Local Development: Public Consultation

Local plans are the best way for communities to shape decisions about how to deliver the housing and wider development that their areas need. We want more people to be involved in the development of those local plans, and a key objective of our digital planning reforms is increased public engagement with them. Measures in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will ensure planning committees play their proper role in scrutinising development without obstructing it, while maximising the use of experienced professional planners.

Across my constituency, local people are hugely frustrated at Labour-run Bradford council inundating our communities with hundreds of new houses, while not investing in local services and roads. Despite protests and valid concerns, the council has steamrollered through developments at every stage. Yet when vast numbers of local people in Silsden supported the development of a new farm shop on the periphery of the town—exactly the kind of new service that would promote local growth and deliver the new sustainable housing we need—Bradford council blocked the proposal. How will the Minister ensure that local councils listen to local people and are not dictating development plans to them?

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman needed to make a political point to get his clip, but I am glad that we have Labour councils across the country that back development. Of course residents should have their say, but it is the role and responsibility of local authorities to make decisions about material considerations in planning applications, and I have no reason to think that the local authority in question has done anything other than that.

When I was leader of South Gloucestershire council, in partnership with Labour, we restored the right of local people to speak at planning committee site visits, giving people back their voice in the affected community. However, clause 46 of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill would enable the Secretary of State to bypass planning committees altogether. If the Minister truly wants to get Britain building, will he think again and give communities a real stake in local planning decisions?

As I have made clear, we want more people involved in the development of local plans. There is nothing in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that will prevent them from objecting to individual applications. The measures simply ensure that the process of determining applications at a local level is more streamlined and efficient. As I made clear in closing the Bill’s Second Reading on 24 March, the Government intend formally to consult on proposals relating to the delegation of planning decisions in England, so the hon. Lady and other hon. Members will be able to engage with the detail alongside the Bill’s passage.

The number of people needing a social home in Luton has gone up from 8,500 last year to 11,500 this year, so I welcome the Government’s plan for 1.5 million new homes. While we are crying out for houses in Luton, just over the border with Central Bedfordshire developments are taking place right on our border, but without people in Luton getting a look in. What can the Minister do to ensure that local authorities co-operate with each other to deliver the homes that we need?

We are taking measures to address precisely the problem that my hon. Friend outlines. Proposals in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will make spatial development strategies mandatory at sub-regional level, so neighbouring local authorities have to co-operate effectively on housing delivery and infrastructure provision across boundaries in just the way she sets out, which will address the challenges she outlines.

Dunfermline is Scotland’s newest city and as such a large number of homes are being built all the time. However, too often those large-scale housing developments are done without reference to local services, such as GPs, and without proper consultation with local people, partly due to failures in the Scottish SNP Government’s planning policy. What advice does the Minister have about how those issues might be overcome? Will he engage with the Scottish Government to ensure they are learning any lessons from the excellent changes being made in that part of the UK?

Housing is a devolved matter, but I am always keen to convey to colleagues in the Scottish Government precisely the benefits of the proposals we are taking forward when it comes to planning reform and renewed drive for house building.