Night-time Economy: Housing
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to protect long-standing (a) cultural and (b) night-time economy venues from (i) closure and (ii) restrictions due to new residential development.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook
The National Planning Policy Framework provides strong protections to ensure that new residential development can be integrated effectively with existing businesses and community facilities.
It sets out that existing businesses and facilities should not have unreasonable restrictions placed on them as a result of development permitted after they were established.
Where the operation of an existing business or community facility could have a significant adverse effect on new development (including changes of use) in its vicinity, the applicant (or ‘agent of change’) should be required to provide suitable mitigation before the development has been completed.
We will consider how we can ensure the most effective implementation of the ‘agent of change’ principle as part of our work to create a new set of national policies for decision making which we will consult on this year.
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