HC 1526 Communities and Local Government CommitteeWritten evidence from the Home Builders Federation

Introduction

1. The Home Builders Federation is the representative body of the home building industry in England and Wales.

2. The Federation’s member firms account for some 80% of all new homes built in England and Wales in any one year and include companies of all sizes, ranging from multi-national household names through regionally based businesses to small local companies.

3. The Federation welcomes the opportunity to contribute its views to the Inquiry and sets out below its answers to the main questions posed by the Committee.

Does the NPPF give sufficient guidance to local planning authorities, the Planning Inspectorate and others, including investors and developers, while at the same time giving local communities sufficient power over planning decisions?

4. The draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is a succinct and clear statement of national planning policy. It is not intended to be a “guide book” or “checklist” for planning decision makers or an instruction manual for local planning authorities or planning applicants. The principles that it expounds are neither new nor radical, drawing, as they do, on the purpose of the planning system and well established planning principles developed to protect the public interest from private interests and to balance the often competing requirements for economic, social and environmental growth and protection.

5. The draft NPPF contains the key elements of planning policy guidance from the current Planning Policy Statements (PPSs) for England. Importantly, however, the NPPF is less prescriptive than the current PPSs in setting out this guidance.

6. This deliberate reduction in prescription is welcome. It is a little remarked upon aspect of localism in planning. The aim is that local authorities and neighbourhoods should be able to apply the key principles of national planning policy flexibly and creatively, taking account of local circumstances and requirements.

7. We believe this less prescriptive approach should result in a less confrontational and adversarial planning system and better outcomes by encouraging and enabling practical dialogue between applicants, communities and planning authorities. It will create the space and freedom for the parties to discuss how identified development requirements can be accommodated in a way that also satisfactorily meets other local objectives, including the protection of local amenity and environment.

8. Many critics of the planning system (and the draft NPPF) do not appear to accept the need for the system to make decisions in the wider public interest. Instead, many “objectors” in practice seek to protect their own private interest or view. This is most obviously demonstrated by the results of various opinion poll surveys in which people recognise and accept the need for more dwellings generally yet become increasingly less accepting of this requirement the nearer the location of a proposed development is to their own home. This is true of a great deal of development—minerals extraction, waste processing, and major infrastructure such as roads and railways as well as housing.

9. The planning system needs, therefore, to be informed by policy and practice that seeks to represent and involve the wider community and public interest rather than be driven primarily by those of vocal minorities. Previous attempts at including a much wider representation (through community plans for example) have resulted in a much higher acceptance of the principles of development and a more inclusive approach towards community engagement. It is this that the draft NPPF (and the Localism Bill) is seeking to foster. The NPPF and the Localism Bill will actually increase the opportunity for whole communities to be a part of the planning process.

10. It is for this reason that the NPPF sets out that proper assessments should be made at local plan level of housing and other requirements for the area. Once such assessments have been made in the light of a suitable and robust evidence base, the Framework leaves it to the Local Planning Authority and the neighbourhood to determine how and where these identified requirements are met.

11. In association with the NPPF, we believe there will be a need for some good practice guidance to ensure consistency of approach, particularly with regard to cross boundary issues such as strategic planning of infrastructure and housing.

12. The case for producing such guidance is particularly strong for issues such as determining housing requirements, strategic housing market assessment and housing land availability assessment. Common and shared understandings of how such key assessments should be undertaken in order to assemble an evidence base that will command confidence as part of the local plan process will be central to the success of the NPPF.

13. Ministers envisage practitioners playing a key part in producing such guidance. We see merit in the “localist” ethos of this approach. For example, it is the practitioners—whether planners, communities, developers or others—who have the knowledge and experience of how to undertake assessments of housing and other requirements and what information is needed.

14. Such guidance will command most credibility and force in supporting the implementation of the NPPF if it has been worked up and agreed by the full range of practitioners and bodies with an interest in it. It is also important, however, that where different parties have come together to produce such guidance it is then endorsed by Government as legitimately assisting the delivery of the NPPF.

15. HBF is currently involved in a group—also comprising, amongst others, the Town & Country Planning Association, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Planning Officers Society, Shelter and the National Housing Federation—that is considering guidance and best practice in undertaking strategic housing market assessment.

Is the definition of “sustainable development” contained in the document appropriate; and is the presumption in favour of sustainable development a balanced and workable approach?

16. The concept of “sustainable development” as a goal of the planning system has been developed through planning policy over the last 20 years or so in response to the Brundtland Report of 1987, “Our Common Future”.

17. The Brundtland 3-legged stool in which the three elements of sustainability must be in balance provides a high level objective for planning policy. Crucially the objective considers the overall public interest and cannot be applied literally to every locational planning decision on a self-contained individual basis. In practice the application of planning policy to individual decisions requires for many reasons that it may be desirable to emphasise, or, in planning terms, to place greater weight, on one or more of the elements of sustainability in a given case.

18. Thus, in areas of high environmental value—SSSIs, AONBs, National Parks etc—it is considered sustainable to place greater emphasis on environmental protection than on social or economic development. In areas of market failure or deprived communities it might be desirable to place greater emphasis on the social or economic goals of regeneration at the expense of the loss of some natural environment considerations. The planning system has been making judgments and decisions on how to balance the weight to be placed on competing objectives in decisions ever since the 1947 Act. Weight to be placed on material considerations is a matter for the decision maker and they are required to explain their decision. None of this is radical nor is it changed through the wording of the NPPF. Decision-makers have been required, and will continue to be required under the NPPF, to demonstrate that overall the individual elements of local plans and the developments permitted under them collectively result in sustainable development.

19. Given the above it is not considered possible to produce a single, precise, national definition of what constitutes sustainable development in all circumstances. Moreover, any attempt to do so would be very likely to make decisions on individual planning applications extremely difficult to reach with the result that the planning system became much slower and a significantly greater barrier than previously to necessary development. Such an outcome clearly cannot be in the public interest: to produce positive outcomes and true sustainable development the planning system must continue to be allowed to place greater weight in individual cases on one or more of the three elements of sustainable development.

20. In view of these very important considerations, therefore, the draft NPPF defines the principle of sustainable development rather than approaching the concept as if it were a checklist of what is and isn’t “sustainable”.

21. The presumption in favour of sustainable development is not a radical change to planning policy. However it is a radical change of approach that should be adopted by everyone involved in planning whether professionally or as a member of a community. In effect the presumption requires local planning authorities to explain why a development should not go ahead rather than placing this onus on the applicant of convincing the authority as to why it should be approved.

22. It does not mean that any development will have to be approved anywhere. The principles of sustainable development, as set out in the draft NPPF, will apply to all development proposals. Similarly the planning system will remain plan led.

23. It is the responsibility of local planning authorities and local communities to ensure that they have in place a clear and deliverable development plan against which applications can be assessed in terms of sustainability. If authorities choose to ignore this responsibility it is only fair that applications can still be assessed—using national policies as set out in the NPPF. To do otherwise would reward those authorities who choose to ignore their responsibility for plan production and facilitating development within their administrative area—ultimately at the expense of other areas who do meet their responsibilities.

24. From a policy perspective, it cannot be in the national public interest that some areas could in effect seek to pass on their responsibilities to other areas. That would produce sub-optimal outcomes that would in itself carry a significant risk of undermining the objective of sustainable development.

25. Looked at in this way, the presumption in favour of sustainable development is the necessary glue or discipline to ensure that under a change to localism the exercise of local planning powers does not result in detriment to other areas or unsustainable outcomes damaging the overall public interest.

Are the “core planning principles” clearly and appropriately expressed?

26. The HBF believes that the draft NPPF is very clear and very succinct.

27. However, given the apparent recent confusion about the scope and purpose of the NPPF, some additional clarification might be helpful, particularly with regard to the need for a timely and deliverable development plan to provide a clear starting point for individual planning decisions that can be related to the area’s overall vision for promoting sustainable development.

Is the relationship between the NPPF and other national statements of planning-related policy sufficiently clear? Does the NPPF serve to integrate national planning policy across Government Departments?

28. The succinctness of the NPPF and its omission of detailed guidance or explanation of policy could potentially lead to other departments of government (central or local) producing their own “supplementary” guidance.

29. If it was felt that such guidance was necessary, there would need to be a means of it being tested as conforming to the principles set out in the NPPF.

30. The Government should therefore adopt a clear procedure whereby any such proposed additional guidance should be endorsed and issued by the Department responsible for planning policy—namely Communities and Local Government.

31. Any official guidance notes should be clearly referenced in the NPPF itself in order that people can clearly assess the weight to be given to other, “unofficial” publications and proposals.

32. In addition, while we believe the NPPF takes account of existing and proposed National Policy Statements on strategic infrastructure requirements, the relationship between the NPPF and the National Planning Statements could perhaps be set out more clearly in a single, overarching statement in the NPPF.

Does the NPPF, together with the “duty to cooperate”, provide a sufficient basis for larger-than-local strategic planning?

33. HBF remains concerned that once the Regional Strategies are abolished, particularly with regard to their strategic role of providing for an open debate and resolution of cross boundary issues and strategic planning, the duty to co-operate may not prove effective in resolving such issues—or at least mean they take longer to resolve.

34. While the duty to co-operate will require parties to work together there is no clear resolution process for situations where a robust solution to strategic challenges cannot be readily agreed between the parties involved. This will pose a particular challenge to the new system and to the Planning Inspectorate in determining whether individual local plans are sound or not.

35. A great deal of planning must take account of issues that are larger than local (not least sustainable development patterns for growth) and the lack of a clear process to ensure that these issues are clearly debated and equitably resolved should be of considerable concern to everyone. The presumption in favour of sustainable development will provide an incentive that in this context reinforces the duty to co-operate, but our view is that further thought also needs to be given to resolving cross-border issues that cannot be readily agreed between the relevant parties.

Are the policies contained in the NPPF sufficiently evidence-based?

36. As suggested above—the policies contained within the NPPF are not as new or as radical as suggested by some commentators. They are drawn from the many years of experience and outcomes of the planning systems before them and the guidance and policy notes of the current and previous planning processes.

37. Taking this experience on board, the NPPF sets out a balanced planning policy and outcomes that the Government is seeking to achieve in terms of sustainable development—of social, economic and environmental considerations. Supporting these tried and tested principles, the NPPF also sets out sensible and objective requirements for the gathering of evidence to inform the provisions of local plans in key areas such as housing supply and other forms of development.

September 2011