Welcome to the Public Accounts Committee on Monday 30 June 2025. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is responsible for overall policy on planning in England; local planning authorities, or LPAs, are responsible for frontline decisions. Developers make financial contributions to an LPA when a development is due to take place as part of the process for granting planning permission. Those contributions go towards infrastructure, such as affordable housing, schools and roads. Contributions are made via both section 106 agreements and the community infrastructure levy, known by its acronym CIL. While CIL cannot fund affordable housing, approximately 44% of affordable housing was provided through section 106 agreements in 2022-23. Today, we will look at the challenge for MHCLG in its design and oversight of the role of the developer contribution system. We will also explore the issues and weaknesses in the system, as well as how the Department is working to make it more efficient and effective. To help us with all that, we are pleased to welcome back the permanent secretary, Sarah Healey, a regular attender at this Committee. Sarah was appointed permanent secretary at MHCLG in February 2023. Before that, from 2019, she was permanent secretary at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Accompanying her is Joanna Key, director general of regeneration, housing and planning; she was previously director of growth and infrastructure at HM Treasury and director for domestic affairs at the Cabinet Office. Before the Cabinet Office, she spent three years working as a director at the Department for Exiting the European Union. On my left is William Burgon—do you like to be known as William or Will?

Will, Chair.

Will is director for planning at MHCLG. He was previously strategy director in the economic and domestic secretariat at the Cabinet Office. Before that, he was principal private secretary to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, having previously worked on EU exit policy and negotiations from 2016 to 2019. So you are colleagues, Will and Joanna—

Actually, all three of us are.

All three of you are colleagues! You are obviously a good team. We extend a particularly warm welcome to Joanna and William. It is your first time at the Committee and you are very welcome. Permanent secretary, I think you were warned about three or four questions to be asked at the top of the session, on two of our previous Reports, Treasury minutes and your responses.

Yes, I think you have some follow-ups on remediation and homelessness.

I do have some follow-ups, but as always, if you do not have the answer immediately to hand, we are very happy for you to write to us.

Go on—if I can help, I will.

Very good. First, when will you share proposals for ensuring that all fire safety defects, including those unrelated to cladding, are properly addressed? This was talked about in our hearing and Report and in your responses on the cladding problems.

I do not think the policy framework has changed since the time of that hearing. I am very happy to give any extra information if I can outside a hearing, and I can outline the policy framework, but it is identical to what it was at the time of the hearing.

We just got the impression that your Treasury minute was a little bit dismissive, but if you like, I am more than happy to write to you.

Yes, if you explain the issues, I am obviously happy to correct anything or expand on anything in the minute that was not helpful.

Okay. That is very helpful. My second question is this. What assurance can you give poor residents in buildings remediated under the new PAS 9980 standard that their insurance premiums will be affordable once the remediation works are complete? This is the whole issue of extortionate insurance premiums.

Absolutely. The first thing to say is that as far as we are concerned, as soon as a building is compliant with building regulations and complies with the standards, insurers clearly should be offering the same premiums to residents in those buildings as they do for other buildings that meet those standards, whether they have been through a process of remediation or not. Both the ABI and members have stated that that is what should happen and that premiums should reduce at that point; and we expect those commitments, obviously, to be honoured. We have asked the industry to work with us to gather information about the nature of premiums, both before and after remediation, in order to assess exactly what has happened and ensure that those commitments are being lived up to. We will take action if we see at that point that the premiums have not been reducing as one would expect. It is worth noting that it may feel to some residents as though the premiums have not reduced, because the market price of insurance has risen quite considerably in the intervening period, so we are definitely not saying that premiums will go back to the level they were at before the need for remediation was identified or the process followed through, but they should be reducing in comparison with what they were like before the building was remediated.

That is very helpful.

Can we go back to construction products? Ever since Grenfell, there has been a vacuum around this area. It is very clear that developers, among others, were responsible for failings at Grenfell and in other buildings, and quite rightly they have been held to account now, but construction products were clearly a factor in that particular tragedy. They are a factor in many other buildings where remedial works are having to take place, not just where fire safety is involved but in relation to other problems, and yet construction product manufacturers seem to have got away scot-free.

We published a Green Paper on construction products and how to address the responsibilities that construction product manufacturers have for what has happened here. The Government’s position is absolutely that it is wrong that they have faced so little accountability. We anticipate being able to respond to the consultation that followed that Green Paper in the coming months to set out plans. Obviously, you will also be aware that the Cabinet Office is running a completely separate process involving those product manufacturers that were specifically involved in the Grenfell Tower fire.

So we are going to see some change. Are we going to see the product manufacturers financially held to account?

We published the Green Paper on 26 February and we will be responding to the subsequent consultation in the coming months to set out the action to be taken, but the Government have been very clear that it is wrong that they have faced so little accountability, and they want to make sure that in future those companies are held to account and sanctioned for serious safety breaches.

Right. You are obviously waiting to assess the results of the consultation, but is your general thinking that this should be payment by all product manufacturers or just by ones that are responsible for particular failings?

The general thinking is set out in the Green Paper, in so far as it exists right now, and obviously I cannot make any further policy announcement here about the exact approach we will take.

Is the approach likely to be funding for a general programme or funding into the Treasury?

we will confirm that when we publish the response and the future policy plans, reflecting on the consultation since the Green Paper.

It has taken rather a long time, hasn’t it?

The Government set out that it is quite wrong that is has taken such a long time for construction product manufacturers to have to face consequences in the same way as developers.

We look forward to the decisions the Government intend to make following the consultation. That is something we may well come back to, because there was a fairly strong feeling in our Report that things need to happen and financial responsibility needs to be placed very clearly on those that were probably as responsible as the developers for problems in building safety.

Yes—agreed.

Your case is strengthened, I believe, by the High Court ruling.

Yes, the Supreme Court ruling was very useful—under current legislation, of course, not under expanded legislation—about the fact that developers can recover costs from people further down the chain who are involved in the construction of buildings. You will be aware that the Deputy Prime Minister intervened in that case, because she wanted to clarify what was intended with the original legislation and that this kind of recovery of costs is possible.

Thank you.

Very soon. But happily, since that hearing, responsibility for homelessness policy has handily passed to the person on my left, so I am going to ask her to expand.

Thanks, boss. Thank you for the question. This is about the data on out-of-area placements for temporary accommodation. As you know, the legislative framework essentially says that local authorities have to place homeless households within their own local authority area where it is possible, and then must place them as close as possible to that local authority. But we know, as the Committee has alluded to, that local authorities have sometimes placed families quite far away from where their original duty derives. In the past, we have collected data on whether there is an out-of-area placement but not on where exactly that is. Since the Report, we have been looking at ways to improve that data. I think we have now got there. It has taken us a little while, because very high levels of granularity in the data meant that it was possible that some households could be identified. We do not want to do that, and we have tried very hard to work with analysts to produce the data in such a way that that is not possible. We hope to publish that data in July—so, very soon indeed.

That is very helpful. Thank you, Joanna. Sarah, you are now going to start us on the main hearing.

It is worth reflecting that while we are obviously very grateful for the NAO’s Report and for the suggested improvements to the regime, this regime costs the Government a limited amount of money up front to make it work as a policy framework, but collects several billion pounds towards the delivery of infrastructure. We recently set out a series of reforms to the planning regime. We have said more about how we want section 106 to work and how we want to make the system much smoother and operate even more effectively, ensure that any power imbalances or otherwise are addressed as far as possible, provide proper support and advice, and make the local plan system work more effectively and so on. We are very keen that local planning authorities have the capability and capacity if they wish to do so and it is appropriate to do so to introduce the community infrastructure levy. Any system can be improved and anything can be made better than it is at the moment, but we would say there are elements of the current system, which is fundamentally a locally led and locally driven system that responds to local needs and circumstances, that manage to secure significant funding for infrastructure, both specific to some developments but also across local areas via the CIL.

There are a number of areas where action we have taken on the policy front has already made some difference. First of all, on a capacity front, the Government has acted to make sure that there is additional resource going into local planning authorities. The NAO’s Report rightly identifies some of the capacity constraints that authorities sometimes find to be a challenge in taking forward both section 106 and CIL. That comprises direct funding from the Department, but also changes we are making to the way fees are charged. Ministers have already chosen to raise householder fees, which have traditionally been kept well below cost recovery levels; those have increased. In the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which has now cleared the Commons and is in the Lords, there are further steps to enable the localisation of fees, so local planning authorities can set fees at their own cost recovery levels to enable them to operate a service much more aligned with the demands coming at them, rather than what nationally set fees by central Government would allow. We have also looked very hard at viability guidance and how that is operating. You will have seen in the way that we constructed the golden rules in the national planning policy framework changes in December that we looked at one model in the consultation on how to approach the golden rules in one sense, including benchmark land values—I am happy to go into that in more detail if necessary. In the end, we took a slightly different approach of requiring site-by-site viability assessments, which, again, the NAO’s Report goes into, not to take place on greenbelt land, subject to the golden rules, in the interim until we had updated the viability guidance. That reflected Ministers’ concern that sometimes those site-by-site viability negotiations could result in a loss of affordable units beyond what was sensible or desirable in terms of the local planning authority. We will be bringing forward updated viability guidance to reflect the priority that Ministers have given to enabling viability negotiations to be more structured and transparent later this year. Until that point, that hold is in place. Those are some of the early actions we have taken, and we have announced steps that are to come. To highlight one of them, in a working paper on planning reform that we published in late May, we looked at another one of the recommendations that we think the NAO are right to draw out, which is the possibility of more standardisation of section 106 negotiations, including through templates. In that working paper, we have asked the sector how we might make section 106 negotiations a bit more structured, including through the use of templates. The NAO’s wider recommendations are very helpful and we will be looking at a number of them, but I like to think that on some we have started to take the initial steps already under this new Government.

You have raised a number of issues that we will want to come back to. On your central issue of the viability guidance, which is critical and causes planning authorities quite a lot of renegotiation problems, sometimes making sites unviable, when will the guidance be published?

We originally said spring, but we are aiming to publish it as soon as possible this year. One of the things we have been weighing in that guidance, which Ministers highlighted when we published the national planning policy framework in December, is the complexity of getting right a system in which you need some degree of local variation and ability to restructure a section 106 where the viability has changed, either through economic conditions or other things that might affect the amount of social housing or other infrastructure that can be delivered, in a way that allows the site still to proceed, while at the same time, exactly as the NAO’s Report comments, making sure that that takes place transparently and in a way that maintains maximum value for residents in that community. Getting that balance right, including in a way that has involved a lot of consultation with the sector, is taking us a bit more time than that original spring commitment allowed, but we are aiming to publish it as soon as possible this year.

I think it is logical to ask this question now. As a chartered surveyor—I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—and having dealt with this matter professionally and as a Member of Parliament over many years, I know that the whole issue of viability is a real problem. It is often an unequal struggle between the LPA and the developer, which can often muster better resources to argue its case and argue its contribution downwards. Will the guidance help in that respect?

In effect, that is the fundamental issue that Ministers identified right up front in the parliamentary term. In their comments on the planning reforms when they published the draft NPPF last summer, that concern about viability was precisely where Ministers—including the Housing and Planning Minister—focused their attention. That is, therefore, the fundamental that we are seeking to tackle through the guidance, and it is the reason we have not allowed site-by-site viability assessments on green-belt land in the interim—it is precisely because of that concern. In short, that is precisely the issue we are trying to address.

Thank you very much.

Ms Healey, the Chair has kindly given me permission to ask a particular question about a constituent who came to see me just last Friday. They have just been given a bill for community infrastructure levy for £50,000—it is increasing every day due to interest on an unpaid amount—on a house extension. It seems that they did not apply for the exemption, which they thought they were automatically eligible for, and that is why this has occurred. The local authority says there is nothing it can do about it. Why are householders being charged CIL for their extensions?

My understanding is that if they apply for an exemption then they would not be charged. We are keen that, in instances where it is possible, local planning authorities apply flexibility, but obviously it would not be appropriate for me to comment on this specific instance, because I do not know the details of it.

Can I write to you about this case and ask you to have a look at it?

Absolutely. Feel free to write about a case. I really do not want to comment on one without the background or the details.

Thank you very much.

Will Burgon’s comments on the golden rules lead me on nicely to my question. I should say in passing, just to put it on the record, that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The golden rules are obviously something quite new, in terms of release of green-belt land. We are going through that in my constituency at present, and I will come on to the reasons why in a second. We are given this promise that there will be appropriate infrastructure provision on any green-belt land that is released for housing purposes—whether that is doctors’ surgeries, road infrastructure or public transport, it is going to be provided—but the question I keep getting asked is whether that will be provided before or at the same time as the development, or whether it will simply be a promise that it might be done sometime after, which might mean never.

The timetabling of the infrastructure delivery is fundamentally a matter for the authority and the developer in question at the time the section 106—probably, in this instance—is put together. Of course, in many instances we see the delivery of infrastructure, including the affordable housing, on site. Sometimes you might see the delivery of the affordable housing, in particular, off site if that makes more sense for the authority concerned and the local registered provider position. The Government’s position would be that local authorities should be striving to make sure that the infrastructure needs are met alongside the development. In many instances, we see that happening: for example, the delivery of a new primary school might be scheduled so that it takes place at the point in the development when it makes sense for it to open. No one wants to see a major piece of infrastructure come forward before it makes sense to use it. At the same time, clearly, we do not want it to come forward right at the end of the process. That scheduling is therefore a vital part of the negotiation.

That seems sensible, but people come back and say, “Look, it’s in the local plan—that’s the decision. A green-belt site has been released for that purpose. Can we be certain that, if a developer comes along with an individual application in the future, the application will not be approved unless the golden rules with regard to the appropriate provision of infrastructure are met?”

Right now, there would be no allowance for a viability assessment. The thing that I think the Government is conscious of is that sometimes in the future viability assessments might be necessary—that is, a variation of the agreement on the type of infrastructure to be provided, if the viability position changes. The Housing Minister has already identified the fact that, for example, on previously developed land or on very large and complex sites, those are the kinds of instances where you might see viability change over time, between when the section 106 is negotiated and when build-out is happening on the site—the assessment of viability at that point in time might need to change. Clearly, as we have said in the answers that we have already given, we are very keen to make sure—the Government is keen to make sure—that that process is transparent and does not disadvantage one party over the other, i.e. the LPA over the developer.

That seemed quite a complicated answer to what I had hoped was a fairly simple question. The public are giving up their green belt, which is often quite attractive land, for development, and they want to know whether the infrastructure that is required for that development will be built. It is pretty clear that you are going to need medical facilities and school facilities, and you are probably going to need transport facilities. In one case in my constituency is about a tram-train project; the site is not really a proper development site without it. People are saying, “Will these things happen, or are we going to get some general promises that, when the time comes around, won’t be delivered on?” Are there guarantees?

The intention is that it would only be in exceptional cases, as Will set out, where there would a departure from the golden rules as set out in the policy. But there probably would need to be some flexibility. For example, if a site were very heavily contaminated and there were very high costs of remediation, you might want some flexibility in terms of the viability. I think that is what we are saying.

I would have thought that might have been picked up at the local plan stage, rather than waiting for the application.

Ideally, it would be.

I think it would be. That would be the intention.

Right. Can we look at a couple of other issues? Some 52% of local planning authorities are not using the community infrastructure levy. That seems a very high number for money that ought to be coming in to provide benefits and facilities for the local community.

There are few things to say about that. Obviously, the community infrastructure levy was established for a good reason—to enable contribution to infrastructure across an area as a result of development. Clearly, it has been taken up by around half of authorities. It is not always appropriate, and it would not always be the case that the community infrastructure levy would be an appropriate instrument for planning authorities to use, largely because of viability and potentially because its existence could lead to a disincentive to develop. However, it is also worth reflecting that the time during which the previous Government was considering introducing an infrastructure levy as a mandatory system will have meant that some authorities may have paused the process of establishing a charging structure for the community infrastructure levy. We might well see an increase in the use of it now that it is certain that that is the system that is going to continue into the future, but I do not think we would ever expect to see 100% coverage, or necessarily even a very significant rise from where we are now, and it is not a specific policy intent to do so.

You mentioned that it may not be appropriate for certain sites, but exemptions can be written in by a levying authority, can’t they? It is not that you have to levy it on every single site that is going to be developed.

No, but there is a certain degree of lack of flexibility in comparison with other mechanisms.

Would greater flexibility help?

Yes, but at the same time, greater flexibility means more changes to the system and less certainty. I suppose we would have to identify that there was a fundamental problem in some of the areas where the community infrastructure levy was not in place. Do you have anything to add to that, Will?

Only that you are right that flexibility can take place within the CIL in terms of charging by different types of development and in different places in the area. Fundamentally, we still leave it as a choice for local authorities to decide whether that is desirable for them, recognising that flexibility, or whether, for example, they view section 106 agreements as the best way of achieving the requirements in their area. In 2019 we removed the pooling requirements that previously limited the kind of infrastructure that you could bundle up through section 106s. In that sense, it is a discretion that we leave to authorities to decide what is best for them in their local area.

Do you expect more authorities to take it up now there is certainty about not having changes to the 106 arrangements and different infrastructure?

Yes, as I said a couple of minutes ago, our expectation is that some authorities were pausing the introduction of a community infrastructure levy in anticipation of the system changing. Now that there is greater policy certainty about the continuation of the community infrastructure levy, we do expect that some more will come forward and want to introduce one.

Well, yes and no, permanent secretary. The NAO Report tells us that some authorities that have been merged already operate a two-tier system: in the part where the CIL had been consulted on and was implemented, they implement it; it the part where it was not consulted on, they do not implement it. Surely, that problem is going to get bigger and bigger when local government reorganisation comes along. Is there not a yet further incentive for authorities that were thinking about introducing it to say, “No, we won’t introduce it until we know what the future of local government will be?”

That is why I did not at any point commit to the idea that we would see 100% coverage or a very significant increase. The question was whether I expected that some more would introduce it, and the answer to that is that we do expect, but cannot be certain, that some more authorities will introduce it now that there is greater policy certainty.

Given that it is a system that has greater flexibility in terms of the development of infrastructure—it may not deliver affordable housing, but it does give greater flexibility than section 106—will it be your Department’s policy to encourage authorities, once they are merged and we get more, bigger unitary and strategic authorities, to introduce CIL?

We do not have a specific policy to say, “Please introduce CIL.” We provide it as a tool and a mechanism; it is for local areas, as Will set out, to decide the best tools for them. If it is identified to us that there are issues with the operation of CIL that, if we changed or developed them, would make it potentially a better or more effective tool, then obviously we will look at those.

Are you aware of authorities where you think CIL ought to be viable but there are other reasons why the authority is not introducing it?

I do not think we have done that analysis.

No.

No?

I do not think we have done that analysis.

Would that be useful to do?

Potentially.

If there are other barriers that could be removed, that would be—

Obviously, we talk to authorities all the time. It is not something that has been specifically raised with us, but we can ask again.

Some local authorities prefer the flexibility of section 106 and planning conditions; that is how they prefer to operate.

Let us move on to local plans. I just started to reflect on conversations with Lord Falconer when he was a planning Minister back at the beginning of the century. His job then was to try to get local authorities to start producing local plans. Over 20 years later, the situation really has not got any better, has it?

I was about to say I think I was still at university then, but I might be being a bit optimistic. I will ask Jo to talk about local plans, which is one of her favourite subjects

It is indeed. I do not think our Ministers are exactly delighted with the situation that only 30% of local authorities have local plans in place. Indeed, they are extremely keen to encourage greater coverage; that is our intention. We have actually put quite a lot of money—I think it is nearly £30 million—to local authorities over the last year to speed up their local plan production ahead of the new plan system coming into operation next year. We are really keen to see that coverage. On the basis of the trajectories that we are seeing at the moment, we would hope to have a much higher number to quote back at you at the end of this Parliament.

We are not only keen to encourage, but very much prepared to take action if local plans are not being implemented.

Exactly.

We all know from our own constituency situations that either forming the plan in the first place or refreshing it is an incredibly complicated process. The NAO Report makes it clear that it can take up to seven years. Some 7% of authorities do not have an adopted local plan at all, which is not at all satisfactory, because they then do not have a five-year land supply and so are subject to the whims of developers. For them, it might take seven years from now to get a plan adopted, or even refreshed—one of the three authorities that I represent is having terrible difficulties getting it refreshed. The Planning Inspectorate says that it will not find the plan sound if the authority does not make a huge upgrade to the M5 junction, which will cost multiple millions. There are big problems out there. Could your Department look at the whole system and see whether it could be simplified?

You raise an excellent point. We are trying to do two things here. The first is to introduce a new system for plan making that is intended to be much more streamlined. The idea is that authorities should be able to complete it in 30 months—that is the target, and it will have statutory timelines for local authorities to keep to. The second is to make sure that we are giving those who have not started a plan in that new system and are still in the process—as it sounds like your authority might be, and many others are—the support that they need to complete the plan process as quickly as possible so that they can form a plan and not be in the position that you allude to, where they do not have an up-to-date plan and are subject to speculative development from private sector developers.

That is very helpful. Thank you.

On the process, I will come back, as we all do, to my own constituency. I am highly critical of Sheffield council for the delays over the years in producing an up-to-date local plan. It is not acceptable. It produced a local plan in 2023 and it rightly concentrated on building on brownfield sites. That is good because it protects greenfield, but it is also good to regenerate and rejuvenate old industrial areas. The planning inspector came back and said, “Okay, but you haven’t hit your housing numbers.” I think the housing numbers have varied, but they have not hit whatever the planning inspector seeks. I am not questioning that. The problem is that, having taken so long to get a plan done in the first place, with little pressure from the Department as far as I can see, suddenly you have to find some more sites, it has to be green belt and you have a very compressed timeframe of a few months to do that. There is outrage from the public. The council was told in February that it had a few weeks to come up with new sites to build on, and then squeezed in a six-week lack of consultation—that is what I would call it; it is not a consultation. That is not a good way to proceed in any sense, is it?

I do not know the details of that specific case. I do not know if you do, Jo.

I do not, and I am afraid that, because of the Secretary of State’s quasi-judicial role in plan intervention, we cannot comment on individual plans that are in those circumstances. I am really sorry not to be able to answer the question directly.

All I would say in a general policy sense is that, as Jo has made clear, henceforth we would expect a local area to feel under pressure from the Department to produce a plan.

Yes, I get that.

We would also anticipate that they have a clear policy framework within which they are operating and clarity about housing number expectation. Without commenting on that specific instance, we think we have made some reforms that would improve that for the future.

It always seems to me that local plans are the key to the whole of the planning system. They are absolutely core and fundamental. Therefore, involving the public and consulting them is core. Is there guidance about what consultation should mean? Different organisations, different councils and different people think it means very different things.

There is guidance about the consultations that should take place at both the regulation 18 and regulation 19 stages; that is to say, when you are preparing your draft plan and then when you have it ready for final review. We are deeply conscious, as we move into the new plan-making system that Jo was talking about a moment ago, that this is a good opportunity for us to look again at the suite of guidance that is available. You will see quite a comprehensive refresh of the guidance that is there to support precisely that kind of consultation as we move into the new plan system.

Do you generally think that consultation that does not involve any letters or leaflets to any of the people affected counts as proper consultation?

There are requirements on notification about the plan stage. Both regulations 18 and 19 require people to be notified. How authorities do that is to some extent a judgment for them.

I thought you might say that.

We’re glad not to let you down.

His job is to ask the questions; your job is to answer them.

Or not!

The Report commented on this a couple of times. It is a really important point, because of course we think that we communicate very effectively with our colleagues, but it is always useful to have that kind of check on our work. At the moment, we have a regular forum where we discuss these issues, but we probably need to make that more structured and more regular, given the feedback that NAO colleagues were getting from around Whitehall. You can never do much of this kind of consultation, because clearly developer contributions are one of those things where almost every Department in Whitehall has an interest—sometimes they do not even realise that they have an interest, and then you start talking about what they cover, and they realise that they do.

I have a particular problem from a constituent of mine, Dr Nigel Moor, who has written several books on planning. He says: “At present, particularly in two-tier council areas, the CIL system is not working for county councils. These require around 80% of developer contributions to finance education, transport and other services required for new housing. District councils, on the other hand, which control the distribution of CIL, are prioritising affordable housing, leaving county councils with insufficient contributions for their infrastructure.” Big things like schools and so on are the big consumers of CIL, so that sounds like an unsatisfactory problem. I do not know whether the Department has thought about that and is planning to do anything about it.

Will might also want to comment. Just to check I have understood the question—

The district council levies and controls CIL. They want the money to all go to affordable housing, which does not leave a sufficient amount of money—I have heard this over a number of years—for things like the provision of a secondary school, which costs a lot of money, and there is simply not enough money left in the pot to fund that school properly. That probably leaves somebody else—probably the DFE—to contribute to that school.

I do not think CIL can be used for affordable housing. That is why I am puzzled by the question. Is that correct, Will?

Correct.

You are right—technically, thinking about my own question. I think the same thing probably applies to section 106—it is developer contributions full stop.

I wondered whether I had misunderstood what you meant. Were you saying that when the district council is coming to a balance between CIL and section 106, they are putting more into section 106 and trying to extract affordable housing rather than CIL? Is that the worry?

In negotiations with the developer, and prioritising affordable housing over infrastructure developments, I do not think the system is working properly between the two tiers of councils.

I do not think that is something I have heard before. I do not know whether Will has.

It is not a challenge that is raised with us significantly. Clearly there are discussions that have to take place right now, where there is a two-tier system of authorities, on the balance of infrastructure provisions required. In putting together the local plan and setting out the infrastructure needs, the expectation would be that that discussion is happening. Indeed, in putting together a CIL schedule for authorities that charge it, one of the requirements is to consider the right balance of that CIL schedule in the light of the infrastructure needs and expected section 106 contributions. Clearly, there is not an unlimited amount of money available here from contributions, so there is a balance to be struck between CIL and 106 where both are charged. But that is a point we could definitely take away and consider more fully.

Joanna, how can you know whether the developer contributions system is delivering the intended benefits without accurate or timely data?

In terms of the data we collect on developer contributions?

Yes.

We have looked at this over a period of years, and we have asked the University of Liverpool, I think, to conduct some research for us on what is being raised in this way. We think we have reasonable data that tells us, at least in broad terms, what kind of levels of infrastructure are being provided and what it is provided on, from both CIL and section 106 contributions, but obviously we can always do better. What is very interesting about the NAO Report is that at one level it comments on the coverage that we have on our IFSs. I think we have something like 80%, which allows for quite a good level of data analysis, but it is not 100%, even though it is a statutory requirement. Over the next few months we are really going to focus on trying to get that right, and making sure we get the data in a really timely and accurate way.

I was looking for the reference to IFSs in the NAO Report, which I have not yet found, but having read the Report I know that the NAO makes the point very strongly that IFSs are inconsistent, they come in all sorts of different forms, it is not possible to give an aggregated picture of what local Government contributions are actually producing, and a lot of them are very late—they are not delivered by the end of the year, as they are supposed to be. Why doesn’t your Department issue guidelines that they have to be in a consistent form, and stronger guidance that they have to be delivered by the end of the year, so that you can get a more complete picture of what is happening on development contributions?

It is a really important point. Following the NAO Report, the chief planner wrote to every single local authority to remind them of their statutory obligations in this area and to ask them to make sure they were completing the information we required in a timely way. I think we did have a template at one stage—is that correct, Will?

Yes. It is worth saying that through the Planning Advisory Service, which is an LGA body but none the less largely funded by the Department, there is a substantial amount of guidance and toolkit on producing this information, including both a template and examples of what the Planning Advisory Service considers to be good IFSs from a number of authorities. We highlighted that in the letter the chief planner sent to all local planning authorities, but we are obviously considering in full the NAO’s recommendations, beyond reminding authorities of that requirement, on reminding them of the guidance that exists and the existence of the template. We are also considering whether we could do additional activity to drive those points home, precisely for consistency, which we agree is valuable.

That is very helpful. Thank you both very much.

To move back to viability, the Report says that the Department has determined that the profit margin of 15% to 20% for developers is suitable for most developments to be viable. How do you arrive at that figure?

That is the figure we use for viability assessments at the plan-making stage. It is worth saying for the Committee’s benefit that viability assessments occur at the plan-making stage, when looking at how to set, for example, affordable housing targets in the local plan, which might vary by area, and there are also site-specific assessments that can occur on a specific development. The 15% to 20% figure—which is the proportion of the gross development value—is one that we suggest at the plan-making stage. We identified it in the update to the viability guidance back in 2019, through engagement with the sector about a sensible ballpark figure for the kind of profit margin that a developer should be looking for on a development in a general sense. That figure has now stood for a number of years, and we think it continues to hold for that plan-making assessment, but clearly for a site-specific assessment you would go through much more granular detail about the specific development, and that is where you might get into a different question. But for the general guidance for authorities on that plan-making assessment, we hold to that 15% to 20% figure.

Have you got information about how many authorities have that sort of figure in their local plans and how many have wildly different figures?

I do not have that information to hand.

Let’s check whether it is information we hold. If it is, we will write and explain.

I would expect that there are some big differences across the country. If you have a brownfield development, for example, the likelihood is that it will not be viable without public subsidy, so how is that written in?

I should say that, while it is a guideline, it is not something we would expect to be followed universally by all authorities, precisely for the reasons of variation in land value, both between different authorities and within them. In that 2019 refresh—which actually followed, or just preceded, the NAO’s last Report into this matter—it was found helpful to add that as guidance for producing that plan stage, and hence the affordable housing targets that flow from that.

You mentioned some of the guidance about standardising how authorities might look at viability assessments. Is that just for an individual application, or are you going to do that for the plan making as well?

We are looking at the viability guidance in full for the plan-making stages and the site-specific stages. We referred earlier to the site-specific assessments on the golden rules, which we have currently paused in waiting for that new guidance.

What is the likely timeframe for the new guidance to be issued?

As I said earlier to the Chair, it is as soon as possible this year.

Several initiatives are under way. Some of them are focused on the recruitment and retention of planners in local authorities, which is what local authorities tell us is their biggest challenge. We will provide direct funding with about £12 million for the recruitment and retention of planners. It is about having a graduate scheme whereby we place people in local authorities, and also about trying to encourage into local authorities more mature professionals, if you like, who are more capable of multidisciplinary expertise across the local authority. That is an important part of what we are trying to do to encourage people into the local authority because, as you say, people are a really important part of this. The other thing is about trying to put the system on a more secure footing for the future. I think Will mentioned the idea that we not only allowed local authorities to put up planning fees this year but, in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, allowed local authorities to set their own fees to recover their costs. We think that, in the longer term, that will allow them to provide a planning service that delivers a much better service to all those developers and, indeed, householders who need to use it over time.

I really hope so. The intention is precisely to address that issue, so that local authority planning departments are properly funded. That way, they can deliver as much analysis, research and data to back up their assessments as a developer who might employ a private sector consultant to do his side of the negotiation.

It is also worth saying that, simultaneously, we are trying to ensure that we are making the planning system as modern as possible through the increased digitisation of the planning system, so that we reduce costs, speed up decision making and reduce the need to use those people who are so critical to it for anything other than the judgment-based tasks that you would want them to be doing, given their expertise.

Yes, absolutely. In fact, we are using it already. We have a planning digital programme, which we are rolling out to local authorities. I think the Prime Minister announced a few weeks ago this new AI tool that we are using called Extract. Essentially, it is a way of getting local authority planning records—which, as you probably know, can take up the space of many underground caverns in local authorities—and putting them on the system. In the past, it has taken a person to input all that data, or scan documents, but the new tool can do it in minutes.

That is what the scheme is called, yes.

I think it has been going for several years. We have expanded it massively. It was very small to start off with but is now considerably larger.

I do not know off the top of my head.

We can certainly write to you, of course.

Permanent secretary, given what Joanna just said about digitalisation, and given all your aims of speeding up the planning contributions system, do you aim, in the future, to set some form of guidance as to when planning applications should be determined? There is of course an eight-week limit, but it is honoured more in the breach than in the compliance, because the planning authority can send out a letter saying, “We are not going to be able to meet the eight-week target; will you give us more time?”, and they know very well that if they don’t give them more time, it will be turned down. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is going through Parliament, and the whole thrust of the Government is to speed up the planning system—

Yes.

Yes, you will be issuing guidance?

No, no—the whole thrust of the Government is indeed to speed up the planning system. I was heartily agreeing with you on that.

Is it therefore your intention to issue guidance as to when planning cases should be determined?

As you say, Chair, we already have guidance on that, and we agree that that is frequently overcome by extension of time agreements. Will can come in on this, but what we are planning to do initially is to make it all much more transparent by publishing the information on the actual time. At the moment we say, “Have they decided the case within the period of time agreed?”, and that can include both the eight-week target and the extension. The intention now is to produce that information so that it is very clear which authorities have delivered within the statutory timetables.

That is completely right. We have moved to being more transparent in the data that we provide online about timelines both with and without, for example, extension of time agreements, of which we have definitely seen a significant increase in recent years, potentially too often as a way of effectively extending a deadline. Ministers are also looking to make greater use of the performance system that they have available, whereby they can designate an authority for lack of timeliness and, linked to that, poor performance. You have seen a number of authorities be designated on those grounds in the last year, and you would expect to see Ministers continue to be quite robust on that front, because they have been clear that on not only plan making—where, as we have discussed, we have been making more interventions—but decision making they are keen to use the powers available to them to drive home the fact that, exactly as you say, the statutory timelines are there for a reason.

Thank you very much. That was very helpful, as always.

As a former Scottish local authority leader, I am listening with interest. It is interesting to hear that my colleagues in England and Wales have the same observations and thoughts as we have in Scotland. It is section 106 in England, section 75 in Scotland and, I think, section 76 in Northern Ireland. What conversations and mechanisms exist to share best practice on themes that are common with Scotland and Northern Ireland?

I speak quite regularly to my counterparts in the devolved Administrations, but there isn’t a set forum. That is something that we should think about more closely, because I can see that lots of really interesting things are happening, particularly north of the border but also in Wales, that we should definitely think about when we formulate policy here.

I think it is fair to say that, whether it is getting more affordable housing or more GP surgeries, everything we are talking about is eerily familiar to me from Scotland. You have maybe given me a glimmer of the answer to this, but how would you characterise your shared understanding of what is a UK-wide problem—it is not just England and Wales?

There are definitely issues everywhere around the provision of the infrastructure required for development to take place. I do not think the issue in Scotland is different from the issue in Wales or England, but it is more about the viability of the place, which varies not only between Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but within those countries themselves. I had a very interesting conversation with Scottish counterparts just recently about affordable housing. Prior to the spending review, Scotland had a more generous system than we did on a per capita basis. That is something that we need to look at again, post spending review, to see whether it is still the case. We also had an interesting conversation about social housing allocations, which work very differently in Scotland and in England. Again, that is something on which we can really learn from each other.

The Renters’ Rights Bill is also one where we have been observing the impact of similar but not identical legislation in Scotland.

I am interested that you are talking about the need to look at having more structured forums. That is quite exciting. In terms of recruiting planning officers—in Stirling, it was planning officers and bridge engineers; we could never get bridge engineers, and there were not enough planning officers—there is definitely a demand for them in Scotland and England. Bringing all that together to work out how we can increase the number of planning officers collectively across the United Kingdom would seem to be a useful way of bringing a problem together, rather than the three component parts approaching it individually.

I think similarly about the development of digital tools, where doing it more than once is probably not that efficient.

I asked the Minister a question about section 106 and affordable homes a few weeks ago in the Chamber. There are clearly quite a lot of affordable homes just sat there on sites, with housing associations not wanting to buy them. Where are we up to with trying to get arrangements in place? I think that there are arrangements in place; I understand that the Minister has said that there is a clearing service to try to deal with this problem. Is the problem getting better? Is the clearing service working?

Just to put it on the record, the figure in paragraph 16 of the Report is enormous: 17,400 affordable homes across the country have not been sold. This is a huge figure.

I will start by commenting on that figure, which is from the HBF. We are trying to understand a bit more about it, but my understanding—Jo will correct me if I am wrong—is that it combines both those that are not allocated or sold on and those for which there are live negotiations under way for them to be sold. Therefore, it is not necessarily the case that that is the sum of those that are stuck.

That is exactly right. We are in active conversations with the Home Builders Federation on the research that it has done. At the moment, it is unable to share the evidence with us, I think because there are concerns among some developers about commercial confidentiality. We are in the process of trying to understand those concerns and make sure that we can get access to that information on a basis that everyone is comfortable with. As Sarah says, we think the figure includes not only built-out units that are unsold, but quite a number of ongoing negotiations between developers and registered providers about exactly the nature of the deal that they are doing and the partnership they are forming for a section 106 agreement. It is worth saying that we now have over 100 local authorities, over 100 developers and nearly 200 registered providers in the clearing house. At the moment, we have seen about 800 units. It is not totally clear to us that 17,000 is the right number. It might be, but that is not what we are discovering through the clearing house at the moment. It is worth putting that on the table. The question about whether we think things are improving is really pertinent. The clearing house was set up to try to crack this problem. Even when we set it up, we did not necessarily think it would be the full answer to everything, because there are some underlying structural issues with the funding of housing associations. They were bringing them to us and saying, “We just don’t have the financial capacity at the moment to take on lots of units.” We sought to correct that in the spending review, in which we have given housing associations a very significant capital injection, in the form of not only a 10-year grant programme but a 10-year rent settlement at CPI plus 1%, a commitment to rent convergence, and access to social housing remediation for the first time. That injection of funding into the registered provider sector—according to them, not just me—puts them on a much more secure footing to take on units. We are hoping that things will start to move in the right direction, but it is obviously something we need to keep under really careful review.

How many houses are in the clearing service now?

Below 1,000—roughly 800 the last time I looked.

This is on the back of having a very substantial number of developers, housing associations and local authorities signed up to the system. Anyone watching this who is currently having trouble with moving units and would like to use the clearing service, please do. We are keen for them to be brought forward. It is not because we have hidden it under a stone, not advertised it or not got people engaged in the clearing service. It suggests to us that a little bit more is going on with that number than necessarily would appear on the surface.

If 17,000 are unsold, it is quite strange that only 1,000—

It certainly seems strange to us, yes. We would love people to bring the 17,000 forward as soon as possible, or we think something else is going on, which is why we are in active dialogue with HBF to try to understand it much better and make sure that we are not missing a much more significant problem that might need more addressing than we have already done through the measures in the spending review.

Do they intend to give you the information?

I think they will. They need to do a loop with all the other developers to get the information in a form that they are happy to share with us, so that there are no commercial issues.

Do the local authorities not know what the figures are?

Local authorities probably will know for their individual local authority, or they may know. They may know for those that have been built out and are currently not occupied, if there are any such units, but they probably will not know for those units where a developer and a registered provider are still negotiating the terms of a section 106 agreement.

It would be helpful to ask them which properties are actually empty for which they know there is not an agreement to buy.

That is exactly the information the clearing house was designed to elicit. As I say, over 100 local authorities are participating in that.

I am just trying to get my head around it.

It is absolutely confusing to us too. It is completely reasonable to be confused about it, because we are confused too. There is this 17,000 number. We do know there has been a problem with the capitalisation of housing associations, so we think it is perfectly plausible that there might be a fair number that there are some issues over, but the two things are not coming together. We are doing a series of things to try to address that. We are talking to the HBF to get under the skin of the 17,500 number and figure out whether we are missing something that we ought to be approaching in a different way, and we are also trying to encourage authorities, developers and housing associations to become involved with the clearing house, to give us all that information and, indeed, enable us to take action on it, because it is about not just understanding the data but what we do to try to get that moving.

Can you not simply ask authorities, even if they do not come into the clearing service, how many properties are in this situation?

We have been to local authorities, told them about the clearing service and said it is there if they want to use it. I suppose our working assumption would be that if they had those kinds of units, they would want to be part of the clearing service. I think we have made it pretty straightforward for them to participate. But we can go back around this if that would be helpful.

We continue to go back around it. I am not going to introduce new data collection for no reason, so I would prefer to try to make the clearing house work as well as we possibly can, do that encouragement, and also understand whether there is a problem that has not been identified.

Are there any more things that you think you need to be doing to address this problem, maybe with Homes England?

If you are asking what I think, I think the thing that will really make a difference is getting housing associations back into development and wanting to participate in section 106 agreements. I really hope that the package published at the spending review will enable them to do that, but it is something that we need to keep under incredibly careful review. Hope is not a strategy, as they say, so we need to make sure that it is actually happening, rather than just hoping that it will.

Certainly we received, at the point of announcing the package that was in the spending review, a very positive reaction from the sector in terms of what they had been looking for to enable them to start building again, because they want to—that is their purpose—and they can see the need as well as we can. That was the point of putting this together as a package—to enable that to happen.

You have just answered my final question. Back to you, Chair.

The Planning Advisory Service told us that it had worked with about 60 local authorities on planning matters, including developer contributions, and it was suggested there was a gap in the guidance relating to how LPAs should spend CIL moneys. In response, you say you are trying to raise the profile of CIL so that it is seen as a corporate opportunity rather than just a planning issue. I don’t think we have really got under the skin of this whole hearing yet. We have constituencies everywhere that say they have all these developments coming along. They are not getting the infrastructure that they think they need. This is raising £5.5 billion, but that is a relatively small amount of money compared with the country as a whole. There are still huge problems both with CIL and with section 106—particularly with section 106. What more can you do? Given all those problems, the more I read this Report, the more I began to think, “Why didn’t you institute the national levy?”, because you would have simplified all these problems and speeded up the planning system.

It is worth saying that in my interaction with authorities, I went to an excellent development funded by CIL in Wandsworth to talk to them and to speak to the council about how they use CIL and how they have designed the system, and their very strong feedback to us was, “Thank you for not changing the system, because it’s a system that works and the infrastructure levy would actually have made things harder for us.” I totally understand that you take whatever perspective on the policy judgment that Ministers made on that, but it is certainly not a universal view that the infrastructure levy would have resolved problems, and there are reasons why Ministers took the decision that they did. Will, I don’t know whether you want to expand on the CIL system.

Ministers were clear on arrival into office that the proposal of an infrastructure levy from the previous Government was something that, on reflection, they did not want to take forward. That was because while there was an aspiration, of course, for that to lead to simplification, the underlying complexity of the system, the variation between authorities across the country and the differences between land types, even within an authority area, as we have been discussing, made trying to arrive at that model, both in Ministers’ views and in much of the feedback that they had had from developers and local authorities, undesirable. As the NAO Report states, section 106 is a well-established and understood model for delivering affordable housing. It is clearly a vehicle that delivers, as we have already discussed, about half of all affordable housing, and it still is a vehicle for delivering about £1 billion-worth of funding through the CIL route—obviously, with much more coming through the section 106 affordable route. Beyond taking the actions that we have talked about in terms of raising again with authorities the option of taking forward CIL, the amount of guidance that exists in the templates and, of course, considering the NAO’s recommendations for areas where we could go a bit further, some of which, as I have said, we are already proceeding on—for example, the section 106 templates—I think that inherently this is an area that does ultimately have some complexity to it. From setting out the infrastructure requirements at the local-plan-making stage—as we have discussed, that is really important—through to having CIL schedules that strike the right balance in collecting the right amount of funding while leaving sites viable, and then securing those section 106 agreements, which reflect the unique nature of sites, that is something that requires, in its fundamental delivery, a good understanding of the local particulars, both at plan level and at site level. The policy framework nationally has to enable that, rather than trying to oversimplify what is inherently a complex system.

It is also worth saying that, clearly, these are not the only ways we fund infrastructure. The new national infrastructure strategy, which was published the week before last, sets out a clear long-term framework for delivering infrastructure, which involves different Government Departments. Jo talked earlier about the extent to which we work very closely with our counterparts in other Government Departments to ensure that infrastructure planning across Government recognises where development is needed and happening. There is a Cabinet Committee that regularly looks at that, and the strategy sets a clear framework for the next 10 years.

Nevertheless, everywhere that there is this developer contribution system—whether it is section 106 or whether it is CIL—constituents would expect their authority to gain the maximum planning contribution so that they can be delivered good infrastructure.

Absolutely. That is the purpose of the system.

The problem is that the difference between the worst and the best local authorities is huge. There must be a role for your Department somehow to co-ordinate the data, issue best practice or do something to try to bring the ones that are not doing it very well—and I can tell you that there are some out there not doing it very well—

We do issue guidance. There is information on best practice. For quite a substantial period, the Law Society issued a template for section 106. It was not particularly taken up, so we would have to reflect on whether it is a good use of resource to do that again. Clearly, we would like authorities to be consistently excellent at this, but fundamentally, in a locally led system, you are going to see some variation.

I wish you would issue that guidance, because even when it is agreed between the authority and the developer, the solicitors still argue about the precise terms of the section 106. It can take ages, which is one of the reasons why the planning system is so slow. Then, when he is halfway through the development, the developer could come back and say, “The development is not viable because the section 106 is too high,” he having agreed it in the first place. The system is just not working in some areas.

I completely agree with you about the variation. One thing we are trying to do through this capacity programme is bring areas up to the best by making sure that they have the professional expertise and experience to really understand what it is they are trying to deliver through those section 106 agreements and negotiate directly with developers in a really effective way. That is part of the intention there.

Can I put to you a particular constituency case? It concerns Hunts Grove in my constituency—a development of 1,700 houses near Gloucester. The development was well and truly completed several years ago. They are still arguing over the 106. The argument is that the developer agreed a price to produce that 106, but he has been so slow at making the development, he is now saying, “For that money, you can only get about half of what you originally agreed.” That is very unsatisfactory. It should not be a price; it should be the actual article specified in the 106 agreement that will be delivered come what may and whatever the price, shouldn’t it?

Obviously, I cannot comment on the specific instance—

I am more than happy to write to you about it, but as a general principle, if that is a widespread problem, then there is a problem. If it is being agreed in monetary terms rather than specification terms, then there is a problem.

It varies an awful lot with section 106 agreements. I tend to agree with you; I think it is a very dangerous road to walk down to specify things in prices, because prices change. Nevertheless, some local authorities have preferred to do it that way; they want certainty about a cost, and that is what they prefer. As Sarah said, it is essentially a very devolved and localised system.

We always have a bit of a laugh about how acronyms make it very difficult for people to understand things. “Section 106” is probably the most insider-language term in Government—and we have a lot of inaccessible terms. When I sat on my local planning panel, I often found that the language that we used meant that communities were not always up to speed on what opportunities were available to them through things such as developer contributions. Even the community infrastructure levy, from a language point of view, is not particularly accessible to the general public. I often found that the more affluent communities in my constituency had a better handle on the planning process, and therefore could make a better case for infrastructure than some of the poorer communities. Do you think you have an obligation to help communities understand this process, so that they can better lobby their elected members to make sure that they are getting the infrastructure they need? In my constituency, it always tended to be the slightly poorer areas that got more houses, because those communities raised less of a problem. Do you think that you have some work to do with the general public to make this entire endeavour more approachable and accessible to them?

We have certainly made a lot of progress in putting planning and housing as a set of issues and priorities for local areas. There will always be a degree of debate, as you say, from places that are good at lobbying for infrastructure, or good at lobbying against development, and I think there is an onus on local planning authorities to ensure that, through their consultations, they are explaining to people what the process of creating a local plan is and how to feed into it. On whether renaming section 106 would be a critical thing, it might help the odd civil servant who comes along, hears people talking about it and wonders what it is, but, at the same time, I think those who are actually involved in these negotiations are just relying on the provision that enables them. But there is obviously an onus on national Government to explain the benefits of development and the way in which they are intending for development to be done to benefit individuals and communities in areas up and down the country, and there is definitely an onus on local planning authorities to ensure that they are engaging their local communities in the plan-making process, in an appropriate way that reaches out effectively to those communities as those local plans are being put together.

To gently push back, I do not agree with your point that the language only matters to civil servants. The more we can make everything we do more accessible to the public, the better it will be for them, so sometimes questioning the terminology we use is important. I would add that, when you have local planning authorities doing all of this work, as they should, they are duplicating the same work. In terms of economies of scale for educating the public, you have a very loud megaphone in national Government, but sometimes I hear, “It’s up to the local authorities to do this.” It is, and it should be, but I think you can complement that with your own megaphone. Do you think you are using that enough?

As I said, I think there is definitely a job for national Government in pointing out the benefits of development, for both individuals and communities up and down the country. I also think there is a job for mayoral combined authorities here, as they take on more spatial planning powers, in explaining how the overall picture in a region will make a difference to people’s outcomes.

May I seek your indulgence and just ask one last question on the general planning issue, regarding green belts? There is now a tendency in Government to designate a green belt as “of importance” or “not of importance”. That is a very subjective judgment. What has tended to happen is that the so-called unimportant green belt—although all green belt was put there in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 for a reason—is being designated as “grey belt”, which is, in effect, a green light for development. I am just wondering how transparent and evidence-led this system is.

Will, do you want to—

Yes—

The two of you could do a double act on this one quite effectively.

I think the underlying idea is to identify those parts of the green belt that are not contributing to its original intention. Will can talk more about that. It is not really about saying, “This is inferior green belt,” but just saying, “This bit of green belt isn’t actually contributing to the original intention of having a green belt in the first place.”

The policy position, which we set out in December and then expanded on in the planning practice guidance in February, is, precisely as Jo has just said, about having an assessment that says, “Is this area of the green belt contributing to its purposes or not, and how strongly is it doing so?” That is a judgment that we fundamentally—for the reasons the Committee has already highlighted—want to be taking place through the plan-making process. Ideally, that is a judgment being made through the plan-making process that can be made strategically and then tested by the authority in consultation and in the work it does in its plan. But where plans are out of date and there is not a five-year housing land supply, in the light of the challenges we face on housing supply—the Government have been very clear about that—there are routes for that judgment to be made through speculative applications where they are coming forward in those circumstances on individual parcels of land. Between the national planning policy framework and the much more detailed PPG, the policy position is now quite substantive. You have seen that already in a number of applications that have been determined for precisely that kind of distinction: “What is grey-belt land?”

Is that explainable in simple terms to the public?

Ministers have explained it in headline terms. The green belt is not an environmental designation; it is a designation that had different purposes in terms of preventing sprawl between urban areas and so on, and there are areas of it that fundamentally serve that purpose and areas that do not, and there are areas the public would expect to see development on, be that previously developed land that is in the green belt or just areas of greenfield land that is not serving a sensible value in terms of the green belt, and therefore is a sensible place for homes. That is the headline ministerial description that hopefully resonates with, and makes sense to, the public. Then, of course, there is significant technical detail that applies for those trying to make those judgments in a planning sense, be they members in an authority or officers.

How does that fit alongside the public’s view? I take your point that in technical planning terms that may be how you define it, but the public think of the importance of green space—particularly around covid, when people went out for walks; it was a lifeline for so many people in built-up areas.

Many of them were not necessarily walking on green-belt land. There is an assumption that it is an environmental designation or it describes what the land looks like; it does not in all circumstances, and that is what the distinction draws out.

So green-belt land release does not conflict with the desire or need for planning authorities to maintain proper amounts of green space in built-up areas.

Absolutely not.

No. Indeed, one of the requirements of the golden rules is provision of accessible green space as part of the development. A very important thing for Ministers, alongside the provision of more affordable housing, was making sure that where a development was taking place with the golden rules applicable, there was open access to green space.

I am sure you would to be absolutely clear that there is a difference between green belt and greenfield.

Yes.

Thank you all very much. It has been a very interesting session. We are all impatient, of course, to get more infrastructure built when development takes place, which is why sometimes there was a slight impatience in the Committee today. Nevertheless, we thank you very much for coming and helping us with this inquiry. An uncorrected version of the transcript will be available in the coming days. We will produce a report, no doubt with recommendations, and we will look forward to your response to those.