Communities and Local Government Committee
Oral evidence: Operation of the National Planning Policy Framework, HC 190
Monday 7 July 2014
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 7 July 2014.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Panel 1 (Questions 228-264)
Gloucestershire Association of Parish and Town Councils
Members present: Mr Clive Betts (Chair); Bob Blackman; Mark Pawsey; John Pugh; and Chris Williamson.
Panel 1 Questions [228-264]
Witnesses: Councillor Gerald Dee, Gloucester City Council, Councillor Steve Jordan, Leader, Cheltenham Borough Council, and Councillor Robert Vines, Leader, Tewkesbury Borough Council, gave evidence.
Q228 Chair: Welcome to our session here in Cheltenham of the Community and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry into the National Planning Policy Framework. This is our fourth public evidence that we have taken. What I am going to do to begin with is get members of the Committee to say who we are and to put on record any interests we may have in this inquiry, so you all know where we are coming from in terms of any interest. Secondly, I will say a few words about our inquiry, and what it is and what it is not. Then, I will ask our first panel of witnesses to introduce themselves and we will begin to ask questions of them. I am Clive Betts. I am Member of Parliament for Sheffield South East and I am Chair of the Committee. As for my interest, I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. We will go around the table, so the Members can introduce themselves.
John Pugh: I am John Pugh. I am a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament. I have two councillors who work with me, and I am also a vice-president of the LGA.
Mark Pawsey: I am Mark Pawsey. I am the Member of Parliament for Rugby. I have a member of staff who is a local councillor.
Chris Williamson: My name is Chris Williamson. I am a Labour Member of Parliament for Derby North. I have two members of staff who are elected councillors.
Bob Blackman: I am Bob Blackman, MP for Harrow East in North West London. I have no declarable interest in this particular area.
Q229 Chair: Also with us at the top table, here, is Glen McKee, who is the Clerk to the Committee, and Kevin Maddison, who is our Committee Specialist and who is leading for us on this inquiry.
Now, what we are doing as a Committee is inquiring into the operation of the National Planning Policy Framework, which was brought in by the Government just over two years ago to try to simplify the guidance to councils about how they produce their local plans and how they deal with planning applications. We are looking at how that is operating up and down the country. We are taking evidence from a whole range of witnesses, most of them down in London. We made a trip today to see how it is operating in one particular part of the country—namely Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury—particularly with the operation of the Joint Core Strategy here. We are not here in the end to decide whether that strategy is appropriate or whether the right sites have been allocated for the right purposes, and certainly not to judge or rule on any individual planning applications. Those of you who think that you have come here to get all your problems solved today may be a little disappointed at the end of it. What we are trying to do is learn from what is happening on the ground, with the very practical experience that you have in this area, and particularly the experience of the three councils working and co-operating together. In some parts of the country, that is not happening, so we want to look at why it is happening here and whether that is working. We are going to begin with our three council representatives. Can I ask you to say who you are, which council you are from and your position in the council? Then, we can start with our questions.
Cllr Vines: Councillor Robert Vines. I am the Leader of Tewkesbury Borough Council.
Cllr Jordan: I am Steve Jordan, Leader of Cheltenham Borough Council.
Cllr Dee: Councillor Gerald Dee from Gloucester. I am sitting in with our leader’s apologies, because he happened to have booked a long-term holiday before this date came up.
I have, however, attended most of the members’ meetings, many of them in a similar capacity as representing the leader, so I have probably got as much experience. I am regarded as the lead member on Joint Core Strategy issues in Gloucester City Council. There has been some turbulence among the supporters, again, so I have useful continuity. Unfortunately, we have had people who have left mid-stream; I do not think that is because of the Joint Core Strategy, but many of our officers and others have now gone. Therefore, again, continuity has been difficult, and I have at least managed to provide some of that. I am sorry you are getting second best, but that is all I can do.
Q230 Chair: Okay. Thank you very much for coming. I will say that whilst this is not an opportunity for members of the public to ask questions or contribute, if there is anyone who wants to submit written evidence to the inquiry—including written evidence on the basis of what you have heard today, which you may or may not agree with—then we are still very willing to have evidence from you. We will then publish that evidence on our website, and we will take all the evidence into account when reaching our final views. For everybody who wants to tweet, the hash tag is #NPPF2yearson. Could we begin by a question, then, to the three council representatives? Your three councils have decided to produce a joint strategy, rather than doing a local plan in isolation. Why have you made that decision? What led you to reach that conclusion?
Cllr Vines: It seemed to be the best way forward, given the geography of the three authorities involved. Cheltenham and Gloucester are self-contained, shall we say, but Tewkesbury Borough Council wraps very much around Cheltenham and a good part of the way around Gloucester. It did not seem such a good idea to go it alone, given that close connection. The duty to co-operate would still be there if it was a single core strategy or a joint core strategy, so we said, “Let’s start straight away with that.”
Cllr Jordan: As has been said, Cheltenham and Gloucester are both very tight on urban boundaries in terms of our administrative boundaries. Therefore, Tewkesbury is very much a part of any equation we are talking about. It does not make sense from a practical point of view, because Cheltenham and Gloucester are very close together. We are a single economic unit, from a practical point of view. Certainly, from travel-to-work and housing points of view, Tewkesbury are in and around us. It makes sense collectively.
The other potential side of that question is: why only three? The answer to that is that starting from one and building to three has been tricky enough. In retrospect, it might have been sensible to try to include Stroud, because we have had issues around South Gloucester, which is where Stroud comes into play. As to whether you could practically make it bigger than three, it would have been difficult. That was one thing, retrospectively, we have been thinking about.
Cllr Dee: I think there are great things about it, except that Gloucester and Tewkesbury have lived together as neighbours for many years now. We have many Tewkesbury residents, as such, who pay council tax for Tewkesbury but come into Gloucester to work and use many of the resources. So, it has worked and therefore it is a good basis on which to start.
I myself cannot see it is going to be as easy to do this next time round, when we have to find the next so many thousand or whatever houses, because we are moving into a dearth of land in those areas. I guess you would have to broaden them out and bring in certain of the neighbouring bodies.
Q231 Chair: I wonder to what extent there is a problem, in that it is hardly a marriage of three equal partners. You have got two authorities where there is more need for housing land than you can supply, in Gloucester and Cheltenham, and one authority that is going to have to take extra houses to meet the needs of two other authorities. Is it relatively easy for Cheltenham and Gloucester to say, “Okay, we are going to do what we need to do as far as we can, for our communities, but, Tewkesbury, you have not explained to your public that actually what we are doing—building on these nice greenfield sites you want to see preserved—is to sort out the problems of Gloucester and Cheltenham,” which cannot deal with their own?
Cllr Vines: That has to be a fact of life, anyway. It is a fact that Tewkesbury had to take the unmet need of Cheltenham and Gloucester. I would suggest, if the authorities came up with single core strategies, there would be an element of that anyway. We could not just view all this in isolation; it would not make sense. Regarding the duty to co-operate, I would suggest that Tewkesbury have been very co-operative in this, as a necessity, but I do not think there was any real option. If we had all come up with single core strategies, it may well have looked very similar.
Cllr Jordan: That is largely true. I cannot see that we could have done this realistically in isolation. The fact is we are trying to do it in a planned way; however, people may argue whether it is good, bad or indifferent. We are trying to plan it. If we had done it on a random basis, that would have been worse than trying to do it in a planned way.
Because there is no fixed barrier in the ground, most people in Cheltenham think the bits that are being proposed are actually part of Cheltenham anyway, because their greenfield is just on the edge of Cheltenham predominantly. So, it does not take away the heat in the issue, about whether or not you are going to build in them for the Cheltenham population.
Q232 Chair: A further dimension to that is you are all politicians. You have a Conservative administration in Tewkesbury, taking on the housing need of a Lib Dem administration in Cheltenham. I understand the Tory opposition in Cheltenham is actually opposed to the amount of development that is going on. How do you deal with that, Councillor Vines, when your colleagues in your own party and the authority next door, who you are trying to help, are opposing what you are trying to do?
Cllr Vines: It is largely a political process, but it is not a party-political process. It shows you how right we were to go along with this. If you watched the debate at each council, it would have been difficult: one political party on one occasion on one council and then the opposition party saying it in the other council. You would not have been able to identify them; it may be quite novel, but that is the way it worked out. Party politics really did not come into it that much, although most of it had a political dimension.
Cllr Jordan: The issues do not get simpler just because one party is trying to grapple with them rather than another. Under the framework, probably rightly, we had to try to assess the need that we collectively had, and then we had to look at how we meet it. That equation does not change, because the framework has imposed that on us. We have done the best we can to achieve it, and we have to try to grapple with the solutions. With regard to the party politics of it, it is fair to say that in Cheltenham the Conservatives were not unanimously against it until the most recent council meeting; there were different shades of opinion. I know that applies to our own party; not all members of our group have supported the Joint Core Strategy as it stands. So, we have allowed discretion for people to take different views, but we have come out with the collective majority view that we think we should take this forward, for the greater good.
Cllr Dee: We entered into the elections 18, nine, nine—I have to get the figures right—and we came out at exactly the same breakdown. There was no party division; in fact, the two strongest voices against were members of the Conservative party administration. So, there was no party division. To be quite fair, it did not hit upon the majority of wards in Gloucester, in many ways; it was sufficiently remote. The Tewkesbury relationship is something we have been living with anyway, and we are quite happy with it.
Q233 Bob Blackman: Councillor Vines and Councillor Dee, you are both county councillors as well as district councillors. Is that correct?
Cllr Dee: I was. I am not now.
Q234 Bob Blackman: Following from Clive’s question, one of the issues is that the County Council seems to have not been involved in this JCS study and co-operation. They seem to be very standoffish. Is there a particular reason for that?
Cllr Vines: If I can start, because I am the only current county and district councillor, it was quite helpful, from my own personal perspective, that I was not in the position of trying to serve two masters. The fact that the County Council distanced themselves a bit from a lot of the input was certainly helpful to me. I could concentrate with just one of the hats on.
Cllr Jordan: From a practical point of view, my understanding is that the team that used to do that was restructured down from 22 people to nine, at which point they said they probably did not have the resource unless we wished to pay for them to do it. In some places we have done, and in other places we have gone outside. There was a practical point of view, in terms of their downsizing of resource. Also, they have got this barge pole. I don’t know about touching it; people might think that is a good idea.
Q235 Bob Blackman: Moving on to my specific areas, the big bones of contention that we have been able to ascertain are: the period of time that this plan is going to exist for and the huge number of properties or dwellings to be developed, particularly when it appears as if the need over the past few years has reduced, in terms of the projections forward. A lot of people are objecting to this, saying that you are deliberately inflating the number of dwellings required in order to justify the incursions into the green belt. How do you respond to that challenge?
Cllr Jordan: That is not entirely the case. What we have attempted to do, from first principles, is to work out what the need is. The obligation under the framework is to try to assess the need. We went through a process of determining who to advise us. We came to the conclusion that the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research were best-placed to advise. They have taken the national population statistics and tried to interpret those, in terms of the numbers of households that will be created or indeed disappear over the course of time until 2031. That includes local population growth, and migration within the UK and internationally. They have factored all of those in to try to assess our actual picture. All that detail was published as evidence. For me, it is quite a convincing case for taking it through that process.
I will come on to the most recent update in a second. Based on the initial census figures from 2011, the interpretation that they came forward with was, across the area, 28,500 houses, to meet pure population and demographic change until 2031. In addition, they were recommending that due to the recession there had been a creation of pent-up demand—particularly with young families not being able to buy houses—that we should look at trying to do something about. My personal opinion is that Government policy around welfare reform may be introducing a restraint on household creation in the future that has gone away with the recession easing and the economy improving again. That is a personal opinion. The recommendation was that we should take that on board.
We have done that by looking at the 25-to-34 age group, who are particularly struggling. We know that we have that age group attempting to move out of the area to find housing. So, the 30,500 that we ended up with as our projection for need includes that extra 2,000 to try to deal with that category, in which we think there is a pent-up demand we are attempting to meet. Whether we achieve that is clearly a matter of opinion.
The most recent population statistics show that particularly the birth rate and the population overall from the census was over-projected. That has now reduced somewhat. Predominantly for Cheltenham and Gloucester, the assessment is the birth rate was overestimated, and anyone born in the next 17 years is not going to be creating a household, almost certainly. However, in the case of Tewkesbury, the issue is more around migration from the rest of the UK. Anyone coming in is going to be almost instantly creating a household, if they are going to try to move into the area. The net effect of that, we are told, is about a 17% reduction in Tewkesbury, which nets as 5.2% across the JCS area, which is a 1,600 houses reduction. In my view, that is a significant issue we need to look at.
At the moment, we are doing a consultation on the soundness of the plan. At the end of that, we will be taking on board both the feedback from the consultation and anything else that may have changed. We need to understand from Stroud what they are doing next, because their plan slightly hit the buffers; my understanding is they are going to do a six-month delay while they review their household provision. We also need to look at more transport and traffic modelling, as well as population.
Before going forward to the Secretary of State, we would pause and consider all of those: is there anything in that package we need to actually get back to the three councils to reconsider? The appropriate point for that will be in the autumn. We have not ignored changes. What we are doing is factoring those in at what I think is the appropriate point. Rather than stopping twice, we are going to only have a look once, at how we build that in.
Cllr Vines: Can I reinforce the first part of what Councillor Jordan has said? There seems to be a perception in the wider world, sometimes, that we have plucked a figure out of the air. The consultants we have used and the information we have gathered have reinforced the position that we have taken. There were occasions when we were accused of either singly or collectively just picking a figure at random. It certainly was nothing like that.
Cllr Jordan: There is an issue around agreed methodology. Because we are trying to work our own, we have actually employed professionals who can give us expert advice on that. But there is no real standard methodology on this; we are all learning as we go, which I guess is a factor of the new framework.
Q236 Bob Blackman: My understanding is that the figure you are currently working is 30,500 dwellings, up until 2031. That is something like a 20% increase in the number of dwellings in the area of the three local authorities. Do you think that is feasible or deliverable in such an area?
Cllr Jordan: Obviously, the whole object is that we are trying to provide something that is deliverable. Putting it into some sort of scale, if you compare what actually happened with what we are now doing—because we are now three years into our plan; some have already been built—so, 2011 to 2031, we are talking about a 5% increase per year in the number of houses. It is not radically different from what actually happened in the preceding 10 years.
In Cheltenham’s case, for decades we have predominantly done about 400 to 500 per year. Again, the 9,100 over 20 years is pretty much that sort of scale. In terms of scale, it is not dramatic. Clearly, given that we have used up existing land in the areas, it means going out into greenfield, which makes it difficult.
Cllr Vines: I would say that we could pick any number in that area, and there is no guarantee that it would be correct, because no one knows. It is very important to come up with a specific number that is evidence-based and is something that we can present to the planning inspector. If we are wildly out, I am sure he will tell us.
Q237 Bob Blackman: Councillor Dee?
Cllr Dee: Gloucester has had very little even greenfield let alone protected land. We have survived on a good-sized greenfield because we had a huge RAF storage area that, for safety reasons, has been spread out, using a hell of a lot of land and very few buildings. So, that and Stroud has provided a readymade, countrified green environment on which to do a lot of building, and we have done it. That, to some extent, has attracted the people who want to build more than our brownfield sites. We have a lot of potentially good brownfield sites in the city centre and in some of the peripheral areas leading out of the city that are still within the city boundary.
We in Gloucester want to encourage people to get on with that, because we do build about 500 houses a year on average, and we could keep going for a while yet on things we plan to do as part of our heritage regeneration, as well. We have places in the city centre that are becoming available. The prison is now closed; we do not know what is going to happen with that, but there is room for quite a lot there, and so on. Really, you could keep going at the moment without causing any particular pain and without attacking any—I will not say “greenbelt”, because it is not—land of similar origin.
Q238 Bob Blackman: One of the challenges from CPRE Gloucestershire is that you, collectively, are going to preside over the greatest proportional loss of greenbelt land there is. Taking Councillor Dee’s point—that actually there is plenty of land that is brownfield—why are you taking all this greenbelt land?
Cllr Jordan: All the brownfield land is in the 30,500. In Cheltenham’s case, we are assuming—we do not have it finally yet—within the local plan we will be seeking to identify 4,800 extra houses in the existing urban area of Cheltenham, for instance, towards our 9,100. That calculation shows you we still have quite a lot to find that we cannot fit in the existing urban area. We are trying to squeeze as much as we can in without destroying the place. You have seen some of the brownfield sites today; we are making some of those happen.
Some people would say, “You just err on the side of creating more houses and then you solve the problem eventually.” I do not buy that argument, because I am conscious that every extra house over and above our need is going to be somewhere on green fields or greenbelt, which is sensitive. Therefore, we should not be overestimating any more than we are underestimating. Coming up with that specific figure is a difficult one, as I am sure you have spotted.
Q239 Chris Williamson: I want to move on now to timescales, if I can. You have been working on the Joint Core Strategy since 2008: that is quite a long time to get to this point. Could you tell the Committee why you think it has taken as long as it has to get to this point?
Cllr Jordan: Part of it was intentional, on the grounds that there was a change of Government and an entire change of policy. We started off with the Regional Spatial Strategy, and in the meantime we switched to the National Planning Policy Framework. So, we did insert some intentional time for us to try to understand what the framework was saying. We put in a consultation phase, just to get some general feedback, in about 2010, while the framework was being evolved and while we worked out what the new Government was going to do. With the RSS being scrapped and the new localism agenda, we were not quite sure how much we were going to get and how much we would not get. We got slightly less than we hoped, let’s say, but we thought we had better understand that.
Having said that, clearly, three councils building a plan on this scale is going to take a reasonable amount of time, if you are going to take all of the key issues on board. It is never going to be a quick process, but because of the complete change of philosophy nationally in between, we had to try to build that in.
Q240 Chris Williamson: Councillor Dee and Councillor Vines, would you concur with that?
Cllr Vines: I agree with that, but nationally there are some councils that are ahead of us and there are some councils that are behind us. I think we are probably par for the course. A little note of caution is necessary; we do not want to be one of the fools rushing in, just to be first in line.
Q241 Chris Williamson: What do you think Government could usefully do to encourage councils to adopt local plans and core strategies more quickly, if anything?
Cllr Dee: I am going to go back to the previous question. We are having to look ahead and lots of them were looking forward to the more localistic aspects and the structure that needs to fit in below the core strategy. This is not easy. It is fine, perhaps, where you have got parish councils or what have you, but if you get into a city, we do not have a structure of even 21 people—the magic figure that people want—who can actually begin to be trained in supporting that. Also, that spreads up. If you have not got the pressure, the consultancy and the machinery there, it is harder to get on with the local plans.
Q242 Chris Williamson: Just coming back to the point I was previously asking: is there anything that Government could do to assist or encourage local authorities to adopt local plans and core strategies more quickly? Has the Government got it about right? Is there nothing more that the Government could do, do you think?
Cllr Dee: I raised that one, so perhaps I need to say that there is a wealth of ideas, guidance and thinking coming out. Sometimes, it rather looks as if one part is slightly briefing differently from another. A co-ordinated, strategic look and a sit down to draw up a plan that reflects more—I was a civil servant, so I apologise—interdepartmental co-operation is necessary, so that the guidance we get is less ambiguous in some instances. One often finds that there is confusion.
I will make a very simple case. I am trying to set up a proper lowest tier of organisation. One part of the council firmly believes that it is only about planning, and therefore all I have to do is find 21 planners and all will be well. The other part says, “It is in certain respects about community growth and looking after the ageing population,” and all those sorts of things, starting from the bottom up. According to whom you talk to and to whom they are tuned in, if you like—what they have read—you do get a slightly different view. My feeling is that one would like to see more cohesion in the guidance that is coming down. My colleagues might not agree with that, but that is something that, as a semi-back bencher who is trying to do something, I find it difficult.
Q243 Chris Williamson: Do you think the National Planning Policy Framework has helped or hindered your efforts to get your core strategy in place? Perhaps you could all comment on this.
Cllr Jordan: I agree that trying to understand it has added a delay—the fact we are all trying to grapple with what they are saying. There is some ambiguity in some of it, it is fair to say, related to greenbelt, as an obvious classic example. There are a couple of things I would change. Do not keep chopping and changing; once you have decided what you are doing, let us get on with doing it locally. Do we really need this massive inspectoral system, which then effectively imposes national guidance upon us whether we like it or not? Would it not be best to let it happen locally? It would knock a year or so off the process if we were allowed to agree our own thing. If we want it quick, those are two things.
In terms of the assistance, I do not fundamentally disagree with it. It has some improvements. The things I think have made it worse are the weakening of the Brownfield First Policy, which used to be fairly clear and is now vague. Although we are advocating it, we cannot insist on it. Clearly, Brownfield First is not the entire solution here, but if we could insist on it, that would be an advantage. That should be done first.. In terms of the assessed need, it is legitimate to expect us to do that—to assess what our need is and try to meet it—but we need to agree amongst ourselves what methodology might be acceptable. We are all second-guessing what is going to be deemed sound by the inspector, which has taken quite a lot of time for us to work out.
When the framework first came out, on the one hand you had people saying, “This categorically protects all greenbelt for ever and a day,” and other people saying, “No, it does not,” so they have developed this charter. The recent statement by Nick Boles I think is designed to be ambiguous, in some ways. We had a special meeting with DCLG officials to try to understand what was being said. It was made clear that, if you are going to move a greenbelt boundary, you do it in your local plan, and then you can protect it for 20 years or 17 years—however long the local plan is. There is no carte blanche, saying, “No, you cannot move the greenbelt boundary.” What was said was that it was up to us whether we move it or not.
I suspect that, given we can only meet approximately 60% of this need without using greenfield and non-existing sites, going back and saying, “We can only meet 60% of our needs,” is not going to be acceptable. I probably would not find it acceptable, let alone anybody else. It is almost inevitable that in order to try to meet the need, we are going to have to move the greenbelt boundaries. Clearly, the degree is the issue. That seems to be finally getting clear, but there is vagueness around some of his comments. I understand there are different audiences that they are trying to speak to, but clearly giving us clarity has not been a priority.
Q244 Chris Williamson: In a one-word answer, would you say the NPPF has helped or hindered?
Cllr Jordan: I would not. We are still trying to work our way through it.
Q245 Chris Williamson: It is too soon to say?
Cllr Jordan: I would say it is pretty even, if I was trying to judge it compared with the previous one.
Q246 Chris Williamson: Until such time as you have finalised your core strategy, are you not vulnerable to speculative applications? Has that been a problem at all?
Cllr Vines: I think Tewkesbury especially is more vulnerable. We are currently taking applications in. If we had pursued it quicker, we might have been further along the road.
To answer the previous points you made—it will not be a one-word answer—I personally think the NPPF has been quite helpful. You asked, “What can the Government do to help the situation?” Well, previously the Government were helping hand over fist with a Regional Spatial Strategy: “Here we are, chaps. Trust us; we have come to help.” That proved to be not the route that had to be taken.
Q247 Chris Williamson: You would not go back to the Regional Spatial Strategy, then?
Cllr Vines: Perhaps I am not the best person to ask. If that is a serious question, the one good thing about the Regional Spatial Strategy was that any development or growth would be dictated from on high. Now it will be assessed on the ground by the local authorities and councillors. Of course, any blame that comes from that will be directed straight to us.
Cllr Dee: Could I come back with an adjunct to what I was saying there? The other thing that is difficult is that housing is one thing; transport is another; schools and health are another. They are all interlinked. We reached a situation in Gloucester City—not entirely because of our house build in the last year or so—where we ran out of nursery places. There needs to be co-ordination between different Government funding areas, because if you build houses then you have to do something about the roads. You need to have that assured if it is putting pressure on schools or hospital or something else. The Planning Committees find themselves having to approve things, knowing that we are creating a big problem with schools.
The two need to go together: co-ordinated funding. I am not being very critical. There needs to be a bit more forced consultation when you are bringing in a useful new thing, to make sure it is not causing problems in an adjacent area. Co-ordinated funding has to be part of the equation as well.
Q248 John Pugh: Can I take you back to the duty to co-operate? Some people co-operate, sometimes, because they think it is a good way of doing things. Other people co-operate because it is a matter of necessity. Which category do you fall into?
Cllr Vines: There is an element of necessity there. As I have said previously, Tewkesbury found themselves in the position of having to be more co-operative because we had to take the unmet need. But that is really what the job is all about. That is what it says we have to do in the NPPF. That is what we have accommodated. That is what we run with. I think we have come out with a very successful plan.
Cllr Jordan: I will put myself in the former, because I philosophically think that working together probably gets you better solutions than if you are divided and trying to do your own thing. In principle, it is the right thing to do.
Q249 John Pugh: Following on from that, lots of local authorities do not co-operate in the way that you co-operate and, clearly, the county council are playing a relatively passive role in this process. Do you think there should be more formal obligations, or constraints, that oblige people to co-operate in such contexts?
Cllr Jordan: Particularly in relation to the county council, the idea that we would be charged for the work they traditionally did is a bit disconcerting. Some sort of mandatory assistance from counties in these circumstances to do the work may actually be helpful.
The issue we have had, as I alluded to earlier, is around Stroud. There are issues around South Gloucester. Obviously, there are boundaries there. Our other boundary is the Cotswold. Because that is all an area of outstanding natural beauty, that is controversial and we are not trying to build anything there. In South Gloucester there has been an issue, with three councils working together and Stroud. Gloucester and Stroud were not keen to see huge development there. Gloucester do not want to elongate south; they prefer to go north. Stroud did not want a huge amount of extra housing anyway. So, between the two of them, they thought 500 would be appropriate, which was what was in the Stroud plan.
I know that Tewkesbury in particular—and Cheltenham to a certain extent—were keen to have that looked at further, because everything else goes in Tewkesbury if it does not go in Stroud. There was a two-on-two disagreement, over how we should take that forward. The fact that Stroud were outside of the JCS made that more difficult.
We have worked our way through to an agreement where, in future circumstances, we would look at all sides, wherever they are—JCS or Stroud—and take those on board. It has taken us some time to get there. The difficulty of getting there was commented on by the inspector’s report and the Stroud plan. If we had included Stroud in the first place, it might have made it easier.
Q250 John Pugh: That is a very helpful answer. What you are basically saying is that it would have been better with the four of you here, rather than just three of you here, with Stroud as part of the framework as well.
Cllr Dee: Can I just add a point to that? That is the case for Stroud, but as we move in—and depending on figures that are going to come up for the next tranche of this; I know we are talking in the future—the same could be said of forest. It actually seemed to be the case, under the old regional government thing, that as an alternative area of research, the other side of the river was being considered for the north Stroud or South Gloucester boundary. That would require expensive infrastructure. I know it is low level—it is not one of these big high-falutin’ things.
I think Gloucester would be unhappy if we only concentrated on the south. In fact, I have got a very firm directive from my management that Gloucester is happier about northern development—that is, the Cheltenham side—than it is on the Stroud side. We are impinging on a lot of very attractive countryside. We have still got major transport problems—and Stroud suffers the same—getting into Gloucester City on our very constrained roads. It is not a matter of throwing up a bypass or an extra channel. The Government department in the South West, back in the old days, suggested we have a bus lane. This is ludicrous. We have got a major railway bridge that can hardly accommodate two buses going across. To have a bus lane and then a mass of traffic is a problem.
I think Gloucester would not be happy that we concentrated only on northern Stroud. We need to look a lot of what we could potentially build on, and possibly some of those across the boundaries at Wychavon or places like that. They are not in our boundary. In that respect, what is going to happen to boundaries, anyway? Are they going to change? Should we be looking from a more strategic, geographical basis that we are now? That is my personal feeling. After all, the centre of Gloucester can only move to the Forest of Dean, as you will recall. All our major assets were going to move into the Forest of Dean, as far as an MP was concerned. We are talking 20 or 30 years ahead, in terms of the impact of what is going on.
Cllr Jordan: In terms of the alternative strategies for our area, we were looking at rural dispersal, which was not practical. We were looking for a major new settlement, which was not identifiable within our area, or the urban extensions, which was where we ended up. There was talk of a potential new settlement; Sharpness has been talked about, for instance, which again is in the Stroud area and not ours. How do you actually progress that? Stroud was not keen. It was mentioned in the LEP’s economic strategy initially, floating as an idea, but it has not come forward again because Stroud was not keen at the local plan level. I know there are perfectly good reasons for not developing it. For us, it may be a solution, but we do not get leverage into the conversation. That is a difficult one. That is something else we have been grappling with. Again, it is the duty to co-operate and how you take that forward.
Q251 John Pugh: You are making a plea for some sort of regional strategy. Of course, the Regional Spatial Strategy was something like that. Let us move to brownfield. The defence site at Ashchurch is the only strategic brownfield site within the Joint Core Strategy. Councillor Dee, you have given us the impression there is lots of brownfield out there.
Cllr Dee: No. Perhaps 1,000 or so is stretching the point.
Q252 John Pugh: Councillor Jordan has also said he is unhappy with the vagueness about the Brownfield First guidance. With both those things in mind, why is there not more brownfield land inside the strategy?
Cllr Jordan: From a practical point of view, we are predominantly using most what is available. Certainly within Cheltenham, we are not saying, “Oh, no, we are not going to bother with this one and this one.”
There is a separate issue around protecting employment land. Because housing land is most valuable, in Cheltenham particularly, we have had pressure to convert employment land sites to housing land sites, which we have tried to resist, otherwise we would have no employment left in Cheltenham. Even though we work in three councils, we do not want that as an outcome. So, we have been restrained. Again, recent guidance may make that more difficult, with Government making it easier to convert from employment to housing land. That is a concern we do have.
Generally speaking, we are keen to use all of our brownfield sites. We are not holding off on them. It is just a question of there not being that many in Cheltenham.
Cllr Vines: It has been identified that the Ashchurch site is in Tewkesbury Borough, and that is our major brownfield site. We have very few brownfield sites, so it is more a question for Cheltenham and Gloucester. There are one or two very small locations, but in the big scale of things it is the other two authorities that probably have more brownfield sites than we have.
Q253 John Pugh: What you are saying is that it is not a question that sites are being dismissed as not viable; you are basically saying that the volume and quantity of sites is actually relatively small. Given that, the Government recently announced the idea of local development orders being put on brownfield sites, and put some money behind the proposal. Are you attracted by that, or do you not think it will make a great deal of difference?
Cllr Dee: I want to correct something I said—a slip of the tongue. When I said 1,000, I did not mean now. I think it partly answers the question. Regarding the prison, there is still a lot to do before we can use that, but there is a brownfield site there, if you like. There are a number of other sites, some of which are contaminated and will require more funding to decontaminate. There are various other things that might therefore be aided by financial input. A study would need to be done before I could answer that question. I do not want people to say, “Gloucester says it has got 1,000 ready-to-build brownfield sites.” We have not. If we had, we would be getting on with it.
Cllr Jordan: From my quick look at it, I am not sure it made a huge practical difference, from our point of view. There is one site where we are restrained by having some old gas bullets, which cost a fortune to take out. Some of the others have been held up for the last five or 10 years but are now starting to move, in terms of getting development. That is a positive sign. I am not sure that specific development orders will make a huge practical difference, in our case.
Q254 Mark Pawsey: We have spent most of our time so far talking about housing. The message I am getting from you is that the three authorities have come together because the housing cannot be provided in the two urban areas, and you need the land in Tewkesbury, and possibly Stroud, to meet the housing requirements. That of course does not apply in respect of town centres and retail provision. You have each got your own individual town centres. How will the Joint Core Strategy help you in planning for your town centres?
Cllr Vines: From Tewkesbury’s perspective, we have two towns that are very small and you could turn the market out. We have got Tewkesbury and Winchcombe. We have not got large areas, like Cheltenham Town or Gloucester City. I would suggest my colleagues might be in a better position to answer.
Cllr Jordan: We are certainly keen to maintain both Cheltenham, obviously, in my case, and Gloucester as large and viable retail centres. We are also conscious of the outlying areas. Market towns are important as well. Ironically, wearing one of my other hats I am on the board of the LEP. We are a retail pathfinder, and we have developed a retail tool kit to assess areas to see their viability going forward. Clearly, there is an ongoing issue, particularly with click and collect. What is the actual size required for retail going forward?
In Cheltenham’s case, we are keen to maintain ourselves as a destination that people want to come and visit. So, that may not make much difference, if that succeeds, in the overall size we require going forward. If people still want to come here, that might still work. In other areas, that may reduce the net size going forward, as the average store gets smaller or the overall number of stores nationally gets smaller. We are trying to factor that in, but we are certainly conscious that each area needs its own market towns, or whatever it has to be. We need to look at those, because they are important in their own right.
Q255 Mark Pawsey: Councillor Dee, does your town centre compete with Cheltenham, or are you working together as part of this Joint Strategy?
Cllr Dee: That is a good question. I worked in Cheltenham all my life and lived in Gloucester all my life. I saw both sides. Over the years, I saw many people come to shop in Gloucester who I would not have thought would, and I used to shop in Cheltenham. I do not think that particular aspect will make a lot of difference. What we need is more financial support, not to help us compete with Cheltenham—we have both got, and are getting, a different but useful offer—but to make us more attractive to visit for people who visit Cheltenham on holiday.
Q256 Mark Pawsey: I hear what you are saying. How does the National Planning Policy Framework assist you in achieving that goal?
Cllr Dee: I am afraid I am not aware. We have got a well-established goal now for upgrading the city. We are repairing and bringing into attractive use a lot of listed buildings. We have got more than almost any other county or place of our size. I am not sure that that is being constrained or supported; I think it is just going ahead, with a lot of support from Government at the right times, and there is a need for more. It is largely things like removing a bus station or improving the railway access to the city—things of that sort, which I would say are more infrastructural. Road bottlenecks are occurring; on a good Bank Holiday weekend, people cannot get into Cheltenham or Gloucester, from some areas. These are areas where I am aware that help is needed.
Q257 Mark Pawsey: Councillor Jordan, you spoke about the changing patterns of trade in retail. The rest of the country is under substantial pressure from out-of-town development. Where do you and the Joint Core Strategy sit in respect of out-of-town retail?
Cllr Jordan: Generally, what we are trying to do is make Cheltenham attractive, so that people do not feel the need to go out of town. For instance, most of the outlying communities of Cheltenham now have a large food retailer. That is their immediate store they may or may not use, but they have got that opportunity.
When it comes to destination shopping, which is most of what you see in the centre of Cheltenham, we hope that that is going to be attractive enough to encourage people to come in. If you want to go into a concrete box somewhere and do your shopping, that is fine. If you want to come to Cheltenham, hopefully you will prefer to do that. That is where Gloucester kicks in, because they have got the Quays and the Cathedral, which is their enhanced destination, which attracts people in as well.
Q258 Mark Pawsey: Are you saying you are not bothered about applications that come forward for out-of-town? The market will determine that, because if Cheltenham is sufficiently attractive, they will not go and buy there. The sequential test, which we are hearing is a problem for some communities, where they are struggling to find enough oomph in the sequential test to prevent out-of-town, is not a problem here.
Cllr Jordan: No, I am not saying that. I am saying that, in an ideal world, we would add that to our list of mechanisms for dealing with it. I am not saying it is not a problem; all I am saying is I am conscious of the fact that in Cheltenham, to maintain the status, we need to make it a continuously improving destination. That is our main target, if you like. Being able to deliver out-of-town is still something we would be keen to have.
Q259 Mark Pawsey: You are not currently faced with any out-of-town applications that are causing you some difficulties.
Cllr Jordan: Not at this precise moment. The issue tends to be that most of those coming in, historically, have been on the edge of town and in Tewkesbury. It is going back to the original Tewkesbury putting things on the edge of Cheltenham, which has tended to be an issue.
Q260 Mark Pawsey: Councillor Vines, how do you respond to that? Why are you upsetting your colleagues in Cheltenham, by allowing these ghastly out-of-town shopping developments?
Cllr Vines: Far be it from me to upset my colleague, here. It is of necessity sometimes that it comes across the border into Tewkesbury. We do not go searching for it in the first place; it is to accommodate the needs of Cheltenham. The housing in Cheltenham and in Gloucester, I would suggest, is right up to the boundary, and then you get into the greenbelt; because it is so tightly drawn, the first available space out of Cheltenham, in this instance, is in Tewkesbury Borough. We have got no intention of upsetting anyone, and I am sure the residents in Tewkesbury Borough will use that amenity.
Q261 Mark Pawsey: Does the fact that you are working together on a Joint Core Strategy mean that, if an application were to come forward along the lines that you seem to have granted recently, you might resist it more strongly?
Cllr Vines: As my Senior Planning Officer always says, we will judge every application on its merits, and delve into the pros and cons of it.
Q262 Mark Pawsey: What does the Joint Core Strategy say? What is your strategy on out-of-town: is it a joint one, or are you all going to deal with it by development control?
Cllr Vines: I am not aware that there is any specific identification on that in the Strategy. Steve will tell me if I am wrong. Is there?
Cllr Jordan: We are certainly encouraging town-centre developments, yes. From my point of view, that is one of the advantages of working together. Sometimes we are limited in what we can do, but we can actually maximise what we can do on that.
Q263 Chair: I am tempted to ask one final question. Given that you are all getting on so famously well together—at least until the last question—and you have got a county that has not been quite as co-operative on infrastructure as you maybe would like but you have got common joint interest, have you ever thought about getting together and forming one unitary authority?
Cllr Vines: Personally, I have not.
Cllr Jordan: Not specifically. Interestingly enough–how long have we got?–we do have a joint legal service with Tewkesbury, we have a joint child service with Tewkesbury, and we are hoping that they are about to join our joint waste company, with Cotswold. Quite a lot of our effort is going into what is called the GO project, which is Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire, where Forest of Dean, Cheltenham, Cotswold and West Oxfordshire are all sharing back-office services on finance, human resources and procurement. We have just launched the idea of forming a joint company that could employ all our residual staff in a few years time. Clearly, that work is across county and regional boundaries. On the specific question of our three forming a unitary authority—possibly not, but we are working with lots of colleagues in different directions.
Q264 Chair: Councillor Dee, a last word?
Cllr Dee: It depends if you are talking to me, an aged citizen, as to where things go, or the younger dynamic. They are still very keen on Gloucester being Gloucester, but I think a lot of this is a love for civic things, which I do not dislike myself, like our Mayor and those sorts of things. We similarly have offloaded a lot of our financial work to a new company that has been set up in Gloucester and is doing work for other areas. So, we are doing the same sort of thing. That is good.
What is the core, if you like, that requires a city as opposed to a county authority that can still have pride in Gloucester when the Rugby World Cup comes to the city? We need somebody to find a formula that provides what people really care about and shares the rest. How that would be done, however, I do not really know.
Chair: All I would say, Councillor Dee, is that, in the new age of localism, it is down to local authorities to sort it out for themselves. We will move on now. I thank all three of you for coming together this afternoon. That brings to an end the first panel and we will move on to our second panel of witnesses now. Thank you very much indeed.
Panel 2 Questions [265-297]
Witnesses: Lisa Belfield, CPRE Gloucestershire, Ian Bickerton, Cheltenham Alliance, and Kim Bedford, Chief Officer, Gloucestershire Association of Parish and Town Councils, gave evidence.
Q265 Chair: Good afternoon. Thank you for coming to be with us this afternoon. This is the second panel of witnesses. Before beginning to ask questions, could I just ask you to say who you are and which organisation you represent? Just go down the table, please.
Kim Bedford: Hello, I am Kim Bedford. I am from the Gloucestershire Association of Parish and Town Councils.
Lisa Belfield: I am Lisa Belfield for CPRE Gloucestershire.
Ian Bickerton: I am Ian Bickerton. I represent the Cheltenham Alliance, which is an alliance of seven Cheltenham residents’ groups.
Q266 Chair: Thank you for coming. Can I begin by asking Lisa Belfield a question? The CPRE slammed the proposals from the Joint Core Strategy. “Slammed” was the CPRE’s own word. Obviously, you were not very happy with them. There is now a new version of the strategy. Are you any happier with it? Have any of your concerns been taken into account?
Lisa Belfield: Yes, one of our concerns has been the Twigworth site. We are still concerned about things like phasing—or a lack of phasing, but some things have certainly been addressed. The figure coming down slightly was helpful, but there are still things in there that we have concerns about. Certain issues, however, have certainly been addressed.
Q267 Chair: Going on to Ian Bickerton, one of the issues has been the population projections. We discussed with the previous Panel the more recent ONS statistics. The Chief Executive has been saying that the changes were fairly insignificant. Do you challenge that position? If so, do you have a statistical basis on which to put forward an alternative that you think is robust?
Ian Bickerton: I do not agree with that. The numbers have always been wrong. They have been wrong from the start of the Joint Core Strategy process. Initially, it was the household formation rates that were being used. We then had the April 2013 report from the DCLG, which was very helpful. That is Bob Garland’s work on household formation. He has updated the England model. That shows, in fact, that household formation across England is fairly flat. It is very dependent on the district. You have to use up‑to‑date local data; that is the important thing. That is actually what is in the NPPF. It says “up‑to‑date data” 15 times in the document, so it is very important.
However, on the population projection, at the moment the JCS is using an interim population projection. The population unit at the Office for National Statistics is saying, “You should not be using that for long‑term projections.” It is significantly out in number, but the two can be used in combination together.
We really should be using the peer‑reviewed models used by the Government experts at the Office for National Statistics and the DCLG. These are accurate models. A lot of time and effort has been put in on these models. If we use those, we get a demographic baseline of a little over 23,000 homes. At the moment, we are pegged at 30,500 on the JCS. We are a little high at the moment.
Q268 Chair: Can I just come back on the household formation figures? Is not one of the problems there that household formation recently has been more suppressed due to economic circumstances? People have found it more difficult to leave home, buy a house or even rent one in many cases, if they have been out of work as well or they have a low-paid job. If the economy improves, will that not change? Is not one of the problems that young people really have with affording houses—and therefore being able to create a household of their own—the fact that we have not got enough homes in this country? Prices rise and rents rise. Is this not almost a self‑fulfilling prophecy?
Ian Bickerton: Certainly, that is an issue. If you look at the trend of household formation since the 1940s, however, the line is coming down. Basically, there is a trend; it is a very strong trend. It is moving towards the European average of 2.4 people per household. In the three districts here, we are showing a pretty flat average household size. The censuses in 2011 and 2001 show that we have a fairly flat trend in household size for Cheltenham and Tewkesbury. We have a slightly rising trend—in other words more people per household—in Gloucester.
At the moment, we have a consultant from the Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research saying to us that this average household size is going to drop considerably over the next few years. There is no evidence for that. As I say, this average household size has been slowly coming down, but it is flat‑lining now across the whole of England and Wales. That is what the ONS are telling us. That is what the DCLG report in April of last year stated.
It is quite clear that there is strong evidence that this is not anything to do with the economic condition we are in now—and we are coming out of it, I might add. It is more of a social thing. People do not necessarily want to live on their own. A lot of the older generation do not always want to live on their own. There are more couples cohabiting now than there used to be and, also, young people are buying houses together. It is not just an economic situation. If it was just economic, you would see blips in the charts at every one of the three recessions we have had in recent times.
Q269 Chair: Kim Bedford, do you share the concerns that Lisa and Ian have just expressed about the different aspects of the core strategy?
Kim Bedford: I have not actually had any feedback from our members, or the town and parish councils that are within this district. Most of the concern seems to have come from the fact that the growth that they predicted and are proposing in certain of the service villages would completely change the feel of the community.
In some cases, for instance in Alderton, what is currently happening there will almost double the number of houses. It is that sort of concern in terms of the proposed growth areas.
Q270 Chair: Not in terms of the end result but in terms of the methodology here, do the three of you support the idea of the three districts working together on a core strategy to assess their own needs? Would it have been better if each district had done their own thing or, harking back to a previous world, would it have been better if the Regional Spatial Strategy had decided the housing numbers and, therefore, done away with the need for any local argument about it?
Kim Bedford: No man is an island. It would be extremely foolish to do this. It is very bold and brave for the three organisations to work together. It has had problems along the way, but now we should not work in isolation on these matters at all.
Lisa Belfield: Yes, the joint working is sensible, given the geography of the area. Tewkesbury borough wraps around the edge of Cheltenham and Gloucester. The CPRE’s view is that it does make sense for the three local authorities to work jointly.
Ian Bickerton: That is agreed. I believe that joint working is very helpful and we have a very talented, professional set of officers who are actually running the programme. It is a very good thing.
Q271 Mark Pawsey: The purpose of the session today is to get some feedback from you on how the NPPF is working. I wonder if I might first ask Kim Bedford a question. Your organisation has said that your members—that is, members of parish and town councils—have a feeling of “acute vulnerability” and “helplessness”. Does that not arise from the failure of local district and county councils to get their plans in place and put sufficient resources into plan-making? If the plans were in place, your members would not be so vexed.
Kim Bedford: It does sound rather simplistic. I have examples from both ends of the spectrum in terms of frustrations and areas where, as you rightly say, there is no core strategy. That has led to confusion. There is a feeling that the development is very much developer‑led.
Q272 Mark Pawsey: May I just ask you a question about that? If there is no plan, where is the developer supposed to put his application in for it? The whole point of the National Planning Policy Framework is that there needs to be a local plan, is it not? The failure of local councils to get that in place is what has led to problems.
Kim Bedford: There is obviously a timing problem; nobody can deny that. However, we have a situation in, say, one of the districts, the Forest of Dean, where there is a core strategy and the areas to develop are clearly marked, but developers are now saying, “We cannot develop there; therefore, the plan is not sound.” Therefore, there is not a five‑year land supply, which is leading to, again, development that is coming out of all of the plans. Even having a core strategy does not mean that nothing but the plan is going to work.
Q273 Mark Pawsey: Lisa, you have raised concerns about speculative development and we hear about speculative applications coming in. You are putting in objections to them in many instances. Would it not be better to encourage the councils to get their core strategies in place? The speculative applications would not then be coming forward.
Lisa Belfield: Yes. The question is how we encourage them. At the moment, all we can do is deal with what we are being consulted on. At each stage of the Joint Core Strategy, we can put in our comments. When an application comes in, whether it is included or not included, again, all we can do is put in our rejections. Ideally, yes, you want a plan-led system. Where we do not have that, we will put comments in as each application comes in.
Q274 Mark Pawsey: Are there things that your organisation can do to encourage local authorities to get the strategy in place more quickly?
Lisa Belfield: That is a good question. I do not know that there are. They have got legislation in place. The timing, as Kim Bedford has just said, is an issue. At the moment, however, we can only deal with the situation that we have. If they came to us and asked for help, I am sure we would, but I do not know what we could do to help.
Q275 Mark Pawsey: Would it be your view that local authorities are not putting sufficient resources into getting the local plan sorted and not attaching a sufficiently high priority to getting a core strategy adopted?
Lisa Belfield: No. That would not be our view. Each time you have to take things through a committee process. That takes time. You have to take it through three committees, because there are three authorities. If there were a simpler process for taking the reports through, yes, that might help. However, it is a lengthy process.
Q276 Mark Pawsey: In that case, would it not be better not to have the joint strategy and have each individual authority do their own thing and get a plan in place quickly?
Lisa Belfield: There is a danger there, is there not? You have to look at how the three authorities relate to each other. Given the constraints that Cheltenham and Gloucester have, our view is that they have to work in co-operation with Tewkesbury.
Q277 Mark Pawsey: Ian, your organisation suggested that councillors rather than developers were exploiting loopholes in the NPPF. Why are councillors exploiting these loopholes and how would you go about closing them?
Ian Bickerton: What you need to do is establish a method for calculating the demographic baseline. You can call the Bristol inspectorate—there is a local‑plan hotline down there—and get answers to questions on best practice, but it is not published anywhere. They will tell you exactly how to calculate an objectively assessed need for a local area. It would be very helpful if that information was published. If we made use of the expertise in the DCLG and the Office for National Statistics, it would really be helpful.
Q278 Mark Pawsey: Are you saying that the process is not sufficiently transparent?
Ian Bickerton: No, it is not. We still do not know exactly how the numbers are derived for the joint core strategy. We know that they are using the interim population projection. We do not know exactly what they are doing with the household formation rates. We know that they are using their own model. We do not know why they are using their own model, except that there is a mysterious return to a trend of 20 years ago—and there is no justification for it.
In fact, Oxford University did some work on this a while back and predicted exactly what was going to happen with household formation rates in England over the period from 1990 through to 2010. They had it pegged correctly.
Q279 Mark Pawsey: Are you suggesting that there is a fundamental problem with the way the NPPF is written? Would you like to throw the whole thing out and start again? What is your position on the NPPF moving forward?
Ian Bickerton: Certainly not, no. The NPPF is a very good document; it is very helpful. It allows parish councils and residents to get involved in planning. It is a slimmed down document. It is something that people can understand. Yes, it has done its job, in my view. The only problem is with the implementation.
Quite frankly, the officers here have done a reasonable job; they have done a very good job on the evidence. The evidence base here is fantastic. It is just that we are arguing over the numbers—and that is perhaps where the NPPF could help us: with the methodology. It could also help us with formalising the relationship with the parish councils. How do we work with parish councils and how do we bring that localism in? That is the sort of thing I would like to see being put into the NPPF, along with the guidance that has already been published in ministerial statements and by the DCLG. National Planning Policy Framework: Myth‑Buster by the DCLG is another good document.
Q280 Mark Pawsey: May I suggest that there is a contradiction in what you have said? On one hand you are saying you want something that is more prescriptive, but, at the same time, you want more local control. How does Government do both of those things?
Ian Bickerton: We want more detail on how we use Government statistics, i.e. the best practice, if you like. We also want more localism in the sustainability work on sites and what is right for residents. We want involvement from parish councils and residents on the local plans. We actually have two plans here: we have a local plan and a Joint Core Strategy. The two could have gone in parallel. The local plan, however, is where the residents and the parish councils could have had more input, especially on things like the local green space applications.
Q281 Mark Pawsey: You would not agree that the more local opportunity comes through neighbourhood plans the better, then.
Ian Bickerton: Yes, absolutely. Neighbourhood plans from parish councils are exactly what I meant. We need that formalised. We need a model, if you like, for how neighbourhood plans are handled by borough councils. Maybe this is best practice, but it would be a very good addition to the NPPF if some model could be described as to how to involve parish councils at the early stages of strategic planning.
Q282 Chair: To be absolutely clear, what you are asking for, Mr Bickerton, is more guidance from the centre on methodology of assessing housing numbers and housing need.
Ian Bickerton: Yes, absolutely. We want advice on which Government Departments to call upon for that expertise.
Q283 Chair: I want to pick up one point from Kim Bedford, which relates not to the Cheltenham, Gloucester and Tewkesbury experience but to that of the Forest of Dean. It does chime with some other evidence we have had from elsewhere in the country. What you are saying there is that Forest of Dean had some sites—presumably, maybe, some brownfield sites—but developers are saying that those sites are not viable; therefore, they challenge whether they could be part of their five‑year housing supply, because they do not confirm with the NPPF guidance, and therefore they are forcing the authority to go and find more greenfield sites to put in the plan instead. Is that basically what has happened?
Kim Bedford: My understanding is that there was a site, which is quite close to Lydney, that was allocated, and the developers are saying, “No, it is not suitable; we cannot build there,” and they have put in an application for a different area entirely. They are saying, “The original site that was put into the core strategy in the Forest of Dean is not suitable and therefore your five‑year plan is not sound.”
Chair: That is very helpful; thank you.
Q284 Chris Williamson: Apologies that I had to nip out of the meeting. I had to deal with an urgent matter in my constituency.
I want to move on to, if I may, involvement of communities. I will start with you, Ian, if that is okay. The Cheltenham Alliance has said that you have little confidence that councillors are prepared to engage with communities. In fact, you go on to say that they do not want to engage with communities. Why do you say that when the councils have indulged in several rounds of consultation on the joint core strategy?
Ian Bickerton: It is because they have not listened to that public consultation. We have been through two major consultations on the joint core strategy. There were issues that were brought up on household formation rates, as was stated earlier. That was described as “misguided” by the consultants.
Chris Williamson: Can you elaborate? What do you mean by “misguided”?
Ian Bickerton: They meant “misguided” in that parish councils and other organisations like the CPRE and residents’ groups did not understand the detail of household formation—how it works and how it connects with average household size. It took a Government report from the DCLG to move the JCS in the right direction. That is exactly what happened.
Q285 Chris Williamson: Could I just elaborate a little bit more? Do you accept that the rate at which households are forming at the moment has been somewhat depressed by the economic downturn? Kids are staying longer in their parents’ home. Under more normal circumstances, and when the economy starts to improve again, households might form in greater numbers than in recent years.
Ian Bickerton: As I said earlier, there is no evidence for that. Household size is more a social issue than an economic issue. If you look at what is happening to average household size in England and Wales, it has pretty much flat‑lined for the last three censuses: 1991, 2001 and 2011. It sits at 2.4. It sits at 2.4 across large parts of Western Europe.
If you dig a little into the detail of what is driving household formation, yes, I do believe that we have had an impact from the economic conditions of the last few years. That will change. We are coming out of the recession now and people will be able to afford houses again. There are younger people perhaps living at home with their parents who cannot afford a house just at the moment. They will be able to afford houses in the future.
However, I do not believe there is any evidence—and there is certainly nothing reported from the DCLG and the work that Bob Garland has done on the England model—that suggests we will have a sharp downturn in average household size or any major changes in household formation.
Q286 Chris Williamson: Could I move on, then, to you, Lisa? You are a planner are you not, by profession?
Lisa Belfield: Yes.
Chris Williamson: Do you accept that there is a balance between addressing community concerns and providing much-needed housing? I do not know whether you agree, but there is a consensus emerging that there is a housing crisis in the country. On that basis, is there not a balance between those two sometimes conflicting issues?
Lisa Belfield: Yes, I agree that there is a need for housing. It is the tenure as well: it is affordable housing; it is the location. Nobody would dispute the fact that there was a need for additional housing in the time scale. It is going back to this question of the projections that have been used and how you reach the figures. Everyone who looks at it will probably do it in their slightly different way.
Q287 Chris Williamson: You mentioned affordable housing there. Are you suggesting that there is not enough affordable housing or too much? What is the point you are making about that?
Lisa Belfield: There is an outstanding need for affordable housing. Historically, the figures have not been met. We already have a deficit. Yes, there is certainly a need for affordable housing, and projecting that forward as well as meeting the existing deficit.
Q288 Chris Williamson: As I understand it, the Joint Core Strategy here talks about up to 40% affordable housing. Is that not enough, then? Should it be more than that in order to meet the need? If that were the case, would it satisfy the CPRE’s objections or concerns?
Lisa Belfield: It might satisfy one aspect of our concerns, but it is about whether that is deliverable. You can set a target, but is it realistic? Can it be delivered? That is something that we raised in the last round of consultation.
Q289 Chris Williamson: Surely if the CPRE believes that there is a need, presumably it must be met, whatever it takes. Do you agree with that?
Lisa Belfield: I agree that it should be met, certainly, yes. Nobody is going to argue that in the right location, where there is an established sequence for local people, yes, that should certainly be the case.
Q290 Chris Williamson: Finally, Kim, your organisation suggested that councils were discouraging communities from starting neighbourhood plans. I wondered whether that is based on hard evidence or substantial anecdotal evidence. Could you pick that up a little bit, perhaps, and explain why that criticism has been made?
Kim Bedford: Initially, the Tewkesbury Borough Council, in connection with the town and parish councils within their borough, were trying to encourage a different arrangement with the town and parish councils in terms of feeding in to the Joint Core Strategy and the initial plans that they were forming—with the idea that, if they fed into that, they would have already created the overriding document.
Since then, I would say attitudes have changed. We now have something in the region of 30 of our town and parish councils working through the process of creating a neighbourhood plan, some of which, of course, are within Tewkesbury itself. It has evolved a little bit more, although, because of capacity, capability and experience, it is a longer term process for my sector.
Q291 Chris Williamson: Are you suggesting that that criticism is no longer valid or not as valid as it once was when it was made?
Kim Bedford: The latter part of your statement is true.
Chris Williamson: Essentially, you are saying that there has been some improvement, but there is still some work to do. Would that summarise your position?
Kim Bedford: Yes.
Q292 Chair: To pick up a point, Mr Bickerton, you said that the councils are not listening to the groups that are concerned about the amount of development proposed. However, Lisa Belfield said that, from the CPRE’s point of view, while the revised strategy does not address all their concerns, at least it has addressed some of their concerns. Does that not show that, even if the council have not come to agree with the groups, they are at least listening and responding to a degree?
Ian Bickerton: Yes, they have made some changes. One of the issues I have with the public consultation is that they do not publish formal reports dealing with the consultation that has been received, i.e. drawing conclusions, making changes and telling us why things are changing in response to consultation. That is an important area. Possibly, there could be some formalisation of the public consultation; the duration and how those responses are dealt with in the course of putting together a strategic plan is quite important. That could come from the NPPF.
Q293 Chair: I have to ask this question as well: to what extent are action groups representative of the whole population? In our political lives, we have all experienced groups that are not completely representative. The councils will probably say that local elections this year did not show an overwhelming change in the electorate voting against councillors who are in favour of the core strategy and its proposals. Indeed, I have to put the point to you: you lost your seat, did you not, even though your opposition to the development is pretty well known?
Ian Bickerton: Yes, I was out‑greened by another very good candidate, who is obviously wanting to protect the fields as much as I do—and all credit to him. However, it was not because we disagree on policy on the Joint Core Strategy or, indeed, what the parish council is trying to do in Leckhampton.
Could I pick up on that point about social homes? There is a difference between social homes and affordable homes. Obviously, the developers are going to try to meet the 40% affordable homes, but social homes in Cheltenham are important too. That is why the council is working very hard on the regeneration of the town. This is happening in Gloucester as well. There they are trying to provide social homes.
Affordable rents is something that is perhaps more important than affordable homes. We have about 5,000 social homes in Cheltenham. We need to boost that by at least another 1,000 or maybe 1,500 over the course of this plan. We have not quite delved into the detail of that yet, but there is some more work to be done there and it is not just about affordable homes. After all, building affordable homes on the green belt is quite a difficult thing to do. Regeneration will produce more affordable homes. I think that was mentioned earlier.
Q294 Chris Williamson: I am grateful for that clarification. Would it be fair to say that, if there was a more explicit commitment to proper social housing, council housing, say—something that people can understand is available at a low rent—that would go a long way to addressing some of the concerns that you identified in terms of providing homes for local people on modest incomes?
Ian Bickerton: Yes, that would certainly help us in the Cheltenham Alliance. That is our view. We need more social housing. We would like to see that 40% commitment for affordable homes, wherever they are built, being achieved by developers. It is really important.
Chris Williamson: It is not a question of nimbyism in any way, shape or form.
Ian Bickerton: No, we are looking for sustainable development, which is called for in the NPPF. The definition is quite correct in the ministerial foreword of the documents, in that it is to the benefit of future generations. That is what is important for us in the Cheltenham Alliance.
Q295 Bob Blackman: One of the areas where we have heard criticism of the NPPF is issues over infrastructure. By infrastructure, I personally mean transport infrastructure, roads, rail, bus services, but also sewerage, water supply, electricity, gas, schools and hospitals. You name it; we could go on. How adequate is the NPPF on delivering that infrastructure?
Ian Bickerton: We have a few issues on infrastructure. This is where the parish councils are leading on the consultation on infrastructure. We have a problem with the transport plan. Cheltenham Chamber of Commerce is also objecting on the transport plan. There is the congestion that certain strategic sites would have on the highways network, certainly to the south.
Schools are also an issue. In conversation with the governors at Bournside School, the biggest school in Cheltenham, they have not been involved in the JCS—and that is troubling. We need to do more about that. We need to involve the schools. We need to decide whether another secondary school is required based on the housing targets that we currently have in the plan.
We have some issues with health. Our A&E is now shut overnight; hopefully, that will come back. There have been some funding problems with our hospital here in Cheltenham. I cannot speak for the whole trust across Gloucestershire, but there are a few issues there with funding.
Infrastructure needs a great deal more work—certainly on transport, schools and health.
Lisa Belfield: There is an issue of time scale. You are looking at 2031 for the Joint Core Strategy, but some of the infrastructure providers do not necessarily plan that far ahead. When you are trying to look at sites for all the things you mentioned—schools, hospitals, sewerage and all of the utilities—it depends on how long their long-term plan is, and there is a difficulty there. If the NPPF could address that issue and look at other ways of making it more co-ordinated, that might be a helpful addition.
Q296 Bob Blackman: Should the NPPF have more guidance on this particular issue for local authorities? It could look not only at the housing provision but at these other infrastructure requirements, which should be part and parcel of what local authorities are required to do in order to demonstrate that they have the infrastructure in place to cope with this housing increase. In this area, we are talking about a 20% increase in housing overall.
Lisa Belfield: Additional guidance on that would be helpful, particularly on how to deal with getting information from the infrastructure providers in line with the time scale we are dealing with. Yes, that would be helpful.
Kim Bedford: The timing is quite critical. We did a little bit of a survey through the districts on where Gloucestershire was in terms of the community infrastructure levy and whether that would help motivate people to do neighbourhood plans. In fact, none of them have actually come forward yet in deciding how they are going to operate that particular levy. We do not have any neighbourhood plans in operation, so none of the town and parish councils would get the benefit of the 25% as opposed to the basic limit.
I was thinking about a couple of areas. For instance, Cam, in terms of an agreement with the Stroud district, are very happy to take something in the region of about 300 houses, because it would give them more jobs and it would create a bridge over a river, which is strategically very important for them. However, because the five‑year housing supply is in question, they may have to take anything up to 1,500 houses, which changes the whole complexity of this. It is sending shivers down their backs.
In terms of West Dean and the Forest of Dean, they have got an opportunity to create a college site and are working heavily on building amenities and leisure facilities. There is the opportunity within the NPPF for people to create their own, but the transparency of what is being put in for the larger development, perhaps, is not being shared—or the conversation is not taking place early enough to get input from the local level.
Q297 Bob Blackman: At local level, how much input have parish councils had in terms of infrastructure in the joint plans that have been developed?
Kim Bedford: The impression I have is that it is very variable across the county. There is not an awful lot in terms of that; there is more perhaps in terms of the housing numbers and that sort of development, rather than plugging into the additional need to sustain that sort of development.
Ian Bickerton: Can I come back on that? It is happening here in Cheltenham, for sure. We have the C5 Parish Councils Group, which is the five parish councils of Cheltenham. They meet regularly with the officers here. They have identified the funding gap. They realised that there was a problem in infrastructure. I should have mentioned that social homes are at the top of that list. It is not just health, education and transport.
There is a funding gap of approximately £750 million on the current plan. That is causing a great deal of concern with the parish councils. They are looking at ways to plug that gap. That is coming from the very large growth in housing proposed by the JCS. If that growth could be brought down some, obviously that infrastructure gap would close.
Chair: Thank you all very much for coming to give evidence to us. It has been really appreciated and has really helped our deliberations. Before I bring our evidence session to a close, I just have one or two thank yous to make. After I have brought the evidence session to a close, Councillor Steve Jordan, the Leader of Cheltenham Council, wants to say a few words to bring all of our proceedings to a final conclusion.
Thank you very much indeed to the three councillors from Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Cheltenham for hosting our event today and organising everything for us. Before we got here for our evidence session, we had a good tour around the area; we had a good briefing session. Thank you to Tewkesbury for hosting that this morning; thank you to Cheltenham for hosting the session this afternoon and walking us around the town centre as well—and, we also thank St Peter’s Church, who put on lunch for us, where we were able to meet a number of local groups involved in these matters. The arrangements have been really excellent. I want to put that on the record and thank everyone for that.
I will bring our evidence session to a conclusion.
Oral evidence: Operation of the National Planning Policy Framework 5, HC 190 21