Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority Regulations 2024

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Lucas

Monday 27th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee of my relevant interests as a councillor on Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

These four statutory instruments are politically and historically interesting. First, they recreate in whole or in part the historic counties of Devon, Lancashire, Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. That is a positive change. It is another reversal of Thatcherite policy, which, in this instance, abolished county councils. Strategic planning and provision of such key local services as public transport, housing and economic development can be much better made across a larger geography. That change is therefore welcome. However, I am not letting the Minister off the hook that easily. I have a number of questions applicable to each of the relevant instruments.

First, on governance, can the Minister confirm that meetings of either the mayoral or the combined county authorities will be held in public and that scrutiny committees are a requirement, with powers for pre-decision scrutiny and to call any decision that is challenged under the relevant procedural rules?

The Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority combines two very unequal—in both population and geography—partners. Can the Minister say whether that disparity has been considered and whether any issues have been raised in the wider county on this point in the consultation, the details of which I obviously have not seen? I ask this because there will be inequality of representation on the authority from these very unequal parts, and I wonder whether that will result in a bit of friction when it comes to making difficult decisions.

I note at this point that, because of the efforts made during the passage of the then levelling-up Bill by the Minister, her team and me, district councils will have representation on the combined authorities by law. That was a very important change to the Bill.

I move on to the Hull and East Riding Mayoral Combined Authority. There will be a mayor from May this year; we will see how that pans out. I recognise the appeal to the Government of having a single person elected to lead a combined authority. However, I and my colleagues are not convinced that, from the residents’ standpoint, this is a positive move. Mayors will be tolerated—this is my experience; I live in a mayoral authority—while there is no mayoral precept and while they are basically determining the details of delegated powers and funding from government. However, when either of those things changes—if there is a mayoral precept of a considerable amount or when there are difficult decisions to be made on funding allocation, which I anticipate will come with bus franchising—I anticipate greater concern from residents that their voice is not being heard.

For instance, in the Hull and East Riding Mayoral Combined Authority area, which I know better, I can easily see that, with the rural parts of East Riding and the very urban area of Hull City Council, it could be difficult to make decisions on allocating funding under the bus franchising legislation, which I hope will be passed. Trouble is coming down the track, I think.

The Greater Lincolnshire Combined County Authority recreates the historic county of Lincolnshire, which is positive. It combines the seven district councils of the current county council, plus the two unitaries of North Lincs and North East Lincs. The issue I want to raise concerns transport funding. In this statutory instrument, the constituent authorities remain the highways authorities but central funding goes directly to the mayor, who then has the responsibility of cascading the funding to each of the three existing highways authorities. Can the Minister describe how fair allocation can be assured and whether using this mechanism will add to bureaucracy by adding yet another layer of governance?

The Lancashire Combined County Authority will, as we know, consist of the existing county council, the unitaries of Blackpool and Blackburn and Darwen, plus the 12 existing district councils of the current county council. We have had the devolution White Paper. If its proposals are accepted—I hope that there will be some challenge to them—this will result in the demise of district councils. For Lancashire and Lincolnshire, this would result in another wholesale local government reorganisation within a short period, with the added confusion that accompanies such structural change. Those of us who are involved understand what might happen; residents will not. Have the Government considered these two separate reorganisations and how they will be managed without causing confusion and additional costs?

As I said at the outset, this is the right move for strategic decision-making. However, I look forward to the answers to my queries from the Minister.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s exposition of these SIs. I completely understand why we are moving in this direction: greater efficiency and effectiveness. I very much hope that the Government can, as this process moves on, increase the level of effective devolution and perhaps even give some real independence over revenue to these authorities so that they can develop their full potential.

In addition, when we reach Committee on the hereditary Peers Bill, I will propose that, rather than hereditary Peers being the eligible candidates in by-elections, it should be people nominated by these new authorities and their mayors. We can use the existing mechanisms that we have to start to introduce a measure of regional representation into the House. I hope that the Government will have their imaginative hat on when we come to that. The mechanism is in place; let us use it to move in a direction that many of us would like to go in and to take at least a small step.

I am a resident of East Sussex, which is one of the candidates for the next round of this measure. I note that the local proposals involve a mayor for the whole of Sussex, thereby recreating not the original county council but the original kingdom of Sussex—perhaps we might have a prince rather than a mayor. What concerns me most is how the towns and communities in these new unitaries will come to cherish, assert and grow their own identities. I very much hope that I can persuade the Minister to circulate widely to all the councils that are candidates for this, as well as their constituent parts, examples of how communities flourish in unitaries, including what structures and relationships make that happen well.

The process of transition from “a county plus districts” to a unitary system will be hugely time-absorbing for the councils involved. They will have no space in their heads to do anything other than make that work well. The constituent communities underneath that need to understand how to play their part and how best to organise themselves so that they have a real role to play in what comes afterwards.

Looking in particular at East Sussex, along the seaside, we have Rye, Hastings, St Leonards, Bexhill, Pevensey, Eastbourne, Seaford and Newhaven. They are all immensely different places. Each has its own identity and its own way of doing things. In the interior, you have towns such as Lewes, which are really different, as well as ordinary country towns such as Uckfield and Heathfield. There is a huge variety of different communities within what will be one unitary: different histories, different spirits.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Lucas

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the Government will take this amendment seriously. I would like to see them accept it. I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that ancient woodland is irreplaceable. It just takes a very long time—a matter of centuries—to replace it. As part of our planning, when it comes to 30 by 30, where to put woodlands and the extremely important issue of connection, we ought to be saying that losing 0.2% of our ancient woodland every year is not good. We want to plan to add 0.5% a year to where we plant and how we connect. We should have a long-term strategy to make sure that, in 100 years, we have twice as much woodland as now; otherwise, we will continue to bite into it.

A planning permission is currently being sought in Kent. I can see the argument for it. We want a supply of ragstone. A lot of important buildings are built of ragstone. This may be entirely the right place from which to get it. An additional Thames crossing is in prospect. We may well need it. We know that there will be circumstances in which we want to tear down ancient woodland. You cannot just take the soil and stick it somewhere else in the hope that things will re-establish themselves. It needs much better, more careful and longer-term planning.

Ten thousand years ago, there was none of this stuff. It has moved and come since. All these plants and animals have moved here during this period. We should not think that we cannot multiply it. We should be planning on the basis that we can, which needs a lot of thought, care and consideration. I declare an interest. I own a PAWS—a plantation on an ancient woodland site. I do not have any ancient woodland but I own a space where one used to be. We should give it careful attention, ensuring that every time we damage a woodland, there is proper consultation and consideration. It should not just be about whether we should lose this bit but about how we, as a local authority, plan to end up with more in a century’s time, rather than saying, “Shall we eat this slice of an ever-diminishing cake now?”.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I ought to start by saying that I am a member of the Woodland Trust and therefore protection of woodland is very important to me, so I wholly support the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, in her amendment.

Ancient woodland is ancient. The definition of ancient woodland is that it has been around since the 1600s or even longer. The combined effect of a copse or even a small woodland area in biodiversity terms is enormous. The Woodland Trust and others define these areas as being our equivalent of the rainforests in the tropics in the extent of the diversity of nature that is encouraged to live among the trees. So, it is not simply a question of cutting down a tree; it is destroying a habitat. I think that is what we ought to be thinking of and it is exactly what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, thought about.

Some of these ancient woodland areas are homes to threatened or at-risk species, so again it is not just about, “Let’s cut down the old oak tree”; it is about protecting a whole habitat for a huge number of species. The National Planning Policy Framework, which was published last week, has a tiny paragraph saying that

“development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats … such as ancient woodland … should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons and a suitable compensation strategy exists”.

If only it had ended at “should be refused”. Because if we are, as a country, intent on protecting and enhancing our environment, those bodies of ancient woodland are exactly the sites that we should be protecting in full. What the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is asking, which we on these Benches wholly support, is that we strengthen that protection of ancient woodland, which is a key element of any Government’s environmental protection. So, I thank the noble Baroness for tabling the amendment and if she presses it to a vote, as she has indicated, we will be with her.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I cannot resist being able to speak about letterboxes. To be honest, letterbox height is important. Even those of us who are seasoned leaflet deliverers do not have the same daily meeting with letterboxes of various heights as the posties do.

From the point of view of the people who are doing their daily rounds delivering mail, we ought to have letterboxes not just at the right height but of the right width, horizontal not vertical, and where you can push thin letters through without their being crumpled up. The hard brushes and spring-loaded letterboxes should be condemned to oblivion, in my view.

Just as important is the number of Royal Mail deliverers who find, when they put their hand through a letterbox to deliver a letter, that there is a dog at the other end that takes a snap at their fingers. When people in my ward help with delivery, we give them a ruler to push through. I can show you the bite marks on the ruler. Dogs are behind those letterboxes and therefore there ought to be safeguards at the other side of the letterboxes for those who are delivering.

I had to go to one house in Yorkshire that said on the door, “Beware of the cat”. When you tried to deliver a leaflet, a paw came out, with claws out ready to strike if you were not quick enough. Beware of cats in Yorkshire, and beware of dogs everywhere.

Although we are making light of this, it is important that it is addressed: that we get letterboxes at a height where posties do not have to break their backs to deliver Royal Mail. Get rid of those horrible hard brushes—there is no need for any of that, and let us get the height right. That will be to everybody’s benefit.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I support everything the noble Baroness just said. From long experience of canvassing and getting bloody knuckles as you try to withdraw your hand from the letterbox but the spring bites them, shortly before the dog’s teeth just miss your retreating hand, I think there would be support across the House and general congratulations if the Government were able to do something along these lines, but I suspect it should not require retrofitting. Chewing up people’s front doors would just be too expensive, but any new front door should certainly not have any of these devices on it.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Lucas

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I cede everything to my noble friend Lord Young when it comes to experience and wisdom in this matter, but I am very attracted by the idea of running the pilot proposed by the Bill. It has long seemed to me deeply inequitable that when it comes to property development, the landowner gets so much for the uplift and the community gets so little. We very much need to explore and try out ways of setting that right, and this seems an excellent thing to try. I share my noble friend’s reservations that aspects of it may turn out not to be right, but that should not prevent us having a go. My amendment just says that if it proves to be a success, and I shall keep my fingers firmly crossed that it is, it would seem foolish to let it die after 10 years without giving Parliament the opportunity to let it continue.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, very much for the best explanation of community land auctions that I have heard. I have searched the internet to find a good explanation but have heard the best one this afternoon from him.

The issue is how we capture for local communities the uplift—a very large uplift in many cases—in land values once planning consent has been given to a site. This is one way in which it could work and it has some attraction to it. However, living as I do in West Yorkshire, where land values are not like those in Surrey, Hampshire or Berkshire, the inevitable consequence of community land auctions is exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said: to the well off, more shall be given while to the least well off, little shall be given.

As far as I can tell, this will exacerbate regional inequalities. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, this is a levelling-up Bill. Living where I do, I was really looking forward to lots of proposals in it to reduce regional inequalities, but this is one example of where it will do the opposite. Somehow we have to find ways of extracting the very considerable uplift in land values once planning consent is given for housing.

Where I live, we still have many former industrial sites in need of costly remediation, and those land values will not be there for a community land auction. The provision will work only on greenfield sites, which is contrary to what we are trying to achieve. It will increase regional inequalities, which is contrary to the purpose of the Bill. If we can find a better way of extracting land value once planning consent or planning allocations have been given, that is where we should go. I am not convinced that this is the way, interesting though the proposal is. “Let us see the evidence” is what I would like to say. I know we are going to do a pilot, but somebody somewhere in the department has done some thinking and provided some evidence. Let us see it before we make a decision on this, because otherwise it is a dive into the unknown.

My last point is that there have not been good examples recently of local authorities getting involved in commercial practice—in fact, the contrary is the case. That is where this would take us: local authorities bidding for and buying land at a certain value and then hoping that, once they sell it on with planning consent, the extra can be extracted. That is putting a lot of faith in the commercial expertise within local authorities, which I am not sure they have. If I was putting a bet on developers and landowners against local authorities, I know which one would win.

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Lucas

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I urge the Government to take the opportunity to give the Bill some wording that expands its ambit, and to take advantage of the leverage that it gives them—as the noble Lord has noted, it is a generous disbursement of funds—to achieve other policy objectives. The policy objective that I, personally, would like the Bill to support is whatever the outcome is of the Government’s current review of toilet provision in general.

It has been a joke all my life, let alone my noble friend’s life, how there is always a queue at the ladies and none at the gents. We have not had equal provision in relation to demand. We now need to recognise that there are people—particularly those who are committed transgender—who are not easily able to take advantage of toilets that are just for men or just for women. Having toilets that are universally unisex, such as those in the Old Vic and the Department for Education visitor accommodation, is extremely difficult for many women and some men, including me, to put up with.

There are, therefore, matters of policy relating to the provision of toilets that we can reasonably anticipate will come to the fore over the next couple of years. It would be good to give the Government, in this Bill, the ability to lever the rates relief that they are giving in order to achieve their policies. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, pointed out, we may find that over time there will be opportunities to expand the Bill’s ambit to other worthwhile premises in ways which, as my noble friend insisted, go along with the modus operandi of the valuation office. That is fine, but we are missing a chance if we leave the Bill as it is and do not give the Government additional power along the lines that I have suggested. I beg to move.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is not clear to me why the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, believes that it is necessary to—I quote—prescribe a definition of public lavatories. It is not clear what policy objective would be achieved by his amendments. Without wishing to cause offence, that clarity has not been expanded during the noble Lord’s introduction of the amendment.

As we have already heard, there is currently a huge variety of provision: some are in old-style toilet blocks, some include Changing Places and some include baby changing facilities. Some modern provision consists of a single facility into which only one person at a time can enter. Some public toilets are unisex, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, explained. That is increasingly the case in modern office blocks. I have never heard anyone being particularly concerned about that provision. Public toilets are simply a facility for members of the public. I do not on earth see what is gained by prescribing a definition.

The best thing we can do, having heard the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, explain his amendments, is agree to disagree with him. I, for one, cannot support this amendment.

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Baroness Pinnock and Lord Lucas

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

[Baroness Pinnock (LD) [V]]