Speaking during the Report Stage of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown puts down amendments relating to compulsory purchase of land and highlights the importance of neighbourhood plans.
On new clause 12, both the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and the Bill contain welcome measures to make it clear that an acquiring authority should make payments of compensation in advance—that is the important bit—of taking possession of land. They also provide a mechanism for improving the rates of interest on late compensation payments, which is important because it will hopefully encourage acquiring authorities to pay in advance, and to pay a reasonable interest rate, rather than delaying payment.
Those measures require further regulations to bring them into force. As soon as the Bill becomes law, those regulations should be brought forward without delay to ensure that landowners and business owners benefit from the Government’s previous commitment to improve interest rates on late payments.
On amendment 26, I welcome the Bill’s provisions to allow acquiring authorities to take land on a temporary basis. That will provide much-needed flexibility within the compulsory purchase system and stop acquiring authorities having to take land on a permanent basis that is required only temporarily. However, they should not be allowed to take land on both those bases. If, having taken land on a temporary basis, an acquiring authority finds that it needs to take it on a permanent basis, that should be subject to a second notice to treat and a compulsory purchase procedure.
Finally, amendment 27 is the most important, in my view. It would remove clause 28, which repeals part 4 of the Land Compensation Act 1961. That repeal will prevent landowners who have had land compulsorily purchased for a particular purpose from seeking additional compensation should the land end up being used for a different, more lucrative development. I will briefly try to explain that to the House.
The general principle of compulsory purchase is that if someone’s land is being compulsorily acquired, they should be paid the same price as if that land were being acquired on a voluntary, willing-seller willing-buyer basis in the private commercial sector. Abolishing part 4 of the 1961 Act will mean that if the land subsequently has a different use—for example, if the planning zoning changes so that it suddenly becomes extremely valuable because it could be developed for housing or commercial purposes—the person having his land acquired will not get the benefit of that uplift. As a chartered surveyor—I declare that in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—if I were ever selling land that I felt was likely to have such an uplift, I would always insist on an overage clause being placed on the sale, not for 10 years but for 20 or 25 years. During that time the vendor would get 50% of the value of the uplift.
I say to my hon. Friend the Minister, loud and clear, that in clause 28 he is enabling acquiring authorities to acquire land on the cheap at the expense of private landowners, and I think that is unfair.
Later interventions in the same debate
My hon. Friend rightly points out that the Government have agreed to the provisions, and therefore that Treasury approval has presumably been given because the measure will cost a certain amount of money. It would therefore be logical that, as soon as the Bill comes into force, the provisions should come into force. That is the strength of our joint proposals.
I am sure that the House will be aware that the reason why local authorities very rarely use article 4 is that they can be involved in paying substantial sums in compensation for using that power.
My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) is absolutely right that it is a gross dereliction of duty. My local authority is in that category, and the net result is that we do not have a single neighbourhood plan, despite the fact that I have written to every single clerk and every single town and parish councillor in my constituency. We need to put powers in the Bill to make sure that every local authority has a local plan, so that the good people in our constituencies can go forward with their local plans in the confidence that they will not be derailed by speculative developers.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on making a very cogent case. Does he accept that the reason why the green belt has a high designation is that such areas are very special—they are green lungs in and around our great cities? Once they are built over, they are very difficult to recreate.
I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says. When she drew up her new clause, did she think about encouraging the planning inspector to award costs to the local authority where the developer was turned down at appeal and the conditions in her new clause were met? I have one case in my constituency where the council had to pay the developer’s costs, even though the council had won.
Later speech in the same debate
I am grateful to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker. So troublesome am I that three Whips, including one who is sitting next to me, have encouraged me to be brief, so I will do just that.
It is in your hands.
It is in my hands. The Whips will see whether their spell has worked.
I start by welcoming my hon. Friend the Planning Minister. He has been incredibly generous in listening to Back-Bench concerns about planning. Having practised in it as a chartered surveyor, I know that it is an incredibly difficult area. The Bill is important, because neighbourhood plans were introduced by the Localism Act 2011—the clue is in the name—and if we can devolve planning down as far as possible, many people will feel that they have ownership of the planning system and be much happier about what is being done to them. In contrast to some Members who have spoken in this debate, I warmly welcome such plans, and the Bill is a good step forward. New clauses 7 and 8 and amendments 19 and 28, which are in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), all represent improvements to the Bill.
We must ensure that neighbourhood plans work, and we need three things to do that. I represent two local authorities, Stroud District Council, which has a local district plan, and Cotswold District Council, which does not, and I have been pretty strong in my words about the latter. The net result in the Cotswold District Council area is that we do not have a single neighbourhood plan in operation.
I have here a neighbourhood plan; this has 50 or 60 pages of hugely detailed stuff prepared by Fairford Town Council, dealing with not only where houses go, but a host of other aspects such as infrastructure, bus routes and community facilities. It contains a huge range of things, so it is a really good thing to get local people thinking about these plans. They cannot do that, however, unless they have a local plan in place; although they can, theoretically, produce a neighbourhood plan, they need a local plan in place. I therefore urge that we get on to local councils to get one in place.
The second thing that needs to be done is to make sure that the five-year land supply can be controlled by the local authority. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) has made clear, the local planning system is a system of development, not of building. Therefore, if a developer plays the system and does not develop one site but gets planning permission for another, that can throw the system. I am grateful for the Minister’s written statement today, which protects the situation until this Bill comes into effect. Indeed, it goes further in some respects than the Bill, because it protects some aspects of a three-year land supply, so I am grateful for what he has done.
If we do not have confidence in the neighbourhood planning system, we will not get any of the 130 towns and villages that I represent in my huge constituency, where 80% is designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty, to produce a neighbourhood plan. Planning is as difficult in the Cotswolds as it is anywhere in the country, and if we want them to produce these neighbourhood plans, which, as others have said, are difficult, detailed, costly and time-consuming for these volunteers, we need to have confidence in the system. In order for that to happen, these plans must work and stand up to scrutiny, and where a local plan and a neighbourhood plan are in operation, it should be de rigueur that the planning inspector does not overturn them, as happened in Kingswood, in the Stroud constituency. Fortunately, this Bill would rectify that, because Kingswood’s neighbourhood plan was at an advanced stage of preparation but was not actually adopted. Just to show hon. Members how neighbourhood plans should work, let me point out that in many cases well over 50%, and often 60%, vote for these neighbourhood plans in referendums, so they are very popular. As has been said by a number of others, they bring forward more houses, because when people buy in to the system, they tend to want to adopt more houses. So I think this is an excellent Bill and I commend the Minister on what he has done.