Victoria Hills and Dr Hugh Ellis.

Q1 The Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the House of Lords Built Environment Committee. This is the first meeting in which we are going to be taking evidence into a short inquiry we are just commencing on the question of the grey belt. Today we have the great privilege of welcoming Victoria Hills, who is chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and Dr Hugh Ellis, who is policy director at the Town and Country Planning Association; both are here to give evidence to us. I should say at the outset that I have no interests to declare that are related to this inquiry but, just for the sake of utter transparency, I have known Victoria Hills for some time, and in the not-so-distant past, maybe a decade or so ago, we both worked at the same time for different arms of the Greater London Authority apparatus, so we have had that acquaintance and that work experience in common in the past.

Our first question today comes from Lord Bailey of Paddington, who will begin by declaring any interests he has in the subject matter of the inquiry.

Lord Bailey of Paddington: Thank you, Lord Chairman. Good morning, everybody. My relevant interest would be that I am the chairman of Faraday Ventures, which is a small property company that builds social housing and intermediate housing. I also sit on the housing and planning committees in City Hall, and Victoria and I may have crossed existences in various parts of City Hall. I am an elected member to City Hall and Victoria was running one of our arm’s-length bodies at the time, so we may have crossed in that sense. Good morning to you, Victoria.

The Chair: Just to avoid parochialism, City Hall means City Hall in London.

Q2 Lord Bailey of Paddington: Yes, City Hall in London. London City Hall. The infamous and famous London City Hall. Right, here we go. Is the proposed grey belt definition and policy clear enough for planning officers to implement without delay? If I start with Dr Ellis, then we will come back to Victoria.

Dr Hugh Ellis: No, it is not.

Lord Bailey of Paddington: Okay, nice and clear there.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Just to quickly follow that up: the grey-belt proposition is an entirely new planning concept and as a result its definition is extremely broad. It will create a great deal of confusion because it is trying to create a new classification of land, but there is not the research and the evidence to support what grey belt actually means underneath that classification. Just as one very brief example: if you are going to say it is “previously developed land”, that is one thing; we understand what that is. But if you say “any other land that makes a limited contribution to the purposes of green belt”, I can happily sustain 25 judicial reviews arguing what that means. So, unless you understand precisely what “limited” means in guidance—the Government have not presented that definition in detail—it creates, and it will create as written, an enormous amount of confusion and legal battle about what the concept means.

Victoria Hills: Thank you, and just to commence this meeting, the green belt is possibly one of the most high-profile planning policies in the UK. It is a very important discussion that must be had, and it is something the public are increasingly familiar with, but there is a point about the definition of the grey belt and whether we really understand what the green belt is, which technical policy experts do. The way it is defined here is this grey belt is very much limited to the five purposes of the green belt. There is a precursor to the conversation, which is understanding what the purpose of the green belt was, before we start layering on other definitions or colours to an existing green belt. Hugh’s point is well made: very clear guidance is going to be essential in this as we move forward—we will get into some of that in this discussion—particularly so that the purpose of releasing extra land from grey belt can be not only understood but very clearly tested. To answer your question specifically, it can be clear if there is very clear guidance produced by the Government that we will be asking for, but the devil in the detail is still yet to come.

Lord Bailey of Paddington: You and Dr Ellis are saying that without very clear definitions, and those definitions need some research underneath them, at this point it will just cause confusion and possibly lead to lots of legal wrangling.

Victoria Hills: Yes. Our biggest concern—and we will get to it as this conversation goes forward—is in having a lack of clarity and certainty at the time when everybody wants that clarity and certainty. It could lead to an increase in planning by appeal, so more sites coming forward, things being tested that are not that clear because the guidance is not that clear, and sites being released that might otherwise not have been released had a plan been in place, particularly where areas do not have a local plan in place. That is our concern. Clarity or guidance on that definition is very much needed because, with the way things are worded at the moment, it is very limited to the five purposes of the green belt and what can be released. We need a greater deal of certainty. I believe Dr Ellis wanted to come in.

Dr Hugh Ellis: I only want briefly to say that if, as a nation we do not want to continue with green-belt policy—there is an open debate about that: lots of people want it; lots of organisations have written about why we do not need it anymore—it would have been much better to have a national review of green belt and its purposes up front. What this does is to try to do it from the other end of the lens at a micro level. It fundamentally probably undermines the purposes of green belt, but without there being this wider public debate, which we probably need, about what we as a nation want to do with the future of our green belts.

Viscount Hanworth: What is the forum in which these appeals are adjudicated?

Victoria Hills: The Planning Inspectorate leads those; it would currently be the forum, for want of a better expression. If a local authority does not consent a site and the applicant wants to challenge that, they currently take that challenge to the Planning Inspectorate. What we can see may happen as a consequence of lack of clarity is that more sites will come forward for application than might otherwise have done so, and that may lead to more sites going through that appeals system.

At the heart of all this, for many years we have consistently said that sites need to be allocated in a local plan by a local planning authority. The grey-belt and green-belt elements should be looked at in a more strategic sense across boundaries, perhaps at a regional or subregional level, but the plan needs to set the priority rather than sites being won outside the plan. We could see a potential for more sites coming forward outside local plans if there is opportunity for discretion, let us put it like that.

The Chair: Lord Mair, could you start by declaring any interests you have?

Q3 Lord Mair: I have no relevant interests to declare.

Can I follow up, Dr Ellis, and indeed with you as well, Victoria? This question of the “limited contribution” seems to be really central to the potential difficulty. A number of written responses to our consultation have already talked about extensive court activity over arguments about “limited contribution”. How do you think that can be better defined? Is there anything you have to offer to clarify what is meant by “limited contribution”?

Dr Hugh Ellis: It is extremely difficult, and my best professional advice to the committee is that this is a term that should never be used in national planning policy. I tried to scenario plan before coming here by looking at existing green belt, and I did not look at the metropolitan green belt but looked at green belt across the swathe of the ex-industrial north. I looked at the gap between Leeds and Bradford, for example, which is tiny, wafer-thin, and around West Yorkshire and Lancashire. As a professional planner, a limited contribution would have to be incredibly tightly defined because development in any of those places would fundamentally undermine the five purposes of green belt.

Green belt is not expansive and even London’s green belt is fragmented. The definition is going to have to pull off something extraordinary, which gets to the paradox of this policy: if the Government expect large-scale housing development to happen, then the fundamental principles will be undermined. If the fundamental principles are not undermined, then large-scale housing provision will not happen as a result of this policy. Defining that concept is extremely difficult. I am a person of limited intelligence, but I can find no effective way of adding to that definition that would make it operationally effective for local planners on the ground.

Lord Mair: Are you therefore rather pessimistic about the whole concept of grey belt?

Dr Hugh Ellis: Yes, I am. The answer to the housing crisis relies on highly sustainable development beyond green belt, it relies on investment in social rent and it relies on breaking the problem we have in planning, which is that planning provides more consents than we build but has no power to deliver them. In other words, this is fundamentally a diversion from the real issue of dealing with the housing crisis, which is how you turn planning consents into delivered homes. The effort and resources of the Government, which I acknowledge are rightly focused on that, are very much down the line. As Victoria said, this policy itself will be highly controversial, as it has been for the last 40 years when anyone has tried to think about green-belt release because of public perception, and that political battle does not help you focus on delivering the homes we need.

Victoria Hills: I would just add to the concerns of “limited contribution”: we do not have the answer as to how you would define it better, but we have raised concern that the term “limited contribution” could be legally challenged quite considerably. The other one that concerns us is being very clear what you mean by “previously developed”. That is another area of interest that would need to be very clear, because we are all aware of situations where people can show something has been previously developed when perhaps it has not been; there might be some incremental, previously developed-type activity that could be argued when it perhaps is not actually development. It comes back to the fundamental point of definitions being very clear. The other one we would throw into the mix would be clarification as to what is meant by “substantial harm”.

There is just a general theme here. We are not against the term “grey belt”; we think planning for not just homes, but infrastructure, industry, everything we heard about yesterday—this is not just about homes; this is about land for all sorts of things the economy needs—can be done perfectly well via a local plan and taking a strategic approach. The terminology, quite frankly, is neither here nor there for us; it is about how you go through a process of releasing land, or deciding which land is the most appropriate land for the most appropriate use. We have always said that a local plan is the most appropriate way of determining that. Quite frankly, you can call it what you want, but it is the process of working out where the best place is to put developments, when you determine what that development is, whether it is homes, whether it is infrastructure, agricultural use, whatever. But having a strategic planning framework, with the local plan at the heart of that, is really quite important.

We are agnostic as to whether you call it “green belt” or “grey belt” or come up with another colour. But what we are talking about here is releasing land for a purpose that it makes sense to release land for, if it is appropriate to do so. All these terminologies we are talking about here are effectively just rules of the game; being very clear on what those are provides consistency and clarity for the applicants, but also the community and the local authority. What we are concerned about is a lack of clarity: that ambiguity provides the opportunity for sites to come forward that, first, the community did not want and, secondly, the local authority had not planned for nor had the infrastructure and services. That really goes against the grain of the local plan and strategic planning, which is thinking about what an area needs and planning for it.

We do not take quite as strong a position as being anti the grey belt; it is fine, let us have a good conversation about it, but let us do it at the right level, let us involve the right people and let us think about what land needs to be released, where, when and, most importantly, why. To do that, you need to have a very strong NPPF document and very strong guidance underneath it, so that you do not waste many days, hours, weeks, months, years in court arguing about the whys and wherefores, and you actually just get on and deliver what is needed.

Q4 Lord Mair: What happens if there is no local plan?

Victoria Hills: Well, that is a big challenge that we have been very consistent on. Some uncertainty over recent years has seen local plans be paused. We are very clear with every local leader that we meet that, with every day that goes by when you do not have an adopted local plan, you are putting yourself at risk of the challenge of sites coming forward and another person, not you, determining what the need is and where it is needed. Every day that goes by and you do not have it adopted, that is a risk.

The Chair: Is that not an attractive proposition for quite a large number of local authorities?

Victoria Hills: I cannot comment on what is attractive for local leaders.

The Chair: No, you cannot. But sorry, Victoria, there is a slight artificiality to this case, if I may say so. First, in your earlier evidence you draw attention to the fact that if there is no local plan in place, the possibility of detrimental outcomes increases, for the reasons you said—try-it-on applications which are then determined by planning inspectors and so on. But are the Government not entitled to rely on an assumption that local planning authorities have made local plans? Why should the Government say, “We’re not going to have national policies that could be implemented through local plans unless they have local plans”, but they are refusing to have local plans in many cases?

Secondly, it is all very well for you to construct an argument based on the notion that the planning system is working to its ideal original conception, which is a hierarchy of plans cascading down from national plans to local plans and so on, but if the local plans are largely missing—from 60% of local planning authorities, as I understand it—then are you not presenting us with an unreal solution to the problem the Government have posed? One has a suspicion that, in many cases, there are political attractions in not having a local plan, because it is a great deal easier living with your neighbours if the decision is made by somebody remote sent out from Bristol, for example.

Victoria Hills: I do not agree. The fundamental is getting your local plan in place and having the planning framework. Nationally, the Government set the framework; locally, there is a responsibility of elected leaders to develop their local plan. If they are not doing it, that is an issue for the department to take up with them, and I know that the Minister does take it up very seriously with those local authorities that are not bringing those forward. Where the opportunity comes, if I may, is to now look at things in a more strategic sense and have some of these conversations at a broader regional level. We have certainly made that case very clearly to government.

The Chair: That is a slightly separate point—a good point, but one we might come to separately, given that the green belt spreads across contiguous local authorities quite often.

Victoria Hills: If I may, my point there was that in looking at those things at a regional level, you move the conversation on regardless of whether a local district is struggling to find its housing allocation because the majority of its area is in green belt, for example. That does happen in a lot of areas we are all very familiar with. In looking at things at a subregional or regional level, you can move the conversation forward and work out how you are going to deal with that across boundaries.

I do not agree that it is an unrealistic scenario; this is what we should all be aiming for. We have a perfectly reasonable framework to move forward with; we just need that clarity through the NPPF and the supporting guidance, and then the rest is there to get on with it. If local authorities refuse to get on with it, that is a different conversation for the Minister to take up with them individually, but it is not the fault of the system. It is about winning the hearts and minds of those local leaders to say, “Look, we need to deliver for communities: we’ve got to get the local plan in place”.

Q5 The Chair: Potentially, it could be regarded as a fault of the system if a key part of the system, which is the local planning authority making a local plan, is consistently failing to do so. It might be a systemic fault rather than simply a local fault.

I have a question on a quite separate matter, following on from what Dr Ellis said earlier. A small but important point is that you said the definition of the grey belt lacks a research or evidence base. I do not understand why a definition should require an evidence base. Was the green belt based on an evidence base when it was first created? It was simply defined as certain land around existing metropolitan areas.

Dr Hugh Ellis: I can say that green belt’s evidence base was probably originally defined by Thomas More, but the evidence base is slightly out of date from 1515. On the concept of grey belt, you would expect government to have done this due diligence: to have decided what public policy problem grey belt was meant to define, to have estimated its extent in solving that problem and, in estimating its extent, to be absolutely crystal clear on the meaning and extent of what grey belt amounted to. Much of our discomfort in dealing with grey belt is trying to understand quite what is meant by it, and therefore how meaningful it is and what the extent is. For example, if in the run-up to this you were able to say that there were 20,000 redundant petrol stations in green belt and therefore a grey belt can be reclassified around a particular land use, I would have found that easier to grasp. But, in fact, this policy does not have that evidence base or, to be absolutely clear, it is not an evidence base that has been presented to us; it may well be that the Government do have such an evidence base.

The Chair: Maybe I have this wrong, but my impression was you were suggesting it needed an evidence base to be legally sound. You can certainly complain—I often complain—that what the Government are doing is vaguely incompetent, backwards and inconsistent. That is fine, and we can all say that: these are government political points, okay? But it is different to say that it is legally necessary, and I had the impression you were thinking it was legally necessary. I may be wrong about that.

Dr Hugh Ellis: My point was to try to say it is necessary to be effective, and in a sense this inquiry would be redundant if they had done that because they would have been able to present a comprehensive case. The history of green belt is different. Green belt has a serious cultural definition in this country that is 500 years long, and it has had a tremendous amount of work and effort put in over the years to how it should be defined. What we are left with now is the minimalist description of what green belt can do: if the inquiry was focused on the potential of England’s green belt to be a resource for our urban populations, then we could have a creative debate about that. But in terms of grey belt, I suspect that what we have is a political idea being retrofitted into public policy.

The Chair: Yes, but political ideas are what Governments do. Lady Andrews is asking the next question and will start by declaring any interest she has.

Q6 Baroness Andrews: I have no interests, my Lord; thank you very much. This is a very interesting conversation, and it is very good to see you both, Victoria and Hugh. You partly answered the question I intended to ask, which was exactly how the grey belt might contribute to housing and how it would actually work, but if I may, Chair, I want to pursue that in another context as well.

First, as far as I have understood, the green belt is always about land containment: it is about ensuring that there is no urban sprawl, that towns are separate and so on. The grey belt is supposed to be safeguarded by those five principles that are set out because it will make a limited contribution, ensuring that those principles still hold. You have basically said that there is a paradox there: that it cannot do that by definition because it is being required to trespass on those principles, and practically it is not going to work. That is a very sound case because a lot of this is essentially about encroachment on land and towns.

Victoria, you have talked about the need to release land strategically; can you both put yourselves in the most positive frame of mind? We are where we are with this definition of grey belt, or non-definition of grey belt: can you imagine how, at best, it might possibly work to identify bits of land which could be classified in a definition that you find marginally more comfortable? Hugh, from what you said it may be that you cannot, but what advice could we give government about how it might work under the best circumstances to generate housing? Basically, it is all about housing, about fast-tracking housing; how is it actually going to work?

Victoria Hills: For us, as the professional institute but also the learned society, we do a lot of research on these sorts of things. We start with global principles of the sustainable development goals: it is about putting the right development in the right locations to enable the SDGs to be met, which are now just over five years away. Governments around the world, including our own, have signed up to these. It is important to make that point because often people have forgotten about them, but they are still there.

One thing we have been doing as an institute is tracking the location of development consents for nearly 10 years now, because nobody else was. We wanted to have a look at homes in particular: are they going in the most sustainable locations? We have done three or four versions of this report now and what our research has consistently found is there are still too many consents for homes going in places that are not sustainable. Our definition of sustainable starts with access: being able to walk or cycle to a transport mode or hub. There are still too many homes being consented where the transport mode or hub is more than two kilometres away.

We are just finalising our update to this research, The Location of Development four, which we will be publishing in November and we will share with this committee. If I am honest with you, it is looking as though things have not much improved. What good would look like for us is this. If you are going to start thinking about releasing land, yes you need to look at some principles the Government are talking about in terms of whether it has been previously developed, then some of these rather strange definitions we have heard about need bottoming out, but there is a fundamental principle here which is: is it in a sustainable location? That is really quite important. And by sustainable, yes, you have to look at sustainability of infrastructure and access to facilities; that includes power and water. If they are not there, they need to be, but is it in a sustainable location for people to be able to move around and live their daily lives? If we are going to have a definition, it needs to bear in mind some of these sustainable development principles. Location, location, location is really important in that.

Baroness Andrews: The grey-belt definition does not do that, though, does it?

Victoria Hills: We do not think it goes anywhere near far enough.

Baroness Andrews: It was in the NPPF in terms of sustainability, but do you think the grey belt would meet a housing requirement any easier, given its relative flexibility, shall we say?

Victoria Hills: Perhaps the way that things are worded at the moment is too flexible: we have both been consistently saying that we have to have some clarity on definitions, some of which needs to be helpful at directing any land that is going to be released into the most sustainable locations. That is our point of principle. If we are talking about big principles here, we can put some detail to one side: if you are going to release land, can it be land that makes sense to be released?

The community is a really important part of this conversation. We are in a housing crisis: we have lots of people on homeless waiting lists; we have lots of need for new homes. The community wants new homes, but not if they are going to be in what it perceives to be the wrong places. By that I mean locations that do not make any sense: they are not connected to any transport, or they do not have those services. Being able to put all that into a strategic planning document, whether it is a local plan or it is a citywide regional plan or a combined authority area, is really important to guide that. Those locally elected leaders should be the ones steering that forward, not through the appeals process. But the community has to sit at the heart of that as well.

Q7 Baroness Andrews: Before I move on to Hugh, I would like to ask my supplementary to this question because you have touched on it. You have talked about the potential for the courts to get completely bogged down in appeals and planning by appeal, but you have suggested that there are other obstacles as well, which are about local engagement, consent and people trying to stop this because it is being put on them, et cetera. Do you think that is a real challenge, and do you think, as well as the obvious ones, there are other challenges which would take it into judicial review?

Victoria Hills: The main challenge, apart from the appeal we were talking about, is the public are much more informed now about the planning process. They hear about planning on the news daily. I lost count of how many times planning was mentioned yesterday at the International Investment Summit. It is a very broadly used term now, and the public understand planning and what it means for them locally in a way that perhaps they did not a few years ago. That can be very helpful, but at the same time it can be very unhelpful for those people trying to bring forward development. Planning with the community and telling the story about what the local elected leaders want to achieve, what the future looks like for them—that is the local plan.

The other obstacle I touched upon, which is beyond perhaps today’s topic, is infrastructure. It all has to be planned hand in hand, not just with those who are building the homes, but those who provide the power, those who provide the utilities and those who provide the services that communities need, such as health, education and access to jobs. It can all be done through a plan-led process, but our concern is if you move to planning by appeal, you will get sites coming forward that the local authority had not planned for and the community did not want. That risks the public turning against all this, which none of us wants because we all recognise that more development is needed, and it is about how we can all move forward together.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Just briefly, the broad context for this is that we absolutely want to see an end to the housing crisis. But the broad-brush approach was always to have a policy in England of sensible and robust green-belt policy, accompanied by a strategic policy for new communities or expanded communities well beyond green belt, well-connected to existing urban centres. Being able to deliver that is a very traditional and very well-proven track record here and internationally. The extensive green belt post-war went with 32 new communities housing 2.8 million people. If you have one side of the policy in green belt but you do not take a strategic approach, you start a battle which no one can win. That battle is about people’s perception, as Victoria said, and their defence of the green belt. It does not matter what we technically think or what legal definitions are; it is a totemic policy in the body politic of this nation. It is not just in the south-east; it is also right across the ex-industrial north of England.

Our advice is always that, if you want to solve the housing crisis, you can expend all your effort in a bitter battle in the green belt, or you can say, “Actually let’s defend the green belt. If you want to defend the countryside, let’s plan strategically for that purpose”. What we have had is a lot of incremental—as Victoria points out—not very sustainable growth for many decades, which has a legacy that has built mistrust among communities.

What is the alignment between grey-belt land and highly sustainable and strategic locations in green belt for development? The answer to that is nobody knows, but the likelihood that there is an alignment is unlikely, because grey-belt land will be randomly determined by where petrol stations happen to have been located in the past, if that is the example the Government use. If you want to release green belt for development, the mechanisms are already there and the best way of doing it, if there is a case for it, is strategically, by which I mean at the 4,000, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, 10,000 home extent, highly sustainably located. That can already happen through existing green-belt policy. It can already happen through a local plan process. The question is: what does green belt add to that? And as Victoria said, where there is a case for that release and where there is local support for it, that is great.

Finally, I just have to say one of the greatest sources of delay and confusion in why we do not have local plans is national policy. I have witnessed more than 30 years of planning reform—the intensification of change in law and policy. An example would be, if you implement the new housing targets in the NPPF as currently framed around a new and arbitrary figure, you render every single adopted local plan out of date the moment the NPPF is published, depending on transitional arrangements. That is the impact of the way that a centralised planning system can operate. If we want a centralised planning system, and it is perfectly legitimate for Parliament to have that, then let us have that debate. But what you need to be clear about is how far Westminster, Whitehall, plays a role in housing delivery and how far it does not. For me, local plans are not best suited to deal with big change, which is why you need a programme of strategic housing growth in key areas, and let local plans do what I would describe as the normal stuff. In green-belt areas, local plans cannot meet their housing targets, nor should they. That growth and that need should be met in these strategic locations. That is why we have Milton Keynes.

Baroness Andrews: Would you be advocating an extension of brownfield sites? We are talking about the green belt, but brownfield has always been first port of call for development.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Brownfield is an opportunity, but the truth is that we live in a volume housebuilder model where profits are much higher on greenfield site development, so they will inevitably push those. I want to say, speaking from a north Midlands perspective, planning is not the problem. There has never been a planning barrier to brownfield site development. If you come into most of those areas with a development proposal, the local planning authority in the community will bite your hand off. The truth about brownfield development is that it is complicated, and that complexity about land contamination and flood risk cannot be passported away; it has to be dealt with. You have to sweat the problem and really solve the problems site by site, and that is hard work.

The Chair: We will come now to Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, who is joining us remotely and who is going to start by declaring any interests that she has.

Q8 Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Thank you, Chair. I have no interest to declare in relation to this inquiry.

Thank you very much for those comments. I wanted to follow up on the housing issue, which is clearly going to be an extraordinarily challenging one for the Government to face in light of what you have said about definitions. But just going back to what Baroness Andrews said about trying to look at this in as positive a way as possible: given the way in which you have thought about grey belt, have you thought at all about how much land could be categorised as grey belt? You are clearly very, very dubious about this—indeed very sceptical about it and obviously quite concerned about the definition—but have you actually looked at it on the basis of whether it could release more land for development?

Victoria Hills: We are aware that many groups have attempted to look at this, and there are some bits and pieces out in the media of people mapping and coming up with all kinds of scientific answers as to exactly what can now be brought forward for development. However, we would just like to make the point that the way grey belt is currently defined is about a process of releasing land from green belt, and it is not a straightforward process. Therefore, it is not a black and white sum, which is why perhaps we have not seen figures on it from the Government.

Furthermore, we have certainly not provided an estimate of exactly how much land would come forward in this way, partly because some of what needs to come forward is clearer guidance and definitions as to how it can be released and on what basis, and that is what we have asked for. The answer to your question is no: we have not looked at a figure. We are aware many organisations have, but we would just caveat that by saying that we currently have a discretionary system in the UK planning system, which does mean that each case will be unique and considered independently. The guidance notes need to be incredibly strong and clear so that there is indeed the consistency and clarity that everybody wants, and less room for ambiguity.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: Mr Ellis, would you like to add anything? I wonder if you could also comment on the proportion of land that you reckon is likely to be challenging to develop for reasons of being contaminated; could you take on that additional dimension as well?

Dr Hugh Ellis: Again, Victoria is right: this is a circular argument in the sense that, without a clear definition, of course no one can be precise about the amount of land. My best professional judgment is that it is marginal, if you do not want to undermine the five core purposes of green belt. As I said, particularly in the context of the north Midlands and the north of England, the issue of contamination is really interesting because, as far as I am aware, no one has done a survey of the amount of contaminated land in green belt. But it is a particular issue for northern England and a particular issue for the green-belt designations, for example, through Lancashire and then round South Yorkshire, and the limited green belt in the north-east as well. Much of that land is ex-industrial, much of it is ex-mineral, or it is ex-landfill, and the idea that any of that could be developed easily, viably, is extremely unlikely. That additional issue is very important, to understand that green belt is often written about by organisations as if it is a monolith, and you have to look at the detail of the designations and then get into that detail.

It may well be, as I have said, that there are opportunities for strategic release. But looking at the majority of northern and north Midlands green belt, it was designated after the horse had bolted. It was a desperate attempt to stop industrial communities coalescing, and it was designated from the ’40s through to the ’60s as a desperate attempt to keep them apart. I started my comments by saying if we do not want green belt in this country to do that, then fine, but if you look at that, you are talking about conurbations that, if you are not careful, run from Liverpool to Hull. And if you look at the fragmentary green belt, that is what you would end up with. In my mind, there is no realistic opportunity of any significance for release in those areas that would not compromise the purposes of green belt. The Government need to be more open about that: if they see a solution to the housing crisis in those terms in those places, then that probably requires a national review of its extent.

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: You are right we are getting a bit circular in this discussion, but have you thought through whether perhaps your two organisations, based on whatever background research you have done, could produce a better set of definitions? You can see what the Government are trying to get at here, can you not? They are trying to get at that land which is not going to encroach on the totemic policy, as you called it, of the green belt, while also differentiating themselves from the problems associated with brownfield. It is a laudable aspiration; is it one that you feel can be identified in that way? You talked about this as a political definition and, yes, of course it will be in that sense, but at the same time it has to be defined in order to be implemented. Are you in a position to be able to offer a better definition, or a definition?

Dr Hugh Ellis: I would just say quickly that it is very difficult to produce that definition. Let me be more honest: no. The answer to the housing crisis lies in sustaining our green belts and planning strategically beyond them. That has always been the position of the TCPA, and it is the right kind of framework that we need. We inherit a legacy in this country of urban sprawl. Definition is important; access to the countryside is important; highly sustainable and well-connected places are important. The answer to the housing crisis lies beyond the green belt, not within it. That said, our position is that the existing policy, which allows the release of green-belt land where there is a sustainable development argument for it, is much better than a grey-belt policy that creates legal confusion, has a potentially marginal impact on housing supply and has serious questions about whether development will be sustainable.

Q9 The Chair: Can I come in on this specifically for the TCPA? There is an incoherence in your position that I do not really follow. On the one hand, it sounds like you are completely opposed to development, at least for housing purposes, in the existing declared green belt. I am sure if pressed, you would acknowledge that some land in the green belt makes a greater contribution to the purposes of the green belt and some less so. You would probably acknowledge that, if I pressed you, but even so, you would want to protect the whole thing. On the other hand, you think there are ways of releasing land in the green belt that you would approve of, but they would involve following existing procedural routes rather than adopting a new one.

The argument that you are adopting seems to be at two levels. One is, “This is a bad thing to do in principle”, and the other is, “This is an okay thing to do in principle because it’s allowed at the moment and we happen to think that the procedure that exists at the moment is quite a good procedure. It works with relative clarity, so why do you need a new procedure proposed by the current Government, which will only, in our view, add confusion and problems to the whole issue?” I am hearing both arguments at the same time, and there is an incoherence in it, is there not?

Dr Hugh Ellis: I will try to be more coherent. Our position is quite straightforward: we are not opposed to development on green belt where that development is justified, where it is highly sustainable and where it is locally determined—and through a local plan process, just as Victoria set out.

The Chair: If they actually get on with a local plan, yes. If they do not, things cannot be held up for ever for want of a local plan. Let us be clear: things are not just determined through a local plan process; the planning system in this country has always involved national plans that have to be taken into account by local plans, so there is a cascading type of system. Earlier you said, “If you want a centralised planning system”, as if it was a new idea, when, to a degree, it has been a centralised planning system since it was set up.

Dr Hugh Ellis: No, it absolutely has not. In 1947, a choice was made between a centralised planning board as part of the Town and Country Planning Act and a central role for local authorities as local planning authorities with the principal responsibility of writing local plans at county level. The Government’s role at that point was to do strategic housing growth through the new towns programme to solve the major demographic challenges of the age, and Governments after the late ’70s decided they did not want that role.

The purpose of looking at planning as a piece, which I have the curse of doing frequently, is that you can see the powers from local government to central government have been centralised very significantly over the last 20 years, and I could sit and give you endless examples of that. The coherence of our position is: if you take England as a whole, is major development and deregulation of our green belt a sensible idea? No. Is there the opportunity in current policy to do that? Yes, and where local communities think it should happen, that is fine. But the Government need to be honest, do they not? If they want to centralise a system and start saying, “Grey belt is a centralised planning policy and you’re going to have it”, that is great, let us have that debate, but let us recognise that for what it is, which is a deregulatory measure that creates fragmented development in green belt. Ultimately, the conversation for this country, in terms of the urban fabric that we have been given as a legacy, is whether you want to press the highly sustainable development button or the urban sprawl button.

Victoria Hills: In relation to the earlier part of the question and the point before, Hugh is absolutely correct: there are perfectly workable provisions that already exist to release land now. On the one hand, you would say, “Well, why are we creating something else that adds more ambiguity? If we already have a green-belt release system, let’s call it that. Why not just stick with what we have?” As I said, we are agnostic; we will always work with the system the Government set. If they want to move forward to a grey belt, there is opportunity for ambiguity, confusion and lack of consistency; I have said all that already.

Where the opportunity lies in all this is moving back to more strategic planning, and that is relevant for the debate. I mentioned it earlier and perhaps now is the point to return to it because those reviews of release show it is not really working at that district-to-district level. Doing it at a subregional, citywide, combined authority area level, for example, makes a lot more sense than having a situation where you have a small authority saying, “We can’t meet our housing targets because we are in the green belt”. Let us look at these things across a regional area because transport, power, education, health, everything we use and need, do not stop at the district boundary. It all works at a regional level, so why would we not look at it that way?

Q10 The Chair: What is the mechanism for doing that at the moment? I think I know the answer to this question but go on.

Victoria Hills: Well, the mechanism for doing that at the moment is we have not had strategic planning in that way for some time.

The Chair: There is no mechanism for doing this at the moment.

Victoria Hills: We are looking forward to seeing the mechanism that comes forward in what I believe will be called the devolution Bill, which will include some opportunity for areas to work together, or indeed, elected officials at that citywide level to do some of this. It exists in certain areas, one of which, as you referred to earlier, we both worked in. There is a mechanism in London at that citywide regional level and it is called the London plan. It is a spatial development strategy, it is a statutory document and it looks at transport, infrastructure, housing and much, much more at a citywide, regional level. We have consistently said for some time that it would be helpful if elsewhere we had the equivalent considerations that you have in those provisions. We now believe that the Government are moving forward with considerations of that nature, which would help these definitions of green-belt release quite considerably because you could look at an area beyond just a district or a small county or unitary.

The Chair: That would be a very large-scale release of green-belt land.

Victoria Hills: It does not have to be large; it could be small bits.

The Chair: In principle though, it would straddle at least two districts. That is what you are discussing, because if it was simply within one district you would not need it.

Victoria Hills: The principle is it makes sense to look at these things strategically. What we have been lacking for some time is an approach of strategic planning. We have heard that there is going to be a move back to that, and we welcome that. As I said earlier, we are agnostic as to what you call it, but we are talking about taking land out of the green belt: come up with a new term that this bit of the green belt is now called “grey belt”, fine—it does not matter what you call it, but it is a process. Our fundamental point here that is relevant for this conversation is, if you are considering release of the green belt and calling it green belt as part of the release, how are you having that conversation and with whom? We think that needs to happen at a strategic level for it to make sense.

The Chair: Victoria, it has to be said that I am not the most natural advocate for Angela Rayner. But if I were in Angela Rayner’s position and I just wanted to release a few petrol stations for development in the green belt, and what I was getting from the RTPI was, “Well, this is all perfectly okay, provided you can reconstitute the ideal world in which 100% of local authorities have a local plan which they’re completely bought into, and in addition, revamp the planning systems so as to create a whole new layer of decision-making, or at least plan-making, at the strategic level”, I would begin to see how she might feel a little frustrated, like she was not being taken very seriously.

Victoria Hills: I do not recognise that definition. It is perfectly reasonable for local authorities to be aspiring towards reaching their local plan coverage. Indeed, thinking about how you do things beyond a district or unitary is exactly the Government’s intention, as I understand it. As they have set out, there will be forthcomings for those elected mayors who are going to be taking on broader powers to look at these sorts of issues than perhaps they currently have.

If you take the example where the success of that approach has provided clarity and certainty for investment, for infrastructure, then that is something that can be built on elsewhere. I come back to some investment decisions; some of that certainty of investment that London was able to attract was because it had a cohesive and coherent approach to all these issues across an area covering many, many millions of people. Why would you not take that approach elsewhere? I do not think there is any divergence in where the Government are thinking about these things, and I do not think it has to take a long time.

The Chair: These are very broad planning reforms, and they are slightly outside the scope. They may eventuate, they may become government policy, but that is perhaps slightly outside the scope of what we are discussing.

Baroness Warwick, have you finished with your questions?

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe: I have, Chair; we can move on.

Q11 The Chair: Thank you very much. I am going to come to Lord Mawson in a moment, but I am reminded by Kelvin, who is our specialist adviser, that we did not actually explore the question—I hesitate to raise this because I think I know what the answer is—of whether the new definition would encourage more rapid development of housing than using the existing mechanisms for the release of green-belt land for development. I would like to hear it on the record: what do you think the answer to that question is? Perhaps a sentence each at most.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Any policy that increases the number of consents does not automatically increase the rate of delivery at all because there is no relationship between those two ideas. We consent one third more housing in this country than we build every year.

The Chair: Could I rephrase the question? Would it lead to a more rapid delivery of consents?

Dr Hugh Ellis: I can see no mechanism that it would. It would lead to an increase in the number of consents in green belt, which does not equal an increase in housing delivery.

The Chair: So, it would lead more rapidly than the existing system for releasing green-belt land.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Any deregulatory measure that essentially allows for the designation of land that creates more consents—on whatever basis this policy is finally framed at—creates more consents.

The Chair: Victoria, would you like to answer in terms of consents? The point Dr Ellis makes is, of course, a good one.

Victoria Hills: I would go back to my earlier point that it could lead to an increase in consents for homes in unsustainable locations, in places where the local authority had not wanted to see them because it made no sense from an infrastructure or accessibility perspective. It could lead to more of those, but I am not going to sit here and say it will lead to those.

The Chair: Good. Next is Lord Mawson, who is going to start by declaring any interests he has.

Q12 Lord Mawson: I work with Barratt plc and Ibstock plc nationally, L&Q Housing Association, and the NHS alliance in Surrey, which includes four local authorities, all working on development sites.

Compared to now, how will the planning process for green-belt development differ under the new proposals, and how meaningful is this? You have answered some parts of this already, but can I just add to that? I would find it helpful because we have a new Government with a very clear mandate, and Angela Rayner and others do want to get on with building this stuff, which is a perfectly reasonable matter. What would be your practical suggestions to her and this new Government about what they need to do to break through some of this impasse, so that we can get on site and get these developments? I am very aware of the complications of some of these sites and contamination; they are often very difficult to do.

Dr Hugh Ellis: I am going to start with that point: when you are dealing with broad-brush policy, you can very often underestimate the practical realities of construction. If it was me, just in reverse order, I would be focusing on supply chain and I would be focusing on sweating the consents you already have, which is well over 1.5 million unbuilt—most local authorities have a backlog—because that is the immediate hit on the housing crisis. Things being consented now face a range of issues.

Planning is often seen as a problem because planning presents realities. I will give you an example: we will soon have the surface water flood risk maps from the Environment Agency, which will sterilise a great deal more land in the south-east that we currently thought was developable. I did not make that up as a convenient problem as a planner: it is the reality of the complexity we have to deal with. For me, it is a shift from policies that deal with expanding consents to an absolute forensic focus on the practical delivery issues.

Since 1925, the private sector has built approximately 200,000 homes a year, and it is currently building 189,000. We consent over 300,000. If you ask the private sector how many more consents we need, as they argue for—there is a third not being built at the moment—then they will say, “Well, the more certainty, the better”. But if the average age of a bricklayer is now mid-40s, the only way of solving the housing crisis is to focus on supply chain, a new programme for workforce and a new programme of highly sustainable communities.

I want to really place on record that the TCPA is a pro-housing organisation that knows the answer to the housing crisis is a transformation of our construction sector, highly sustainable new communities and one overwhelming investment: social rent—a return to the direct construction of socially rented homes, probably by local authorities. Because that money is not there, the Government are hoping that the private sector will produce all the necessary infrastructure and affordable housing. There is a very important debate about whether that is fair or reasonable as an assumption, because the private sector has a range of viability issues we might discuss. But those are the things I would focus on. I would not have focused on a marginal debate about small sites in existing green belt.

Victoria Hills: If I may, it is a very big question and perhaps we do not have time to do justice to it all. But from our part of the stratosphere, one pressure that we know and hear about unlocking planning is being able to get things through the planning system. We have seen a decimation of resources in local government over the last 10 to 15 years. We would ask the Government not to lose their nerve in investing in that local capability and capacity because, as Hugh has described, often the consent is just the start of it. You then have to discharge conditions, but more importantly you have to unlock the components of some very knotty issues which are seen as planning delay, but it may be the lack of water, the lack of power, the lack of construction products, the lack of available labour; there could be all sorts of issues as to why things are not coming forward.

It is about investing that local capability and capacity within the heart of local government to actually work alongside developers and investors. I meet many of them—as I know you do—who are desperate to get things going, and actually there are a lot of quick wins that could be unlocked locally. I am delighted to see more brownfield funding announced today to help unlock some of that, but you need to have capability and capacity within local government to sit alongside the private sector. As Hugh said, there are huge expectations for the private sector to deliver some of this stuff, but our members, half of whom sit in local government, are at the front line of trying to bring forward some of these things and, quite frankly, some with half the resources they had 10 years ago.

That is a really important part of this conversation, but your question is far broader than we have time to give justice to. I agree we cannot just rely on the existing models; we need to see more investment coming from a mix of investors, which must include local authorities that are extremely challenged to do it at this time. But with some clever funding and financing support, it cannot be beyond the wit of man or woman that we can see more councils returning to housebuilding again.

The Chair: Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer is joining us remotely and she will ask the next question. Again, she is going to begin by declaring any interest she has in the inquiry.

Q13 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My first and only declaration would be a number of shares in a family firm, Bradfords, a builders supply merchant based in Yeovil in the West Country and supplying that region.

This has been an absolutely riveting session so far. You have both touched a lot on sustainable nature and the sustainable development goals. You have answered the first part of my question: would the proposals as they are currently drafted result in good places to live with good transport links? I think you said they are not currently drafted adequately.

How could the definition or broader proposals be amended to support the aim of delivering sustainable good places? In answering that, I would have to push you on the very definition of “sustainable”. It is a lovely, tree-huggy word that everyone loves to use, but it can mean very different things in an area such as the West Country, which has lots of national parks and AONBs, and somewhere with a much denser urban nature.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Sustainable development is a pretty contested idea, but the current NPPF mentions the UN sustainable development goals, which give a very consistent definition of what sustainable development should be, and then comprehensively disempowers them in decision-making by saying famously that they should be applied, “Only at a very high level”, which is written for a High Court judge to disapply in any meaningful way if there was ever a challenge. We have all been around the merry-go-round of writing policy that is more or less meaningless. The legal definition of sustainable development in planning law is “make a contribution to”; good luck with that in any meaningful challenge.

Let us be clear that the purpose of planning should be sustainable development, and a clear definition is available if government chooses to adopt it. The TCPA was really clear in our response to the NPPF on these issues: what is the purpose of all this? What is the outcome of all this planning reform? What kind of places do we want for people? Where is health and well-being? Where is climate change?

In terms of the detail, the Government could go much further in defining what kind of design standards would be applied to grey-belt development if they wanted to. That in itself is quite complex given viability, which we might come to, but two important things are in my mind. A very radical Annexe 4 has been written for green-belt release in the NPPF, which sets an entirely new viability framework for a particular piece of land. With that principle established, there is no reason why the Government could not write a design code—if they wanted to—for grey-belt land.

If they want a national planning framework, they could do that. As I have said, there are limits to that. They would need to be much clearer about other environmental standards, one of which I would genuinely flag as zero carbon.

Victoria Hills: We feel the NPPF could be much stronger in terms of requiring that definition of sustainable development, but in terms of the discussion we are having today—green-belt release and grey-belt release—we feel the Government could go further in making any release prerequisite on it being a sustainable location.

I come back to my earlier point about it being accessible by public transport; it may sound like a basic point to make, but actually it is not. Being able to have accessibility to transport choices is a fundamental part of the sustainable development principles, so why should it not be there embedded within it as one of the fundamental prerequisites of any release of land? That is a point we have made consistently to government and will continue to make.

Q14 Baroness Janke: I have no relevant interests to declare. My question is about the viability of achieving 50% affordable housing, and I would like to add the issue of social housing; I am afraid affordable housing is usually not terribly affordable for many people these days.

You have already mentioned sweating the supply chain and realising the number of consents that are already in the system. How do you think we can achieve this as one of the goals? We seem to be hearing that the release of grey belt is not really the answer to achieving this particular objective; perhaps you could comment further.

Victoria Hills: I will take the affordable housing part, but I just want to be clear: grey belt could be the answer. There could be some very sustainable locations out there that are just the answer, but it needs to be taken through in a considered way.

Our point on viability and affordable housing is we recognise there is this proposed requirement that any released sites have to deliver 50% affordable housing. But as we know, land prices vary quite considerably across the country, and we feel a 50% target does not take account of that and may actually render the whole thing meaningless in huge swathes of the country where it is just not viable to deliver 50% affordable housing.

Why is that important? I come back to the could: if there are sites that meet this new grey-belt definition that could be ideal for affordable housing and for housing coming forward because they are in sustainable locations, they fall at the first hurdle because they cannot deliver 50% affordable housing. That would be a missed opportunity if it was a sustainable location to put homes in.

We do not agree that one size fits all; having a blanket 50% across England does not make sense, and we have made that point very clearly. Coming back to the local plan, it would be far more effective for local areas to work out an appropriate percentage for their area, for example. It may be that lots of areas could take 50%, but it is highly likely that many may not be able to, and that could be a missed opportunity, as I say, from sites not coming forward that could otherwise do so.

In terms of your broader question in relation to unlocking those other sites, we come back to an infrastructure first policy. When you get to the nitty-gritty of it, usually an infrastructure issue is holding back some of those consents, so having local teams focused on bringing forward development and working alongside those infrastructure providers to find ways to bring that forward could be a very important part of the process that perhaps is not evident everywhere, though some areas are getting better at it. I am quite happy to draw examples of where we think that is working well. That answers the second part of your question, but do you want to come in, Hugh?

Dr Hugh Ellis: I really support the idea of 50% affordable; it is a great starting point. What Victoria says is right, but the policy actually says, “50% subject to viability”. We enter into Annexe 4, which sets a new framework for viability that I really support and that is getting to the heart of what landowners and developers might expect.

It is quite curious to set up two kinds of viability testing for two different types of land, but Victoria is quite right about the reality of what will happen in a residual valuation process on marginal sites in the north of England. Developers will be able to argue that there is no headroom, and you will not get significant affordable housing outcomes.

Let us be clear: you will end up with a grey-belt release with very marginal affordable housing contribution, which will be controversial because of that and is not meeting those in the greatest housing crisis. The housing crisis is different everywhere; there is no way you can reasonably use the definition of England’s housing crisis. The housing crisis is hugely differentiated spatially and is most acute for those on the lowest incomes.

Let us reflect on what this policy is trying to do. Will this solve the housing crisis for those currently in temporary accommodation? No; not on any scale whatsoever. The only way would be to reorientate the policy to say that affordable means social rent, which in itself raises viability questions for developers. There is a circularity to this; viability testing as it is currently constructed in Annexe 4 is trying to evolve, but it is worth reflecting that developers get a fixed return amount enshrined in policy, which is extraordinary for private sector enterprise: they get 15% to 20% written into the guidance as an expected return on a development value. If you are really serious about dealing with the viability issue, you need to take viability much more seriously.

This is not an argument against the private sector. Despite what Treasury sometimes thinks, there is not a money tree that can endlessly yield all the public benefits the Government want while still preserving a reasonable profit margin for the private sector. That would only apply to a very few, very high-value sites in London, the south-east and some parts of the south-west.

The Chair: The Government appear to be focused on sites which, almost by definition, will require decontamination—we talk about petrol stations, ex-industrial sites and so on, so there is very likely to be a decontamination requirement on that property before it can be developed for housing. Putting that together with a 50% affordable housing target seems to create a burden on development in the green belt that almost kills the policy from the outset, irrespective of whether you need to construct transport infrastructure that connects to a non-local transport hub, for example. It is almost as if the Government did not want this to happen. You have to buy an ex-petrol station, decontaminate it and provide 50% affordable housing; who is going to sell land for what is left as the residual value?

Victoria Hills: In that scenario, you might then assume the sites that come forward as part of the grey-belt release are not the really dirty ones; they may be the ones that are easier to develop. Our position is clear: there should not be a one size fits all for this. Yes, the sites should be seeking an active contribution towards local affordable housing, but is there a risk that nothing comes forward at all if you make it too onerous? Possibly.

The Chair: That comment is important to record.

Victoria Hills: It is a possibly.

The Chair: Possibly is understood, but it is important.

Q15 Baroness Andrews: We have struggled with viability, with developers being able to say, “Sorry, I can’t possibly develop that; that’s simply not viable”. In Annexe 4, you are saying there is a stricter definition of viability, but it does not really matter what definition of viability you have because the sites themselves, the areas where you really need to be building—the north, the west, the Midlands, and so on—are not areas where any form of viability is going to reflect or match the situation on the ground, or the cost and availability of land. That is a very gloomy prognosis if that is the case.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Yes, it is, and Victoria is right: if the policy is to be successful on grey belt, our petrol station scenario that you have set out is absolutely right. People inevitably default to greenfield locations, which have a limited contribution to the purposes of green belt—back to that definition—because they potentially have some viability to deliver. That in itself gets back to the paradox, because those will be most politically difficult to build any consent for locally; they will look like green belt and they will be greenfield.

Planning reform in general raises a question that the private sector and Governments have struggled with for 40 years: if you really want to build places that are resilient, fit for purpose and healthy, you cannot do that solely through a private sector-led development model. We had a much stronger planning process in this country in the late ’60s; we built 400,000 units of housing a year, but half that housing was funded by the state, and when we built most developments, the council funded most of the infrastructure.

We have shifted the burden of all that infrastructure, and healthcare facilities, roads, transport and affordable housing are all now loaded on to a fixed residual valuation economic model. That model cannot bear the expense necessary and it will only get worse, with 25% inflation in the last five years in construction costs and massive amounts more needing to be spent on flood defence. The truth is that highly sustainable places where people want to live in the right locations require some element of public investment or a new financial model from patient investors.

Baroness Andrews: With more profit built in for the developer, balanced by more regulation and so on. Presumably, you are saying there is more profit to be made out of those parts of the green belt that can be released because it is conditional or whatever, but you cannot get those profits in areas such as the north and the west where land values are much lower.

Dr Hugh Ellis: I would point you to the green belt, and development values and land prices between Rotherham and Sheffield or around Newcastle; by the time you have loaded on, the requirements are negative. As a result of climate change and flood risk, land prices in many places in this country will be moving into a negative position; it is the great readjustment nobody wants to talk about.

Baroness Andrews: There is no incentive for the private sector.

Dr Hugh Ellis: The private sector will go on doing very efficiently in this country; between 190,000 and 200,000 units of housing a year. You can give them any new consents and they will continue to build out at that rate because they have neither the financial incentive to build more nor the capability to deliver more.

Q16 Viscount Hanworth: My designated question depends on concepts and definitions that have been called into question, so I must rephrase it. How are local plans to be co-ordinated, if indeed they exist, and to what extent might they be subject to some kind of strategic agenda? I believe some local plans cover widely varying geographical extents from very local ones to regional plans. Could you tackle that vague question?

Victoria Hills: The National Planning Policy Framework sets the ground rules of what must be included, local areas then come up with individual policies to meet those rules and requirements, then they move on to be inspected by the Planning Inspectorate which has a couple of stages, a public inquiry is held, and then it gets adopted. That is the current organisation route in a very crude, broad sense. The public is involved very upstream with engagement in what may or may not happen.

At some point—two years, three years, sometimes longer—the plan will get adopted, and that then sits in place as a guiding, very powerful tool for local authorities. I often say to local leaders, “You have two key tools; one’s fiscal raising, not many but some powers, but the only way you can deliver stuff locally is through your local strategic plan; that’s how you steer investment and guide development, et cetera”.

In terms of how it is organised, it is local areas and national policy. With the strategic planning route, there might—emphasis on the might—be a broader consideration of those spatial elements across multiple district and unitary boundaries for some areas such as combined authority areas; the example I gave earlier was the London plan. We are yet to see the local detail coming forward, but there may be some intention to replicate that umbrella strategic spatial strategy—we call it a spatial development document in technical terms—for other areas.

As an institute, we are saying that that would be helpful because then you can look at infrastructure, utilities, health, education, homes and industry across a broader area. While coming up with their own local plan, it enables local decision-makers to all fit in in a harmonious way and plan going forward, which provides certainty to the market and for investors as to what is coming when and where. That would not cover everything but would cover large parts of the dense city urban populations currently, and we think that would be a helpful intervention.

Viscount Hanworth: Did you mention the Planning Inspectorate?

Victoria Hills: Yes.

Viscount Hanworth: Is that the agency for co-ordinating?

Victoria Hills: That is the government agency—arms-length body, if you like—that is there to inspect the local plans. It is looking for whether those local plans are playing by the rules set by national government, but it is also listening to the communities, investors and anybody else who wants to have their say through the consultation and to influence the content of that local plan. It is all done very openly and transparently, usually through a couple of public inquiries organised by the Planning Inspectorate.

Viscount Hanworth: It is complicated and quite variable. Hugh Ellis, does it works well enough, or do you see any possibility for improvement?

Dr Hugh Ellis: It certainly does not work well at the moment. Victoria is right that there is the prospect of change and we are yet to see where that is. It is worth reflecting that we are pretty much the only advanced economy without any national conversation about our future from a spatial point of view, unlike Wales, Scotland and most of our competitors in north-west Europe.

That has always been problematic for England because we are now facing a new process where housing targets will be issued, which will put enormous pressures on for growth in places where growth has been focused already, such as the south-east and south-west. It is interesting to ask: if we also had a national spatial plan to complement regional plans, what would be the vision for England? The vision for England cannot be growth on growth for ever because you run out of water and basic infrastructure at the end of it.

I am fascinated by the question over the next five years that I can see in the detail of government policy. Grey belt is a classic example of that; it is very small and probably makes a marginal contribution for better or worse. What is the vision, therefore, for England? A national spatial plan helps you understand that. For example, is the north-east going to be the place to build a new town, or are we going to continue to pressure the south-east?

The impact of artificial intelligence, changes to the way we live, the importance of health and well-being and the challenge of the climate crisis all need to go into a sense of what vision we want for the future as a nation. That vision has been absent for a long time in England; it will be interesting to see whether this Government address that question.

Viscount Hanworth: Victoria seemed to imply that the Planning Inspectorate simply checks whether the rules are being obeyed; is that about the limits of what it does?

Dr Hugh Ellis: Yes, it is effectively playing a role of traffic warden for local plan coverage.

Victoria Hills: I did not say that.

Dr Hugh Ellis: You did not say that. But the National Infrastructure Commission and various other organisations have been mooted in this role that has responsibility for thinking about spatial data and what goes where. It is really interesting that you can actually see the obvious opportunities for growth when you map, most of which need to be vision-led. In other words, government needs to be able to support that.

Victoria Hills: If we have a national infrastructure strategy over here, the national health investment piece here, the education piece there, industry here and homes here, it makes sense to bring those things closer together. I have not mentioned nature, but it makes sense to bring nature recovery and environmental plans a little closer together than perhaps they have been in recent years, which would reduce some opportunities for divergence or conflict locally because there is a lot of competition for land.

We have been talking a lot about homes, but that land is in hot demand for energy, logistics and distribution, and agriculture, as well as meeting our biodiversity needs, drainage, water and so on. Bringing all this together into a much more considered piece—we have mentioned strategic planning—is a really important way to do it.

Viscount Hanworth: Thank you. That has answered the question very effectively.

The Chair: Viscount Hanworth, I forgot to ask you to declare your interests at the beginning.

Viscount Hanworth: I have no interests relative to this inquiry to declare.

The Chair: Lord Bailey of Paddington, you had a question.

Q17 Lord Bailey of Paddington: You talked about a national framework around spatial use; could you give us some short sentences on that?

Victoria Hills: Hugh introduced it. The point Hugh was trying to make was there is no national spatial strategy that sets out what is going where. We are aware there are lots of national investment plans and frameworks that are not currently knitted together in a meaningful way. We are a bit more agnostic as to whether that goes forward into a national spatial strategy or something else. At the moment, we just see a divergence of all these big plans that have a spatial element attached to them and we would like to see them brought closer together.

I am not saying we disagree with the points Hugh is making, but let us walk before we can run. Why not do it at a citywide or regional level first? That feels a lot more meaningful, and the proof of the pudding that it can work, to look at it at that regional level, has already been shown in London. Were you making the point perhaps a bit strongly for a national strategic plan?

Dr Hugh Ellis: I was. When you map all the basics together, such as flood risk, for example, it is a terrifying map for this country in the next 100 years, and you need that data behind you before you make big commitments in infrastructure.

The Chair: We just need to come back to grey-belt matters, though it is very helpful.

Lord Bailey of Paddington: That is all, thank you, Chair. I just wanted to understand.

The Chair: Our last question comes from Lord Greenhalgh and again he will start with a declaration of interests.

Q18 Lord Greenhalgh: I have no interests to declare with regard to this inquiry. Like you, I have met Victoria Hills before today; it is great to see you, Victoria.

A lot of this has been answered in passing, but it would be good to focus on the unintended consequences. Are there likely to be any unintended consequences from grey-belt proposals as they are currently drafted? For example, do the proposals place pressure on other types of land outside the green belt, such as agricultural land? You have already talked about unsustainable development and other issues.

Victoria Hills: Our overarching concern really relates to the interim period while there is a change in the planning policy and legislation. We have some quite punchy housing numbers that have been issued for certain areas and, as has already been highlighted by many people in the room, we do not have 100% local plan coverage, which provides vulnerability during a period—

Lord Greenhalgh: Is the coverage only 60%?

The Chair: It is 40%.

Victoria Hills: Yes, 40% of local authorities have an up-to-date local plan.

Lord Greenhalgh: So the majority do not?

Victoria Hills: Not completely up to date, and that is a concern. If the adopted plan does not demonstrate how you would like to meet your local need, it can be for the applicant to do so. With the definition of grey belt as it is currently worded and without the sufficient guidance notes attached, there is a risk of more sites coming forward that will be won at appeal, outside the local plan process. Why does that matter? Some could be perfect homes in the perfect location and exactly what the community needs, but some may be in the wrong location sustainably, and some may be the wrong types of homes where the local elected leaders said, “Well, we did not actually want those sorts of homes here; you are building the wrong sort of homes for our community”, but they will not be able to fight it, so that is a risk.

The Chair: Should they not get on and produce their local plan?

Victoria Hills: They absolutely should, but there is a period in the interim where there is a vulnerability unless things are determined, guidance is worded and interim arrangements are made.

The Chair: Yes, but even a draft local plan has a degree of force.

Victoria Hills: It has a degree of force, but it does not provide the sufficient protection that we feel would be needed.

The Chair: No, but a planning inspector would take account of a draft local plan.

Victoria Hills: This can all be fixed with clear guidance and definitions from government, which is a point we have been consistently making. If that does not happen, there is a vulnerability that we may see some unsuitable sites come forward for development, by which I mean wrong location, wrong type of homes, not what the community or the local elected leaders wanted to see.

Dr Hugh Ellis: With considerable sadness, I would say the unintended consequence of any Government in the past when they enter into a debate about green belt is one of diversion. It will be very controversial, for better or worse, and of course, this is about public perception, not necessarily about the rules or what the NPPF says about green belt in detail. It is how people perceive their green-belt designations, and how people more generally perceive them. It is going to be incredibly controversial and is going to reinforce a really unhelpful debate that is summarised between YIMBYs and NIMBYs—phrases I never want to hear again—which gets in the way of a sensible, proper discussion about housing need.

It is the unintended political diversion of effort and energy when we should be trying to build consensus about the new development and new housing that we need to deliver. I fear that backlash—as it has been three or four times since 1980—will be so severe in a year or two that the Government then have to change course, but in the interim public trust in the planning processes is yet further diminished. That is the unintended consequence.

Q19 The Chair: Are there any other questions that members of the committee would like to raise? No, then I will ask one question out of curiosity. Dr Ellis referred to the grey-belt proposal from the Government as a deregulatory measure; he was quite emphatic about that. Does the RTPI agree it is a deregulatory measure?

Victoria Hills: If it is a definition within the NPPF, it is part of the planning policy framework. I am not sure if I recognise the term deregulation in the same way as, for example, permitted development rights, where we have been very clear that is deregulation of planning. This is just defining a process of how you release green-belt land. It is not as sharp as it needs to be and risks some land coming forward that may not be suitable for development.

The Chair: Some people would say you are right to draw attention to the fact that the definition is not as sharp as it might be. In particular, any expression along the lines of “limited contribution” raises the question of how limited, and so forth. One way we might have expected your two great institutions to contribute to this debate would be by offering a more refined and targeted definition, but we have come to the end of the evidence session and you have not done so. Could I give you one last opportunity?

Victoria Hills: I thought I was quite clear: in the event of land being released from the green belt—as I say, you can call it grey belt or whatever you want, but it is about a process of releasing land from the green belt—it links back to these location development and sustainable development principles, so we would want a very clear definition that gave priority to the most sustainable locations being released. Other bits and pieces, such as whether it has been developed before, the extent to which it may cause harm, et cetera, are all very important, but the fundamental principle is the location: where is it, and how does it relate to existing urban form?

The Chair: I do not feel I have advanced much on that, but I ask the same question to Dr Ellis.

Dr Hugh Ellis: Reinforcing the point, we do not think it is a useful concept, but you are right to push us. In pushing us, I would say if you wanted to deal with that definition, you would look at the annexe and the phrase “limited contribution”, and you would simply tighten that phraseology around what that means. In planning policy, planning does that in all sorts of ways in terms of exceptions: an exceptional policy, should this be an exception test?

The Chair: Planning is full of vague phraseology. What is “substantial development”? We had to go to the courts to find out what substantial development was in conservation Act terms, and so forth. On exceptional policies or “Undertake enforcement action if it is expedient”, when is it expedient to undertake enforcement action? Planning policy is full of this sort of language.

Victoria Hills: There is a very clear definition of what is meant by sustainable development, so that should be a fundamental principle of any release of land.

The Chair: My point was different, though. My point was on “limited contribution”, which I agree is vague. In planning terminology or practice, “limited contribution” is not unique in being vague. Lots of the language is vague and it works out. Part of the advantage of being vague is that it allows local planning authorities a degree of variability as to what decision they might reach. There is an advantage in vague language. I am not defending this particular example of language; I am just saying the fact it is vague may or may not require tightening up. If it does require tightening up, it would be nice to hear a definition or suggestion as to how it might be done.

Dr Hugh Ellis: It took almost 25 years for the High Court to decide what a material consideration was in planning. So, although there are vague definitions littering the planning system, all they have actually done is employ an entire legal ecosystem to try to work out what they mean. In this case, you can insert the word “strictly”. You are quite right that none of this is novel, but if this is a continuum of vagueness that planning policy encompasses, the Government have located this definition at the very far end of that continuum of vagueness.

The Chair: Thank you both very much for the contribution you have made. That concludes this session.