Localism Bill

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Lords Chamber

I am not at all convinced that my amendment contains the perfect way of doing this, but I am convinced that we need transitional arrangements to see us through from the old to the new. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

I have the other amendment in this group, Amendment 204F, which has a very similar purpose. I very much support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best, and what he said in his speech. In our view this is one of the important remaining issues in the planning parts of the Bill. The two amendments are about the pragmatic position of the local planning authorities. Some are faced with old plans under the pre-2004 legislation; some with emerging new plans—local development frameworks—under the 2004 Act; and some with adopted core strategies—new plans—under that Act. All of those are now up in the air as a result of the Government’s wish to do away with a great deal of the previous planning guidance and instructions which local authorities had in regional strategies and in the planning policy statements. Instead those will be replaced by a much shorter document, the national planning policy framework, but that is going to take some time to approve.

The Government originally said that local authorities would have six months in which to adapt their local plans, whatever state they were in, to the new guidance. Frankly, they have not thought through the practical problems that this would have caused. They are now doing so, and that is extremely welcome. I am taking a lot of advice from planning authorities, from the planning world and, indeed, from Members of this House. We understand that it is now their intention to include clear guidance on how to adapt their local plans, and pursue their new local plans, in line with the NPPF. My first question is to ask the Minister if she will confirm that that is the route they are taking. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best, would put a great deal of the detail of how this is to happen on the face of the Bill, and this would be our first choice. Transitional provisions have appeared in quite some detail in previous planning legislation. In our view this would be the best place for it, but for various practical and other reasons, the Government do not want to do that.

My amendment would put a duty on the Secretary of State to issue regulations which would set out the transitional arrangements. It states:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations specify transitional arrangements concerning the timetable and procedures involved in the introduction of changes to local development schemes and the preparation and adoption of local development documents”.

Regulations are stronger than guidance so we would prefer to have it in regulations rather than simply in guidance. Wherever it is, it needs to be clear and well understood. It needs to give local planning authorities the necessary flexibility and time to get it right.

There have been fears that local planning authorities will be left with no defences against any kind of inappropriate development as a result of some of the wording in the draft national planning policy framework, particularly the suggestion that in the absence of a plan the default position on planning applications would be to approve. The noble Lord, Lord Best, said that that might be opportunistic and unplanned development. My description of it might be a bit cruder than that but I am happy to align myself with his more elegant wording there.

The timetable from transition is crucial. Six months is clearly ludicrous. We have heard rumours of 18 months but in practice it needs to be a lot more than that. The noble Lord suggested three years. We would perhaps go along with that. We clearly do not want it to be seven years or more, which is the position now following the 2004 Act, where half or more of the authorities have still not got their new local plans in place. My second question is about the timescale.

Thirdly, do the Government believe that the inspectorate will be able to deal in a practical way with the huge congestion that there will be in all this work of getting the local plans in line with the new planning guidance? How much work will be needed locally and at the inspectorate simply to get a certificate of conformity for approved core strategies? In determining planning applications during the transitional period, what reliance will local planning authorities be able to put in the mean time on approved core strategies under the 2004 Act which have not yet been certificated as compliant with the new NPPF? What reliance can they put on old, pre-2004 local plans which are still being used by many authorities as the basis for planning? As material considerations in planning application decisions, what reliance can be put on emerging core strategies which are perhaps near inspection but not there yet? What will be the relationship between these existing local plans and the emerging NPPF? Finally, what will be the relationship between the adopted NPPF and all these various kinds of uncertificated local plans?

This is absolutely crucial if there is not to be a free-for-all but a smooth transition from the existing, old system to the new one. This is not in any way trying to undermine the new system but rather to make sense of converting from one system to another, which will take a number of years.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, I would like to add my support to Amendment 204EA—supported also by the RTPI, which I think is very significant—and particularly subsection (14) of the new clause, which specifies the three-year minimum for transition. I completely understand why the Government have eliminated the regional tier but there remain instances where regional decisions are particularly valuable—I would say irreplaceable—such as matters to do with housing shortages, the issue of Gypsy and Traveller sites, which we discussed at the last Committee meeting, and the lack of planning expertise at a local level which could result in really unattractive developments. If we are not to go backward in all of these areas we need a transitional period as the amendment specifies for local authorities to work out how to co-operate where it is really essential.

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[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, while the regional strategies are there and before they have been revoked, the plan will have to have regard to them. They will also have to have regard to the emerging NPPF in determining a planning application. Unless they conflict wildly, that should work very well. There is going to be a short period only before the regional strategies are revoked. I do not think there will be any inconsistency. Local authorities are going to want to keep only part of the regional strategies in their local development plan and they ought to be able to work in conjunction with the NPPF for the short space of time, if that is necessary.

With the explanations I have given, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Best, will feel able to withdraw his amendment. I am afraid I said that the NPPF consultation ended yesterday; in the interests of accuracy, it ends today.

[Lord Greaves]

Before my noble friend the Minister sits down, would she consider the possibility that not giving any indication at all to local planning authorities of the time they have got to get themselves sorted out—I completely share her view that they need to get on with the job—might prolong the process rather than speed it up? In that context, I do not think she answered the question of what the Government are going to do to assist the Planning Inspectorate to cope with what everybody thinks is going to be a very substantial increase in its workload in the short run.

[Baroness Hanham]

Discussions are going on with the Planning Inspectorate at the moment to see what is required to make the examination process quicker. Under the new way of working, local authorities will be able to have single areas examined one at a time instead of the whole policy having to be dealt with. It is well understood that the Planning Inspectorate will be put under pressure and we hope and expect that that will be able to be worked around.

I have said all that I can say about a transitional period. The transitional arrangements will come about as a result of the consultation on the NPPF. The noble Lord thinks that a set period might be a good idea. However, as I said, with the experience of the previous set period, which does not seem to have put any pressure on local authorities, we would need to consider very carefully whether there is any value in having that.

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One way or another my fundamental plea, in which I am grateful for the backing of London Councils, is that local authorities engaged in robust neighbourhood planning should not also have to grapple with the parallel legislative and regulatory framework currently enshrined in the Bill. I believe, I hope not naively, that freedom would encourage and stimulate the best councils to be leaders in neighbourhood planning. I believe, and I know from our conversations, that my noble friend and her right honourable and honourable friends share that commitment to localism and neighbourhood planning, and so I hope even now that the Government may be able to offer some more flexible way forward on this very difficult, but I believe important, matter. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I enthusiastically support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord True. I do not want to repeat everything he said about the common sense of building on existing successful systems and structures rather than trying either to set up a separate parallel structure, as the noble Lord suggested may well happen, or alternatively closing down something that exists or trying to transform it into a template imposed from on high.

I have been involved in the idea of getting people in communities to take a much greater involvement in local affairs generally, and in planning specifically, for about 40 years now. Forty years ago, when some of us started to talk like this, we met total opposition, and indeed hostility, from almost everybody else in British politics outside the Liberal Party at that time. Opinion has so changed that we have won the argument over those years. The last Labour Government talked about double devolution—central government devolving powers, and perhaps even resources, to local authorities and the local authorities devolving them to “communities”. It never actually happened very much but there was a lot of talk about it.

In the present Government we have had the idea of the big society coming from the Conservatives and, separately really but perhaps as part of that—I have never really been quite sure—the idea of neighbourhood planning, which is a very strong part of this Bill. Always, mechanisms are difficult because there are always the questions: “What is a community?” and “Who are the big society?”. Many of us have argued for a long time that, on a democratic basis, the default position is: “The many, not the few”, as the noble Lord, Lord True, said. A neighbourhood is a clearly definable entity, unlike a community which is much more difficult to define as you may have several communities in a neighbourhood. In a neighbourhood you start off from the basis that everybody who lives there is a member of that neighbourhood and you build it from the bottom upwards. Of course, some do not want to take part in it but that is up to them.

As regards who in the neighbourhood area takes part, lots of councils of pretty well all dispositions have been working hard on this idea in their patches. In a truly localist way, they are approaching the matter in different ways that are appropriate to their area, the ideas of the people who live in that area and, indeed, the people on the local authority, so the systems that exist in many parts of the country are different. There are obviously similarities but, basically, each area has built its own system according to its own circumstances: the noble Lord waxes lyrical about Richmond; my noble friend Lord Tope could wax equally lyrical about Sutton; and I could go on for ever about attempts to do all this in Pendle, some of which have been very successful. Many others could make similar remarks, but the systems are all different.

However, the real problem arises when central government comes along and, in order to do something which is very worth while, imposes a national template on very different systems. Where there is nothing at all, that is a good way to tackle this matter as at least you get people going. However, where measures exist on the ground, it is counterproductive and, indeed, ridiculous to force people to spend a lot of time either closing something down in order to start something else up or, indeed, trying to adjust and adapt to the new rules and regulations coming from on high. Therefore, I very much support this amendment. If nothing else, I hope that the Government will be rather more flexible in carrying out this measure than seems to be the case at the moment.

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Moved by

[Lord Greaves]

205ZZA: After Clause 104, insert the following new Clause—
“Community governance review in area of a neighbourhood forum
In the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, after section 80 insert—“80A Community governance request by a neighbourhood forum
(1) This section applies to a neighbourhood area where a neighbourhood forum makes a request for a parish council to be created.
(2) A request may be made to create a new parish council for—
(a) the area of the neighbourhood area, or(b) the area of the neighbourhood area together with the area of an adjacent parish council.(3) A request under subsection (2)(a) must be made jointly by the neighbourhood forum and the parish council.
(4) Following a request under this section the principal council must commence a community governance review relating to the area of the request within three months of receipt of the request.
(5) A community governance review under this section shall have a presumption that a new parish will be created.
(6) The provisions of this apply only insofar as they do not prevent action being taken on the request made under this section.
(7) In this section “neighbourhood area” and “neighbourhood forum” have the meanings given by section 61F of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.””

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[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, it has been drawn to my attention that there is a typo in my proposed new Section 80A(3). It refers to subsection (2)(a) instead of (2)(b). The misprint will be obvious to anybody reading it. I am sure that it was my fingers that got it wrong and not the Public Bill Office.

The amendment tackles the problem of the democratic deficit and creates the opportunity for more democratic legitimacy in unparished areas where neighbourhood areas and neighbourhood forums may be set up. It does this by amending the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, covered by Schedule 9 to this Bill, which then affects the sections of the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 that cover community governance reviews. It is slightly complicated, but I think that what is set out is clear.

I remind noble Lords that in parished areas, the body that will be responsible for neighbourhood planning—for the creation of a neighbourhood plan or of neighbourhood development orders—is the parish council. In unparished areas, the local planning authority can, on request, designate a neighbourhood area; and no fewer than 21 people in that area can be designated as a neighbourhood forum. Clearly in that situation there is a democratic deficit in the formation and accountability of the neighbourhood forum compared with parished areas where there is an elected local authority—the parish council—responsible for carrying out the work.

This is a modest proposal. It does not force anything on anybody. It seeks to give a neighbourhood forum—where it exists and is recognised by the local planning authority for the purposes of neighbourhood planning, and where it believes that it would be advantageous to convert into an elected parish council—an easier and quicker means of doing that than exists at the moment. The Government recognise the problem. After the summer the Minister wrote a number of letters to various Members of the House setting out the views of the Government on this. I want to quote from the letter to my noble friend Lord Shipley, because when I was digging this out I could not find the letter to me, which I think includes the same stuff. My noble friend Lord Shipley apologises for not being present at this debate on a topic which he has raised repeatedly. He has had to go to another gathering in order to make a speech.

The Minister wrote to my noble friend as follows:

“In these neighbourhood areas, we have sought to recognise the democratic legitimacy of parish councils by ensuring that, within an area that includes any part of a parished area, only the parish council has a mandate to undertake a neighbourhood plan. We would therefore encourage communities to use the opportunity of preparing a neighbourhood plan to consider whether they wanted to apply to become a parish, town or community council—with the extra powers and responsibilities that brings”.

Community councils, of course, are parish councils in Wales. The letter continues:

“However, we do not want to force communities to become parish or community councils before they undertake neighbourhood planning—hence our neighbourhood forum provisions”.

The problem with the way that the Government want to go ahead on this is that where a neighbourhood forum and a neighbourhood wish to consider setting up a parish council, the process under a community governance review—under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007—is fairly cumbersome. More to the point, the principal local authority—the district or unitary council responsible for the community governance review—can put a stop to it if it wants to do so. In the best of all worlds, it will not be carrying out local community governance reviews very frequently. It may say, “Well, we have just done one and we are not going to do another for five years”, or something like that, or it may, as has happened with a number of local authorities, simply be hostile to the idea.

This amendment puts forward a means by which a neighbourhood forum can require a community governance review covering just its area, which has to take place fairly quickly. It also provides for a presumption that, unless there are some very good reasons, it will be approved. That is the purpose of this amendment. What I would really like to come out of this debate today is for the Government to tell us how they intend to tackle this problem, which they have recognised, and how they will make sure that there are more community governance reviews for more parish and town councils, particularly in urban areas where they do not exist at the moment, and where local people, through the neighbourhood forum, actually want them. They should not be compulsory by any means, but there should be a means by which a lot more could be created. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I support the principle behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I cannot speak to the wording, even less to the typos I am afraid, but noble Lords will of course know of my interest in parish and town councils. At present a parish council is the only community-based organisation that combines a democratic base, truly local roots and a statutory status. So it has a special cachet from that point of view, and indeed many communities aspire to that status. Crucially it is independent of other local government bodies in having its own power to precept, and that of course gives it a financial independence as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has touched on this, and it is certainly no reflection on the borough—which I think has an exemplary record towards communities in its area—of the noble Lord, Lord True, who I see is no longer in his place, but some local authorities have been obstructive to the formation of new parish and town councils, and I do not think that there is any point in overlooking that. That has happened on occasions despite an authentic and well-argued local desire having been put forward.

I would put one caveat in here and that is that the geographical template for new parishes in unparished areas needs to be a reasonably good fit. I am concerned not so much about the precise geography as about the cohesion and the identity which is to some extent reflected, as it must be, in geography. Size is clearly not the main issue because, up and down the country, we have very large and very small parish and town councils. One feature that they benefit from is that they serve the needs of the community and have grown up to reflect that community, whether large or small, over very many years.

I welcome the sentiment behind this amendment, which I see as a way of effectively creating, to some extent, the possibility of a fast-track route to parish and town council creation. It enables neighbourhood forums that wish to to migrate to the statutory basis where they can join and become one of the family of democratic structures that form the first tier of local government. I welcome the principle behind this amendment and I hope that the Minister will be able to give a positive response.

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[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am going to leap in because I think, with the greatest respect, that the noble Earl is out of order. On Report, we normally get the Minister to wind up after the Opposition. But I hear what he says.

The amendment has its faults, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already recognised that. But having said that, we are not unhappy about the principle of neighbourhood forums investigating opportunities to create town or parish councils for their area, and we accept that that gives greater democratic legitimacy. The noble Lord is also correct that there were a great many standards inquiries on parishes, but we also accept that they have responsibilities, duties, income and powers that would bring benefit to these neighbourhood proposals.

This is why we have already committed, in the Open Public Services White Paper, to look and see how to make it easier for neighbourhood forums and others to have a parish or town council for their area. In doing so we are looking at streamlining the community governance review process, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred in rather uncomplimentary terms, but we need to strike the right balance so that neighbourhood forums or communities that want a parish council can get one relatively quickly. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was correct that this is not a speedy process at the moment, but if we speed up the process there will have to be safeguards to ensure that parish areas reflect community identity and interests.

The listening phase—which I have written down here, by which I assume consultation is meant—on the Open Public Services White Paper has just finished, and we are looking at cross-government implementation plans being announced in November. Building stronger neighbourhoods, including making it easier for people to set up parish councils, will be a priority for us in those plans.

While I do not want to pre-empt this work that has got to be done, I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that we will consider the issues raised in this amendment in conjunction with that. I hope that, as I said, that process will not be terribly long in coming to conclusions. I hope that with those reassurances, the noble Lord is willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who has taken part. I have to point out to my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree that there is a fundamental difference between a parochial church council and a civil parish. If he would like to do some historical research he will find that a not very great Liberal Government in the middle of the 1890s—perhaps in 1894, but I would not stick to that—introduced the concept of civil parishes against the hysterical opposition of Conservatives, particularly in your Lordships’ House, who thought that the idea of elected parish councils in the countryside was the nearest thing to communist revolution they could think of. But it was forced through, and it was just about the only good thing which that short-lived Liberal Government managed to do before they lost power.

Having made the party political plug, if I can comment very briefly, the point is —and I am grateful for the support from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton—I accept the nitpicking complaints about the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. If he were to investigate the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 he would find out what is in this section which this amendment is referring to. In my opinion, it is all together far too long-winded and bureaucratic in terms of community governance reviews. On standards, it is often little rural parishes which cause the most bother.

However, I am extremely grateful for the Minister’s comments, which are extremely positive. I look forward with enthusiasm and anticipation to the Government’s proposals in November, which some might say is a pleasant change for me, although it is not entirely. I thank her very much for what she has said. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 205ZZA withdrawn.

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[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I hope to be brief in moving this amendment because I think a point here was left outstanding. This brings back an amendment that was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in Committee. In responding to the amendment, I think the noble Baroness confirmed that plans could not be approved under these provisions unless they were compatible with the Human Rights Act, but she said that neighbourhood forums do not exercise a public function and therefore we have the anomaly originally pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that parish councils are subject to the equality duty while neighbourhood forums are not. This remains an issue of concern because the impact assessment for these provisions points out that certain communities are much less likely to engage and therefore be involved in this process than others. I do not think we dealt with the question of whether there is a technical problem in bringing neighbourhood forums within the scope of the equality duty, notwithstanding that they apparently do not exercise public functions. Otherwise, there is an issue about doing all we can to ensure that all communities have a chance to become engaged in these neighbourhood planning opportunities. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has quite rightly said that I brought this amendment forward at the Committee stage. I apologise to him because I had intended to add my name to his amendment at this stage, but in the hustle and bustle of the Bill, I failed to do so. The noble Lord has set out the position clearly and I do not have anything to add other than to support his remarks.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am not going to be able to take this any further, so the response I made in Committee is the one I am going to give to the noble Lord again. Neighbourhood forums are not public bodies and therefore by definition they are outside the requirements of the Equality Act. Their purpose is to form themselves in order to make a neighbourhood plan and subsequently, when they have done that, to disband, so they will have a shortish life. By definition they are expected to be widely inclusive in terms of who is on them, and that will be checked by the local authority. The neighbourhood planning proposals cannot be approved unless they are compliant with human rights obligations. Built into this is an expectation of equality both in terms of who should be on the neighbourhood forum and in the way that plans have to be compatible with human rights obligations. It is a requirement, but it is not an absolute legislative requirement because it cannot be one. I hope that, with my explanation, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Greaves]

My noble friend has just said something I have not heard before, which is that the expectation is that neighbourhood forums will be short-lived. They will be set up for a particular purpose and they will then close down. I wonder if she would like to comment on that because it is something that we would like to take away and think about, particularly in light of the comments made on earlier amendments by the noble Lord, Lord True.