Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Lord Lucas

Monday 10th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief. My morale has been sustained throughout the Recess by the prospect of shortly moving Amendment 195ZB, in which I see I have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. That amendment is directed at the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has addressed. I tabled it at the request of the British Retail Consortium. If it makes any difference to any doubts in the mind of my noble friend the Minister about what she is about to say, she will have the British Retail Consortium on her side when she does so.

I am less sure that Amendments 195D and 195E to Clause 59, which are in my name, will now be unnecessary. If we are to have a break for dinner, there may be an opportunity to find out whether they need to be moved.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am significantly less well informed than the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. This has caught me by surprise, particularly since, in various discussions with my noble friend’s officials, the local referendum was used to ward off my requests for amendments in other areas. To go over some of my concerns, I have, throughout the passage of the Bill, tried to persuade the Government that they need to look at how localism will work in cities. In rural and suburban areas, planning is a great lever and generator of funds. All things will be possible if we get the planning side right. Once you have funds, you have the ability to do what you want in a neighbourhood to a certain extent. You certainly have a lever with which to negotiate with the local authority.

However, even in as gentle an urban area as Lavender Hill, planning has no function as a raiser of funds or people’s enthusiasm. The place is built out. There is very little that planning can do. You will never get a community created in Lavender Hill, let alone some of the more difficult areas of cities, on the basis of what is in the Bill. We should be turning our thoughts to how the section on allowing local initiatives to run local services might be made less formal so that neighbourhoods might group around it. We ought to turn our minds to how neighbourhoods can make representations to local councils and be listened to on subjects that they really care about, such as school catchment areas, how parking is enforced and how decisions are made about the distribution of services.

There are many ways in which we might build localism in cities. Surely the riots have shown us the importance of doing that. However, in removing this provision the Government remove the one bit of the Bill that gives a possible voice to neighbourhoods in cities in trying to persuade their local councils to do something in the way that the neighbourhood wants them to be done. I will not argue with the Minister and my other noble friends that what is in the Bill at the moment is not an expensive and bureaucratic way of doing it, but we have to find something else. The Bill is such an opportunity to improve life in cities but the Government do not seem interested in taking it. I find that enormously disappointing. I am particularly sad that—since somewhere in the great collective mind that is the department there is an awareness of my arguments—I should be kept in the dark and not given time to prepare thoughts and arguments to compensate for this loss later in the Bill. I shall apply myself to it for the rest of the evening. With luck, we shall not get so far into the Bill that I cannot find ways of putting back opportunities to argue these things. As I say, my main concern is that this great opportunity to help build communities in cities is being allowed to pass by at a time when we are all acutely aware that it should not be.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Lord Lucas

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I thoroughly agree with my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree. Good existing relationships ought to be encouraged but where they do not exist the idea that we should have to go the whole hog and create neighbourhoods as set out in the Bill will be a very difficult thing to do, particularly in cities. Where I come from in Hampshire, localism at present consists of the parish council saying, “We’d like this”, and the district council ignoring it. Therefore, I look forward to the full variety of localism down in Hampshire. However, I understand that Richmond may well be a happier and more coherent place under my noble friend’s management. Certainly when it comes to cities, as we will see in some of my later amendments, I very much support the idea that there should be a proper recognition of what you might call interim, less formal neighbourhood arrangements than are set out in the Bill. Beyond anything else, they will be a great deal easier to manage and a great deal less expensive. If the local community can get what it wants without having to go through the whole process of putting a plan together, agreeing it, having it inspected and going out to referendum, but can just do it by means of conversations with councillors and local meetings, that seems to me entirely preferable.

As regards some of the points raised by my noble friend Lord Greaves, I say go for parishes. We have a well set-out system in an Act passed by the previous Government to enable parishes to be created in urban areas. If you use that, you will have the democratic structure you are looking for.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, having listened to the other speeches that have been made on amendments in this grouping, it is clear that this is a thoroughly valuable grouping. I am speaking to Amendment 148AZZA, which was prompted by the Heritage Alliance. I was prompted by the UK Association of Preservation Trusts and the Heritage of London Trust. The amendment is supported by a rainbow alliance in all four corners of the Chamber. This has had one slightly untoward consequence in that, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and I have waited on about four different occasions over the past 10 days to move this amendment, he eventually ran out of time and asked me if I would take over the gist of his speech. That was a helpful and constructive suggestion, except that I have mislaid the merged article. There will therefore be a slight quality of improvisation to my remarks.

The heritage sector has been arguing for a local approach for the past 11 years, since the publication of Power of Place in 2000—a report that was facilitated by English Heritage and represented the views of a wide part of the heritage sector. It was followed by A Force for Our Future, published by the DCMS and the then the DTLR, which included the observation:

“There is a very large body of research that demonstrates the great economic sense of conservation-led regeneration. As stated by the Government, ‘policy-makers need to regard the historic environment as a unique economic asset, a generator of wealth and jobs in both urban and rural areas’”.

That report was followed in 2004 by Recharging the Power of Place: Valuing Local Significance, published by the National Trust, the CPRE and Heritage Link—which underpins what is now the Heritage Alliance as a whole.

Heritage is a limited resource, and international organisations such as the International Council on Monuments and Sites, once remarkably led by the late Bernard Feilden, recognise it as a fourth component of sustainable development. When the Prime Minister, on 23 November last year, made his speech on the Government’s agenda for well-being, he indicated that the historic environment was a major contribution to people’s sense of well-being. Power of Place research by MORI showed that people consider that,

“the historic environment represents the place in which they live”.

Power of Place and successive reports have had an important effect on the way in which the historic environment is perceived as being local as well as national.

The heritage sector is concerned to achieve a balanced approach to public and private financing of neighbourhood development plans and orders. The Government’s emphasis on economic growth as their particular imperative is totally understood, and is to be welcomed and supported. However, heritage is not a psychological addiction or obsession; it has a practical perspective in these matters.

When I began subscribing to life membership of the various heritage societies some 40 years ago, I recall the chief planning officer of the City of Bath, when criticised for the fact that he had caused to be knocked down a large number of Georgian artisan dwellings, said that he would be happy not to have done so if the city fathers had provided him with a number of Georgian artisans to occupy them, and that since they were not available the redevelopment had to occur. In Northern Ireland, planning regulations were massively relaxed during the Troubles, simply as a stimulus to economic activity. I therefore recognise that there are occasions when you have to eliminate some of the rigour that you would normally have.

However, in the past 25 years, both the Landmark Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund, in the money that they have poured into the infrastructure of our heritage, have created a great deal of enjoyment and pleasure, as well as constructive economic activity. The churches are a superb exposition of the development of the British, especially English, vernacular tradition in which our heritage has unrolled harmoniously over the centuries. The essence of the amendment to which I am speaking on behalf of the Heritage Alliance is to make sure that there is a consideration of cultural well-being in addition to the considerations that the Government have placed in the Bill.