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19 Jun 2007 : Column 381WH—continued
“We could have sought immunity due to the length of time the exceedances had been apparent; however, we did not believe that this approach would have been in the best interests of the community, the company or the local authority.”
The company’s point is, like my hon. Friend’s, that the issue has gone on for so long that the company could have just carried on. However, to its credit, it has decided to regularise the situation. I should also say that the quarry company has recognised that its liaison with the local community could have been a lot better. It is now starting to meet all the residents who have complained to consider the issues of noise, dust, traffic and so on. I hope that, whatever the outcome, relations between the quarry company and the other parties will be better and that some of the initial concerns will be addressed.
I want to give a second, very different example, which is also big in my constituency. I was not able to forewarn the Minister that I was going to raise it, although I hope that he will be able to give some initial reaction. The same sort of issues arise from it.
Obviously, my constituency is the most attractive in the country—with the obvious exception of yours, Mr. Chope. My constituency has some attractive green belt land and lots of villages, and lots of people want to live in the area. There are good motorway connections to the rest of the country—we are at the junction of the M4 and the M5—so the area is popular for Travellers. Many people want to travel around the country as part of their lifestyle, and I see no reason why they should not. We are a good base for them. The council has a couple of official council Traveller sites. However, a planning issue that relates to Travellers is arising now; such issues are sensitive and controversial, but this one is germane.
Normally, when we talk about Travellers and planning, one thinks about people pitching up on a highway verge or a farmer’s field and needing to be moved on. That is not what I am talking about. My example is of a Traveller who buys a piece of green belt land on the edge of a settlement and moves a caravan and a mobile home or two on to the site. Obviously, doing so breaches planning regulations, so it is reported to the council. The Travellers unit goes to see the families to find out their intentions, whether there are any children on the site and so on. We should remember that the Travellers own the land, so there has been no trespass and there is no question of their being evicted. However, they are in breach of planning regulations.
Someone objects to the fact that the Travellers have put the mobile home or caravan on the site and an enforcement process begins. At that point, a planning application is made for a house, caravan or mobile home on the site. The council then says, “Hang on, a planning application has been made. We will not take enforcement action because it would not be expedient to do so.” Such applications often go on for a long time. Inevitably, social needs assessments of the families are made and there is assessment of the availability of Traveller sites elsewhere in the area and so on.
That is why I mention Travellers. My example is not about anybody pitching up on a greenfield site; there
are particular issues about such applications that mean that they are handled differently. The issue is not only about where the pitching takes place; who does the pitching is also germane. What tends to happen is that after the application goes in, there is no enforcement. The process can be slow. One, two, three or six months go by and local residents start to say, “Hang on a minute. This is a lovely village, and we would all like to have a nice house on its edges in one of those fields, but we can’t. We want somewhere for our kids to live in the village, but there is nowhere—an extra house or two around the edge would be lovely, but we know that we cannot have them. How can somebody else do that?”
The planning application goes in and may well be turned down—routinely, such applications are. One imagines that enforcement would then happen. It would, except that an appeal is then made. The appeal can take months and months—such appeals are, in fact, often successful because of the shortage of official sites. However, whether it is successful or not is irrelevant. What happens in practice is that the breach of planning regulations goes on for months and months, if not years and years, and creates real resentment. Effectively, no enforcement takes place because planning applications are live. If, at the end of the entire process, the application and appeal fail, 18 months have gone by. What do the Travellers do? They sell their plot of land, buy the next-door one and start all over again.
The worry is that the planning system falls into disrepute. Every time that somebody complains to me about a breach of planning on the edge of a village and I write to the council to say, “Come on, the rules have to be the same for everybody,” it writes back to say that it will not take enforcement action because a planning action or appeal are pending.
The strategic planning of the area is gradually being undermined by such piecemeal developments, but in any case the public increasingly feel that the rules are not being followed. I have absolutely no problem with diversity and different people having different lifestyles; the issue is not about that, but about people feeling that the rules are not being followed and their frustration at the fact that there seems to be no way to enforce them.
That second example was very different from my first; the quarry company was not too thrilled at my using it in the same context as their case. It says, not unreasonably, that the issues are different. However, the underlying issue is linked. We need a planning system in which the public can have confidence. The public need to know that when a restriction is placed on something, it will be enforced, and that just as they would not be allowed to put a house on a green field next to a village, so others will not be able to. The public need to have confidence that the taxes that they pay for planning enforcement are money well spent and that there is consistency. The worry, which I hope the Minister will address, is that given how the rules and guidelines are interpreted, councils—not just mine; I am sure that we shall hear about others in this debate—are judging that it is not expedient to enforce them, and the public are feeling let down.
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise my principal point—that we all want consistency. We all want rules, where they exist, to be followed. As my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives said, the public do not want to have
to report breaches or to look up planning conditions all the time to make sure that they are being followed. They expect that work to be done, but that is not happening. I know that there has been a big review that concluded that things were kind of okay, but is the Minister satisfied that the system is working as it should? My constituents are clear that it is not. Does the Minister have any views on how we can more effectively ensure that the tabling of a planning application does not become a loophole? That happened in my second example. More generally, how do we ensure that when conditions are imposed, they are effectively and consistently enforced?
9.57 am
Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): I am delighted to follow my near-neighbour, the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb), in this important debate; I am glad that he managed to secure it. I do not want to speak for long, but the issues are of concern. I shall raise a couple of cases that are different from but share a number of common features with the ones that he raised.
Planning is a difficult issue, and there are notorious cases in which planning enforcement officers have lost their lives because of the nature of the conflict in which they had to engage. However, if the law is to mean anything, it has to be enforced. I am sure that we all, as constituency representatives, have faced individuals who have said, “Well, if I had sought planning on a bigger scale, I would have got away with it even if I had broken the rules.” I declare an interest as a town councillor; we spend a lot of time seeking retrospective action against people who have built a conservatory, shed or even a small extension without having sought planning permission. However, some developers have blatantly broken the rules but apparently are able to get away with it. There is an issue of scale; enforcement is often used against people who break the rules on a smaller scale, while the way in which bigger-scale issues are sometimes dealt with is almost tantamount to causing the law to be treated with contempt. That is not acceptable.
Andrew George: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be sensible to amend PPG18 and the regulations so that if an applicant finds that they have to make a retrospective application because of the commencement of enforcement action, they should lose their right to have costs awarded against the council as the result of any appeal? That might at least concentrate people’s minds so that they follow the proper procedures rather than trying to flout them in the way that many developers, both small and large, do.
Mr. Drew:
I support that. I hope that the Minister will say something about the way in which some people deliberately—there is no other way to say it—contravene planning policy by building something, then putting in a retrospective planning application if action is taken against them. More often than not, those people do not bear the council’s costs for taking action against them. It is galling to know that enforcement is about to be taken but that developers can defend themselves by seeking another planning application, even if the original was turned down. This is a grey area, and unless we get into the legal process the problem is often never resolved satisfactorily, and the next-door neighbour ends up
saying, “Why don’t I do the same?” That is the biggest problem, as it leads to planning by neglect.
I have two interesting cases. I do not want to have a go at Stroud district council—the people who carry out enforcement are friends of mine—but it is under-resourced and under-powered. Taking enforcement action is dangerous and difficult, but if the process is to mean anything it has to be done and someone has to do it. One of the biggest problems is section 106 agreements, as councils often try to get jurisdiction over them, as they would like to see some amenity value properly delivered from a bigger development. The problem with section 106 agreements, I have found—I cannot believe that I am alone in this—is that they are signed by one developer but are often delivered by the second or third developer to take on the site. Lo and behold, that developer is often not keen to deliver the section 106 agreement. The council comes along and tries to enforce it, only to be told, “I’m sorry, but we never signed that agreement. We signed a subsequent agreement.” That brings the planning process into disrepute. The council may choose to take enforcement action, but any developer worth their salt will have a skilled lawyer who will make the point that the developer did not think that it was taking on the agreement when they took on the site.
Let me show how ludicrous the problem can become. A development is taking place in Dursley, not a million miles from the constituency of the hon. Member for Northavon. Crest Nicholson, one of the country’s biggest developers, has worked to the letter of the law, I presume, but certainly not to the spirit of the law. During the course of development at the site, the developer prevented businesses and the public from gaining access to it. It was abundantly clear what was going on, and a so-called enforcement action was pursued. The problem was that Crest Nicholson batted it away. That was frustrating for those businesses, as they received little or no compensation for all the disruption that they suffered when the site was being developed. Why was effective enforcement action not taken? The reality is that a small district council was taking on a big developer, which was able to play for time and use the legal process to say, “I’m sorry, but what do you expect with a difficult site?”
The situation became even more ludicrous. The scouts had a hut next door to the development, and it provides one of the most graphic demonstrations of how planning can go wrong. The hut is now isolated, 20 ft away from the rest of the site. The developer dug away at the side of the scout hut, leaving it 20 ft up in the air so that the scouts could not get any proper access to it, saying that that was in the original agreement. The council tried to take enforcement action, but once more it was left to the media to highlight how unfair the process was. The argument is that the amenity is being delivered in other ways, but as far as I am concerned an existing amenity, such as a scout hut, is important. We tried to take action against Crest Nicholson, but it merely said, “When the development is finished, we will get proper access restored.” That is not acceptable.
Another case concerns a Gypsy site that was won, effectively, through the back door. The Gypsies had a good reputation in Moreton Valence, where they were before, but they moved on to a site in Brookthorpe, bang up against Gloucester city, so there was much more impact on Gloucester city than on Stroud district. Despite the unease of the local population about the
way in which the planning was won, they let it go and in the early months there were few problems. Three years down the line, I went to a protest meeting a month ago in Brookthorpe. The original Gypsy site has now become a transit camp. The planning agreement, under which foul drainage arrangements should have been put in place, has clearly never been adhered to. The planting of trees has not been fulfilled and the site is in such a mess that we have called on the council to take action against the development, which is clearly outwith what was intended by the planning agreement. All the ill feeling in the locality, which was against the original Gypsy settlement, has returned with knobs on. Locals believe that the planning process has been completely overruled and that enforcement action is rather late, if it has taken place at all, and weak.
Those are only two examples of how enforcement, if it is not properly carried out, can lead to all sorts of problems. The difficulty is that it is unclear whether the problem is purely a planning matter. Environmental health services, the police and the Environment Agency are all involved in considering the need for enforcement action, but no single agency can deliver it. If they all turned up mob-handed, I suppose that that would have an impact, but that is not how the planning process should operate. There is a lack of clarity about how planning should be delivered and, where it is not delivered properly, who should take enforcement action.
The examples I have given are typical of what can happen and what can go wrong. Will my hon. Friend the Minister say something about the need to finesse the planning system so that if there is a break in the planning process and enforcement has to be used, councils regard that process as important, and provide sufficient resources to ensure that integrated action follows when needed? I agree with the White Paper that we need to remove some of the unnecessary burdens on councils when they deal with small developments, but if we are to remove those burdens from councils they have to be given real powers to deal with larger cases of clear breaches of the planning rule, or people will take the law into their own hands more frequently in the belief that they can get away with it. There are too many cases in the Strouds and Northavons of this world that show that planning is held in contempt by many local people. If their application is turned down, but if they see that others have got through the back door and that no enforcement action was taken, they get the message that it is one law for some, but a completely different law for others.
10.9 am
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), and I congratulate the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) on securing the debate. It is timely given the White Paper and the concerns of many of our constituents, particularly in the south-east, where planning is becoming one of the big issues that deeply worries people, who write to me about it.
My constituents and I feel that the Government’s plans to deregulate planning are bad for local democracy, communities and our environment, not just for protecting our green belt but for our carbon footprint as well.
Their proposals for a national policy statement on major infrastructure projects are at odds with their support for local democracy and their efforts to reduce carbon output. The White Paper will cause a surge in major, carbon-intensive developments such as airport expansions, like the one that is threatened for Stansted in Essex, major road schemes, massive incinerators and major non-renewable energy projects across the UK. The Government must try to square that circle and make their policies make sense.
I know that the Minister is keen on local democracy and bringing control down to the grass-roots level to empower local people to have meaningful control over what happens in their communities. I totally agree and support him on that, and have heard him speak eloquently about it in the House. I wonder whether the Government’s proposals in the White Paper will conflict with that objective. I know that there are difficult questions to answer and that the national interest in infrastructure and energy generation projects must be considered, but a careful balance must be struck. We still need to respect true local democracy and to keep local people empowered.
The planning system, as it is at the moment, is biased against local communities. If a planning application goes in and is knocked back, the developer can appeal at very little cost and trouble to himself. If it is approved, the local community cannot appeal. There are no circumstances in which a community can say, “You’ve got this one wrong. We want it looked at independently, because we think something has gone wrong in the planning system.” My constituents regularly feel that something has gone wrong in the planning system in Castle Point and that bad decisions have been made, but they have no means of challenging those decisions unless the procedure was got wrong. In general, the local council does not get it wrong, and even if it does residents only have a compensation route and cannot change the planning decision.
The planning system needs to be rebalanced. We need to empower local communities to challenge major planning applications. I know that we cannot have a next-door neighbour fighting another next-door neighbour—that would be rather silly—but there needs to be a system of challenging major decisions that affect a community, such as the planning application in my community to enable the building of 320 houses on green belt land. Many of the planning committee did not turn up to vote on it, and people from another community voted and approved it against the expectations of the local community, the local media and myself. We need to rebalance power and to give it back to local communities.
The debate is about enforcement. It seems that the enforcement rules are complicated and muddled. I pulled out the Library debate pack “Enforcement of planning conditions”. It states, quite rightly, that
“domestic building work that has not been challenged during the four years after its substantial completion is safe from enforcement action by the local authority.”
That is clear, and we all understand it. It also states that the limit for a breach of conditions is 10 years, after which enforcement action cannot be taken. The same report says that, with some exclusions, unauthorised change of use is not excluded from enforcement action for 10 years, but that action on a breach of planning control through a change of use has to be taken within
four years. I am now confused—is it four years or 10 years for a change of use? In deciding on such a matter, a judge was also confused and there was a lot of controversy about what constituted a change of use rather than a breach of condition. There is room to clarify such matters and have clear, simple principles against which planning decisions can be judged.
Retrospective planning applications, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Northavon and others, are often used to legitimise unauthorised developments. I know that the Minister is considering whether we might have some controls on that, such as a change in the fees for retrospective planning applications so that they are made more difficult and controlled.
I was going to talk about other issues, but I see that other hon. Members want to speak. I hope that the Minister will consider one or two of my points.
10.17 am
Mr. John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) on securing the debate on a matter that affects every right hon. and hon. Member. I am sure that it is regularly raised in every postbag.
I agree with what hon. Members said about the lack of enforcement. There is no doubt that the planning departments of local authorities are overstretched and that the action that they take is reactive rather than proactive. All too often, they rely on local residents or residents’ groups to inform them of when planning conditions are breached. I wish to give one example from my constituency—the old Withington hospital site.
Withington and West Didsbury have the very active West Didsbury residents association, which takes a keen interest in planning matters. When the hospital site was being redeveloped, some of the trees there were protected to retain as many of them as possible. Unfortunately, the conditions that were put on the application to protect the trees during construction were flouted. It was only because of the work of Alison Hunt, the environmental officer for the residents association, that it was ever brought to the attention of the planning department that the developers were putting building materials right up against protected trees, potentially damaging their roots. Without that hard work by local residents, some of those trees could have been damaged and might have ended up dying.
The problem is that it is okay where there are strong, proactive residents’ groups to do that work and keep an eye on developers, but all too often areas do not have such groups to take action and inform local councillors, local MPs and the planning department when regulations are being flouted. Clearly, there are some areas where developers will always get away with ignoring the planning conditions. The areas with strong residents’ groups are the only ones where action is actually taken.
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