Direct Planning (Pilot) Bill [HL]

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Friday 20th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on securing a Second Reading for his Private Member’s Bill. I should also say at the start of my remarks that I am an elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and I serve on the planning committee of that authority. The Bill has the support of these Benches. We wish it well and a speedy passage through your Lordships’ House.

The Bill essentially seeks greater support for the involvement of local people in the planning process through use of charrettes, form-based area codes and neighbourhood planning. It seeks to get people involved in the planning process in a positive way to find the best solutions for their local community. A charrette is a technique used in planning for consultation with stakeholders. It can be intensive and mean multiday meetings involving planners, developers, businesses and local residents. It is about seeking agreement on the way forward in a more collaborative way.

The Bill states that charrettes must be included in estate regeneration programmes. I very much welcome that. I grew up on the Aylesbury Estate in south London and I can confidently say that if we had had a consultation and community involvement programme like a charrette, as outlined in the Bill, then all the streets of houses would not have been knocked down to build the estate in the 1960s. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, talked about landmark developments that do not stand the test of time. The Aylesbury Estate won awards. People came to visit it from around the world in the 1960s. Of course, we know what happened there in the end.

As a family we were very happy on the estate and the design of the property inside was actually very good. The problem was the environment outside the estate. You had no interaction with your neighbours as you would have if you lived in a street. I remember as a child they talked about having walkways in the sky, where you could walk from Peckham because all the council estates would be linked up. You would not have had to cross a road until you got to Elephant and Castle. Thankfully that never came to fruition and these estates are either being knocked down or have undergone transformational work to make them more acceptable to live in. That means that we basically bring streets back into these areas.

In the 1980s, I recall talking to two former councillors in Southwark who said how proud they had been to announce the building of all these new homes, but then how quickly it had all gone wrong. Of course, that story was repeated all over the United Kingdom in the 1960s and 1970s. What is being built in place of these estates is newer homes with a much more traditional street design or small blocks of flats with proper security measures and a door entry on to the main road. I am confident that that will produce better and happier communities and will be much better than what was there before.

Form-based area codes are a means of regulating land developments, producing predictable results and a high-quality public realm by using physical form as the organising principle with a lesser focus on land use, and can produce more consistent and predictable patterns of development in the public realm. There are good examples of that as well.

As I said earlier, I am a local councillor in Lewisham and represent the ward of Crofton Park. We have begun the process of setting up a neighbourhood forum in that ward. That takes a lot of work and can be challenging, but I am very much of the opinion that it will produce better outcomes for local people as they are more fully involved in the planning process rather than being spectators. For many years we have had an awful development site covered with pink hoarding which we have never been able to sort out. Indeed, we have spent years trying to sort it out. It has been the centre of battles between local residents and various developers. If we had had a charrette, we could have dealt with that problem much more quickly than we finally managed to do earlier this year.

I am pleased that the Government Chief Whip is present. I am sure that this Bill will receive a Second Reading but there will then be 11 Private Members’ Bills waiting for Committee stage. They will all be Committees of the whole House. But then those Bills will struggle to get any further. Will the Government Chief Whip consider putting some of these Bills into Grand Committee? It can be done. I have asked the Clerk of the Parliaments whether that can be done and it would move the Bills on much further. I hope that the Government Chief Whip will consider that.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)]

It is the custom that, after Second Reading, Bills have a Committee stage of the whole House. But, of course, if no amendments are made, it is perfectly possible for those Bills to proceed.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

That is absolutely right; that is the custom. However, we certainly could move these Bills into Grand Committee. I have had a long conversation with the Clerk of the Parliaments but I will leave it there. However, I keep making the point that there are some very good Private Members’ Bills that could be moved along much quicker if we wanted to do so.

In conclusion, I again congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, on his excellent Bill and hope that he will get a positive response from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford.