Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Boyd of Duncansby and Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 153B, which is grouped with the amendments of my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, although it is on a rather different theme. I believe that this amendment has the support of most of those concerned with the cultural heritage of this country, and certainly of those concerned with the understanding of the prehistoric and early historic past of our land. It is needed to ensure that the Bill ensures that heritage issues are not ignored in the course of development.

Members of your Lordships' House will recall that the Heritage Protection Bill, which was supposed to be given consideration in the previous Parliament, had the intention of placing the maintenance of the historic environment record as a statutory duty upon local planning authorities. That did not happen, nor is it proposed here, but it is imperative that all developments have some regard to the historic environment and take steps not to damage it, or at least to do so only after careful consideration and with any necessary actions by way of mitigation.

These obligations do not appear on the face of the Bill and it seems very desirable that they should do so. It seems that as part of the new neighbourhood development plan process there will be no opportunity to carry out pre-application assessment in the same way as for other development under the normal planning application process. This is all the more serious since most archaeological sites are undesignated; that is, they are not scheduled monuments or otherwise protected. This point was discussed earlier in relation to Amendment 145B. This leaves a glaring loophole in the Bill.

My amendment is drawn up in such a form as to place on the developer the obligation to seek the advice of the local planning authority about the historic environment. That implies that the local authority must have access to the relevant historic environment record. This amendment deliberately sets no obligation upon each local planning authority to maintain such a record. Ideally, each will have its own record, but there may be cases where two or three local planning authorities can share a single historic environment record. We are not setting out to be prescriptive in that respect, but it is implied in the amendment that the authority shall at least have access to such a record. Is it conceivable that development should go ahead without the local authority giving consideration to the historic environment on the basis of good and up-to-date information?

[Lord Boyd of Duncansby]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 153AM and to express some sympathy with it. I very much welcome the principle of pre-application consultation in a range of applications, particularly for major projects and so on. It has been working in Scotland and there are some benefits to that because there is the ability then to take into account at an early stage the product of that consultation and to feed it back in.

My worry is the one expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about the rigidity that can creep into the statutory provisions that can sometimes provide a hurdle for developers to get over—and, frankly, they cannot do without lawyers’ advice. While I am more than happy for lawyers to be employed on this, there are limits.

I ask the Government to see whether or not we can get a system that puts the principles into the statute but leaves a lot of the way in which it is done to guidance, and we should not thereby get into a situation where applications fail because one person who might have been expected to be consulted has not been—or something of that nature. That is not to detract in any way from the principle that there must be adequate consultation and, within it, an obligation on the individual developer or applicant to respond positively to the consultation exercise. Let us not get into a rigidity.