Localism Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

I start by agreeing with pretty much everything that the noble Lord, Lord True, has just said. I have more than a few amendments in this group—I will speak generally and raise the questions they bring up rather than go through them individually.

Liberal Democrats are supportive of and excited by the concept of neighbourhood planning but we have two practical criteria to apply to this Bill. First, we want it to work; and secondly, we want it to work in the interest of local communities. We are not sure that the Bill as it stands does that. We are into a new world—a new architecture—of a new neighbourhood planning system based on neighbourhood areas and on authorised and qualifying bodies to carry out planning functions in these areas, which may be parish councils; or, in unparished areas, neighbourhood forums. These bodies can make neighbourhood development orders and neighbourhood plans. This is quite revolutionary stuff.

I will indicate my recent experience of neighbourhood planning at this stage. In recent years I have been involved, as a local councillor, in several master-planning exercises under the housing market renewal programme in east Lancashire, involving consultation with and participation by local residents and businesses in areas of Victorian terraced housing and local industry. I was also a member of the Whitefield Regeneration Partnership in a similar, but mainly Asian heritage, area in Nelson with special conservation status that started with an inquiry-by-design process run by the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment. I was a member of the partnership board which was chaired by my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland.

Issues and questions raised by our amendments include the designation of neighbourhood forums. We question the concept in the new Section 61F(5)(a)(ii) of the Town and Country Planning Act of a neighbourhood forum set up solely for,

“promoting the carrying on of trades, professions or other businesses”.

There is a government amendment to this effect. The question is whether this will mean businesses giving themselves planning permission via a neighbourhood development order. What is the role of residents—both those living in the area, however few they may be, or residents living just outside the area, who may be many—who may be affected by nuisances caused and decisions made?

My noble friend Lord True has already referred to the membership of neighbourhood forums. We are concerned that their membership must be inclusive and their internal processes democratic, so that everyone who lives in the area and all councillors representing the area can take part in neighbourhood planning, and to make sure that the forums are representative of all social and geographical parts of the local community. Similar amendments deal with this issue. This is a central issue for us in this part of the Bill. It is absolutely crucial that we do not end up with neighbourhood forums that are run by a local clique for their own particular purposes. In what ways does the Bill guarantee this? What extra prescribed conditions for possible designation of an organisation or body as a neighbourhood forum are intended in new Section 61F(6)? In particular will narrow profit-making bodies be allowed to set up as neighbourhood forums? These are crucial matters, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

On parish councils as neighbourhood areas, new Section 61G(3) says in the case of a parish council the specified area,

“must be one that consists of or includes the whole or any part of the area of the council”.

So a neighbourhood area, for neighbourhood planning purposes, can be the area of a parish council or a part of the area of a parish council. Can two or more parish councils combine to form one neighbourhood area? This is an obvious question in relation to small parish councils that are simply not big enough to do the job on their own. And what happens in areas that only have parish meetings?

Neighbourhood development orders effectively give planning permission outside the normal system. We will be talking about these orders quite lot in the coming hours. What can be done to create democratic legitimacy in areas without parish councils? Is there not a serious democratic deficit if self-appointed neighbourhood forums are able to make neighbourhood development orders and indeed neighbourhood plans? This is a critical issue for us—the democratic deficit at the neighbourhood level in areas that are unparished. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, my Amendment 148AZZC relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has been saying, which I generally support, but is much narrower. It reflects concerns shared by the Royal Town Planning Institute and relates entirely to the purpose of setting up a neighbourhood forum, and hence making a neighbourhood plan.

At Report in another place, the Government amended subsection (5)(a) of new Section 61F so that an organisation can be designated as a neighbourhood forum if,

“it is established expressly for either or both of the following purposes—

(i) furthering the social, economic and environmental well-being of individuals”—

I abbreviate a bit—and,

“(ii) promoting the carrying on of trades, professions or other businesses”.

There was very little discussion of the government amendment in the other place.

The purport of “either or both” is that the neighbourhood forum and any consequent neighbourhood plan could be set up purely with the sole purpose of carrying on trades, professions or other businesses. There is no reason for that not to be one of the purposes, but government guidance and most ideas of planning take account of economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable development. A neighbourhood plan should surely not address one activity alone.

The Government may want to think again and adopt something along the lines of my amendment, which makes it clear that the purpose of the neighbourhood forum is to further the social, economic and environmental well-being of the residents, including carrying on businesses if need be, but would not allow this at the expense of the other factors.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have five amendments in this group and will deal with them extremely briefly, because they are really all addressed to the same issue. I do not find at all clear the relationship between a neighbourhood area that may consist wholly or largely of residential properties and one that has an established business in it. My noble friend has tabled a very important group of amendments to establish that there can be neighbourhood business areas. That is certainly a very considerable advance. But when one is dealing, as one does in Schedule 9, with definitions of bodies that can be neighbourhood areas and areas that they can cover, can that include a neighbourhood area with a business? Can they form a neighbourhood area? Is all that in fact now covered by government Amendment 148AE, which comes in a future group? I and others are not at all clear on what will be the interaction where there are combined communities of businesses and residences. Those must cover a very large part of the country, which might form themselves into neighbourhood areas. I get the impression that the Bill has been designed on the assumption that they are all going to be residential properties, when of course they are not. They may well be small businesses as well. It would be very helpful if my noble friend could indicate how these can work together and form a neighbourhood area.

I disagree with my noble friend Lord Greaves—we are moving into an entirely different area here. Quite a lot of local plans have developed around the country, and I will not weary the Committee by reading out a list of them. It seems important that if one is going to have all this new bureaucracy to try to surround this whole area, which is what we are getting in the Bill, the question is whether it can be made to work as successfully as quite a lot of the local plans have been working. I entirely support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord True, but if my noble friend on the Front Bench can give us some indication of how the various components of what a neighbourhood plan would be can work together, that would be extremely helpful. A number of bodies outside will read her words with very great care.

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[Lord Best]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 152ZA and 153ZA, which concern the design considerations in neighbourhood plans. This House contains many eminent champions of good design, including the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who have added their names to the amendment and are in their places today. I would only say, in declaring my interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, that my experience of looking after housing projects has proved to me that poor design not only alienates and depresses those who have to suffer it but is wastefully expensive because it does not last.

Contrast the disasters of now demolished council housing from the 1960s and 1970s with the enduring popularity of the homes built many decades earlier in the garden villages of Rowntree’s New Earswick, York, and Cadbury’s Bourneville, Birmingham. Last week the president of the RIBA, Ruth Read, launched an excellent report, Good Design: it all adds up, which the relevant Minister, John Penrose, highly commended. Design matters, so it seems entirely right that neighbourhood plans should be just as mindful of the requirements of good design as the local development plans of local authorities themselves. The first of these two amendments places a responsibility on neighbourhoods when engaging in neighbourhood planning to have,

“regard to the desirability of achieving good design”.

This replicates precisely the existing obligation on local authorities which resulted from an amendment in your Lordships’ House to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill in 2004.

Amendment 153ZA would mean that when neighbourhood plans are examined, as they will have to be under the Bill's provisions, the independent examiners would have special regard to the desirability of achieving good design. It may be argued that this issue can be addressed at one remove, through national or local government planning requirements. Publication of the national planning policy framework—when we finally see it—may shed light on the emphasis to be given nationally to issues of good design, and because the neighbourhood plan must be,

“in general conformity with the strategic”

priorities of the local development plan, good design could perhaps be implied through that route. However, the experts tell me that this is likely to be too weak a link.

Ministers in another place have helpfully accepted an amendment that requires the independent examiners to pay special regard to conservation areas and listed buildings. It seems equally important and worthy of an amendment to require the examiners to have special regard to design quality. I know that the decentralisation Minister, Greg Clarke, also favours good design and I hope that these amendments will appeal to the Government.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, in supporting Amendments 152ZA and 153ZA on the crucial aspect of the good design of the places that people live in, which has such wide support from professional and interest groups, I take comfort from the Minister’s undertaking in her letter to me of 20 June:

“We remain committed to promoting the highest standards of architecture and design”.

Indeed, this is what the Government did in also undertaking to honour the provisions relating to design in the previous housing and planning Acts. Those provisions, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, bound local authorities but not neighbourhoods because neighbourhoods did not come into being as the deciders of planning until the present Bill, so it is only consistent that the duty to have regard to good design should be extended to neighbourhoods, as Amendment 152ZA says.

Amendment 153ZA is consistent with the Government's undertaking and I need hardly repeat the evidence of the profound impact that design has on enjoyment, security, amenity, health and leisure. I am sure the Government would agree that communities should be enabled to make good design choices.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have tabled three amendments in this group. I apologise that I missed my amendments in the earlier group, because the Committee is making such breakneck progress on this Bill, but I wish to speak now. However, I support both the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the cross-reference by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to Schedule 12 and the need to clarify the position in relation to conservation areas and the setting and general appearance of buildings, which from Schedule 12 seems not to apply to neighbourhood plans. My amendments attempt to relate neighbourhood plans to the broader planning structure, which still exists. The Government have, of course, deleted any application of regional spatial plans but there are still national policies, national advice and the local plan.

This part of the Bill, paragraph 8 of the new schedule in Schedule 10, relates to the issues which the examiner should take into account when considering neighbourhood plans. It seems to me that under paragraph 8(2), there is a weak relationship between the requirements on the examiner and the reference to national policies. We all know that “having regard to” national policies and advice containing guidance means that you can take no notice of it. Indeed, that is often the case. I am suggesting a rather stronger form of words: that the examiner should consider whether the plan “is compatible with” the national policies and the advice issued by the Secretary of State and that, in relation to the local plan in paragraph 8(2)(d), rather than the order being,

“in general conformity with the strategic policies”

of the local authority’s plan it should be in,

“conformity with the objectives and policies”,

of that plan. It seems to me that general conformity is, again, fairly weak. If the examiner were to find that the plan is in general conformity or had taken into account the Secretary of State's advice but then totally ignored it, there would be problems.

We need to place some tighter requirements on the examiner in this regard. I am all for flexibility and localism but if we are maintaining a structure of planning, there needs to be interrelationship between its various layers. My three amendments in this section, starting with—I get lost in this alphabet soup—Amendment 153ZZA, therefore would attempt to tighten up the form of wording in this section. I commend them to the Minister.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, unusually, because I nearly always agree with almost everyone who has spoken, I want to express a note of scepticism which I even dare to hope might be helpful to my noble friend on the Front Bench, if she is looking for that. I am a bit sceptical about this because what is now regarded as dreadful 1950s/1960s stuff was regarded as good design at the time. This is totally subjective and I do not understand how it is going to be interpreted. In any circumstances, people will have regard to design but whether it is good design may depend on whether it is thought to be so at the moment. It may be thought a totally rubbish design in 20 or 30 years’ time, which is exactly what has happened, so what is the point of writing it in?

[Baroness Whitaker]

Would the noble Lord agree that if local people participate in the choice of the design, as is good design practice, it is more likely to suit their needs?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

That is a slightly separate question of what they feel about their area at the time, which clearly ought to be taken into account. It is not necessarily the same as good design.

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[Baroness Whitaker]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness, but I am not quite clear how the national policy planning framework will bite on neighbourhood decisions. How are they bound by the national framework?

[Baroness Hanham]

They will be bound by the local development plan, and the national policy framework will impact on them through that. The local development plan must have more than regard to the national planning policy framework, and that will bite through the local authorities’ plans.