Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
Lord Beecham
My Lords, this amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Kennedy deals with an issue which is close to home for the Minister, whose daughter—she told me the other day—lives in a student house just opposite friends of mine in a residential part of Newcastle. It is a fact that in Newcastle and many other cities there are very large numbers of students. In Newcastle, I believe that the two universities have between them some 45,000 students. Some of them of course will be local and others will not necessarily be living in the city. Nevertheless, substantial areas of the city are now given over to rented-out student accommodation, which not infrequently is jammed full of students living in not particularly attractive conditions and also somewhat changes the character of the area. Increasingly, we find areas virtually totally dominated by students. Recently I had the misfortune to canvass not far from where the Minister’s daughter lives, and I encountered house after house occupied by students, many of whom, I am sorry to say, expressed the intention of voting Conservative, because on the whole Newcastle attracts large numbers of better-off students. They are not quite mature enough to realise that they are taking the wrong course politically, although they may come to realise that in due course.
However, what we are now seeing in the city—and, I suspect, elsewhere—is rather different and in some ways rather better: large purpose-built places for students to live in, not in residential streets but in purpose-built complexes. That is a good thing in a way because, one hopes, it will free up family-sized accommodation and perhaps bring back more permanent occupation of residential areas, which is desirable. On the other hand, sometimes these buildings are thrown up in close proximity to residential areas and the behaviour of those in the residential blocks is not always appealing to the local community. However, perhaps that is another issue that needs to be looked at.
Amendment 102A simply raises the issue and seeks to get the Secretary of State involved in ensuring that the National Planning Forum takes an interest in what is a growing concern in many areas. The amendment would ensure that it offered some guidance and, in collaboration with local authorities and indeed with universities and student bodies, sought a way of balancing the needs of universities and their population with the local population. On the whole, this works tolerably well. In the area where the noble Baroness’s daughter lives—not necessarily in the same street, although there have been some difficulties there—things are not always satisfactory. There is a good deal of late-night carousing and the like, which some noble Lords may be young enough to recall from their earlier days but is not at all appealing to local communities.
This is a matter that has not really played much of a part so far in national policy formulation, and I hope the amendment will begin a process through which it can be properly developed. I beg to move.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 102C. With the emphasis on affordable housing, there is a danger that the infrastructure and support to make developments into communities will be sidelined. Many people have talked about what constitutes affordable housing. A £450,000 home after discount in London may be a good buy but you have to be able to afford the deposit and the mortgage payments. Putting aside my concerns about what constitutes affordable housing, this amendment makes the assumption that we can have a building bonanza but we need to ensure—this is my reason for tabling the amendment—that the funds are not diverted from libraries, schools, community culture, public transport and indeed the multiplicity of activities that make a community. This has historically been effected by Section 106 planning gain money, to which many noble Lords have referred, but the position has been further complicated by the new community infrastructure levy, which no one seems to have mentioned. This levy, which has not been welcomed by some local authorities, can be imposed by local authorities on new developments in their area.
The levy is said to be designed to be fairer, faster and more transparent than the well-tried Section 106 system of agreeing planning obligations between local councils and developers—that is what it says. I therefore ask the Minister, when responding to this amendment, to report on how she sees the community infrastructure levy and/or the Section 106 planning gain funds being protected and enhanced. Can she reassure the Committee that the other provisions in this complicated and convoluted Bill will not militate against the local services that maintain housing developments as communities and not purely, as my old favourite Pete Seeger said in 1963, little boxes of different colours which are all made out of ticky-tacky and all look just the same?
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
Lord Beecham
No, I am not going to sort it out—but I was going to suggest that one way in which to look at it would be to revoke the permission, so that that developer is no longer sitting on it. Does that not work?
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
I rise on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, who is no longer in his place because of the hour at which this amendment is being debated. Amendments 100ZAA and 100ZBB relate to a matter that has come up in previous discussions on this Bill. Clause 139 will allow the Secretary of State to designate a local planning authority for its poor performance in determining applications for categories of development described in the regulations, possibly including non-major development. If a local planning authority is designated, developers may then choose to make an application for development in the poorly performing authority area directly to the Secretary of State.
It is believed that in London the actual consideration should be made by the mayor rather than by the Secretary of State, because the Greater London Authority, as the Minister will know, has significant planning expertise, local knowledge and strong experience of PSI applications, making it a far better place to determine these applications than Whitehall. This change will probably take into account the mayor’s strategic planning role in the capital and the Government’s devolution agenda. So rather like a previous amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Tope, this amendment is saying that in developments of this nature the person best suited to decide would be the Mayor of London rather than the Secretary of State, which would fit in with the Government’s proposals for devolution and localism. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
Perhaps the noble Lord could help me. The amendment as drafted refers to the substitution of the Secretary of State or the Mayor of London. I take it he means the Secretary of State elsewhere than in London and the mayor in London, but that is not what the amendment actually says. It seems to pose a choice, even in London, which I do not think is the intention.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
There is to be a choice at times. There may be times when it is appropriate for it to be the Secretary of State. This does not completely outlaw the Secretary of State from taking action in this case, but the appropriate person to deal with it in the first instance would be the mayor of the largest city in this country.
Lord Beecham
With respect, that is not what the amendment seems to say. The Minister and I are in rare agreement.
Local Audit (Appointing Person) Regulations 2015
Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that detailed exposition. I need to declare—especially given her last comment—that I am a chartered accountant and that I was, until May, the chairman of a local authority audit committee. I think that is probably enough in that respect.
I see my role as being to pick holes, if there are any, in what I see in front of me. The main thing that I am looking at is the draft guide which my noble friend referred to. On page 3 of that guide, there is the comment that the annual accounts are subject to a limited assurance review. Within audit committees, internal audit teams have a way of classifying the work of each department or service area, and when they audit that service area, they deem its performance to have been satisfactory, limited or poor respectively. It is generally done with a traffic lights system. The term “limited assurance” has a specific connotation within the audit field, and by referring in the guide to a limited assurance review there is the complication that it will be viewed as part of what I call the traffic lights system in local authorities. It is a slightly careless use of words that are used within the realm of audit. Could my noble friend think about that and the confusion that it might cause?
There seems to be a very light mention within the paper of internal audits, which I mentioned in an earlier discussion on the Bill. Good local authorities rely very much on their internal audit teams. External auditors also rely on the internal audit to a large degree, although it depends very much on the firm and the internal audit. The idea is that you do not do the job if it has already been done. However, internal audit is hardly mentioned. It is mentioned on page 5 of the paper that there should be an internal control, but there does not then seem to be a relationship in terms of what regard external auditors can take of that internal audit. If we are aiming to drive down costs for local authorities and the like, there ought to be an acknowledgment of what good internal audits can achieve. I did this when I was chairman of an audit committee—internal audits tore the living daylights out of service areas, and if they did not perform better, they had to come back and explain why. That is what internal audits do, but there does not seem to be much mention of it here.
Annual appointments are complicated, as very few accountancy firms are deemed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales—I presume this is the case in Scotland as well—to have the stature, knowledge and capability of doing this. I cannot remember what the figure was—I am sure other noble Lords will—but it was no more than eight, and probably about five. There were about 10 firms that had the capability but only about eight were deemed to be able to do it. So there will be a very limited market for these firms. I do not know whether the Minister has inquired with the professional bodies as to whether they see any problem.
My last comment on this is about very small authorities. My understanding of the paper is that very small authorities—those with a turnover under £25,000—will not need to appoint an external auditor, unless someone raises a query. In practice, if a small authority that needs a set of accounts, and thus an audit, has a turnover of £25,000 or less, and somebody raises an accounting query, that local authority or body will then have to appoint an external auditor to deal with that query from a member of the public. I may have this wrong, and my noble friend will correct me, but my reading says that that is what needs to happen. Therefore, in practical terms, if Mr or Mrs Vexatious raises a problem with the accounts of a local body with a turnover of £25,000 or less, it has to appoint an external—not internal—auditor, whose fees will start, say, at £1,000 and may be a lot more. My noble friend should know that that is impractical. I hope that these points are addressed before the regulations are put on a firm basis.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Newcastle City Council and of its independently chaired audit committee.
My noble friend Lord McKenzie and I whiled away a happy hour or three, as I recall, on these issues when the Bill was going through. Some of the reservations that we had then would apply also to the proposals before us, and my noble friend will enlarge on them. I concur with some of the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. In particular, he is right in his recollection that there are, apparently, eight firms—a couple of which are actually connected to the big five; so there is generally little choice in this field. One of the questions is whether that is acceptable to the Government or whether there should not be an attempt to encourage other, perhaps smaller, firms to develop an expertise, make more of an impact on the market and recognise that, in fact, the high cost of employing the major firms—the Deloittes, the PwCs and so on—is justified in the context of even a joint appointment. The fact that there is a joint appointment will not necessarily reduce the cost of an individual audit exercise, although perhaps the Government have done some work on that and can enlighten us.
One of the points that I, and I think my noble friend, raised was the desirability of positively promoting a change of auditor after a period of time, because there is a danger that the auditor and the local authority get too close together. The Minister has a long experience—although not quite as long as mine—in local government and as a council leader, and will therefore be familiar with these issues. A turnover is desirable, and perhaps the noble Baroness can indicate whether the Government might be prepared to facilitate that in this context.
One of the other issues facing all local authorities is, given the effective demise of the Audit Commission, the difficulty of comparing what goes on within one’s own authority with other authorities. The Audit Commission had its virtues and some problems from time to time, but at least it often provided information across the piece that one could look at and with which one could compare what one’s own authority was doing. I know that that is the view not just of political members of the audit committee in Newcastle but very much of the independent chair and independent members, and they miss such a basis for comparison. Given what I guess is the slightly smaller degree of experience in these matters among the smaller councils that we are talking about, have the Government any proposals to remedy this information gap? While all authorities can benefit from that kind of comparative information, it is probably more important, in some respects, for smaller authorities—particularly if independent members serve on them. It would be very much welcome to hear the Government’s position on that process.
The Audit Commission is not officially dead and buried but that part of its work regarding local authorities is effectively gone as far as local authorities are concerned. That is unfortunate and we have to live with it—at any rate, for the time being—but, given these new proposals, I hope that something will be done to assist members of smaller authorities, their officers, in so far as they have any, and those who ultimately do their accounts to be able to look at what comparable authorities are doing. That would certainly be a much more useful process for the audit committee’s oversight, or that of the local authority, of what is going on in their local patch.
Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, first, I declare an interest as the current chairman of a local authority audit committee. I shall chair a meeting later this evening. I shall add a touch of reality to the comments made by other noble Lords.
The first subsection of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, states that the local auditor is to have right of access to the books and records of contractors. In the real world, any local authority worth its salt has in all its contracts a clause allowing it access to the documents of its auditors or the processes that those local auditors use. If a local authority does not have that, shame on it. What we are perhaps trying to do here is to put into legislation something that is a normal commercial attitude that local authorities or corporate bodies should do anyway. As my noble friend Lord Tope said, commissioning is coming on in so many local authorities, and the measure and size of some of the contracts will be very significant. With these large commissioning items, it is not the legislation that should be relied on but the normal contractual terms between the local authority and the contractor. The Government and the noble Lord, Lord Wills, are right to highlight that local authorities should deal with this with their contractors. As my noble friend Lord Tope said, when the Government review these matters, even after this Bill is passed, they should perhaps seek to encourage that within local authorities.
Subsection (3) of the amendment states:
“A local auditor must make available on request any audit documents, obtained under … the Freedom of Information Act 2000”.
That worries me somewhat because, if something is too rigid and too demanding, the net result in practical terms is that people do not put it down on paper in order not to be subject to freedom of information. That might discourage the local auditor from carrying out its job in a deep way. I am all for transparency, but it should be transparency as the auditor feels is right rather than being enshrined in law. Although I understand where the noble Lord, Lord Wills, is coming from, and I appreciate the amendment, I hope that it will encourage the Government to review matters before the Bill becomes law.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join others in declaring membership of the LGA vice-presidential mafia. I am also a member of Newcastle City Council’s audit committee. I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment, as did the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, a former leader of Newcastle City Council who, alas, is not in his place.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Tope, on the ingenuity with which he has contrived some wriggle room to justify supporting the Government this afternoon as opposed to doing what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, would perhaps have done had he been here and opposing them, but I do not think his arguments carry very much weight. He is particularly concerned about the cost of these matters, but the audit is carried out on these services whether they are provided as of now by the local authority or by an external body. There ought to be a level playing field in that respect in any event so that there will be a cost of proper auditing by the district auditor and it should not add to the burden that is currently experienced.
The argument that the noble Lord adduces about the need to assess the situation is perfectly fair, but of course it is provided for in the amendment. One could argue that my noble friend has been excessively generous in saying that the review should take place after five years. It may be that a shorter period will be short enough to assess the functioning of the system and, if there is still a question as to the costs, the costs. However, the principle of my noble friend’s amendment is clearly right.
Local Government Finance Bill
Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that there have to be different consultations. An authority may have a £500 million revenue expenditure, as Barnet authority has, but you have to focus your mind within that authority and, even if there are two or three levels of consultation, it has to be done. There is a short time in which to do it, but there is time.
The noble Lord, Lord Tope, talked about there being a difficult time over the next few months. I agree. Central government and local government, the Olympics and all sorts of organisations are having a difficult time, but local authorities have a history of rising to the occasion. I believe that they are doing that and that they will continue to do so. Therefore, I am against postponement.
Lord Beecham
The difference between this round of change and a general round of changes is that hitherto we have had to cope with a national scheme. There has been the shift of national and domestic rates, the introduction of the poll tax, and the introduction of the council tax—and they were national schemes. One factor in the present round is that consultation has been meaningful and that people will naturally want to see what is happening in their adjoining authority. The authorities may well consult, but as the whole purpose of this misguided legislation in my view is to create variety across the whole country, and no doubt even within county areas, presumably people will want to know how their scheme, as a resident, compares with the scheme in the adjoining district or in another district at the other end of the county.
These decisions will be very difficult for councils to make and, I would have thought, equally difficult for their residents to understand. They will certainly be concerned—it is the intention of the Bill—if they come up with a wide range of options that will then be exercised. In this very tight timescale, how will the citizen or the organisations that will act as advocates for groups of citizens—we shall come on to some of those in more detail later—be able to contribute meaningfully to this consultation process? There will not be time to weigh the implications of one scheme against another. This is a third dimension to the problems that my noble friends have outlined, and I do not think that they have been taken into account in the way in which the Bill has been drafted and the way in which the Government are proceeding.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Beecham and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, this amendment also has the fatal “o” word—ombudsman—in it, but noble Lords need not be afeared because it is a very non-contentious issue to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has kindly replied, and I agree with her answer. I tabled the amendment about the ombudsman because, when reading the Bill, one notes that the Housing Ombudsman will make a determination, but no mention is made of any compensation element. Determination is all very well, but an applicant may want monetary payment or grovelling of some sort and that is not mentioned in the Bill.
When investigating this in advance of the helpful reply of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, I went back to Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1996, which says, as the Minister implied, that the Housing Ombudsman may,
“order the member of a scheme against whom the complaint was made to pay compensation to the complainant”.
It is already in law that compensation of a monetary sum can be paid. I will make what is almost a drafting point. The laws of this country are so entwined and confused that it is wrong that one has to keep referring back to previous Bills to understand the Bill that one is looking at. We are not talking only of lawyers who will go back and say: “Ah, that is in the Housing Act 1996”. In this Bill one does not see any element of monetary repayment as compensation. I seek acknowledgement that, in whatever paper forms are produced, there will be a cross-reference to the 1996 Act so that people can see that there is a determination. I would be very happy if the Minister would confirm something on those lines. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I will follow the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, on the question of compensation. Clearly, the ombudsman route provides the possibility of compensation. It is not certain whether that would apply to the alternative route, which we debated at some length earlier. Perhaps the noble Earl could indicate whether under the alternative method of the designated person—a councillor, Member of Parliament or tenant panel—there will be the opportunity for a compensation payment to be made by the designated person. If not, we would have two systems, one of which would afford the possibility of compensation while the other would not. I am sure that the noble Earl much appreciated that word in his shell-like ear. In the event that we will have two competing systems, will the Government ensure that guidance is given to tenants that that is the case—in other words, that under one system they may get compensation while under the other they will not? The matter could be discussed in the forum to which the Minister referred. Strange circumstances could arise if the situation were not clear.