My Lords, as we begin our discussions on the detail of the planning section of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, it is important to explain that, although our amendments necessarily cover the detail of the various clauses, there is huge concern in local government about some of the fundamental principles that underlie the proposed changes in the Bill. We absolutely must ensure that local plans, with the input of local people and democratically elected representatives, retain their primacy over anything that is drawn up centrally in Whitehall.
As currently written, whether intentional or not, the Bill would give primacy to the national department management policies, which is a very significant change indeed from the National Planning Policy Framework that currently exists and which, as we discussed earlier, is guidance rather than statue. We all recognise the need to have a framework to guide planning policy, but it should always give primacy and flexibility to local areas to ensure that planning meets their local needs, enables the voice of their local residents and businesses to be expressed through the planning system, and meets the test of local democratic accountability that is so important in shaping our places.
Noble Lords will have received significant numbers of briefings on this part of the Bill, as we have, from some of the most respected bodies in this field: the Local Government Association, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Town and Country Planning Association, CPRE and the Better Planning Coalition. It is fair to say that most of them welcome the focus on planning in the Bill, although perhaps some of them, like me, would have preferred a dedicated planning Bill, which would have enabled an even greater focus on what needs to be done to make our planning system fit for the 21st century.
All these organisations focus on the essential element of planning, which is that it must be local and properly engage local people and businesses. The Royal Town Planning Institute, for example, says:
“If those living in newly devolved areas are going to truly benefit from the Bill they need to be given the planning freedoms to innovate and deliver planning policy that works best for them. We’ve seen that development management policies can be an effective tool to stimulate growth, provide energy, transport and housing decisions strategically, and experiment with different policy options to meet local needs.”
The Local Government Association expresses considerable concern about the ability to retain local autonomy and decision-making over plans in the light of the NDMP proposals in the Bill, saying that,
“in reality, local plans will be constrained in the event that they conflict with National Development Management Policies, in which case the latter will take precedence. We have previously sought an amendment to reverse this proposal so that local plans will take precedence in the event of conflict. This is critical to ensure that that one of the key principles of the planning reforms—‘a genuinely plan-led system’— is enshrined in the Bill.”
The LGA goes on to emphasise that local councils should have the flexibility to respond to local, complex and changing circumstances.
The CPRE has gone to the extent of seeking extensive legal advice on these issues. It strongly supports our Amendments 189, 190, 191 and 192, as well as an amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. It has provided a detailed legal critique, particularly regarding Clause 86,
which questions whether there is any legal scope for local development plans and NDMPs to vary from each other in any way, which, as it puts it, is likely to dissuade local authorities from seeking to set local policies for fear that they will be rendered obsolete by subsequent changes to NDMPs. It goes on to comment that according to Clause 86 as drafted, if there were to be a tension between a national policy and a local one, there could be no assessment of balance. The national policy would always win out, despite its not having been given any democratic scrutiny. The decision-makers’ scope to make a locally appropriate decision is therefore removed.
The CPRE is also concerned about the fate of neighbourhood plans under this proposed new system, as it says they could become out of date quickly if NDMPs change—for example, if there is a change of Secretary of State, which is not an unusual occurrence in recent times. For communities which have spent months or years working on their neighbourhood plan, this could destroy their trust in the planning system. The CPRE’s legal opinion from Landmark Chambers in November last year demonstrated that the Bill is a radical departure from the current system and would elevate NDMPs to the top of the planning hierarchy, a position which the Government at Second Reading stated was not the intention of the legislation. However, it appears from the way the Bill is currently drafted that it takes planning into uncharted waters which are both centralising and undemocratic.
We come to this important group of amendments with that backdrop, which is a very important context against which we should consider this section of the Bill. My Amendment 183, along with amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Lansley, address issues relating to how local plans are kept up to date. I have to say that planning officers may feel that they are already in a situation where local plans are permanently in preparation. That is because the many stages of plan preparation take a long time, as does the process of inspection, public inquiry and so on. All this means that by the time you have a full plan in place, you are already dealing with the review of that plan.
However, with the pace of change, rapid developments in the economy and the need to take account of demographics and changes in our communities and to tackle climate change, we must ensure that we simplify and enable the renewing and refreshing of development plans every five years. This would ensure that local authorities do not have to face the cliff edge of an enormous, complex and expensive planning exercise which would result in the longer intervals of up to 30 years given between plan reviews. This will require corresponding changes within the Planning Inspectorate, but they would need to be considered in relation to the Bill in any case.
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Amendment 189, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, is a probing amendment to express our concern that Parliament might have no say in determining or scrutinising the national development management policies as the Bill is currently written. Clause 87 appears to give all the powers to the Secretary of State, saying that such policies are
“a policy … of the Secretary of State in relation to the development or use of land in England, or any part of England, which the Secretary of State by direction designates”.
This is an astonishing, centralising and undemocratic move. I doubt whether the current Secretary of State has ever even visited Stevenage, so just how he would be able to come to conclusions about the best planning policies for our area, or any area, from his office in Whitehall, I am completely unsure.
Amendment 190, also tabled by my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, aims to curb the centralising tendencies in Clause 87 by stating that policies in the NDMP should not impose absolute standards on local authorities as they make their local plans, and suggests instead that minimum standards are applied. Amendment 191 probes the powers given in Clause 87 to the Secretary of State unilaterally to amend or modify national management development policies. My Amendment 191B aims to deal with our concerns at the heart of the centralising of planning proposals as currently written into the Bill, by introducing requirements relating to sustainability assessments of NDMP policies and increasing the public consultation requirement and parliamentary scrutiny based on the processes in the Planning Act 2008 for setting out national planning policy statements.
It bears restating that it simply cannot be right that the Secretary of State can determine, revoke and amend planning policies that affect every single place in the country without appropriate public consultation or any parliamentary scrutiny.
Amendment 194 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock addresses transparency relating to the cost of this new NDMP process and would ensure that there is an annual statement of those costs. It also refers to questions which still need to be answered about how local authorities will be supported to make changes arising from NDMPs. Presumably if the Secretary of State can amend them at any time, at any time a diktat could come down and local authorities would have to deal with it. This amendment is about how they would be supported to do so.
I have referred previously to our concerns about the potential for the centralising proposals in the Bill to silence parliamentary and local voices and diminish the democracy of the planning process. My noble friend Lady Hayman’s Amendment 196 attempts to address this by asking for a strategy on public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny of national management development policies to be published by the Government within 120 days of the Act being passed. We are interested to hear the Minister’s views on this.
My Amendment 216 would give local authorities the flexibility and freedom to act in accordance with the needs of their economy, local area and public consultation by removing the requirement that they comply with the NDMP where the national policies conflict with the interests of their areas. In a similar vein, Amendment 220 gives flexibility to local authorities to set their local plans according to local needs where these conflict with national development management policies.
The planning clauses of the Bill as currently written will override the stated intention of the Government, which is towards devolution. Centralising planning
and preventing it taking account of the voices of local people and their democratically elected representatives, let alone giving ultimate power to the Secretary of State to determine planning policy with no parliamentary scrutiny, is taking it in entirely the wrong direction, back to the dark ages rather than forward to the kind of democracy where people can participate and engage in decision-making, where they feel they have had a say in place-making for the area in which they live and work, and develop the kind of trust in institutions entrusted with planning that will enable wider confidence in the system to level up and regenerate every part of the UK. I beg to move.