Contribution
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. We are at the stage now where we are considering the Government’s significant changes—basically, removing decision-making from councillors on a huge scale, which gives me cause for concern—but I have decided to highlight just a couple of issues.
I shall start with Amendment 87F, which goes to the nub of one of these issues. The Government seem to be proposing, in Part 3, that councillors no longer make decisions and that they be handed over to officials, who are obviously not locally elected. Amendment 87F would require the reporting of planning permission that has been granted but not actually commenced. We already have plenty of homes that have planning approval right around the country, never mind the 700,000 homes that are currently sitting empty. I do not necessarily mean second homes; I am talking about other homes that are sitting there doing nothing. This is important to me when I think of communities around the country that have had huge housing targets imposed on them, when actually, the worst situation is in London, where, sadly, hardly any homes are being built at all. Instead, to be candid, we are seeing this rather Stalinist approach. Amendment 87F is intended to encourage the Government to make sure that at least we have some transparency on what is happening with all the homes for which development permission is being granted, but which are not being built.
Amendment 62A deals with what happens when officials talk about planning applications that do not fit within the boundaries of the plan. We have been told at various stages of the Bill that the real democratic process is in the initial creation of the plan. My experience of various places I have lived in is that communities rarely get involved—councillors do, of course, but there is a lot of consultation—until there is a particular development in their area. Nevertheless, even if the focus will now be put on consideration of where housing can happen—with, we hope, little further argument once that is done—officers should not then be allowed to approve planning applications that sit outside the plan.
The second issue is something I have seen in the Felixstowe area in particular. Land has been set aside for 2,000 new homes on the edge of Felixstowe, but we are already starting to see officers questioning the housing density being proposed, and making recommendations in line with other policies. If the same principle was applied to every single planning application, instead of the land that has been set aside, which is already substantial at a housing density of about 150 per acre or per hectare—I apologise; I cannot remember which—the implication is that three times the amount of land would be needed. That is a huge extension of what communities that have been encouraged to get involved in plans thought they were getting when they signed up to this.
That is why I believe that if councillors want to go beyond the boundaries set out in the local plan and change the density, they should be the ones making that decision, not officers. I am conscious that at this stage, we have not seen any draft regulations or proposals from the Government, and those would be helpful. But my intention today is to press again to make sure that, as and when the regulations come forward—of course, we do not have an opportunity to amend regulations —this issue is covered.
I fully endorse Amendment 63 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley. It makes a lot of sense that this House and the other House at least consider the proposals that are going to be put forward, which will determine the sorts of issues I have just mentioned. I also support Amendment 76 in the names of my noble friends on the Front Bench. Again, it seems quite straightforward that if there are valid planning reasons why something should be turned down, the elected councillors should get to say that.
This is a huge change that is coming and we need to make sure that there are safeguards for communities, so that when they vote for their local council, or in the future for their mayor, they have some assurance that these will actually have some powers rather than this being dictated from Whitehall, which has not always proved to be the best way to achieve housing in the past. With that, I beg to move.