4. Will the Minister make a statement on how the planning process can be improved to better assess the cumulative impact of multiple residential development applications in the same locality? OAQ53237

Yes, indeed. Up-to-date local development plans provide the local context to assess the cumulative impact of multiple residential development applications in the same locality. LDPs should ensure sufficient land is available in appropriate and sustainable locations to meet the projected housing need identified by the local planning authority.

Thank you for that answer, Minister, and can I also welcome the shift in Government policy towards a more spatial approach to planning? But, in my constituency, in Llantwit Fardre, we have three significant residential planning applications within a 700m radius. They're all at different stages in the planning process, and I’m not asking you to comment on those—the ones at Ystrad Barwig, Cwm Isaf farm, and Tynant common—but what we know is that the highway infrastructure is under considerable strain, and local GPs tell me that they are struggling to maintain a good service to existing patients. People need houses, but do you agree with me that the planning process must place a greater emphasis on the cumulative impact of adjacent development on people’s well-being and access to key services?

Yes. A good local development plan should plan not only for its housing need, but for the infrastructure needs associated with the housing need. Clearly, that is a range of services, you know, from prosaic highway infrastructure, to digital connectivity, to access to GPs and schools, local bus services, sustainable transport, and so on. It’s a very complex picture. Each place should be planning to have its place properly served by its plan, and I do think councils should be very ambitious and innovative in setting out their requirements of developers through the various agreements they make through the planning process—section 106s, for one example, or the Highways Act agreements that they make, and so on—to maximise the benefit to the local population of particular developments and to ensure that they don’t concentrate everything in one area to the detriment of the other services. Indeed, that’s the purpose of the LDP—to go through an inquiry stage in which local people get to have their say in that way. And I’m very pleased that 'Planning Policy Wales' has focused on place making and has put that at the heart of our national planning policy, because I think that is in line with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the way that we want to take Wales forward into the future.

I've got a similar situation, Minister, in my own constituency, in the town of Abergele, where there are many hundreds of new homes planned for that area as part of the local development plan. And Abergele, as the Minister may be aware, is just a short distance from Bodelwyddan, which is in the neighbouring local authority, where there are a couple of thousand new homes planned. So, within that small area, around 3,000 new homes are proposed, and yet we already have a situation where our infrastructure is creaking at the seams, the traffic is often gridlocked in Abergele, the schools are already oversubscribed—the primary schools—and, indeed, we have problems with our health service and people being able to access GPs as well.

Now, I heard very carefully what you have said about the responsibilities that local authorities have, but what do you do as a Welsh Government when there are irresponsible decisions being taken by local authorities that are having scant regard, sometimes, for the transport and other infrastructure needs in their communities and potentially exacerbating them by giving permission to significant housing developments? Furthermore, what guidance are you issuing to local authorities in order that they have regard to local development plans in neighbouring local authority areas, because Bodelwyddan, of course, is in Denbighshire, and Abergele is in Conwy?

I want to make it plain immediately that I'm not going to comment on any specifics, and my remarks are not directed to the particular development that the Member has raised—so, in general terms. We have provisions in the Planning (Wales) Act 2015 to enable local planning authorities to bring forward strategic development plans and therefore to work more regionally. We are looking to have local authorities do that for the exact reason that the Member pointed out, so that spatial planning across local authority boundaries can be better.

We're working to prepare our first national development framework to provide a national context within which that can sit, and I had a useful meeting this morning with the officials supporting the infrastructure commission for Wales around how they can fit into some of that national planning.

I am hoping that we will be able to put in place the first strategic development plan down in south-east Wales this spring, shortly, and I'm looking to have that system spread out across Wales so that we can take cross-border issues properly into consideration.

But in the local development plan and in developing the local development plan, of course it is a proper consideration to consider where developments are taking place along the borders and elsewhere, and to map out provision for other services and so on, in order to ensure that people who are at the heart of the local democratic process that the LDP is put in place by are at the very heart of that decision-making process. If the process isn't about the people who are going to live in it, what is it about? Plans should keep in mind, at all times, that the people are at the heart of the process.

But there's an even more fundamental issue here, of course: what is the local housing need? Your Government has actually told local authorities now that your population projections are outdated, and they were the basis, of course, for the local development plans that people are concerned about, and we've seen the allocation of additional land for housing and a need that, clearly, simply just doesn't exist. So, will you accept that that was wrong? And will you also now, therefore, instruct your officials to allow councils to de-allocate greenfield sites in order to protect our environment and communities?

I don't have a picture of Wales in my head around the different population projections, so I can't talk in specifics, but I'm very keen to make sure that we have the right projections in place, and that we actually respond to the need in the right places.

I'm also actually very keen to ensure that developments are the right size and fitted for the area they serve. So, what we want to do is encourage, as I said, small housing developers from across Wales to bring forward small sites that suit local need and not have to have large allocations. And that's not to criticise any council; as I say, I'm speaking in generalities. But I'm hoping to look again at what we are projecting, both in terms of the local government formula overall and in terms of projected need, in order to see where we can go.