-density development. Almost all the land with housing potential within Greater London is brownfield and most has existing use in place. I speak as a London resident: if we are going to go down this route then the mayor and the Greater London Authority are better placed to understand London’s particular needs. That is why they are there. Their relationship with the London boroughs, while occasionally and understandably difficult, is on the whole very good and there is a continuous dialogue there. It is much more appropriate for the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority to have these powers in relation to Greater London than for them to be vested in the Secretary of State, who has to deal with the rest of country as a whole. We believe in devolution and this is very much a part of it. In this case it is to the GLA—what may follow elsewhere is not part of this amendment In essence, the purpose of these amendments is to give the Mayor of London—whoever that may be—the powers that the Secretary of State will have in the rest of the country. I beg to move.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Timothy Francis Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I rise very briefly as a member of the Select Committee to support Amendments 94A and 95A, so ably spoken to by both the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and simply to draw the Minister’s attention to a couple of paragraphs in the Select Committee report which directly bear on the planning-in-principle point. Paragraph 143 says: "These proposals have caused some concern. It was suggested that ‘principle’ and ‘detail’ in the planning system were closely related" One particular witness is quoted as saying: "This negates the whole basis of the fact that detail and principle in planning are intimately related. How is it possible to give permission for something in principle, without understanding its detailed design or flood risk mitigation or sustainable urban drainage or proportion of social housing? I could go on. It misunderstands the intellectual process of making planning decisions" So the Select Committee came to the conclusion in paragraph 148: "We are anxious to ensure that moves towards a permission in principle do not undermine the capacity of local authorities to develop, design and integrate key sites in a way that ensures that they function effectively and respond to local needs and aspirations. The relationship between principle and detail is important in the planning system. We recommend that the Government should carefully consider the impact its reforms could have upon this relationship. As a minimum, it is important that the process of granting permission in principle and Technical Details Consent should give due regard to design quality, sustainability, archaeology, heritage and all the other key components of place-making that would normally be required for the granting of planning permission" This amendment precisely reflects those concerns and I very much hope the Minister will have due regard to them.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
John Warren Shipley (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, Amendment 92HB would rewrite new Section 59A(2) that is inserted into the Town and Country Planning Act by this Bill. I thank the Royal Town Planning Institute for its advice on this amendment. As we know, the Government have indicated that they intend to use local plans and the proposed brownfield register as the vehicles for the new system of permission in principle. This should be made clearer in the Bill, and that is the subject of this amendment There are good reasons to limit permission in principle to sites in local plans. Since these have been subject to public consultation and public examination, there would seem to be a strong case for reducing any further handling of the principle of development in the interests of accelerating housing development and, just as importantly, demonstrating the importance of the plan However, I think that the Bill should limit permission in principle to sites in the proposed brownfield register. If there is to be such a register—and that is the Government’s intention—we need to know what kind of register it is to be, and whether any other document can be drawn up to grant permission in principle that would run counter to local democratic accountability. This amendment would provide for the qualifying document only to be a local plan or a register of the kind being introduced by new Section 14A This amendment would not in itself limit the permission in principle to the brownfield register, but it does limit it to local plans and the new Section 14A registers, which is a great improvement on the Bill. Secondary legislation should then be used to limit new Section 14A registers to the brownfield register. This is because using the Bill to define brownfield may in practice prove an unwieldy mechanism and would actually be better in secondary legislation I hope that this amendment is clear. I beg to move.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I tabled this as a sweep-up, in case we had missed something. I am not sure there is anything, but there may be one or two things. I was going to put it in a group, but the Labour Party said they wanted to keep it separate. Perhaps they have got something to say A couple of questions have occurred to me during the debate. One of the curiosities of getting planning permission is that anybody can apply for it for any piece of land. Is that also going to apply to permission in principle? That is something for the Minister to think about. The second question is slightly more substantive. We are told that permission in principle is just for housing, in the Bill or anywhere else. There may be other things associated with housing development, such as shops or local offices, but so long as it is housing led that is okay. In local development plans, allocations of land are usually for housing. In most cases, they do not say "housing with shops". When it comes to applying for planning permission, if people want a little area in the middle of the housing with two or three shops, everyone says that is wonderful and gives permission for it. How will permission in principle work in terms of categories? Will it have to be in the local plan, or the brownfield site register, that it is housing with associated ancillary things? If so, categories in local plans are going to have to be substantially revised. I just thought of that question and it seems to be a practical thing that needs to be looked at.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Robert Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I rise to support the direction of travel of my noble friend and to pick up on one of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord True, about the evolution of planning needs in an area that may have received a PIP some years before. It is important to know the answer to that question. It is also linked to what the Minister will tell us is meant by the phrase "housing-led" in the first place. Reference has been made to shops and maybe offices, but no one has mentioned clinics or schools when talking about housing-led. It would be really helpful to understand whether what might broadly be described as civic or public service buildings are included in that omnibus idea of housing-led neighbourhoods or housing-led sites. That is an important clarification that might help some of us to understand more completely what is envisaged here. Certainly if schools and public services buildings have to be identified separately, that raises a whole host of other questions which I do not think we have discussed so far I want to say to my noble friend who is concerned about brownfield sites that they are not necessarily only mills. I remember being fiercely lobbied as a junior Minister by two Deputy Speakers of the House of Commons about a country park in Lancashire, which I think was called Cuerdan Valley Park, a reclaimed mining area that is now, as the name suggests, a country park. Both MPs—one Conservative and one Labour, I have to say—were deeply concerned that part of this country park that was being designated as a brownfield site might be sold off for housing. They were very anxious about what would be likely to happen in those circumstances. It is an existing problem rather than just one that might be created by the new circumstances, but bearing in mind the increased importance of brownfield as a definition with a consequence, it would be sensible for the Minister to give some further attention to it.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Robert Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I fully understand that the Minister is going to write to us but if she could give us a hint about whether or not public service buildings, schools and clinics are included in the housing-led concept at this stage, that would be really helpful.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the Government Chief Whip has walked in so he will want me to beg leave to withdraw my amendment. I just want to say two things. First, I thank the Minister for a very comprehensive response to this series of brownfield questions we have all been asking. The only point I will pick up again is this: if the Secretary of State is to give guidance or send out regulations to authorities, will the Government please pay particular attention to the question of brownfield turning to greenfield over a period of time? Local authorities need the discretion to decide when that transition has occurred. Otherwise what is clearly, to everybody’s eyes, now a greenfield site will have to be built on because it used to have development on it 40 or 50 years ago or whenever it was. That is an important issue but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is very simple. Housing associations are organisations which have to run commercially. They therefore judge the viability of their new-build schemes on the basis of contributions that they get from the Housing and Communities Agency, contributions they put into it themselves, the cost of managing and repairing the properties over 30 years and the rents they will get in during that period We are an area which has not only low house prices but low rents, so there is a limit to what we can charge. These sites have been looked at in great detail. Some of them have been developed by the council in co-operation with the main housing association, which is the Stock Transfer Housing Association. The sites I am talking about, however, are simply not viable for social housing, just as they are not viable for anything else. The numbers do not add up, whether you are building for rent, for sale or for partial schemes. In some sites they do. For example, the council has developed some sites in Briarfield, where a majority of the houses have been sold, and in order to make the scheme viable and for other good reasons, some of them have been sold to the housing association. We are working together wherever possible, but the fact is that building new houses on a lot of the brownfield sites in a lot of these places, and certainly in Lancashire and neighbouring parts of Yorkshire, simply is not viable. Therefore, there has to be gap funding and some sort of subsidy—not a huge one, but it has to be there to make it possible.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Some local authorities were sensible enough, or foolish enough, according to your view—I was against what we did in our local authority, but we did it—to get rid of all their council housing. In our case, it was as a result of a quite disgraceful bribe from the previous Labour Government which people felt they simply could not turn down. It really was shocking, the amount of money that was thrown into it—not shocking for the tenants and the houses, because a lot of money went into those houses as a result of the stock transfer, and the local authority had all its debt written off as a result. The whole thing was a public scandal, but very good for the housing estates in Pendle. However, we do not have a housing revenue account, so we cannot do it. What we do is build properties through our development company, a half-owned council development company, highly successful, but, again, it has to be done. We do it on the basis of a 5% or 8% mark-up, profit, compared to the commercial people, who want 15% or even 20% on such sites.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am grateful for that reply. My only comment is that I want the Minister to say that non-viable sites will go on the register and that, together, we will work to find ways of making them viable and develop them. If the fund is now £2 billion instead of £1.2 billion or £1.3 billion, will somebody please tell me how we can get our hands on some of it, because we will use it well and build lots of new houses on brownfield sites? I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Graham Norman Tope (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, once again I support the noble Lord, Lord True, in as strong terms as he has spoken to his amendment. I added my name to it for the same reason. Until May 2014, I represented a town centre ward in an outer London suburb and I saw the start of this. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, it was entirely predictable and, sadly, the predictions have possibly more than come true. I, too, could quote statistics from my borough which are very similar to those which the noble Lord, Lord True, quoted but, at this time of night, I am not going to. I simply say that, in Sutton town centre—the area I represented for 40 years—between the coming into effect of prior approvals and 29 January 2015, when the Article 4 direction took effect, 28% of the office space was lost, just in that 18 months or so. That trend has continued One of the many arguments against these indiscriminate prior approvals is that they do not distinguish between occupied and vacant offices. Among the statistics given to me from the research done by the London Borough of Sutton was that 62% of the office space lost in the borough was either occupied or at least partly occupied. There are many other statistics to back it up, but the conclusion given to me by the council—and I am no longer a councillor—says: "The situation has now reached such a stage that the council’s economic development assessment states that the borough has an under supply of office space for the next 15 years" The noble Lord, Lord True, is absolutely right. I will happily join him in his campaign, although I am no longer a London councillor.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Donald Foster (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones asked a further question about the retrospective nature of the very welcome government proposals. I absolutely appreciate the real difficulties with retrospective legislation, but what advice and guidance will the Minister give to those music venues which will be affected before the change comes into effect? Can she also say what changes she will make to the guidance being given to local authorities So that the Minister is aware how serious this is, it is worth reflecting on the situation of the Fleece in Bristol, which started the campaign to change this. Chris Sharp, who led that campaign, points out that although he is pleased with the Government’s announcement: "The irony is that the venue that was doing the most to change the law is being left out in the cold" It continues to have a problem.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Timothy Francis Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am afraid that even as regards Amendments 99 and 100, the Minister has only a partially satisfied customer. As my noble friend has said, it is important that we look in a rather more granular fashion at some of the points that I have raised, particularly on the retrospective aspects and the difference between guidance and putting this on to the statute book I am concerned about precisely the point mentioned by my noble friend, which is the example of the Fleece in Bristol, where the local authority played a perfectly proper role. It took account of the NPPF and so on, but in the end it was the Planning Inspectorate that was the real problem. If the local authority is allowed to consider noise impact and then does so, what is the difference between that and the inspectorate perhaps being free or not to take that into account, and therefore it does not impose the same conditions as the local authority? Would it be different if we had something rather more obligatory on a local authority? Would that impose a higher duty on the Planning Inspectorate in those circumstances, thus avoiding the situation that the Fleece found itself in I am rather concerned about how strong this particular guidance is going to be. I recognise that the principle is floating around, but how much of a fix do we have on it in order to make sure that the future of our music venues is protected? I am not going to go any further at this time of night, but I would welcome a fairly detailed letter from the Minister. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Monroe Edward Palmer (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the intention is to get the development started within five years and finished within seven years so, as the noble Lord says, if you start one house and do nothing else, you will be caught by the fact that within seven years you have to complete the site. That is the protection against people using devices to partially develop a site.