Councillor Tony Newman, Duncan Wilson, Angus Walker and Hugh Ellis gave evidence.

We now come to the second panel of witnesses. I refer Members to page 28 of the brief.

We will hear oral evidence from the Local Government Association, Historic England, National Infrastructure Planning Association and the Town and Country Planning Association. For this session we have until 11.25 am. I welcome the witnesses. Could you please introduce yourselves?

Councillor Newman:

I am Councillor Tony Newman representing the Local Government Association. I am a member of the LGA’s Towns and Environment Board and also leader of the London Borough of Croydon.

Duncan Wilson:

I am Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England.

Hugh Ellis:

I am Hugh Ellis, interim chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association.

Angus Walker:

I am Angus Walker, board chair of the National Infrastructure Planning Association.

Does the shadow Minister want to go first on this one? We have already done declarations of interest so the Minister has made it clear, councillor, that he is going to be on his best behaviour.

Councillor Newman:

Likewise.

Q Thank you and welcome everyone. We are going to continue the discussion on pre-commencement conditions. It would be helpful to hear your views on whether they are overused, whether they do in fact cause delays in the planning process and whether you have evidence to support that.

Councillor Newman:

If you are looking at the whole of clause 7 of the Bill—the conditions and the pre-commencement—best practice is where there is a strong, well-resourced local government planning department, to use traditional language, working in partnership with developers. I know that is a view the British Property Federation share: two thirds of them support the LGA’s view that we should see well-resourced planning departments. The whole perspective of what I am seeing in the Bill looks very much like a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach—another layer of red tape. If you look at the actual outcomes in terms of local government and planning, nine out of 10 permissions are given, and 470,000 permissions are already granted for homes up and down the land that await development for various reasons.

I am not saying there is not room for improvement from an LGA perspective and from a planning perspective on how you conduct pre-commencement conversations or any other approach. There is always room for improvement, which I think the starting point of the clause—this is a huge issue that the LGA needs to address. There is a collective issue about how we genuinely work better.

On best practice, I am not here specifically to talk about Croydon, but there is an awful lot of development happening there. As the Minister would recognise, where there are strong relationships between a council and the developers, it is all about taking a strategic view—what is a sustainable position and what do you want to achieve for the wider community?—and coming up with really exciting plans that are actually happening. Where development becomes mired in red tape and becomes a legal battle, more often than not the end result, as we have seen in my borough in the past, is a piece of land that sits empty for years while legal wrangling takes place. This does feel like unnecessary red tape, I think.

Duncan Wilson:

On behalf of Historic England, our primary concern is with archaeological investigation pre-commencement conditions. Essentially, we believe the current system works quite well. We understand that developers need certainty and the system provides for conditions relating to investigation of sensitive sites. Only about 2% of planning applications are covered by these archaeological pre-commencement conditions. Most developers want to know what is there.

I go back quite a way at English Heritage in a former existence and I remember the Rose theatre, where there was a lot of messing around that did not really suit the developer and did not necessarily provide the best archaeological outcome either. That was because there was no clear archaeology pre-condition. Afterwards PPG 16 was introduced and has worked quite well, we believe.

We are more than happy to discuss any perceived problems with the system or any real problems with the system. We are not actually aware that archaeology in particular is causing those problems. We think, on balance, the system as it exists works pretty well for developers because it is based on an investigation of what is actually there and an assessment of the risks. That relies on local authority expertise and resources to help make that assessment, and we have our part to play in that too. I suppose it would all depend on the regulations that came with the Bill, which we do not yet know about, as to whether archaeology was mentioned as something where a pre-commencement condition would normally be appropriate in a very small number of sites. In a sense, we would have to await that.

Hugh Ellis:

From our point of view, the concern about conditions is that they are fairly crucial in delivering quality outcomes. The short answer to your question about whether we have evidence that conditions result in delay is that we do not. What we do have is a growing concern that planning has to strike the right balance between the efficiency of the system for applicants and outcomes for people. The evidence about outcomes is a bit more worrying, particularly in relation to things like quality design, flood risk and various other issues, which are often secured through conditions.

The reasons for that are complicated. The discussion about resources, though, is overwhelmingly crucial, because that really is about the expertise of setting conditions, ensuring that they deliver strong outcomes and, ultimately, ensuring that they deliver the objective of sustainable development in the round. The question is: how does this measure help us with that wider endeavour of planning and delivering sustainable development?

Angus Walker:

I also cannot provide you with any evidence this morning. Indeed, my expertise is more in the national infrastructure planning system where all this will not apply, but I can see that there may be one or two unintended consequences of this clause when put into operation. It is clearly designed to eliminate the lazy application of conditions where the survey, as you heard earlier, is already in the application and all that sort of thing. I can see situations where more planning permissions are refused because the applicant and the planning authority cannot agree on whether to impose a condition. I can also see conditions being recast as not being pre-commencement conditions but as having the same effect later on—pre-operation conditions, if you like—so I am not sure whether this will work, essentially.

Q Do you think that the measures in the Bill change the balance of power more towards the developer, and what are the risks with that? We have not yet talked this morning of the risks, particularly in clause 7.

Hugh Ellis:

Pursuing that point, it is an issue about whether you end up with a planning system whose primary purpose is the efficient allocation of units or a wider endeavour around place-making and inclusion. Although it seems like a good idea because it is difficult to defend inefficiency or apparent inefficiency when it is thrown up, really good place-making requires good dialogue with developers, but also strong control from local government and an empowered local government to ensure that community visions are truly delivered.

The system has been weakened—permitted development is one example of that—and the Bill needs to strike the right balance. I suppose that if it went forward, the safeguard would be, and would need to be in the wider system, the place-making objective, otherwise we would find a series of outcomes that potentially have very long-term and serious impacts on everything from public health to wider economic efficiency.

Councillor Newman:

I agree with that. As I said earlier, the Bill would potentially build in a more confrontational approach, and we would lose that ability to have a place-making and sustainability overview of a development, along with the benefits and perhaps future development to come.

Somebody mentioned permitted development. We have certainly seen the flip-side of that. Where permitted development has sometimes let rip, we have seen poor-quality provision of homes—perhaps people do not have any choice in a market such as London. Permitted development has proved not to be the answer. At one point, I think, half the permitted development in London was happening in Croydon. We got an article 4 direction for Croydon town centre, and we were able to protect what is now thriving business use and office space, so permitted development was not only delivering poor-quality planning outcomes but threating our local economy by damaging a space that is now at a premium for investment in jobs.

All that would reinforce my view that you need a holistic approach where possible. That is not to be naïve—there will always be confrontation in the system, but to build it in at the start seems to me to be the wrong approach, and in the LGA’s view it is an unnecessary further layer of legislation or red tape in the process.

Duncan Wilson:

It seems to me that there are two issues. One is the imposition of unnecessary conditions and the other is the time taken to discharge conditions. I have been on the other side of the table too as, in effect, the developer of a number of major heritage schemes in London, and inasmuch as we had any trouble, it was to do with the time taken to discharge conditions, which was largely related to the people and resource within the local authority—it is simply a matter of getting people up to the place to tick the box and see that we had done what was required of us. The same applies to a whole load of other things such as building regulations.

On the imposition of unnecessary conditions, the local authority has to be reasonable already—if it is felt that unnecessary conditions are being imposed, it is challengeable. I worry that the proposed new system will lead the local authority to have to make a choice early on as to whether it wants to impose a condition that would be challenged—the application could be turned down and the condition challenged again. That whole system would surely take longer than arguing about the condition and determining whether to impose it at the beginning.

Angus Walker:

In line with the other speakers, I think that the planning system is a balance. Although economic growth is important and development contributes to that, it still has to be in the right context and have regard to social and environmental factors.

I can see that, if an applicant and a local planning authority cannot agree on a condition, in some cases the planning authority will refuse permission, which may be appealed and then allowed. In others, the authority will agree the application without the condition in it, even though it might have been one that ought to have been imposed. In answer to your question, it seems to me that there is a slight increase in the balance being weighed towards applicants by the measure.

Q Good morning. One of the speakers briefly touched on this. What is the panellists’ opinion about whether planning departments in local authorities are adequately resourced to deal with the kind of issues we are discussing—pre-commencement conditions and the determination of applications?

Councillor Newman:

Local government has taken more than its fair share of efficiency savings in the past few years and has faced serious cuts. Planning has to be properly resourced: the LGA would put forward the figure of £150 million a year for the planning department, which is effectively subsidised by the council tax payer. The British Property Federation—two thirds of it anyway—supports the view that they would rather see a contribution that meant it was properly resourced and not subsidised by the taxpayer, and there are always issues around recruitment. Many planning departments work well but are stretched to the limit. There are extra pressures and other challenges in growth areas. I do not just want to sit here and say that more resources are needed, but local government is operating on tight budgets after year-on-year decreases in our budgets.

Q Will other members of the panel comment on the resourcing question: do you think local authority planning departments are adequately resourced bearing in mind the demands being placed on them?

Duncan Wilson:

In relation to archaeology, it very much depends on the archaeological advice rather than the planning department. Some local authorities have that advice, but in the past few years there has been a reduction of around 30% in the volume of archaeological advice directly available to local authorities. There is no straight-line relationship between the quality of the advice, its timeliness and the number of hours that the local authority has, but obviously there is a relationship. There is also the question of conservation offices, which is another specialist area where there has been a significant decline in local authority resources. It would be counterintuitive to suggest that there is no relationship between the volume of resources available to the local authority in terms of its planning department and conservation and archaeological advice, and the timeliness of turning casework around, but it is not quite as simple as that.

Hugh Ellis:

I am trying to choose my words carefully based on research we have just carried out on the production of local plans. The research showed that planning teams had fallen below the critical mass capable of delivering a local plan effectively in the rural areas that we looked at that were at severe risk of flooding. In some of those authorities we visited, we found 1.2 full-time equivalent members of staff were working on a local plan process, which I found quite shocking. There is no fixed limit for how many people you need in a planning department, but minimum service levels are a critical issue, both establishing them effectively and resourcing them properly.

What struck me about your discussion with previous witnesses was that, while fees could be increased—that is an option—there are low-demand areas where not many applications are submitted. Those applications would not attract much fee income but would require significant planning services, particularly in those areas trying to deal with the aftermath of significant severe weather and flood risk. Cumbria is one of those places.

There is a crisis in the planning service—it is not everywhere because some urban areas have sustained resource—that overwhelmingly affects efficiency and the quality of neighbourhood planning service that the community receives. That is probably the single biggest thing for us as an organisation presented to us by applicants and communities about the state of the modern local planning process in England.

Angus Walker:

I do not think there is any question that a large number of local authorities are not adequately resourced in their planning departments.

Sorry, can you say that again?

Angus Walker:

A large number of local authorities—perhaps not all—are not adequately resourced.

Q The previous group of witnesses, who by and large represented the property development industry, appeared unanimously to support the idea of paying higher planning fees for some kind of guaranteed service level—for a determination within a particular time. If that target was not met, the extra planning fee might be refunded. Do panel members think that that might be one way of getting extra financial resources into local authority planning departments? If one proposed that idea, the Chancellor would probably say—I am putting words in his mouth—“The danger is that you put the extra money into the planning department, and the council reduces its subsidy, to spend it on something else, so the total amount of money stays the same; it just comes from applicants, rather than the subsidy.” If you do think extra planning fees for a guaranteed service is a good idea, how do you prevent existing resource being diverted to another part of the council’s activities? I suppose that is a question for Councillor Newman.

Councillor Newman:

As you alluded to, if there was a different planning fee, there would be some relationship with, or expectation relating to, the outcome. I think what you are asking is whether it would be ring-fenced. There is a way of doing that without getting into the ring-fenced budget piece. The other position on that, the LGA would say—I welcome the question in that sense—is to have locally set planning fees. That would involve people who know an area, know what the demand is, and know what the recruitment issues are for the planning department in one area, vis-à-vis another. Then it would be for the local authority to justify both the fees it charges and the outcomes of the service it offers. Locally set planning fees and, related to them, performance indicators on how the process works—that is something that should be explored.

Q Would you support the specific idea of extra planning fees conditional on service delivery?

Councillor Newman:

I have to be careful what I support. I represent LGA policy here. There is a principle in the line of questioning you are asking. I think there is a way forward around locally set planning fees related to an expectation of the service one gets. That would be a step forward in terms of localism, and democratic accountability locally for the performance of the planning department.

Q Do you accept that there is a danger that if you allowed local authorities to charge higher planning fees, you would at the same time have to stop them from simply diverting existing financial resources elsewhere, in order to make sure that you got an increase in total resource level in the planning department?

Councillor Newman:

I do not think it would be beyond somebody to construct the model, but the key test would be the outcome—whether the planning process was working well, or was speeded up, depending on what the local challenge was.

Q Can I invite other panel members to comment on that exchange?

Duncan Wilson:

In the Historic England context, clearly the issue of hypothecation is really important. My colleague has said more or less what I would want to say on that. However, it is probably worth noting that Historic England has operated something called enhanced advisory services for the last year or so on more or less that basis. If it is worth your while as a developer, you can buy a tighter outcome, in terms of deadlines and delivery, and a more detailed assessment in relation to listed buildings and scheduled monuments. That has been introduced with the encouragement of the development industry, on the whole, and the British Property Federation.

Q Have you found them coming forward and saying that they would like to pay these higher planning fees?

Duncan Wilson:

Exactly. It can be consensual, because the cost of a planning application, certainly in the sorts of services that we provide in relation to listed buildings, is a tiny percentage of a major development project.

Hugh Ellis:

I would add that there are two problems here; it is partly the planning service in local authorities, but I would not want us to completely ignore the fact that there is also a crisis in the number of planners. There is direct investment in planning schools that we also need to get right. There is a major recruitment problem in local government, not just in being able to afford planners, but in finding them. We need to take a wider step back and look at how we bring planners through the process. It is also about the messages you send to young people about why planning is important and why it might be a career that they want to take up. That is important.

Q One of the challenges is that local authorities lose planning experts to private practice, because private practice can afford to pay more, and because local authorities are very stretched, so it is a slightly stressful and harassed environment to work in. The resource issue might partly address the brain drain to private practice.

Angus Walker:

Undoubtedly, if you pay more for dedicated resources, you will get a better service. My concern would be that those who made applications and had not paid any more would get a worse service as a consequence. Maybe the diversion of funds would be a consequence of that. It would not necessarily be more money in the system that everyone would benefit from.

Q Of course, you would still have the statutory time targets, and if you increased total resource levels, it may most directly benefit those paying more, but it might have wider benefits as well, even to applicants who were not paying the extra fees.

Angus Walker:

It is possible, but in my field, it is not financial deadlines—we have time deadlines in some areas, and not in others. The ones that have a decision required, statutorily, in a certain length of time get their decisions within that time; the others probably take longer than they otherwise would have done, because more of the resources are devoted to making those decisions on time.

Q I have a question for Councillor Newman, and perhaps Hugh Ellis as well. Have either of you undertaken any assessment of the likely additional burden to local planning authorities from the new proposed process in the Bill? Supplementary to that, and following the discussion that was just had about the possibility of applicants paying for an enhanced level of service, might a better system be for local authorities to be able, on a transparent and consultative basis, to charge the full cost of their development management service through fees? One concern I have about the proposal that developers be able to buy in an enhanced level of service is that it is potentially quite difficult for local authorities to manage fluctuating demand, in relation to individual applications. Surely what we actually want is for local authorities to be properly resourced to do the job well for everybody, irrespective of who the applicant is.

Councillor Newman:

We do want to be properly resourced anyway, as a starting point. There is a £150 million tax subsidy going in; that would absolutely be the starting point for me, but I still think that this is worth exploring, in terms of the particular recruitment issues we have, because there will never be agreement on what “properly resourced” would be. That is why I would not rule out looking at—I do not like the word “enhanced”. There is something around fast-track and something around some major developments perhaps requiring more resource than other developments, but there is a discussion to be had. One way or another, we have to get more resource into a system that is under-resourced financially, and where in many areas, as we have heard, there are pressures regarding recruitment and staff coming forward.

On the other question you asked, I know the LGA is submitting written evidence later in the week. I have not got figures in front of me to evidence the extra burden, but I think the extra work this would potentially bring round is significant. As colleagues here have said, you could see more refusals, and the whole thing could become mired in a more confrontational process that, by definition, will set planning applications back, rather than them being, where possible, resolved, sometimes in a mature manner.

Hugh Ellis:

Just to reiterate, planning is a key service with vital outputs for communities; in that sense, it needs to be resourced properly, and certainly at a minimum level. It also worries me that a lot of this resource in fees would go into development management, leaving open the question of how you fund the rest of the planning service, which is, in some senses, the most important part for us—the development plan, neighbourhood planning and master planning process, and getting it right up front.

On the idea that applicants would pay a fee base for a particular service, and that that would somehow sustain the planning service, there are some real questions to answer. It could be part of the answer—that is absolutely true—but I return to the point, on section 106 and the community infrastructure levy, that there is already, in pure taxation terms, a slightly regressive element to planning: you get most in high-demand areas. If this was another measure that led to that, it would be challenging, partly because the planning system has to deal with all sorts of varied issues. The examples coming in from Cumbria really reinforce that. They need very powerful local plans; how are they to pay for them if the predominant form of income generation is fees from applications that they do not get?

Q I have a further question for Duncan Wilson. You mentioned concerns about archaeology. It seems there have been indications from the Government that some assurance might be provided around the question of archaeology, and we will wait to see what comes forward in that regard. Are there other areas of heritage about which you have potential concerns relating to pre-commencement planning conditions?

Duncan Wilson:

Less severe ones. A number of concerns were raised in the context of the Housing and Planning Act that were perhaps more significant than in relation to this particular clause, other than for archaeology. Our concerns on brownfield land, design, massing and density are not really centre stage, as I understand, with pre-commencement conditions here.

Q Obviously, the Government are trying to strengthen neighbourhood plans in the Bill. Do you think the provisions they have in there at the moment are likely to eliminate the erratic decision making from the Planning Inspectorate that we have seen with regard to neighbourhood plans?

Hugh Ellis:

They go some way. The relationship between neighbourhood plans and local plans in law is still really quite problematic. There is a direction of travel question about whether or not we end up with a full coverage of neighbourhood plans and in some sense an idea that they might replace local plans. That is talked about but it is important to get that right.

There are a range of challenges. For example, the neighbourhood planning process is producing neighbourhood plans of variable coverage, predominantly in areas with the social and economic capital to prepare them. In law, neighbourhood plans escape a number of the placemaking duties that the wider planning system has applied; those on good design, for example, in law, do not apply to neighbourhood planning but do apply to local plans. I think these measures try, do they not, to fill some of those loopholes in relation to the status of an unadopted neighbourhood plan as it comes through the process, which might help solve part of that appeal process.

For us there is still a wider issue about how the system will work as a whole and the friction that is inevitably produced by neighbourhood plans coming forward in advance of a local plan; the different legal status between the two plans; and ultimately the adoption of a neighbourhood plan as part of the development plan. Part of this debate could very usefully settle what the vision is for neighbourhood planning. Is the idea that the neighbourhood plan ultimately becomes the key lodestone of the English planning process with local plans doing something else, or are local plans going to remain intact? That is a very important question going forward, because many neighbourhood plans are not dealing with the full range of placemaking issues that we need to resolve. That is perfectly fine because communities have a measure of choice about what they do with them, but in relation to good design, flood risk and climate change, for example, those issues are not well represented in the content of neighbourhood plans. So, this is a step; I am not sure it resolves the full range of legal issues that we are confronted with between neighbourhood and local plan status.

Q So in your view, even if this provision goes through and a post-examination neighbourhood plan is given full weight in a planning application, in the absence of an approved local plan, do you still think we are likely to see neighbourhood plans effectively upended?

Hugh Ellis:

You can still see neighbourhood plans upended because of the tensions that exist about whether we have a plan-led system, which is probably another three-hour debate. In a nutshell, the difficulty we have at the moment is that because of the tension between the national planning policy framework presumption in policy in favour of development and the legal presumption in favour of the development plan, you can find circumstances where a brand-new development plan can be rendered out of date because of its performance on five-year land supply—literally within months of adoption, rendering the entire framework of housing policy in that plan out of date. If they have adopted neighbourhood plans in support of that plan, then communities can quite understandably feel confused about that. That is a wider issue about the status of whether we have a plan-led system. For us, that balance needs some attention, to say the least.

Q But if we do have a plan-led system, which seems to be the way that we are going, would you therefore support greater strength being given to local authorities’ ability to defend the five-year land supply?

Hugh Ellis:

There is a need to end that uncertainty and it seems to me that the core issue—very crudely and very quickly—is that local development plans allocate five-year land supply but have very little influence over delivering it. The issue about joining those two things together is about other measures in play: local authorities playing a much stronger role with housing companies, and as lead and master developers. That is the way to resolve it. But the position at the moment, whereby allocations can be made and then overturned because of a deliverability issue that the local authority has no control over, needs attention. Otherwise, what happens—five-year land supply is crucial, by the way, to deliver the housing we need—is that the system becomes discredited in the public’s mind, particularly when neighbourhood plans are being overturned as a result of it.

Q Given that the overall objective perhaps ought to be certainty for resident, council and developer alike about what is allowed where over time, if you can get to a situation where you have a post-inspection neighbourhood plan and an approved local plan—in other words, you have got two of the pillars in place—with a five-year land supply available, do you think that the role of the planning inspector in that circumstance should be diminished or not?

Hugh Ellis:

That is an attractive proposition, but it is extremely difficult to see how you could remove an individual developer’s appeal rights without engaging a whole other legal debate. Whether you want to balance legal rights in the planning system between communities and applicants is a very interesting question.

Councillor Newman:

I certainly would not want a position where neighbourhood plans were seen to override a local plan. I don’t think that is what you are suggesting, but the local plan does enable strategic and sustainable planning, in terms of health provision, schools or whatever, and a neighbourhood plan, by definition, is coming from a different starting point. The LGA would want to see local government having, in relation to the local plan, more powers to agree, for example, where homes should be, when they are not coming forward. That takes me back to the nearly half a million planning permissions granted that have not been acted upon as we sit here today.

As you said, it is about credibility in the system, so that the public do not start believing that their neighbourhood plan is going to have no impact or will probably be overridden, either by the local plan or by developers going to appeal. I do not have the answer sitting here, but I think it has to be about a system that has credibility—where people believe that if they make representations to their council or their Member of Parliament, although it may not always come out how they would want, the system is responsive, and respects their—there are tensions in this.

Q On that point, is it possible for a developer to obtain a large permission in an area, and then not develop it out, and then challenge a refusal on another site in that area on the basis that a five-year land supply has not been fulfilled? That happens, right?

Hugh Ellis:

Yes.

Q That does happen. Therefore, by being patient, they are able to blow a hole in the land supply and get a permission that they otherwise would not have done, and double up.

Hugh Ellis:

I would not want to comment on their motivations, but as a strict matter of policy and law, yes, absolutely that is what can happen.

Duncan Wilson:

On behalf of Historic England, we do get engaged with neighbourhood plans when we are asked for advice and expertise, and it has been pretty positive, in the sense that it gives the local community a voice in a system that can seem, frankly, rather arcane otherwise. Where that has happened, we have found that neighbourhood plans have been quite strategically drawn and they have not fulfilled people’s worst fears, which were that they would be very narrowly drawn.

Angus Walker:

I suppose it would be interesting to know, as Mr Ellis said, whether the intention is that the whole country will eventually be covered by neighbourhood plans. The resourcing issues that were raised earlier would be a lot worse if it were reliant on parish councils and neighbourhood forums to produce all these plans.

Q Presumably the Bill is designed to provide that incentive. The incentive is that if you have a neighbourhood plan and it is strengthened you are more likely to have certainty about what is going to be developed in your area, so if you are bothered about development you should have a neighbourhood plan. I am interested in what you say about local plans. We hear that neighbourhood plans deliver more housing than was otherwise predicted. Is that your experience?

Hugh Ellis:

It is. I think the Government produced some statistics about that. It has been one of the really positive surprises about the neighbourhood planning process. On housing, there are positive ways forward. On whether or not neighbourhood plans offer the full range of issues that planning needs to cover in a local area, the evidence we have is that they probably do not. But then, that is not what they are being set up to do. That is why I ask, is the ambition for them to be a kind of replacement for the local plan, or not? In our view, you need both. Neighbourhood plans are great at articulating community aspiration inside the local plan framework. When both work together very powerfully, that can be a very strong framework for a community.

Q I just want to clarify for the Committee what Mr Malthouse was asking. If I understood right, Mr Malthouse was asking: if there is a neighbourhood plan, a local plan and an established five-year land supply, should there be a restriction on the right of developers to appeal?

Yes.

I was not quite sure whether the witnesses had answered that. Would everyone just say yes or no to that?

Hugh Ellis:

I will try and be a bit clearer. In policy terms, you could probably strengthen that issue, but a legal restriction on an applicant’s right to appeal has always been in the legal territory of impossible because of engages of the legislation. You could certainly tighten the policy framework, but an absolute restriction on appeal is probably impossible in law.

Thank you.

Q Thank you, gentlemen, for coming to see us. What a delight, Councillor Newman, to have you here, for the simple reason that I was the Tory party agent in Mitcham in the 1980s when Nicholas Ridley introduced the whole local plan process in the first place. I have been very interested in following all this.

You have talked quite a bit about resources. I am pretty aware that my council in Plymouth, for which I am the Member of Parliament, has similar issues. However, we have a university and a planning school. To my mind, councils could have a much closer relationship with their planning schools and try to use some of those resources. Is that something that you have looked at?

Councillor Newman:

Periodically but, to be completely frank, not enough. As the LGA, and perhaps as local councils, sometimes we do not sell the exciting career that local planning can be for many people. Many people who are part of it stay for many years and have a good career. There is more work to be done on how we market a career in the local planning department and some other roles in local government.

There are other pressures. If you are in London, it is not about marketing the career. Social workers, for example, cannot afford to live in many localities. In London, the question is whether people can afford to live in the area where they might want to come to work. It is not just a single issue. I would encourage the sort of practice you describe in Plymouth.

Q It seems to my mind that students, I keep being told, find it very difficult to make ends meet. They have tuition fee loans and all those kinds of things. It would actually be a way of trying to get them to have some practical experience in the planning world. Similarly, local archaeology people come to see me, some of whom are doing things at the university. Is that a resource that you might think about using and looking at?

Duncan Wilson:

There are certainly supply-side issues with archaeology over the whole country in relation not just to local authority advice, but to the large number of archaeologists we will need to fulfil the demand for archaeology arising from major infrastructure projects. It would be an oversimplification to say that that is just an aggregate supply of archaeologists. The higher education sector is not necessarily producing archaeologists with exactly the right kind of skills to deal with the different kinds of problems that archaeology in Britain throws up. More fieldwork is rather an important issue in that context.

I am sorry to interrupt, Mr Colvile, but I am very conscious that we have limited time and three people want to ask questions. I will bring in John Mann, because I know he will be brief.

How many of these 500,000 unmet house planning consents are in neighbourhood development plan areas? Does anyone knowQ ?

Councillor Newman:

I do not, but we will write to you rapidly with that information.

Q What is the average number of new house proposals that come from existing neighbourhood development plans?

Councillor Newman:

Again, the LGA will write to you.

Q Nobody knows. What is the increase from what the position was in the same areas covered by neighbourhood plans, in terms of proposed new housing units in areas covered by neighbourhood development plans?

Angus Walker:

I do not know the answer to that, but I think the Secretary of State said on Second Reading of the Bill that, of those who had an increase, the average increase was 10%. That does not give how many there were overall.

Q You said that the five-year land supply for housing was critical for housing development. How do you know that?

Hugh Ellis:

It is an element of it. To be clear, the problem with the delivery of housing in this country is not primarily the planning system; it is development, but five-year supply is important.

Q Correct. Am I right in saying that every neighbourhood development plan, in order to be in any way legal, has to incorporate new housing development?

Hugh Ellis:

The position is that it has to be in conformity with the development plan, if there is one, and the NPPF, which means that it has to recognise local housing need and the five-year land supply to go with it.

No, is it not the case that a neighbourhood development plan has to have an increase in housing supply?

No.

Hugh Ellis:

The general view, when neighbourhood plans were being developed, was that they could not plan for less housing—which is sometimes how people tried to use them—than the local development plan had allocated, so there is a kind of floor. They certainly can plan, and have planned, for more housing than the local development plan has allocated.

Q Is there a reason why English Heritage has not tried to initiate neighbourhood development plans using major historic buildings, such as cathedrals, as the core basis for defining urban communities?

Duncan Wilson:

As I said before, we do engage with neighbourhood development plans, but normally on request, rather than proactive consultation on every neighbourhood development plan. When we do engage, we certainly encourage proper consideration of the historical character of the area and how development can sit alongside that. Cathedral cities are a really important subset of that group.

Q My final question: is not the strength of neighbourhood development plans also their weakness? The strength is that at the moment a plan lends itself perfectly to villages with parish councils, which can easily, and very ably and effectively, localise the planning process—in my area virtually every parish council has or is developing a neighbourhood development plan, all of them increasing the housing supply significantly, and they will be delivering on that housing supply significantly over the next five years—whereas the weaknesses are in urban areas, where defining what the community is actually requires a bit of original thinking; otherwise everything simply becomes one urban mass. Is that not the opportunity, be it for the English Heritages, the good planners or enlightened councils, to get urbanised neighbourhood planning to involve communities in exactly the way that villages have hugely successfully involved vast numbers of people in the development of the existing neighbourhood plans that have been agreed, or are currently rolling forward?

Councillor Newman:

I think you could have more urban neighbourhood plans, but I would want to see them still sitting with the overarching plan in an urban area—such as the one I am very familiar with, Croydon—to be the local plan. As we have learned from mistakes in the past—although I know this is not what you are suggesting—we should not just focus on increasing housing numbers without looking at the sustainability of the community in terms of health provision, school provision, transport links and everything else. Much as we need new homes, it should not just be a numbers game that leaves us in the same place we were in the ’70s.

Duncan Wilson:

In relation to our historic towns, yes, I agree that neighbourhood plans would be and sometimes are a good way of crystallising that discussion, but it is really important that the areas around towns are brought into consideration too. Otherwise, you have a plan for an historic town and all the housing gets pushed out to the periphery, without a proper strategic consideration of how that relates to the historic town in terms of transport links, public spaces, infrastructure or design.

Hugh Ellis:

In a way, the critical flaw in neighbourhood planning is the neighbourhood forum model. There has to be an issue around making that accountable. The differences in neighbourhood planning between an accountable parish or town council and an unaccountable forum were always pretty stark. It was always unclear where that ended up. There would probably be more enthusiasm for urban neighbourhood planning if that problem could be resolved.

Q Will the changes proposed to the pre-commencement conditions leave enough flexibility to deal with things that local communities are really concerned about? In my area of Taunton, the big issues are all about what Mr Ellis referred to: design quality, the look of the houses, vernacular character, flood resilience. Can we get all that cleared through the changes proposed, or are we relying utterly on neighbourhood plans to do that? Are there enough teeth for that to be taken into account when the planning consents are given?

Hugh Ellis:

Although there is conflicting evidence in planning, one thing we can be absolutely certain of is that the design quality of domestic housing in this country is one of the great lost opportunities.

Q And it is one of the big bugbears locally, when you talk to people, in all neighbourhood planning.

Hugh Ellis:

We are capable of delivering so much better. That would require two things: a sense that planning is part of the solution to these problems and not always part of the problem, and a fairly robust local planning process. I think it would also include a greater emphasis on good design as an outcome in planning.

Q But where would you put it? In the pre-commencements?

Hugh Ellis:

You would need to think about it right from the top. The content of the NPPF on design is actually quite good, but I do not see it being enforced, particularly, through plan-making.

Q I have two quick questions for Councillor Newman. You felt that the planning conditions measures were a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I want to get a sense of the size of the nut. Among the previous witnesses, there was a consensus that the use of pre-commencement conditions has been growing over time. Does the LGA share that view?

Councillor Newman:

As I said at the start, I think there is sometimes a perception in Government that planning is the problem. Maybe we are not even looking to crack a nut. To repeat what I said at the start, we risk setting up a far more confrontational process at the start. Conversations around design, sustainability and so on get lost, because people have to take a fixed position very early on in the process. Look, it is not perfect—there will always be examples that people can give of where it has ended up in confrontation—but the evidence seems to suggest that the nut is not particularly large.

Q It is not getting bigger, in the LGA’s view?

Councillor Newman:

No.

Q In its submission to us, the District Councils Network acknowledged that the discharge of planning conditions can be a factor in slow decision making and supported the Government in seeking to address conditions. Why did district councils take a different view on this from the LGA as a whole?

Councillor Newman:

I have not had district councils coming to me, knowing that I was coming here, but if that is the position of their network, we will include it in our evidence.

Do I have time for one more question, Chair?

Yes.

Q You made a very good point that in the year to 30 June, this country granted a record number of planning applications for housing, but that there is a gap between the planning permissions we are granting and homes being built out. If you do not think planning conditions are part of the problem—I would certainly say they are not the sole problem—what do the panel think are the reasons for that gap?

Hugh Ellis:

The core reason is that we have restricted our delivery of housing to a single development model. You have signalled, Minister, that you are interested in exploring how we can find new ways to challenge that. The critical issue is that from 2019-20 onwards, the private sector will probably go on building 150,000 homes a year, almost forever. The critical elements missing from our debate—I know your mind is open to this issue—are how we deal with scale strategic development, how we join up infrastructure with housing development and, crucially, how we deliver a new generation of new settlements.

I am very conscious of Macmillan’s achievement in delivering 350,000 homes in the mid-1950s, but he did have a programme that was 32 new towns strong at that point. They are a fantastic way of delivery. They overcome the issue of delivering numbers. Milton Keynes is delivering almost 4,000 homes a year. I believe that there is an exciting opportunity for us to take that up again, but it seems to me above all that in our collective debate about housing delivery in this nation, we need to address our attention to that strategic scale.

Councillor Newman:

I will finish with an example from Croydon. If a planning permission has not been taken up within three years, perhaps a council building company like Brick by Brick should be invited to step in and start building the homes that somebody promised they would build but did not.

I am afraid that time has beaten us, although we could have gone on much longer. Thank you, witnesses. That ends this morning’s evidence session.

The Chair adjourned the Committee without Question put (Standing Order No. 88).

Adjourned till this day at Two o’clock.