Enough infrastructure & localised planning?

Floods in our high streets

In July 2013 Arundel & South Downs MP Nick Herbert introduced a Commons debate to urge the Coalition government to allow more 'localism in planning', warning of the risk of a return to "the bad old days of planning by appeal" when local authority plans were overturned by the inspectorate.

Previously the MP had tabled an amendment to the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which became law on 25th April 2013, to require planning authorities to identify that there is, or will be, sufficient infrastructure to support new development in their development plans. 'Infrastructure' was defined to include roads and other transport links, flood defences, schools, and medical facilities. Regrettably the amendment was supported by only 20 other Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs and went no further.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Mr Herbert had raised the issue of residents in his constituency who are affected by heavy rain causing lavatories to overflow and sewage to run in the streets.

"Sewage is the most extreme symptom of an ever more common problem - a lack of infrastructure to support development.  Residents move into new homes, only to discover that the local schools are oversubscribed.  Roads which may have been adequate in a village become congested in what is now a small town."

In the following 'localism in planning' debate Mr Herbert drew attention to a specific pledge in the Coalition Agreement that the Government would: "rapidly abolish Regional Spatial Strategies and return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils... In the longer term, we will radically reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live".

Mr Herbert concluded: "When we explicitly promised localism not only in the Conservative manifesto but in the Coalition Agreement, when we have just passed a Localism Act, when we have told people that they will be in charge in their local communities and when we have put on them the responsibility for planning sensibly, we must uphold their ability to do so."

Responding to the debate, the Planning Minister, Nick Boles, denied that there was a serious problem and said that any difficulties would be resolved with time: "Childbirth is a painful process and gestation is not without its pains and difficulties, but the process resulting in local communities having local plans and neighbourhoods having neighbourhood plans will - I promise - be one in which everyone feels that they are in control of development in their area in a way that was never true under Labour or previous Conservative Governments."

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