Localism Bill
Debate between Earl Cathcart and Lord Shipley
Earl Cathcart
The noble Baroness raises a good point—what about them, indeed? If communities do not use them at the moment, they do not form part of this Bill. It is the very question that my noble friend Lord Reay has just raised.
My second point is that the Government seem hell-bent on the trigger point being when an asset is disposed of or sold. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, I do not think that the selling of an asset of community value hits the spot at all. Hundreds of shops and pubs are sold every week up and down the country, with no loss to communities, as the purchasers are another shopkeeper or publican. So the business continues with no loss to the community. The real trigger point is when the facilities are closed down subject to an application for change of use or a demolition order. So I ask my noble friend to listen sympathetically to my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts when he speaks to his Amendment 144.
To illustrate the point, there is great concern over the loss of so many school sports fields to development over the past 20 or 30 years. I do not believe that the measures in this Bill would do anything to stop this in future. The Minister might say, “But they can be listed as assets of community value”. And so they can. But the local authority can give itself planning permission for development without a sale of the land taking place and without triggering the right to bid provisions. The local authority can receive a shed load of money from the developers and retain ownership of the land for a nominal annual ground rent. The land has not been disposed of or sold, but the playing field has been irretrievably lost. Surely there should be an obligation on local authorities to supply alternative sports facilities.
I know that my noble friend is well aware of the shortcomings of this part of the Bill and is as keen as any of your Lordships to get it right. She recognises that the most valuable asset is the current good will and genuine community well-being that already exists.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, in a number of respects, not least in that I think the Government are on the right lines. Some aspects of procedure and process—how this may be delivered—might need to be looked at before Report. I wanted to give some examples from my personal experience of where this legislation could well help to protect a community asset.
This is not entirely about pubs and post offices, but let me give an example of what can happen with a pub. Let us say that a pub is owned by a national, private sector organisation and is closed down. It is sold on the open market but, when research is done with a small advert in a newspaper over the summer, it is knocked down by the purchaser, and the community has no power under planning law to prevent it being knocked down. There is then an application for a change of use, but the criteria for change of use alter because the building no longer exists. It is treated and deemed to be a brownfield site. As a consequence, different planning law pertains and new planning permission for a change of use is much easier to obtain.
My second example is more hypothetical, but it reflects a concern that I have about the financial viability of sports clubs, which often find themselves in financial difficulties and needing to do things to protect their position. This might involve a merger, for example, or moving to a new site. There is an issue about whether land used for a sporting purpose should be considered, before it is sold, for permanent use as a sporting provision. Of course, planning law and the zoning of land help in that respect, but are not the entire story. There has to be a right to give a community the power, if the sports club is going to move, to say whether some greater community interest should be considered whereby a trust could be formed to perpetuate sporting recreational activity on that site.
A third example is government-owned land or buildings. This is not just about privately owned buildings. What about a cricket pitch on open space that is within the purview of a government building, such as a National Health Service building? Planning law currently protects that. One of my great fears is that it becomes easy, when finance is difficult, to suggest that the solution to that finance problem would be to sell off more land and that, to secure a reasonable price, it needs to be sold off for housing or some other purpose with a commercial outcome, which then generates a large sum of money for that government department. The community has to have some general right to intervene to protect that open space, above and beyond the rights bestowed by the planning system.
Another real-life example involved Ministry of Defence buildings for the Territorial Army next to a large secondary high school on a constrained site. The school needed further land, ideally for expansion, because it was too tightly constrained for the growth that it needed. It was in the community's interest that the school should expand, but it was clearly in the Ministry of Defence’s interest to secure the largest income it could from the sale of the buildings and land. That was a housing use issue. We are then up against the difference in values between what one government department is prepared to pay to another. Nothing in current legislation says that one government department must give another the right to buy at a price lower than open market value—in this case, for housing development. This is a problem because the community's interest is not in the housing development—that may be in the MoD's interest—but in that of the children being educated in our schools.