Take-away Food Shops (Hansard, 1 February 1991)

§ Mr. Cyril D. Townsend (Bexleyheath)
I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the subject of planning controls over hot food take-away shops, with particular reference to Welling—which is the second largest town in my south-east London constituency.
I appreciate that such shops meet an obvious demand and are certainly popular with many people—particularly younger persons and parents of small children. My own two sons hold them in high regard. They are well suited to the pace of modern life, and create wealth and employment locally.
However, as many right hon. and hon. Members know from constituency experience, there is a downside. In the words of Bexleyheath's chief superintendent: A number of such establishments in this borough have in the past attracted police attention for the following reasons. Complaints of noise by local residents. A cause of litter in the immediate vicinity. Obstruction to footways outside by groups of youths. Complaints of rowdyism, particularly in the late evening. Obstruction of vehicles parked outside. The Government are well aware of the litter problem, which reached unacceptable levels years ago. Some types of commercial operation, such as take-away restaurants, generate a disproportionate volume of litter. Firms such as McDonalds are well aware of their public responsibilities. Their experienced managers do their best, but the litter problem remains.
Although the town of Bexleyheath has benefited from a vast new shopping centre, there is local concern, which I share, about the future of Welling. It must hold on to the attractiveness and vitality of a prime shopping area.
In past years, Bexley borough council was slow to recognise that too many hot-food shops were opening in the Welling area. Local people became increasingly vocal and I began to receive a large number of letters and complaints. I pay tribute to Darwin and Faraday residents association, which for many years has carried out a classic campaign to alert those in authority to an ever-increasing problem.
Bexley council—with all-party support, which is not easy to achieve at a local level—started doing what it could within existing planning controls, but it hit a major snag. I quote from my letter dated 15 November 1989 to my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for the Environment: I wrote in July 1988 to the then Minister of Housing and Planning concerning the approach being adopted by the Department of the Environment towards local planning decisions. I regret to say that since then the position in my own constituency has gone from bad to worse. I refer in particular to the almost regular practice of the Department to overthrow the decisions of our local planning authority—decisions they make as elected representatives of my constituents and normally with the whole-hearted support of my constituents. Of course I understand that the Government rightly wishes to reduce the amount of bureaucracy in the planning system and allow more firms and individuals to do what they want, but we both know a proper balance needs to be struck and regretfully the evidence in Bexley is that this is not happening. There are now 21 hot food take-away shops in Welling which seems to me, as a layman, to be an extraordinarily large number for one comparatively small town. Of those, three were allowed on appeal in 1985, 1989 and last year.
1294 My correspondence with the Department became increasingly frustrating. Bureaucratic replies, laced with planning jargon become meaningless at constituency level, as we all know. Junior Ministers were insensitive to what was becoming a major local issue for me.
On 8 December 1989 I received a letter signed by the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan). The nub of that letter was that the question whether any service is sufficiently represented in a locality is a matter of commercial judgment, and is not a matter for planning consideration and that the planning system should not be used to regulate the supply and demand for commercial services.
I submit that that approach is barmy. I like to think that under the Department's new and distinguished management it has been or is being altered. Frankly, I have no idea what the market for hot food take-away shops is in an area like Welling. South-east London has a high population density and a highly mobile and comparatively wealthy population. Welling is on a major road and there are plenty of bus stops. Would that market take 30 or 40 of these shops before some started falling off? It would be ridiculous to allow more shops to try their hand and to fight for their share of that crowded market, while the whole area continues to suffer in the process.
I stress to my hon. Friend the Minister that this matter should not be left solely to market forces. Proper planning by the local elected authority should be encouraged in the interests of the inhabitants of my constituency and the local environment. I look forward to hearing exactly what a local authority can do in such circumstances to meet the strongly expressed feelings of the local residents. At present many of my constituents are losing faith in the planning system. They see Whitehall overruling Bexley far too often.
I am proud of what we have achieved as a country in terms of local planning to protect and improve our surroundings. Whenever I go to the United States I am appalled at the unchecked linear development that has been allowed to take place, and I am grateful to Britain's far-sighted post-war planners. Ministers tell me that when they deal with appeals, the inspectors are concerned that what is proposed is in the public interest. That entails weighing the legitimate worries of local residents about the possible effects of development on their environment, against arguments in favour of proposals. My constituents do not agree that their interests are being properly looked after and they do not believe that the proper balance is being achieved. They have appealed to me, as their local Member of Parliament, and I have therefore initiated this brief debate. I appeal to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment for his support.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)
The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and his hon. Friends appear to be holding a committee meeting. Perhaps they would prefer to do so outside the Chamber.

§ Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I find it odd that you should make such remarks about my hon. Friends and me, given that about 10 Conservative Members persisted in interrupting the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) on the important Bill dealing with no-fault compensation, which the Tories have just ransacked.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is taking up the valuable time of the hon. Member who has the Adjournment debate.

§ Mr. Skinner
You started it.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that he ought not to engage in sedentary conversations—

§ Mr. Skinner
rose—

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will respond to the request of the Chair.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tim Yeo)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on winning the opportunity to raise this important subject. He is a strong and effective champion of the interests of his constituents and I hope that he will remain their champion and representative for many years to come.
I regret any insensitivity that may have been shown by any of my predecessors—of whom there have been quite a large number in the past few months—in the wording of replies to my hon. Friend. We shall certainly renew and redouble our efforts to avoid recourse to bureaucratic jargon, which may, indeed, be incomprehensible by the time it reaches Welling.
Hot food take-away shops have been around in a variety of guises for generations. Perhaps the most familiar are fish and chip shops. My hon. Friend acknowledged that most of us patronise such outlets from time to time, and those of us with families no doubt visit them rather more frequently than we might if the choice were left entirely to us. Nevertheless, proposals to establish new outlets can still generate local controversy. The Government's planning policies in respect of such establishments are sometimes misunderstood and I am pleased to have the oportunity to set them out in a way that I hope will be unambiguous.
I entirely understand why individual establishments and proposals for additional establishments give rise to concern such as that expressed by my hon. Friend on behalf of his constituents. It is most important that the operators of such outlets should ensure that they minimise any problems of litter, noise or disturbance, and those are all factors which local planning authorities can take into account in deciding whether to grant planning permission. I am encouraged by the fact that many operators are adopting very responsible policies towards the communities in which they function.
For more than 40 years, the development control system has distinguished between the use of land for catering establishments such as restaurants and takeaways, and other uses of land for outlets such as shops. There is a world of difference, in both a cultural and a culinary sense, between a traditional pie-and-mash or tripe shop, and a modern fast-food restaurant. But there is less difference in land-use planning terms. I refer, for example, to the effects on local amenities and the environment and to the pedestrian and vehicular traffic that they generate. At present, the planning system allows changes of use as between most catering trade uses to take place without planning permission, but planning permission must be 1296 obtained before a catering use can be introduced for the first time. I believe that that is the right basis for planning control.
The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987 is often regarded as the present-day villain of the piece as regards take-aways. Nevertheless, it has considerable merits as a piece of deregulation in relation to planning matters. My hon. Friend seemed ready to acknowledge that there is a great deal of concern about the fact that the planning process involves considerable delays for people making applications and for people involved in appeals. Of the very large number of applications dealt with each year, almost 30,000 go to appeal. The order performs a helpful service in reducing what, if it were not in force, would be an additional burden of extra appeals. It means that more manpower resources are available to deal with other aspects of the planning system, including enforcement.
For the first time, the order groups together restaurants, take-aways, cafes and other catering trade uses in a single food and drink use class. In the order, that use class is known as A3. It frees from planning control changes between those uses. It broke new ground and it was always likely, therefore, to be regarded with mistrust and suspicion in some quarters.
The approach adopted in the order, however, was pragmatic as well as deregulatory. It recognised that the catering trade has undergone a transformation in the past decade. The traditional demarcation between public houses and restaurants and between restaurants and take-aways has become blurred. The order allows the catering trade to adapt to changing trends and demands with greater speed and certainty, in premises where potential environmental nuisances such as smell, traffic and parking have already been accepted. It also relieves local planning authorities of the burden of determining whether planning permission would be required for a change of use from a public house to a wine bar or from a bistro to a brasserie.
I should stress that the order did not remove or reduce local planning authorities' power to control the proliferation of premises used by the catering trade. Planning permission is still invariably required to erect new premises, or to change the use of existing non-A3 premises to A3 uses. Each such application must be decided on its merits by the local planning authority, according to a time-honoured formula of having regard to the provisions of the development plan and to any other material considerations. Let us suppose that an area is already well served or, as my hon. Friend and his constituents might claim, over-supplied—21 seems quite a large number for a town the size that he mentioned—with restaurants and take-aways, possibly for historical reasons. Let us further suppose that, individually or collectively, the establishments are creating environmental difficulties. It will be difficult for a local authority to secure a reduction in their overall number under planning legislation other than by granting planning permission for suitable alternative uses as and when the opportunity arises.
There are powers for local authorities to make orders to discontinue particular uses of land, but such orders can involve the local planning authority in a liability to pay compensation for the losss of existing use rights. I recognise, therefore, that the use of such powers will be 1297 contemplated only in exceptional circumstances. Nevertheless, local authorities have discretion to refuse planning permission for any additional take-away outlets.
Local authorities also have several options available outside the scope of planning control to alleviate some of the problems associated with restaurants and take-ways. These include the introduction of parking restrictions and, in Greater London, the power to require hot-food shops to close at midnight. Those powers will be augmented by the street litter control notice provisions of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, under which a local authority will be able to place a duty on the proprietors of premises such as take-aways to keep their frontages litter free.
To safeguard against planning refusals being overturned on appeal, local planning authorities must buttress their decisions with sound reasons based on criteria that are relevant to the land use planning system. Typically, such reasons will relate to the anticipated adverse effects on the local environment and amenity. Such effects can include an increase in traffic and parking, noise and disturbance, particularly if this seems likely to take place in the evening or to affect a residential area.
My hon. Friend will understand that I cannot comment on or discuss the merits of individual decisions, but I assure him that appeals are decided only after the most careful assessment of all material factors. My hon. Friend said that three of the 21 establishments had resulted from appeal.
An additional way in which a local planning authority can defend a refusal of planning permission on appeal is by basing its decision on a relevant policy in an adopted local plan. This leads me to another issue that appears to have caused some misunderstanding. In 1985—before the introduction of the A3 use class—my Department issued guidance on "Service Uses in Shopping Areas" in development control policy note 11. That document made it clear that, in land-use planning terms, the adoption by local planning authorities of policies designed to maintain or to strengthen the retail element of shopping areas can be justified. Indeed, I understand that the London borough of Bexley included such a policy in the Bexley borough plan, which was adopted in February 1985. This means that it is acceptable for local planning authorities, in the light of local circumstances, to decide whether they should resist changes to the mix of retail and non-retail uses in a particular shopping area. Thus, if the conversion of a shop to a take-away were proposed in an area in which such a policy applied, the desirability of giving effect to such a policy could provide an important pillar for a refusal of planning permission.
However, what the Government could not support in the context of such a policy would be decisions that discriminated against a particular form of non-retail use. I cannot accept that local authorities' power to regulate development should go so far as to set ceilings for the 1298 number of particular outlets in a particular area. This does not mean that we are simply content to allow a completely market-led free-for-all. I recognise the force of my hon. Friend's point. It means that we are committed to a development control system in which each decision is considered carefully on its own merits. Such decisions will be based on an assessment of the likely effect that the development proposal will have on the locality and will not be arbitrarily pre-ordained on the basis of a rigid system of rationing for specific forms of development.
I am sure that my hon. Friend and others will agree that it would be inappropriate for Bexley council—or my Department—simply to set a limit for the number of pizza parlours or burger bars that could become established in Welling. I am sure that those of my hon. Friend's constitutents who patronise such establishments would not wish to have their choice curtailed in such a way. Equally, I hope that they will accept that if the continued viability of a retail shopping area or the amenity of a locality were judged to be issues raised by any proposal to create a new A3 outlet, the council has a duty to ensure in the wider public interest that such considerations are taken into account in determining whether planning permission should be granted for that outlet. The same duty would apply to the Secretary of State and to his inspectors when deciding appeals.
If, in reaching its decision, the local planning authority judges that a particular use or uses within the A3 use class would have adverse effects on the environment or on amenity, not susceptible to other control, it need not necessarily refuse planning permission outright. An alternative approach would be to grant planning permission subject to a condition restricting future changes of use which, by virtue of the Use Classes Order 1987, would not otherwise require a further grant of planning permission.
Independent research has recently been carried out on behalf of my Department into the effects of the Use Classes Order 1987. That research has revealed that local planning authorities' use of such conditions is relatively commonplace when granting planning permission for A3 uses. The Government are still considering the implications of the researchers' findings and we will announce our conclusions in due course. However, the apparent willingness of local authorities to grant conditional planning permission for A3 uses seems to demonstrate that applications from the catering trade represent a demand that should be met, where that can be achieved without compromising those areas of concern that the development control system is designed to safeguard, and about which my hon. Friend has spoken.
I hope that I have been able to provide some enlightenment and encouragement to my hon. Friend on the Government's planning policies in this sometimes contentious area.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at four minutes past Three o'clock.