I take issue with the right hon. Lady on the idea—I think that phrase is used too often to obscure what I think is her real position, to be fair to her—that her local authority should be able to plan for less housing than the standard method that the target implies. We take the opposite view; we have a very legitimate difference of opinion here. We do not think that local authorities should be able to plan for under-housing need targets, and that is where the difference comes on the NPPF changes. It is not a question of whether there should be good development. Yes, we must change what the offer of development means, but it cannot be the case, as the right hon. Lady so often advocates, that no development takes place because of the characteristics of a local area or many other attributes that local authorities can now use as a result of the NPPF to come in under target. That is a clear difference of opinion between the Government and the Opposition.

I will return to the argument I was making. Like many other councils across England, Medway Council now confronts a dilemma with this brownfield site as a result of the nature of the housing and planning system over which the Government preside. First, through changes to national planning policy, Ministers have ensured that there is no effective mechanism for sub-regional strategic planning that might enable what is a relatively small unitary authority in Medway to meet housing need in a co-ordinated manner. That could have been done through a joint plan with neighbouring two-tier authorities in north Kent, as the historic south-east regional spatial strategy did with the Kent Thames Gateway.

Secondly, because central Government support has not been forthcoming, the number of viable potential sites within Medway Council’s own boundaries has narrowed. The most pertinent example is the Government’s decision to withdraw from the authority £170 million in housing infrastructure grant funding that would have facilitated the construction of 10,000 homes over 30 years on the Hoo peninsula, despite the Department seemingly not having spent £2.9 billion of the £4.2 billion allocated by the Treasury to that fund. As a result, Medway Council now must determine alone how it meets its housing targets across the sites that remain available and viable. As I said, we take the view that they must meet those targets.

The challenge I put to the right hon. Member for Rochester and Strood, leaving aside the considerations of investment required in the docks to bring it up to a viable operation in the future, is for those who take the position that it should remain a working port to identify the collection of sites across Medway that will ensure the authority can build 29,844 homes—the numbers have been slightly updated since the ones she cited were published—between now and 2040, because that is what it will take to meet housing need in that particular authority.

Medway Council proposes—quite rightly, in our view—to make that determination in a considered manner through the local plan development process. I very much welcome the fact that the present leadership of the authority have restarted the process and are working at pace to complete it. The pattern of indecision and delay that characterised the approach of previous Conservative administrations to planning and development in Medway over two decades was lamentable as, it must be said, is the Government’s record on boosting local plan coverage across England more generally. It is frankly laughable that, despite the extensive range of powers to intervene that Ministers enjoy, the Government are presiding over a local plan-led planning system in which only a third of authorities—and falling—have a plan that is less than five years old, with the number of plans published, submitted and adopted last year the lowest for a decade.

The local plan-making process in Medway is now firmly underway, and I do not think it is for Members in this place to pre-empt its outcome, but it is worth remarking that Medway Council obviously cannot prohibit Peel Waters from submitting a proposal for mixed-use development on the wider Chatham docks site as part of the local plan preparation process, in the same way that the authority cannot force that developer to make the necessary investment that might sustain the docks as a working commercial port. Just as the contents of the developing draft local plan are ultimately a decision for Medway Council itself, considering not only how to meet housing need but how other economic, social and environmental priorities can be addressed, so is the determination of the basin 3 application submitted for the present industrial state to be redeveloped for employment facilities.

As such, while I certainly appreciate that concerns exist about the employment opportunities changing on the site in question, and whether all the sitting tenants will agree to be relocated or compensated, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on the application, just as I know the Minister will not be able to discuss details of the proposal, given the quasi-judicial role of the Secretary of State in the planning system.

To conclude, the case of Chatham docks reinforces our strong belief that we need to make changes to the planning system to ensure that the Government take a more strategic approach to development across the country, thereby enabling local planning authorities to better balance competing priorities regarding brownfield regeneration. It also highlights the pressing need to do more to boost local plan coverage. An up-to-date local plan is the most effective means of influencing where and how development takes place in any given authority area for both the housing and jobs that communities need.

The situation is lamentable, and many of the problems we are discussing stem from the fact that the authority has not updated its plan since 2003. Much of the uncertainty that the constituents of the right hon. Member for Rochester and Strood are feeling about the future of Chatham docks would be significantly abated had previous Medway Council administrations prepared and adopted an up-to-date local plan with a robust and viable proposal for the site—the present administration finally doing so is to be commended. It is the elected members of that authority who are best placed through engagement and consultation with the local community to take decisions on local planning matters, including in due course the basin 3 application.