§ The Minister for Housing and Planning (Keith Hill)There has been a great deal of concern that agricultural land is being sub-divided into smaller plots and sold over the internet to purchasers who believe they may at some point in the future be able to build on the land. There are two issues of public concern surrounding the sub-division and sale of plots. Firstly, the erection of 3WS fencing and the installation of caravans and access roads using permitted development rights granted under the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995. This can lead to an unwelcome change in the appearance of open countryside, the loss of agricultural land and concern about the neglect of land split into different ownership. The other issue is whether buyers of the plots are being misled into thinking they will eventually be able to build properties on the plot and the fear from neighbours that development will be inevitable.
When the matter was debated at the Commons Report stage of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill, the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), undertook to keep Members informed on progress made in considering what could be done to prevent the unwelcome development of sub-divided agricultural land. This statement provides an update on he measures that we have been considering.
As the issue arises from the sale of land in agricultural use in a way that implies the potential for development we have looked carefully at consumer protection measures. We do not think this offers a way forward at present. Cooling-off periods are usually a way of protecting people against high pressure selling techniques and they would probably not be effective here as there is no evidence that buyers have been subjected to these techniques. Moreover many of the purchasers of these sub-plots see themselves as making a long-term investment. They are not deterred by the knowledge that there is no likelihood of the land being granted planning permission for development.
We have also considered ways in which control over development on sub-plots could be tightened either by amending or removing permitted development rights, perhaps by requiring prior approval for development on sub-plots, or by classing the division of land into subplots or unused land as development. It became clear that real difficulties arose in trying to distinguish between the development we wanted to prevent and legitimate development we did not want to hinder. We need to balance the needs of legitimate users of permitted development rights against the desire to prevent unwelcome developments. Any benefits would be greatly outweighed by the negative impacts of any changes and open to further abuse.
A number of other issues have been raised during debates on this issue which fall within the remit of our review of the planning enforcement system in England and these points will be considered alongside that review.
However there are measures we can bring forward which will enable local planning authorities to take more immediate action as soon as evidence of abuse is suspected or emerges. We will consult in the summer on changes to enable local planning authorities to serve article 4 directions on site rather than in a newspaper to bring them into effect more quickly and on changes to allow an article 4 direction to come into effect without the Secretary of State's approval on a wider range of permitted development rights than is the case at present. We have already taken steps in the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill to introduce a measure to help speed up enforcement action following a breach of 4WS planning control that will enable local planning authorities to issue a temporary stop notice when a breach of planning control is first identified without first having had to serve an enforcement notice.
A large number of powers are already available to local authorities that some authorities use more effectively than others. We are also today issuing a letter to local planning authorities that sets out a summary of existing powers to deal with sub-plots. The letter encourages local planning authorities and amenity societies to advertise or use the Internet to give prospective plot purchasers a realistic idea of the likely development potential of their plots.
The Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of Fair Trading will investigate complaints about widespread misleading advertising or misselling of subplots. DTI's "Don't be A Mug!" website also provides a consumer's guide to scams and rip-offs and has recently been updated following a DTI campaign on investment scams. The address of the investment scams pages is http://www.dti.gov.uk/ccp/scams/page9.htm. Many of the points included on his section of the website are also applicable to sub-plots.