Lord Dubs
Main Page: Lord Dubs (Labour - Life peer)Planning (Subterranean Development) Bill [HL]
Lord Dubs Excerpts
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, anyone looking at their newspapers will see, at frequent intervals, articles about basement excavations. Invariably they will describe the anger of neighbours who are fearful of being subjected to noise and disturbance. If these basement excavations have not reached the parts of London where your Lordships live, there will not be long to wait at the present rate of progress—they are sweeping through from borough to borough.
In yesterday’s papers, there was an item about an application to build under a house in Primrose Hill—a pretty affluent part of London. The extension would stretch under much of the garden, and house a swimming pool, a plunge pool, two massage rooms, a sauna and a steam room. It would also feature, among other things, a Jacuzzi, a gym juice bar, cinema room, games room, bar, cigar humidor, wine store and banqueting hall. It must be tough living without these things in one’s home and I suppose that some of us are still learning to cope. My understanding is that such developments already require planning consent, so, although some of them are pretty awful and are appalling for the neighbours, my Bill is not aimed specifically at them.
My concern is directly mainly at basement excavations that do not require planning permission, leaving local authorities powerless to stop such developments. They come under what I think is called “permitted development”. If the basement excavation is within the footprint of the house and there is no light-well, it is a permitted development and the local authority is pretty well powerless to stop it. If I am wrong, I shall be delighted, but that is what local authorities have been telling people who have come to me complaining about developments in their area.
In the recent past, Private Members’ Bills have been introduced in both Houses dealing with this topic. As recently as September this year, my honourable friend Karen Buck, MP for Westminster North, put forward a Bill, as she has done on a number of occasions. A year or two earlier the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, also put forward a comprehensive Bill. That resulted in certain undertakings from the Government but, as I understand it, so far nothing has happened, and the noble Lord will no doubt describe this in more detail when he speaks later on.
My point is that this is not a party-political matter; it has support across the political spectrum because we might all suffer, or our neighbours and friends may suffer. It may be seen as a Bill against millionaires, but that is not the intention; it is simply intended to give local authorities more powers than they have in certain circumstances. I am trying to protect those in many of the smaller houses.
There has been a positive epidemic—I use that word carefully—of basement excavations in recent years, and not just in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea, which have attracted the most publicity. Now, they are extending to Camden, Hammersmith, Wandsworth, Lambeth and Richmond—and probably further. While walking here from my office in Millbank House, I spoke to a Member of this House. He apologised that he would not be able to take part in this debate, as he would have liked to have done so, but he confirmed that these excavations had reached Richmond.
The reason for the spread of these developments is pretty obvious. Given the rise in house prices, it is significantly cheaper to enlarge a house than to move out and buy something bigger, with stamp duty and all the other costs that that involves. So the trend is likely to extend to other parts of London and elsewhere in the country unless checked by giving local authorities a bit more power in their areas.
All building work clearly disturbs neighbours. Nobody wants to have any building work next to them, but roof extensions or rear extensions are not nearly as disturbing as digging into basements, and I base that on evidence from people who have experienced it. Many people are very upset about the present situation, and I shall quote from what people have written to me:
“I live in a small road, where houses are close together. My two neighbours opposite and I are at home all day, working. In the last few years, three houses very nearby have had basement floors dug out. Ordinary extension building, roofing etc are shortlived. Basement digging is a truly industrial undertaking, and plunges everyone around into that world for 3-4 months, whether they like it or not”.
To my knowledge, it often takes longer than three or four months; builders start and they go away, and it goes on for a long time. I go on quoting:
“Unlike other building work, this creates a truly intolerable noise, which continues all day including Saturday mornings, (large generator, squeaking belt, lumps of earth falling into empty skip, daily skip deliveries, industrial scale material deliveries, scraping, shouting, banging, clamouring, clanging and general mayhem). This continues for 3 months or more. So far two summers and one winter have been made utterly miserable. In summer it has been impossible to be in the garden, or to have any windows open. The latest digging (next door) has obviously been the worst for me, despite windows being shut. I am rigid with tension, every activity inside my house is disrupted, including thinking: creating a catalogue of breakages, things forgotten, or abandoned in mid-stream. I am trying to ignore it all, and sometimes go out on pointless errands for an hour or so of peace, but am frequently in tears, or on the phone trying to support my elderly neighbours opposite”.
Another neighbour was trying to sleep in the daytime because she was in hospital every night with a sick child—she was also pregnant. She did not get any peace during the day.
Businesses can be affected. Recently, there was dramatic media coverage of the owner of a music recording studio who said that he would have to close his business if a neighbouring property has a basement excavated. So these things affect residential properties but they also affect people conducting business in the area.
The key point is this: I understand that “disturbance to neighbours” is not a reason for refusal by a local authority under present planning laws. That applies whether, in other respects, a planning application would be necessary or whether it is a permitted development and would not be. My Bill seeks to establish a new principle for local government planning: “disturbance to neighbours” should be a consideration that local authorities can take on board.
There is nothing novel in that principle. Take large infrastructure projects, which do not come under local authorities. For example, people living near the Crossrail construction spent a lot of time complaining, arguing and lobbying about the noise and disturbance that would be caused by the digging and ongoing work. The argument about disturbance is a key factor in the debate about a third runway at Heathrow and the effects of HS2. For large infrastructure developments we are prepared to say that local people can have a say. For smaller things, such as basements—although they are not always small—in many cases local authorities do not have the power. In principle, there is nothing new in this, except that I apply it now to local authorities.
I believe that there is a need for new legislation. However, it has been put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, who will speak later, that regulations might be sufficient. That may be the case, and I am open to persuasion.
Certainly, when I asked a Question on this subject earlier this year, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said:
“My Lords, this Government consider that powers already available to local authorities are sufficient to control the planning and construction processes of basement development”.—[Official Report, 12/3/15; col. 753.]
I challenge any Minister to say that to people who are suffering. Tell them, “It’s okay; it’s all under control”—they will know that it is not.
The present position is sometimes misunderstood. Certainly, near me in Hammersmith, neighbours were complaining about a development and they misunderstood the position. They thought that the local authority could do something but the local authority said that it could not, for the reasons that I have said: the development was within the footprint of the building above and did not involve a light-well.
My Bill is not against all basement excavations. I argue that, in certain circumstances, there should be a presumption to refuse if certain things apply. The first of these is if the house is on a flood plain—maybe that is partly covered, but not totally. The second factor is terraced housing. If one has a free-standing house, it is quite easy because one does not disturb people so much and it is not going to damage the house next door. But with terraced housing, the concern is not just the disruption of the work but also the knock-on effect of having a basement dug and then cracks appearing in neighbouring houses. I am not sure that party wall agreements are sufficient to cover it—certainly, that is what people have told me and they suffer for years from the damage done.
As I have said, the presumption to refuse in my Bill applies if the development is on a flood plain, if it is terraced housing, if there is significant local opposition and/or if it would cause unreasonable disruption to neighbours—the last two are pretty well linked. These criteria would give local people a say in something that affects their lives. After all, the people who are not digging basements get no benefit from it, yet the people whose basements are excavated move away. They find somewhere else to live while it is going on; they do not suffer any of it. It is the people living next door who have to put up with the noise and the nuisance, and then the knock-on effect of possible damage to their building.
I have had people say to me, “We support your Bill so that others do not have to suffer as we have done”. I beg to move.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I am grateful to all Members of the House who contributed to this debate. I must say that I thought I had done my homework quite well but I learned a lot about some of the issues from the comments that were made—which shows how useful it is to have a Second Reading.
Perhaps I could refer to one issue that I do not know how to handle. My noble friend Lord Kennedy on the Front Bench said that he thought a Committee of the whole House was a blunt instrument—although those were not his words—and that a Grand Committee would be better for dealing with this sort of Bill. I am not sure that I have the powers to change anything; I am merely dealing with the bit of paper I was given. I think that he is right, but I will have to deal with that outside the Chamber.
I am moderately unhappy after this discussion. First, the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, who has done a lot of work on this, still believes, if I am quoting him correctly, that a lot of this could be achieved by regulations. I am not totally clear from what the Minister said that regulations are quite the way forward, although if it were possible then of course it might deal with some of the difficulties.
I have known the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, for a long time. We sat on opposite sides of the chamber when we were councillors in Westminster, so I am used to having little disagreements with her. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, who sent me the Kensington and Chelsea guidelines this morning, I have had a brief chance to look at them. I agree that the guidelines are very interesting. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for having mentioned them because they are certainly helpful, and I hope that other local authorities will take note.
I understand her argument that the smaller your house, the more you need to build a basement—I think that is what she said in relation to terraced housing. That is okay as far as it goes. The trouble is that the smaller your house, the more likely you are to disturb your neighbours and have a damaging effect on them, so it works both ways. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness for spotting a printing error, a typo. I feel embarrassed about that and can only apologise unreservedly.
I listened with great interest to the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. He certainly is an expert and I wish that I had had a couple of hours’ discussion with him before this debate. What he said bears a lot of thinking about. He referred to ground-water and to trying to improve provisions for local opposition, and I agree that they need to be spelled out in more detail. He was also very supportive in what he said about the structural difficulties of terraced housing. Not very far from where I live in Hammersmith there is a basement excavation going on, and I got some of my information from neighbours who told me how much they had suffered.
I was delighted with the contribution made by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. I thank him for the compliment that he paid me, but that is by the way. The experience that he described is exactly—to the letter—why I put this Bill forward. I could almost call it “the Marlesford Bill” because what he said and the accurate way he described it reflects what I have been told by people in a similar position. Unfortunately, local authorities have not always proved as helpful. The Kensington and Chelsea guidelines for local authorities set down ground rules that applicants should talk to neighbours and have a discussion with them to try and get agreement. That is pretty good stuff but local authorities do not do that, so in this respect Kensington and Chelsea is certainly ahead of the game.
Turning to the Minister, I had no idea that she lived in Primrose Hill, otherwise I would have been more circumspect. I did not for a moment assume that the house was hers. However, I hope that she is not too close to it, because if this proposal goes ahead, she will suffer.
The issue that I have not resolved in my mind is this. Unless Article 4 directions are easy and not too costly, it seems that we are still in the difficulty that where some basement excavations require planning permission, with all the safeguards that local authorities have the right to apply, covering hours of work, noise levels, and so on—although I am bound to say that if one shortens the hours of work, one extends the period of weeks or months when it goes on, so it is not a total benefit. But a lot of the concerns that I have expressed are about permitted developments, where local authorities have said, as they did in Wandsworth and to my friends in Hammersmith, that there is nothing they can do. Article 4 did not come into it; if Article 4 is simple and straightforward, that may be the answer, but if it is more difficult than that, I am afraid that it will not help much.
Lastly, as regards party wall agreements, the problem is that some of cracks develop after everything has been signed off. It can happen much later, possibly through ground-water and so on. So although party wall agreements may be fine within the period they cover, people who suffer damage to their properties may go on suffering it for a great deal longer.
May I bowl a fast one at the Minister? Could she arrange for some of us, before we get to Committee, to have a meeting with some of her officials to talk about this? Would she be agreeable to that?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, I would be very happy to meet the noble Lord and others who may be interested in this area.
Lord Dubs
I am sorry—I should have warned the Minister that I was going to ask her that question. However, that would be helpful, because some issues may be better resolved if some of us could have such a meeting than if we simply put down a series of amendments in Committee, which may not be a subtle enough way of doing it. Having said that, I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading.