Subterranean Development Bill [HL]

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Friday 10th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I have been chuckling a lot in the past few days as noble Lords have come up to me and to other noble Lords to say that the only reason I am speaking on this Bill is to delay the next piece of business. I am happy to declare my interests once again. I am a surveyor and a consultant to a residential property company in Chelsea, which has an office with a crack in the wall that has been caused by a problem in a basement located two houses away. Therefore, I think I am qualified to speak on this matter.

It is a particular pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. There is no greater exponent on the subject of why the hereditary Peers by-elections principle works than the noble Earl. I thank him for the incredible amount of hard work that he has done in chairing the relevant RICS body undertaking work on this matter. My noble friend Lord Selsdon might know of the work that the noble Earl has done in that regard but I do not think that many other noble Lords do. The latest RICS booklet that has been produced on this subject is of immense value to all us professionals. While I am on that subject, I say to my noble friend Lady Hanham that the former Deputy Prime Minister, the then Member for Kingston upon Hull East, Mr Prescott, produced a very good, simple party wall explanatory leaflet in 1999. I understand that her department is looking at revising this. I hope that she will be able to expedite that process as the leaflet complemented the RICS booklet. The RICS booklet is for professionals, whereas the booklet that the department produced made for much easier reading for those who are unfamiliar with the technical terms used by the RICS.

I thank my noble friend Lord Selsdon for introducing the Bill and for the timing of it. The timing is hugely important because I believe that many of the Bill’s provisions should have statutory force by 2013. Planning law and the building regulations are currently being revised. I will come back to that in due course.

I am not against subterranean development. Human beings have carried out subterranean development all around the world for many years. I have no doubt that some of your Lordships have been to the Sun Temple at Modhera in India or to the rock-hewn churches in Lalibela in Ethiopia, which is an UNESCO world heritage site. If noble Lords have not been to those places, I am sure that they will have visited the underground structures in Benin in West Africa. Apple is adding a 1,000-seat underground auditorium to its new headquarters in Cupertino, California. In Mexico City there is a proposal to build an earthscraper underground. The first 10 storeys will comprise a museum, the next 10 storeys retail outlets and housing and there will be a further 35 storeys of office space. It will go a long way underground. In London we have the Underground, the first line of which opened in 1863, and the Victorian and Edwardian basements. We have a great deal of underground development. Indeed, the new Crossrail station at Tottenham Court Road affects the neighbouring buildings. It is, of course, being built in a professional manner. Centrepoint—an existing building—has had to have new piles 50 metres deep and one and a half metres across to support it while the work is going on. Therefore, we should not take too much notice of rumours, suspicions and headlines in the papers as subterranean development can be perfectly okay and, indeed, beneficial.

I take a different view from that of my noble friend Lord Selsdon. He said this measure applies principally to London. I disagree entirely with that. The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 started out as a London Bill, but it affects the whole country. There are problems in respect of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Oxford and Bath. There are plenty of areas around the country where it is difficult to build upwards because of the planning rules and if you want to expand the only way to go is down. This Bill has nationwide application. Can my noble friend tell me whether it applies to Scotland? I could not find that out. Is it a UK-wide Bill or does it apply only to England and Wales or to England, Wales and Northern Ireland? I hope that he can answer that point.

I mentioned the work that the department of my noble friend Lady Hanham is doing on revising the building regulations and planning law. I believe that there is no need for this Bill as many of its provisions could be implemented through revising the building regulations. It would be very easy to amend Part A of the building regulations to include much of the work that the RICS has produced and what is in the Bill. I agree with many of the Bill’s provisions. Indeed, the whole of Clause 4(3) could be included in the revised building regulations. However, the other thing that can happen is that councils can get their act together. I am particularly delighted that my noble friend Lord True will speak after me. I really do not understand why councils have not got a grip on this problem. Permitted development is fairly flexible and it is quite easy to revise it.

There are particular problems in London. My noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding was rather dismissive of swimming pools being part of such development. I have no objection to that, provided it is done properly. There might be noise and the time element that the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned is a problem—it takes as long to dig down two storeys as it does to build up 10 storeys. For those next-door neighbours who are anguished about suffering the noise, dirt and inconvenience, I should say that building a basement will actually be completed. Some of us have suffered from development that is not on our land, but which we have to look at and is much more painful, such as the wind farms that are mushrooming in the country. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Reay, who is sadly not in his place, is a great exponent of their evils.

Although the Bill as it stands is not necessary, there is one thing on which there needs to be legislation—insurance, as mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and my noble friends Lady Gardner of Parkes and Lord Mancroft. There ought to be a separate insurance bond for anyone who wishes to build underground to provide a guarantee for neighbours. That is an important issue. Councils, particularly in London, need to be aware of this because any development that is more than four metres deep requires an archaeological dig, because Roman remains can be found at about six metres down and it is important that they are excavated properly.

I shall go through the Bill quickly. A good place for there to be provision for an insurance bond would be Clause 6. Such a provision requires primary legislation. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend about Schedule 2, which states that “the building owner shall” do certain things. If the building owner is overseas, such as the one mentioned by my noble friend Lord Mancroft, what about his agent? Paragraph 1(e) of Schedule 2 states “provide where necessary”. I ask—provide to whom? Am I allowed to wander down the street, see someone digging out a basement and demand all this information? This is where we have a lot of work to do in Committee. If my noble friend Lady Hanham could produce a document—perhaps a statutory instrument— that made provision for an insurance bond, I do not think that there would be any need for the Bill and we could address this issue in other ways.