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Mr. Clifton-Brown: I thank the Minister for his unfailing courtesy and his great patience in answering all our questions. Despite that, we shall press new clause 47 to a vote at the appropriate time.
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Matthew Green: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 28
Development control
'(1) In the Principle Act after section 44 Part III (meaning of development) subsection (2A) there is inserted—
''(2) The following operations or uses of land shall not be taken for the purposes of this Act to involve development of the land—
(a) the carrying out for the maintenance, improvement or other alteration of any building works which—
(i) affect only the interior of the building, or
(ii) do not materially affect the external appearance of the building
(iii) do not materially increase the overall retail sales floor area of the building by more than 10%
and are not works for the making good war damage or works begun after 5 December 1968 for the alteration of a building by providing additional space in its underground.''.'—[Matthew Green.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
Matthew Green: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 33—Planning permission for increasing the floor area of large shops—
'After section 57 (Planning Permission required for Development) of the principal Act there is inserted the following section—
''57A Planning Permission for increase the Floor area of Large Shops
(1) Planning permission is required for works which increase by more than the specified amount the area of large shops.
(2) Permission given by a local planning authority for such works may be conditional upon all or a proportion of the additional area being devoted to the sale of local produce.
(3) In this section
(a) 'large shops' has the same meaning as in the Shops Act 1994;
(b) 'the specified amount' means 25 per cent, or increases which aggregate to 25 per cent, of the area available for retailing for which permission has been granted;
(c) 'local produce' has such meaning as the local planning authority shall determine.''.'.
Matthew Green: New clause 28 is about a matter that Friends of the Earth brought to my attention a few months ago. It concerns Asda, which is owned by Wal-Mart, and its use of a loophole in the planning system to increase dramatically the retail floor space of 40 of its stores by installing mezzanine floors. In many stores, that would double the floor space. It can do that without seeking planning permission because planning law excludes internal building works from the definition of development that requires planning permission. Such works can go ahead provided that they do not affect the external appearance of the building however significant their other impacts may be.
The addition of significant areas of retail floor space—equivalent to a new store in some cases—may have a significant negative impact on high street stores, and may lead to increased traffic, noise and
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disturbance, yet local planning authorities will have no opportunity to assess those impacts, and local communities will not be given the chance to become involved.
Asda installed its first mezzanine floor in York, and its second such floor is under construction in Sheffield. That floor will add 33,000 sq ft of retail space with the specific, and declared, aim of expanding its range of non-food goods, which will change the nature of the store, and will pose a new threat to local non-food shops. An Asda spokesman is on record as saying that the non-food range in the York mezzanine is encouraging people to drive to the store from further afield. That is hardly a worthy environmental aim. It makes a mockery of the intention behind PPG6 on retailing, which seeks to maintain diversity of local shops, and sustain and enhance the vitality and viability of town centres by protecting them from the negative effects of large-scale out-of-town developments.
However, it is not just small shops that are risk. At the moment, Asda is installing mezzanine floors, but any one of a number of supermarket or DIY chains could follow suit. Doing so gives Asda a competitive advantage because, by chance, it built high in the past. There could be a lower store next door that does not have the opportunity to put in a mezzanine floor, so other big retailers could suffer just as much as smaller retailers. The issue is therefore not about the small fighting the big, but about fairness and where the planning system ought to come in.
The new clause deals with section 55 of the 1990 Act, which creates a broad definition of development and provides for various qualified exceptions. The new clause extends the qualification to the exceptions in subsection (2) to exclude the material increase of retail floor area. Such increases would constitute development and therefore be subject to planning control. The inclusion of a 10 per cent. margin allows for minor operational changes to premises that would not pose a significant risk to the local community. The Minister may say that the Bill is not the appropriate vehicle to pursue those aims, but if so, we would like him to reassure us that the Government plan to close the relevant loophole another way.
New clause 33, which the hon. Member for Isle of Wight has tabled, is similar and has a caveat that if more floor space is granted, some of it must used to sell local produce. On the face of it, that is a super idea, but it is difficult, when giving planning permission, to dictate exactly where something being sold was purchased from in the first place. Although I share the sentiments, the proposal is a difficult concept in planning terms.
It is only a matter of fairness that the loophole is closed, before we see a race to develop mezzanine floors. One group of stores is doing so now, but I am sure that others will follow.
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Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): Will the hon. Gentleman comment on whether he considers the new clause to cover the eventuality where an out-of-town store not only compartmentalises but departmentalises? Departmentalising is developing an alternative high street in a flat floor store through either filling in an atrium or compartmentalising the existing flat floor permission by extending to mezzanine and creating additional stores, thereby taking the high street as a whole out of town, rather than just building sheds out of town.
Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman has raised another potential loophole that I do not think the new clause, which deals with the increase of retail floor space, covers. I have even heard that, at some stores, there have been projects to dig down and put in new floors below the ground level of the existing shop. Again, that does not require planning permission, but goes against the spirit of using the planning system to ensure fairness across the retail sector.
The idea is not that there should not be mezzanine floors, but that proposals for them should come before the planning committee and be considered like anything else. If there is good reason for them, they will be granted planning permission. Such proposals would also require environmental impact assessments and probably traffic impact assessments, because, given the size of some mezzanine floors, the doubling of a floor space could easily lead to a significant increase in traffic to a certain store.
If the new clause were accepted, all that would be considered. The new clause does not mean, ''No mezzanine floors,'' but, ''Let us have mezzanine floors only where they have gone through the planning process.''
Mr. Betts: I thank the hon. Gentleman for moving the clause, which is of interest to my constituents as one of the stores is in my constituency. It has now been built, and is open and operating. I speak from first-hand experience, as I had a tour round it with the manager only a few weeks ago to examine the situation. There are significant benefits to Asda being in my constituency; for example, it tries to enable people without transport to get to the store by putting on free community buses. I should declare an interest, in that Asda occasionally offers me space to conduct my surgeries in the store.
There are problems, however, which the hon. Gentleman rightly identified. What was initially a major and very large food retail outlet with some non-food goods has almost become a food store and a mini department store in the same building. It is a massive development. The mezzanine floor stretches virtually the entire length of the original store. It has almost doubled the capacity, and has changed the nature of the store as well as the amount of floor space.
10.45 am
The hon. Gentleman also rightly mentioned the highway implications. There have been significant traffic problems from the very beginning when the store first opened in the mid-1990s, which have been of real concern to the people who live closest to the store,
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and to others simply trying to get home in the evening. The back-up created by people queuing to get into the store and people trying to get out of it caused significant traffic problems even before the new development took place. Imagine the repercussions since the mezzanine floor was constructed. Traffic is considerably heavier, yet there has been no analysis or plan to deal with it, because there has been no requirement for the store to sit down with the highways authority and the planning authority to work out these problems, because there is no need for planning permission.
The planning permission system is now changing the way in which cars can enter the store. There is slip road off the Sheffield Parkway, which itself has significant environmental consequences for constituents of mine who live nearest to the store. Again, that slip road was an afterthought, rather than an integral part of the plan to build extra floor space.
I am not saying that the mezzanine floor should not have been developed and that the store is not a good facility for the many people who want to shop there, or that Asda does not try to respond to community issues. As a fundamental principle, however, there should be a requirement for such a development to go through the planning process before it takes place. The local community should have a right to have its views taken into account, and the local planning authority should be able to take a decision about whether such a large expansion of floor space is appropriate. As I understand it, existing planning law does not allow that to happen. It is clearly the view of the planning office in Sheffield that it had no right to intervene. I do not know whether the new clause is technically the right way to go about making that requirement, but something must be done to ensure that such expansions go through the planning process.
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