Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Lord Greaves

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, all sorts of scenarios have been put forward, many of which I agree with, including the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, that there will be people who will find ways around the regulations and buy these houses unscrupulously.

I remember when I was a local councillor it was decided that local councils should not be owners of property and we sold off houses near to here on the basis that they were offered to sitting tenants at an incredibly low price. It is hard to believe that you could buy a house near Smith Square for £50,000, but that is what they were. After we sold all of these properties to the sitting tenant, one was left vacant and sold for £150,000. There was a huge difference between the property values; in fact, I think the sitting value was out of touch with values at the time. It annoyed me to discover that one of the people who had bought as a supposed sitting tenant was nothing but a front man for someone who could well have paid anything. So, a lot of the abuses suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, will happen—I hope not too many, but someone is always working out a way around things to get a personal advantage.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, commented on the issue of whether a person has bought a property as a genuine place to live in and whether, to ensure this, there might be letting restrictions and various conditions applied. This leads me back to the point which has been made again and again, that until we have regulations we honestly do not know how we are going to care about and deal with this. That is the greatest worry of all.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I want to speak to government Amendment 45B. I was wondering if I should wait until the Minister had spoken to it but I think it is probably better that I speak now and that she hears what I have to say. If the Committee is happy for me to do that, I will.

The amendment proposes quite an extraordinarily far-reaching Henry VIII power. It simply says:

“Regulations under this section may amend this Chapter”.

That is as far-reaching as is possible. It suggests that the Government are not quite sure—perhaps it is stronger than that—whether they have got it right in this chapter on starter homes, and therefore that they want a provision to be able to change it in any way and at any time, subject to parliamentary approval. Of course, we keep being told that the House of Lords is not allowed to oppose these things, anyway.

In what ways can this chapter be amended, either as we go through this procedure in Committee now or in the future by regulations, to deal with the fundamental problem, which I keep banging on about, that housing markets are different in different places? There are parts of the country—not just in north-east Lancashire but in lots of other areas too—where the housing market is not buoyant but flat and fragile. In these places, the introduction of starter homes into the system could have serious unintended consequences which harm the market rather than boost it.

I want to give noble Lords the prices of three or four houses for sale at the moment. In so doing, I refer to the asking prices in the property supplement of the wonderful newspapers, the Nelson Leader and the Colne Times, published on Friday—so they are up to date. I have to say that in our area houses often go for less than the asking price; the idea of forcing prices up is not known to us.

I was taken by one of the featured properties at the beginning of this supplement because it is in the ward I represent, which is normally not featured. It is one of their top properties and a two-fronted terrace house. It is described as:

“Immaculately presented and substantial in size … dwelling has two reception rooms … three bedrooms”,

et cetera. It is obviously highly modernised. It continues:

“The garden has an area of hardstanding … and views toward Pendle Hill”.

What more does anybody want? An offer—and this is incredibly high for a terraced house in this part of Colne—of £110,000 is being sought by the owners.

Localism Bill

Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Lord Greaves

Monday 31st October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, always moves his amendments superbly, and I am fascinated by them, although I heard it elsewhere than in the Chamber this evening, and I apologise for that. But I think that he does not look at this matter from the point of view of people being elected. Ever so many people are elected simply because they have always had some pet subject that was very much of local interest, and that is what got them elected. Any of those people, under this amendment, will find themselves being accused or blamed for the fact that they fought in that way. I am thinking of the Member of the House of Commons, who was elected on the single issue about the hospital in Worcestershire, and elected not once but twice on that issue. Would we have all condemned him if he had shown a particular interest in the hospital in Worcestershire? It is unrealistic to believe that people could be completely opposed to something that they had fought for for years.

The other side of that is that anyone sitting on any planning committee should do so with an open mind. If they do not have one, they have no right to sit on that committee and they should declare it as such. That should deal with the matter, rather than this amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

I declare an interest, since it is Third Reading, or redeclare an interest as a member of Pendle Borough Council, which has a local planning authority on whose planning committee I sit.

I smiled when the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, got into a little bit of trouble for trying to use his native Bradfordian flat irony in your Lordships' House, which is something that I also get into trouble about for the same reasons. I sometimes think that we should run a campaign so that we have a means of telling Hansard to insert a smiley at appropriate places, but I suspect that that is a campaign that I will not win in my lifetime.

I regret the fact that I did not get involved more in this issue in Clause 25, as it now is, earlier in the passage of the Bill. It is not completely satisfactory as it stands, but I think that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, would make things worse. I shall explain why in a minute. I do so not from his position as an eminent lawyer who knows about things like predetermination, predisposition and perhaps predestination as well, I do not know—or perhaps not. I come from the point of view of how these things are now looked at in local government. What people have not really been talking about is that within local government there is a general belief at the moment that there are two types of issue. There are those that people say are in some way quasi-judicial, or involve things like appointments and disciplinary hearings, as well as planning and licensing, whereby the approach of councillors has to be less predisposed than on other matters. When I got back on the council eight years ago, I spent the whole election campaign speaking about the number of empty, boarded-up houses in my ward. I thought that the position had deteriorated appallingly in the six years I had not been a councillor. The electors actually agreed with me, for once. I have spent a lot of the eight years since then working hard on the council to do something about that problem. I am totally biased on this matter; I think that it is an appalling problem, and I campaign on the council and outside the council to try to solve it and make no bones whatever about that. But if a planning application came up in relation to one of those houses, I would step back and regard it and treat it as a planning application. That is quite well known within local government, although perhaps not as well known in some councils as it should be—but it is the case. Therefore, there is a problem here in that both the Bill and the amendment are broad-brush and do not make that distinction between different types of issue, which are certainly well understood within local government.

I have problems with the words predisposition and predetermination. It may be that in the courts of this land they are well understood, but I do not believe that most councillors would understand those words if you put them to them. The word that is more used in local authority government in relation to that kind of problem is fettering. Councillors are told that they must not fetter their discretion when it comes to things like licensing and planning applications. That is the word that is used—but fettering includes both predisposition and predetermination. The attempt to pull back from the straitjacket that councillors are in at the moment is well done.

I do not think that the position is well understood, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said on Report and said again today, but one problem is that different councils apply different rules. In some cases, when planning applications are submitted—that is probably what we are talking about most here—councillors are banned absolutely from speaking to anybody, including residents, applicants, objectors or the local press. Some councils are absolutely draconian in doing this: one is not allowed to talk to anybody unless one is in the presence of a planning officer. That is totally unrealistic on many councils that do not have lots of spare planning officers to wander around with councillors who are talking to people on their patch.

All this did not originally come from the courts. I particularly noticed it because I was not a councillor for six years and during that time, between 14 and eight years ago, the whole regime changed. It came from decisions of the Local Government Ombudsman, where there were complaints that councillors had made up their mind on planning applications before the applications were dealt with. It also came from references to the standards authorities, particularly the Standards Board for England. That is where this whole regime within local government has come from.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, made the point that councillors are different because they are elected. Therefore, the regime that has to apply to councillors as opposed to other public officials and people serving on tribunals and so on is different because they are elected. Very often they have fought election campaigns and taken part in local campaigning. We have examples from around the country. A market town provides one classic example. A particular political party had campaigned vigorously against the redevelopment of a town centre that involved a big supermarket as the core of that redevelopment. All its councillors—the party had swept the board—were banned from taking part in the part in the decisions once they were elected because it was said they had fettered their discretion because they were part of a party which had won elections on that basis. Clearly there is a huge conflict here between local democracy and fair decision-making. Electors cannot be expected to understand that.

Regarding the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I would say that there is a lot of talk of bail hostels. As long as a bail hostel is small and is confined to an existing house, I do not think it needs planning permission. It is not a good example in that sense, but I understand the point made by the noble Lord. We have all had to deal with a very difficult application where a lot of residents have been strongly opposed to it, yet it has actually been right. That is when councillors have to gird their loins and do what is right. They do not always do it, but that is democracy.

The amendment of the noble Lord is an admirable attempt to clarify the position. Subsection (2)(c) of the amendment states that,

“an earlier statement or conduct by the decision-maker that amounts to predetermination shall be taken into account and given such weight as is appropriate in the circumstances of the case”,

I do not believe that even local authority lawyers will understand that sufficiently to give clear advice to their councillors, and councillors certainly will not understand it because they will not understand what amounts to predetermination. The words,

“given such weight as is appropriate in the circumstances of the case”,

are a recipe for a lot of lawyers to earn a lot of money when matters come to court to determine what they mean in the circumstances of a particular case. I do not believe it is a useful check on what one does in a particular circumstance that happens locally. Therefore, I do not think the amendment of the noble Lord provides clarity. In a practical sense, at a local level, it will make matters a lot worse, with no clarity.

The problem is that council lawyers are well known for being top of the league of people who err on the side of caution on pretty well everything. If the House were to pass this, it would result in no change to the present position, in which it is the councillors who are totally fettered from doing the job that people elect them to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Hart of Chilton, said that if councillors are given the advice that they cannot say or do anything or take part in any discussions before it goes to a planning committee, it is bad advice. All I can say is that if it is bad advice, it is universal bad advice. Given the choice of two not wholly satisfactory wordings, I very much prefer that of the Government.

Localism Bill

Debate between Baroness Gardner of Parkes and Lord Greaves

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

My Lords, my Amendment 155 is in this group. After listening to the complexity of the last amendment, I must say that mine is extremely simple. However, it is not quite what I intended to table. It is headed, “Requirement for consultation on retrospective application”, which is exactly what I believe should happen. However, it says that the local planning authority may require an applicant to do this. My view is that the council planning authority should do this.

I have had personal experience in two parts of the country. In my village, local people supported an application to convert a barn opposite into a home and to build a wall two metres high. Suddenly, we found that we were faced with a wall at least two to three metres higher than originally proposed. When we said that we were not consulted, we were told that the builders of the wall had been given retrospective permission. However, it was given without any of the people who had taken an interest in the application, and in many cases supported it, having any idea that the thing had gone back for retrospective permission. I believe that anyone who sent in comments on the original application should certainly be consulted again, but I do not think I intended it to be the applicant doing it. I intended it to be part of the planning procedure. It is a very simple amendment. It cut out the lovely view we all had of the village green, the only unspoilt part, where there are sheep and so forth wandering around. Instead, we have got a wall three metres extra in height. I think this sort of thing is happening to people everywhere, and it should be covered.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I have the fourth amendment —Amendment 170CH—in the group, which is a bit of a mixed bag. I also added my name to the first amendment which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, and support everything he said about it.

Amendment 170CH is another amendment which originated with the RTPI. I am also grateful for help with it from Vivien Green, who is a planning consultant who lives not very far away from me in Pendle. The amendment would add two new sections to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. The first would be new Section 106D, “Notification of initiation of development”, the key part of which reads:

“A person who intends to carry out development for which permission has been granted or for which a local development order, a neighbourhood development order or a community right to build order has been made must as soon as practicable after deciding on a date on which to initiate the development inform the local planning authority of that date”.

It also requires the local planning authority to draw attention to this provision when it gives permission for development.

The second new section, Section 106E, “Display of notice during development”, states that,

“A person carrying out relevant development must display a notice containing prescribed information while the development is taking place”,

and gives some more details about the classes of development to which this applies—it obviously would not apply to small developments or simple changes of use—and to some other provisions in relation to it.

There is no doubt that there is a general problem with enforcement. In general, enforcement is something that local planning authorities do not always do as well as they do some of their other tasks. It is seen as something that you do when you have a bit of spare time, perhaps, and it does not get the same resources put into it. That includes enforcement of conditions and of compliance with the details of planning applications. It is our view that a provision that developers and people with planning permission should have to inform the local planning authority when development starts would be of help in this respect.

Such a provision would ensure that checks can then be made on pre-commencement conditions and subsequently that development is proceeding in accordance with approved plans. It is already a mandatory requirement for developers to give 48 hours’ notice of intention to commence work under the building regulations. Of course, developers may use someone other than the council to provide building control, but, nevertheless, many still use the council. Even if a developer is going to use a council building inspector, in a number cases the development can commence by the actions of the developer long before a building control notice is required.

I have been provided with correspondence between the Member of Parliament for Pendle, Andrew Stephenson MP, who was originally contacted by Vivien Green to take this matter up, and Bob Neill, the Minister, whose letter puts the argument about why the Government are not happy about this, which is perhaps what the Minister is going to say. The letter says:

“However, I would be reluctant to impose a further statutory requirement of this nature on developers, in addition to those that apply under Building Regulations and the Community Infrastructure Levy system, particularly when we cannot know whether local planning authorities would be likely to use the information routinely or only exceptionally. If a developer is suspected of having failed to comply with any pre-commencement condition, the local planning authority’s enforcement team is still able to take action”.

However, I think the argument that it is onerous should not be taken too seriously. Filling in a simple form, possibly a prepaid one, to notify the council of the intention to start development is not a great burden and is definitely not in the same league as the CIL system. Where developers are using the local authority for building control purposes, they have to notify them under the building regs. It would be perfectly possible to have a joint form so that there would be hardly any extra work. It has been a statutory duty to notify the planning authority in Scotland since 2009, and developers did not raise this requirement as an issue or a cost when the impact of those changes was assessed recently by the Scottish Government. It is a relatively minor thing for people to do but it could have a significant effect in improving the system of making sure that people are adhering to conditions and to the planning application that has been approved. In our view, it would be a useful small reform. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.