My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young. I will speak to our Amendments 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256 and 257 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman. A number of those amendments
echo the concerns of the noble Lord. It is important to place on record that the clause to which amendments in this group refer was not in the Bill when it was debated in the other place, so it has not had the kind of scrutiny you would expect for a proposal of this kind. Therefore, it is right that your Lordships’ House gives this clause and the amendments submitted very careful consideration.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Young, that the progress of this proposal straight into primary legislation is unusual to say the least—I would call it inexplicable. I have much sympathy with his comments that, were the street votes part of a consideration that the planning and development committees took into account, that might be a different issue. However, from the proposal in the Bill it seems that they are intended to sit outside that.
In recent decades, changes to the planning system have meant that local people and, on occasion, local councillors have felt that they have little say or control over what happens in their area due to a combination of permitted development, changes to use classes—meaning, for example, that there is little to stop your high street being dominated by betting shops and vape stores—the prevalence of conversions to houses of multiple occupation, which puts particular pressure on infrastructure and parking and can change the character of neighbourhoods, and the hollowing out of so many coastal and rural areas as family homes become holiday and Airbnb lets. We have heard powerful advocacy for the role of neighbourhood forums and town and parish councils in previous debates on the Bill. There is undoubtedly something of a community engagement vacuum in the delivery of new homes which the advocates of street votes believe they can help fill.
As a member of the Co-operative Party, a sister party to the Labour Party, and a former chair of the Co-operative Councils’ Innovation Network, I have spent more than 10 years promoting and supporting greater engagement of residents and communities in the decisions taken on their behalf, so we absolutely support the principle sitting behind the street votes proposition. I am very grateful to Samuel Hughes from Create Streets, who took a great deal of time to brief me and my noble friend Lady Hayman and kindly provided us with a background briefing on street votes.
The problem with the clause as drafted is that it is very thin on detail, not least any detailed definition of “gentle densification”, which we have heard so much about during the Bill. I am sure that the Minister will tell us that it will be in the regulations or the National Planning Policy Framework, but in this case it is particularly important to understand how the system of street votes will work. Even their most passionate advocates feel that there is room for more clarity in the Bill.
Our amendments in this group attempt to understand how this detail and some of the potential complications will be resolved. As an example, although greenbelt, areas of outstanding national beauty and historic buildings are expressly excluded, there is no mention of conservation areas.
In his article, which is generally very positive about street votes, the designer Alastair Parvin points out that, when you start thinking about the detail of how they might work, it is not hard to see how it could all go very wrong. Those of us who have been involved in planning will feel the same trepidation that what seems, on the face of it, like a move towards community engagement, development and an ultimate expression of street democracy, may also need to be particularly well thought through in advance to avoid the obvious potential pitfalls.
The system of local authority planning may seem bureaucratic, complex and too slow, but you could argue that it is developed that way to ensure, for example, that experts in planning, law and finance are involved, that there is transparency in the process, that decisions are properly debated and recorded, and that there are proper voting procedures, appeals processes and declarations of interest. As Alastair Parvin notes, to even think about the idea of every street in the UK emulating this way of working, appointing an urban designer, holding consultations, drawing up a valid design code, having it checked against local policies, revising it, holding committees, leafleting, then organising a referendum, is utterly exhausting and could be expensive in time and money. It could also add a significant potential burden on to local planning departments that are already feeling overstretched. He also points out that community politics can be, at best, dominated by those with the loudest voices and, at worst, pretty toxic, with the potential for style wars or tribalism to develop, or those who are fixated about parking to take over—in my experience, there are plenty of them. I loved his line,
“we’re talking about doing design-by-committee with Alan Partridge on the committee”.
How do we ensure that those participating are not being coerced or receiving financial inducements, particularly the elderly and the vulnerable? Street votes will also have to take into account that, while many places in the UK may have well-defined streets, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed out, some do not. There have a variety of layouts, types and styles, with perhaps less well-defined groupings or boundaries. Some of you may be familiar with Radburn layouts that are common in first-generation new towns, where houses that appear to be on one street are actually in three different streets.
It is important that we note the comments of the Local Government Association, which were quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Young. It says that it wants to work with government to enhance opportunities for engagement and reach a wider audience within the process of developing local plans, and that is the key to the answer here. Amendment 248, in the names of noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, is welcome and very straightforward, and we would certainly support that amendment to bring clarity to the precedence of the local plan, should the outcome of a street vote conflict with that.
My noble friend Baroness Hayman’s first amendment ensures that residents who have a recent connection with the area are included in street votes. We are very grateful to Generation Rent for its proposals in this
respect. It makes the valid point that street votes must work for renters as well as owner-occupiers. Part of the answer, which is included in the Bill, is to enfranchise residents, not owners, so that tenants have as much democratic say as owner-occupiers, and absentee landlords are not further empowered over tenants’ homes. However, we agree with Generation Rent that this is not enough in itself so, before any homeowner or landlord can redevelop with permissions issuing from a street vote, any tenant resident in the building over the past two years must have consented. The alternative could be that landlords could refund 12-months’ rent or give their tenants 12 months’ notice. The Bill is very light on issues affecting tenants in this way, which is why we hope that our amendment will redress that balance.
Amendment 250, in the name of my noble friend Baroness Hayman, relates to the important issue of voting thresholds. We believe that it is important that it is a very high proportion; we would suggest two-thirds of total residents should support the proposals, not just a majority of those who turn out to vote. This ensures that developers cannot try to game the process and proposals can pass only if they have the overwhelming support of local people.
Create Streets, working with London forums and the Community Planning Alliance, also suggests two further safeguards—first, requiring that a resident in at least half of eligible households vote in favour, and second, that at least half of those registered to vote at the addresses on the street for at least three years must vote in favour. We would like to see this detail in the Bill but, if not, perhaps it could be considered for any subsequent statutory instrument.
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Amendment 251, again in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman, probes the possibility of residents agreeing a code of construction practice for a development. This would ensure that communities can choose patterns of development that are minimally disruptive to them and best suited to their needs and priorities. We understand the Government may be considering including this provision in secondary legislation, but it too could easily be provided in the Bill. Doing so would provide assurance that it could not be overlooked subsequently and that a full range of tools and safeguards for the community would be provided.
Our Amendment 254 refers to biodiversity targets. We believe that the kind of development enabled by street votes could be a huge improvement in relation to biodiversity occurring on brownfield sites, relieving the pressure on the countryside and relying on public transport rather than new road infrastructure. To ensure that street votes deliver on this potential, all development through street votes should be required to meet the national 10% biodiversity net-gain target. For technical legal reasons, this requires some adaptation of existing regulations to ensure they apply correctly to development permitted through street votes. There is a clause for this in the Bill, allowing the Secretary of State to make provisions modifying or excluding the application of Schedule 7A, on biodiversity gain in England. However, as drafted, it would allow the Government not only to modify biodiversity net-gain regulations so that they
apply to street vote development, but to exempt street vote development from those regulations. This could be precluded by an amendment saying that the Secretary of State should have power to modify the regulations but only in ways that do not make them less strict than they were had the development been permitted through the normal planning system.
Amendment 255 is to probe what engagement has been done with the Association of Electoral Administrators in relation to street votes. This association, as we all know, can provide expert advice on how the types of electoral process that may be necessary for street votes could be conducted. They will also be able to liaise with teams across the country in councils that may need to be involved. These teams are generally small and highly skilled groups of council officers, and it would be important, as with many other consultations with the professionals involved with this process, to assess any potential impact on them of the street votes proposal.
I have mentioned the potential for conflicts of interest to arise in relation to street votes, as it does with all planning matters; in local authorities, these issues are taken especially seriously in relation to planning. Our Amendment 256, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman, probes how this will be dealt with in relation to street votes. For example, would declarations be necessary if one of the residents of the street was likely to be a developer engaged in building out the proposed development? What land ownership declarations would need to be made so that all residents understood where there might be a disproportionate benefit to one particular resident or group of residents? We would also understand the sentiment behind Amendment 253A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, who made such an eloquent case for neighbourhood forums on Tuesday. We agree that setting neighbourhood forums up to go head-to-head with street votes may have the exact opposite effect than joining communities together for a harmonious approach to planning, which is surely what the Bill intends to do.