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Planning and Energy Bill

Targets, ideas and criteria are better placed in guidance than in detailed legislation. I hope that my hon. Friend agrees. Perhaps I have not made this point clear enough, but we are supporting the Bill because it is about going beyond targets, and about local authorities encouraging ambition and innovation. My hon. Friend mentions new clause 7. Our planning policy statement on climate change requires local planning authorities to have an evidence-based understanding of the local feasibility of and potential for renewable and low-carbon technologies, such as microgeneration, supplying new developments in their areas. They are required to pay particular attention to opportunities to utilise existing decentralised and renewable or low-carbon energy supplies, and to fostering the development of new opportunities to supply proposed and existing developments. I worry that the clause would bring ambiguity, as it could be seen to water down the Bill's focus on local energy. Local planning authorities would be expected only to"““take into account the availability of local supplies””" of renewable and low-carbon energy when setting their requirements for energy supply to new developments. We want them to do more than simply take local energy into account; we want them to be more ambitious. As I have said, we want them to push hard on local energy if there is potential for it to supply new developments in their areas. We want them to be ambitious, but we want their ambition to be evidence-based, as their targets must be feasible and viable. I turn now to new clause 8. My hon. Friend spoke in some depth about the possible implications for housing in the Bill. The House will be aware that the Government have made their commitments quite clear: we want to develop 3 million new homes by 2020. Earlier, I mentioned our ambitions on zero-carbon homes. From 2016, we are expecting 240,000 new homes to be built to zero-carbon standards. That is a challenging target, which equates to level 6 of the code for sustainable homes. Immediate steps will be taken in 2010, when we will set building regulations at a standard equivalent to level 3 of the code. We will set level 4 standards in the building regulations in 2013. This is an unprecedented scale of ambition, and we welcome the support that we have received from industry, house builders, the supply chain, local authorities and non-governmental organisations. The Callcutt review, which reported last year, confirmed that the programme was achievable. As has been highlighted in the debate, however, this is a huge ask. The proposals will require industry to get its supply chains into shape to provide zero-carbon products. They will require research into those products and exemplar programmes to show what works and what does not. They will also require a huge marketing effort so that home owners can understand what they will be buying, and they will need investments in skills and processes. Above all, we will need a co-ordinated programme to minimise duplication and to avoid wasted effort. We need to maximise learning and co-operative working, and that will all require a stable framework to provide certainty for investment over the next eight years. We have spoken before about the legitimate concern raised in the Callcutt report that house builders have to deal with a plethora of different standards and that, however well intentioned the provisions might be, they could get in the way of a co-ordinated programme. We need to avoid a situation in which different building standards apply all over the country. It is in no one's interest to fragment building standards. We recognise, however, that some house builders and local authorities will want to go further and faster than the national timetable, and there will be circumstances in which it is justified to do exactly that. That will be important for the exemplar projects, for example. Some householders have said that they are going to move ahead as a matter of policy, without waiting for new building regulations. In Committee, my right hon. Friend the Housing Minister noted the example set by Berkeley, which has said that all its new homes will be built to code level 3 from here on in. I hope that hon. Members will be aware that we have put in place our own exemplar programmes, through the carbon challenge being run by English Partnerships, and our eco-towns programme. In our ““Building a Greener Future”” policy statement last July, we said that we welcomed house builders and local authorities working together on exemplar developments, and that local authorities could bring forward policies to encourage and mandate such developments when the circumstances could justify that. The planning policy statement on climate change sets out the policy in more detail. Those who are particularly interested can find the details in paragraphs 30 to 33. I sympathise with my hon. Friend's concern about taking costs into account. This is one of the reasons why the Government have welcomed the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks. The Bill, as amended in Committee, will require local planning authorities to have regard to national policy when drawing up policies under the terms of the Bill. That will be the effect of clause 4. In England, that will include our planning policy statement on climate change. The Welsh Assembly Government are working on their own planning policy on climate change. Our climate change PPS sets out clear steps for testing local requirements to ensure that they are reasonable. They cover the type of concern that my hon. Friend had in mind when tabling his new clause. As I have said, the tests in the PPS are not intended to tie councils down. Quite simply, if targets for using local energy and on energy efficiency requirements are to make a serious cut in carbon emissions, they must be achievable and compatible with delivering the affordable homes, jobs and regeneration that are needed in our local communities. If we were unable to deliver all that, we would be making a mistake in supporting the Bill. We believe that we can achieve that aim through a combination of the PPS and the Bill. That is why targets should be set, and tested, through the preparation of development plan documents. Helping communities to grow and high environmental standards are not alternatives but should go hand in hand. My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon will not be surprised that I am worried that new clause 8 will bring ambiguity to the Bill. It might intend to place a requirement on local planning authorities to consider the viability of their proposed policies, but on the other hand it might intend to ask local authorities to consider the energy costs to the end user. By ““end user””, I mean the individual who buys or rents a development once it has been completed. The clause could of course be asking for both intentions to be considered, but the drafting does not make that clear—hence my question to my hon. Friend earlier. Local planning authorities should not have to second-guess what a piece of legislation requires. I call on him to withdraw new clause 8 because of the way in which it is drafted. Finally, on new clause 9, requirements for consultation on drawing up development plan documents are already set out in the Town and Country Planning (Local Development) (England) Regulations 2004. The Government have consulted on the simplification of the regulations in the interests of devolving such matters to local authorities, which we consider to be best placed to make those decisions. We intend to make the simplified regulations that result from the consultation later this month and the new procedures will take effect from late June. It is unclear how the new clause would fit in with either the existing arrangements or the streamlined proposals, which have received substantial support. I am sure that my hon. Friend is sympathetic to the notion that such matters are best run by local authorities. The new clause also covers many interests, including those of local businesses, house builders and other groups. Energy providers or commercial developers would be high on our list of those who would have an interest, as well as many others mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North. The new clause could make many of those organisations think they had been excluded from the consultation expected in the preparation of a DPD. I do not think that that is in any way the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, but it is the unintended consequence of the new clause's wording. I hope that I have persuaded my hon. Friend that the new clauses are unnecessary. The intentions behind them are noble, but are covered elsewhere. I hope I have also shown that their drafting means they are not risk free and could undermine the Bill's intentions. At the same time, the whole House is grateful to him for the work that he has done in allowing this level of scrutiny. As he said, the Bill was considered in Committee, but many issues have been aired in such detail for the first time today.