Ann Coffey

Planning clampdown on children's homes

2 February 2010

Ann Coffey has scored a victory in her campaign for a planning clampdown on unruly private children's homes that import young offenders into Stockport.

Ms Coffey has been concerned that private children's homes have been allowed to set up lucrative businesses in residential areas of Stockport without seeking any planning permission or consulting local residents.

She has received a recent influx of letters and emails from distressed Stockport residents who are at the end of their tether after suffering abuse and anti-social behaviour from young people in the homes.

The residents complained that they were not consulted about the change of use of houses next door to them, which changed abruptly, without planning permission, from being ordinary family homes to children's homes housing troubled teenagers.

Ms Coffey took their complaints about the planning laws to Stockport Council and the planning minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government and last night she held an adjournment debate in the House of Commons to highlight the issue.

In the Commons, Ms Coffey said that Stockport Council had responded by issuing new planning guidance which she said would be welcomed by her constituents.

The guidance states that all proposals for new buildings for children's homes will require planning permission and that, in most cases, planning permission will be required for change of use.

Stockport has more than 30 private children's homes and has been having difficulties with the very high number of children and young people placed in them from other local authority areas.

Fifty three per cent of all locked after children in Stockport are from outside the borough – one of the highest in the country – compared with the national average of 35 per cent.

Many of the children - who live in the homes about which Ms Coffey received complaints - are from outside Stockport and are prolific and priority offenders. The home owners charge up to £4,500 a week per child and advertise aggressively for hard-line offenders from outside Stockport. Some are coining in more than £40,000 a month.

Before the new guidance, children's homes in Stockport had been allowed to set up without having to seek planning permission under the Class C3 (Dwelling House) criteria of the Town and Country Planning Order 1987. This made it possible for a house that has been used by a single person or family to be used by up to six unrelated persons living together as a single household without the need for planning permission.

Under the stricter criteria of C2 (Residential Institutions) there has to be planning permission and consultation with local people.

"Badly run children's homes can have such a fundamental impact on people's lives and are a massive drain on services, such as the police, education and adolescent and mental health services. They should not be just allowed to spring up unannounced in communities," Ms Coffey told MPs.

Ms Coffey raised the case of one Stockport man and his mother who live next door to children's home.

"He wrote to me about, what he described as, their "monumentally distressing situation". He and his mother have been subjected too much abuse and damage to their home. He described how the home for young people came into existence without local people knowing anything about it or being given a say in the change of use form a private dwelling house," she said.

Responding for the government, Ian Austin, the planning minister, referred to Stockport's new guidance and said that he would expect most children's homes to fall into the same use class as other residential institutions, such as nursing homes of training centres – the stricter class C2 – which means they must seek planning permission and consult local residents.

He also agreed to hold a further meeting with Ms Coffey on the issue to examine how the law could be further clarified.