Planning Bill

My Lords, since garden grabbing was debated and voted on in this House on Report, our amendment on the issue was debated yesterday in another place and, predictably, thrown out. During the debate, there was strong support from all parties for the need to protect gardens and open spaces. Indeed, it was heartening that on Report in this House the Minister said: "““We support the underlying aim of the amendment””.—[Official Report, 12/11/08; col. 694.]" However, when arguing against our garden preservation amendment, both the noble Baroness and the Minister in another place, John Healey, argued that there is sufficient protection within PPS3 to preserve gardens. The small print of PPS3 must be so small that this protection is unidentifiable. Even the Minister’s honourable friend Paul Truswell had to ask for clarification on how PPS3 can be used to address garden grabbing. The issue certainly is not clear to me, to local authorities or, indeed, to the Planning Inspectorate, especially as PPS3 defines previously developed land as, "““land … occupied by a permanent structure, including the curtilage of the developed land””." That definition specifically does not exclude gardens but it includes them within the curtilage of the house. This issue was not helped by John Prescott saying, when Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Planning Inspectorate, that the need for housebuilding was such that gardens were a legitimate source of development. We can go on debating whether PPS3 offers sufficient protection for gardens but it is obvious to me that, as I think the noble Baroness said, the policy is unclear about whether gardens can or should be protected. Another tenet of the Government’s arguments against the amendment has been that brownfield policy has been in existence for years and therefore a change of course now is either not necessary or too complicated. However, that is not the case. The previous version of the guidance, PPG3, issued by my noble friend Lord Patten in 1992 when Secretary of State, did not include any definition of gardens as brownfield, nor did it contain density targets. Indeed, the guidance discouraged residential infill where inappropriate and gave a broad discretion for councils to protect the character of their locality. It stated: "““Where authorities consider that the pressure for development and redevelopment is such as to threaten seriously the character of an established residential area which ought to be protected, they may include density and other policies in their local plans for the areas concerned, while avoiding undue rigidity. Policies may also need to cover the physical scale of new buildings, access, and in areas where new development is likely to have serious traffic implications, off-street car parking standards. Policies should take account of the character of particular residential areas … Where the planning authority considers that existing densities in a particular area should not be exceeded, a policy to that effect in the local plan can help to deter the speculative demolition of sound housing””." That policy gave gardens and open spaces the necessary protection while giving local authorities flexibility. The policy has now changed and it changed under this Government. I believe that they now recognise this, too, which is why they are offering us a review. I welcome the announcement that they made yesterday, which was repeated by the Minister, that there will be a review of this issue early in the new year, but that could signify either that the Government have accepted, however grudgingly, that there is a serious concern that must be addressed or that they simply wish to kick the subject into the long grass in the hope that it will go away. I hope that the former is the Government’s motivation. Indeed, I feel sure of that, given that the Minister said: "““We support the underlying aim of the amendment””.—[Official Report, 12/11/08; col. 694.]" As the underlying aim of the amendment is to protect gardens and green spaces in urban areas from infill and rapacious overdevelopment, the Government’s concession is very welcome. I hope that the Minister can furnish the House with some details of what form the review will take. One of the great difficulties in this area is that there are no reliable national figures and facts, because the Government do not collect them. There must therefore be an external review, not simply an internal department review of whether anything should be done. The review must be evidence-based, comprehensive and countrywide, encompassing all local planning authorities in England. What is the timescale of the review? The matter is urgent and concern is widespread. When will the review report? Will the Minister facilitate a debate in this House? I hope and expect that the Minister will agree that the following questions should be asked. What percentage of new homes is built on brownfield land? What percentage is built on existing gardens and green spaces? What is the density of such developments? How does that compare with the density of housing in the existing surrounding area? How many of these developments were refused by the planning authority as inappropriate development but were allowed on appeal by the Planning Inspectorate? How does each local planning authority interpret the local development framework set out in PPS3? Does each local authority’s framework provide specific protection for gardens and open spaces and, if so, how? These are the kinds of questions that must be asked. If the Government claim that they cannot act because there is no evidence of a problem, they must be prepared to gather the data that will allow us to ascertain the scale of the problem. The Minister in the other place said that he was not prepared to accept anecdotal evidence. These are the sorts of questions that must be asked if anecdotal evidence is ever to be allowed to be investigated in a fair, clear and statistical way. I have one more point. Given that the review will take place in 2009 and that, with the present state of the housing market, developers are reluctant to build any new housing, I hope that the Government will not be tempted to conclude that garden grabbing has been much reduced over the previous year or so and to go back to their old argument that PPS3 therefore gives sufficient protection for gardens. Unless the Government do something now, garden grabbing will return as soon as the property market strengthens. I do not doubt that the results will differ from local planning authority to local planning authority, but I am quite certain that, if the Government go about this review in a rigorous and impartial manner, the scale of the problem will quickly become apparent. Once we have got to that point, perhaps the Government will be more amenable to suggestions about how we can better protect our gardens.