My Lords, we come now to the clause in the Bill dealing with street votes, which has generated a substantial number of amendments, of which mine is the lead amendment. It seeks to ensure that a street vote cannot conflict with a local plan. This clause was not in the Bill when it was introduced in another place: it was introduced on the second day of Report. The Government have said that Clause 99
“is intended to encourage residents to consider the potential for additional development on their streets, and support a gentle increase in densities, in particular, in areas where additional new homes are needed”.
I expect the Minister will describe the provisions of the clause in more detail, so I will not spell them out.
We have heard the expression “gentle densification” several times from the Secretary of State; it is something he clearly approves of. I will need some clarification before I lend it my approval, for this reason. Michael Gove was in another place, as I was, when the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, then John Prescott, the Secretary of State, came up with a similar policy of promoting suburban development and the development of back gardens. Those with long memories will remember that all hell broke loose. On 7 March 2007, the Daily Mail thundered:
“Thirty thousand gardens every year ‘torn up’ due to Prescott's policies”.
My party was whipped to vote on a Friday for a Private Member’s Bill to block the policy. Greg Clark, the then shadow Minister, wanted gardens to be reclassified as greenfield sites, and he took up the cause because local authorities were powerless to stop gardens being built on. When my party won the 2010 general election, Greg Clark, then the Minister, ordered changes to planning rules that meant gardens will no longer be seen as brownfield land, ripe for development. Crucially, it meant that stronger powers were available to local authorities to block “gentle densification”.
I just mention that to put this proposal in a broad historic and political perspective and to suggest some caution before we endorse it. Normally, and indeed given the controversial background to this proposal, innovation such as this, in the planning world, would be preceded if not by a Green Paper then at least by some form of consultation to gauge its practicality and effectiveness. This would involve the LGA, the Royal Town Planning Institute and, of course, the public. Nothing of the sort ever took place. This policy emerged from a think tank and was fast-tracked into primary legislation, overtaking on the way some well thought-out and badly needed policies on housing reform, in sharp contrast to the normal process of policy formation. I believe that the Government are adopting a high-risk strategy and, rather than going straight into primary legislation, they should test the proposal in the usual way and then consider how best to proceed. There is nothing particularly urgent about this, and we need to get it right.
5 pm
One of the problems I have with the clause is that it sits very uneasily with the objective of planning policy in the rest of the Bill, which is to promote certainty in the planning process through the adoption of local development plans. The development plan is supposed to act as the master plan for development at the local level and should therefore take primacy. Any variation from the plan would then have to go through a process before development at variance with the plan can proceed. Uncertainty is a theme that has run through all our debates. Ad hoc street votes undermine that principle, leaving residents who participated in good faith in the plan-making stage and are satisfied with the outcome with no recourse if policies at variance with the plan are then adopted following a street vote. As the LGA has pointed out, you can make provision for gentle densification using processes that already exist. That is one reason why Clause 99 does not have the support of the LGA.
Let me turn to the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Of the 19 pages that the DPRR Committee devoted to this marathon Bill of 223 clauses and eight schedules, no fewer than six are devoted to this one clause. To summarise its verdict, this is what it said about its objections:
“A common thread runs through them all: in each case, we consider that the power relates to matters that are too significant in policy terms to be left to be determined by regulations”.
It wants whole sections of the clause removed. To date, I do not think the Government have responded to that report, which came out on 1 February.
I was grateful to my noble friend the Minister for allowing officials to brief me in February about this clause, and I pay tribute to the lengths she has gone to try to satisfy my curiosity about the Bill. But it would be fair, following that briefing, to say that the policy is still in gestation. I believe that, if the clause survives, the intention is not to roll out the policy nationwide immediately but to have some pathfinders to test-drive the policy. Can my noble friend confirm this?
I have a real problem with how this is going to work out in practice. Take a suburban road, which we will call “the Avenue”. On either side are detached houses with back gardens with access to the garden by the side of the house. Parallel to the Avenue on either side are two other roads. Their back gardens back on to the back gardens of the houses on the Avenue. Under this clause, residents in the Avenue can decide, in a majority street vote, to allow those who want to do so to build a bungalow or indeed a two-storey house in their back gardens. This will clearly have an impact on the residents in the parallel roads, who will find their privacy affected, as there will be a new home overlooking their garden. But crucially, they have no vote. Also, those residents on the Avenue who voted no will find that their garden too has an intrusive development next door. I would not want to be the Member of Parliament for the Avenue. There is a potential recipe here for major neighbourhood friction, and I just wonder if this policy has been fully thought through. It would put into the shade the disputes we read of about leylandii.
I mentioned the LGA’s opposition. It said:
“We do not support the proposals for street votes as it could add another layer of complexity to the planning system, stifling the production and implementation of local plans and the delivery of affordable housing.”
I do not believe that the policy will help to solve the acute shortage of affordable accommodation. I suspect that we may get a lot of attics making already expensive houses even more expensive.
To be constructive, I should say that I have no objection to street votes feeding into the development plan process. Appropriate account could then be taken of the outcome in formulating the local plan, not least in formulating required likely future infrastructure such as schools, GP surgeries, transport infrastructure and the rest. However, if development happens at random and outside the local plan process, as proposed in this clause, that could lead to significant infrastructure shortfalls in local areas, with associated negative impacts on communities and potentially increasing community resistance to new development.
Criticisms were made of this clause at Second Reading but, given the scope of the Bill and the length of time allowed to Ministers for winding up, my noble friend was understandably unable to address them then. I know he will want to do so today. I think I have said enough to indicate that, in the words of Sir Humphrey, this is a brave initiative. I beg to move.