Localism Bill
Debate between Baroness Valentine and Lord Newton of Braintree
Lord Newton of Braintree
My Lords, in what people will no doubt regard as my characteristically generalist way, I rise not to move some clever amendment or ask some difficult questions but simply to express my support for what I take to be the basic thrust of my noble friend Lord True’s amendment, which goes to the heart of one of the tensions in the Bill. This is called the Localism Bill, and it is supposed to promote localism, but all too often we find that localism means what the Secretary of State wants it to mean rather than what people think it means locally. If I am right, I think that my noble friend is saying that there is a risk that the proposed neighbourhood forums—in the case of authorities that do not really want them to work—will simply be formulaic arrangements with box ticking and meetings where they can say who has attended. That is a risk, at any rate; we have all seen it happen. Meanwhile, however, perfectly good working arrangements in authorities such as those of my noble friend are made to be scrapped in favour of doing this other stuff. In other words, if you have a vehicle with four purpose-built wheels that work perfectly well, the Bill would appear to force you to replace them with the Secretary of State’s bog-standard design wheels. I do not see what is to be gained by that. It is not consistent with localism and we need the additional flexibility that my noble friend seeks.
Baroness Valentine
I declare an interest as chief executive of London First, a business membership organisation including infrastructure providers in its membership. I support Amendment 148C, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, which seeks to exclude development associated with nationally significant infrastructure from the scope of neighbourhood development orders. This refers to infrastructure which gets, or would have got, planning permission via the Planning Act 2008.
A signal box next to a railway track is perhaps a good example. It may not constitute nationally significant infrastructure in the sense that the track does, but the signal box is integral to the running of the railway. If a neighbourhood plan had the ability to set land-use planning policy for the area containing the signal box, the plans could affect the running of the railway. It is therefore important that in drawing up neighbourhood plans and the associated development orders, development that is ancillary but integral to the working of nationally significant infrastructure is excluded from the scope of neighbourhood planning.