Localism Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord McKenzie of Luton
I shall speak also to Amendments 152BA and 152BB. These amendments propose that those undertaking a neighbourhood plan should have a duty to engage with people in the neighbourhood area at an early stage in the development of the plan. Of course, the plan has to be tested by a referendum in due course, but that is at the end of the process when the effort and expense have largely been incurred. Amendment 152ZE requires that proposals for neighbourhood development orders should be accompanied by a statement of consultation covering the responses received and how they have been taken into account. Amendment 152BA imposes a requirement to consult. This should be in the manner which the local authority considers to be consistent with good practice and, where relevant, the local authority’s statement of community involvement. These are straightforward amendments and I beg to move.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I have an amendment in the group which has nothing to do with the Bill, and I apologise to my noble for inserting it. However, it relates to a long-running campaign for the age of voting to be lowered. When it comes to what is happening in their own community, children as young as 14 not only have a real understanding of that, but are also participating in what is going on and have an interest in the things a community might be doing to improve itself. We should look for ways of involving them.
Lord Cameron of Dillington
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 153ZAKA in this group. It is probing in nature and probably does not require an immediate answer. Your Lordships are unlikely to remember that at Second Reading I expressed a concern that bad neighbour developments might possibly end up in neighbourhoods or parishes where the opposition to such a bad neighbourhood development was likely to be the least vocal. I gather that this is a phenomenon which happens even today, and with a neighbourhood planning system is probably more likely to happen in the future. The reason a neighbourhood is not vocal may be that it is already a deprived area or it is one which for a variety of reasons lacks the capacity, the personalities, the knowledge or possibly just an understanding of this new system and the way things work. It may also lack the funding to commit itself to the preparation of a neighbourhood plan or organising a referendum and so on. Even without the threat of a bad neighbour development, it is likely that many parishes and neighbourhoods lack the time and capacity to organise a cohesive plan which, it is hoped, would promote development and progress. I do not believe that these sorts of communities will be able to compete within the new system.
I was struck by some briefing that I received from the Highgate Society, which, albeit in a completely different context, said—I paraphrase—that people have jobs, children and lives to manage and do not want to take responsibility for what they pay their taxes to government, particularly local government, to do. This applies particularly to deprived neighbourhoods or to people within rural parishes who do not necessarily have the ability to counteract either an articulate middle class who might share their parish or someone with a bee in their bonnet who does necessarily consider the effects of their grievance on the whole community. Perhaps I may paraphrase, or plagiarise, a Chinese proverb—I am not quite sure that it is a Chinese proverb, but, if it is not, it should be: a man with a job or income that pays for more than his basic needs has many choices as to how he spends his time, but a man who struggles to earn his basic needs has only one choice. Very often in rural communities, the poorest people do not get involved because they focus on other needs.
Although the whole localism agenda is a very worthy cause, many people will need a lot of help to play their part. It is vital that the Government devote considerable thought and resources to working out how they help all communities to do that. It is the very communities who are least likely to play their part and pick up the baton who are probably in most need of the localism agenda. I hope that the Government will be prepared to spend a lot of time and resources on developing capacity in those neighbourhoods. It would be good if they could respond positively and state exactly how they are going to set about this.
Localism Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
My Lords, according to the programme we are supposed to conclude the Committee stage of this Bill on Wednesday after one further day’s debate. That does not seem to be a realistic prospect. I would like to make good progress with the Bill and the House has the flexibility to do better than that and to give itself some additional time. We could hoof the Education Bill out of the Moses Room on Monday. We could perhaps use the Moses Room on Tuesday or put the Finance Bill into the Moses Room and use the Chamber on Tuesday. We could sit on Thursday. There seem to be a number of options available to enable us to complete the Committee stage of the Bill before we rise. I very much hope that the Government will be able to tell us which of them they propose to use. One way or another, we are not going to complete it unless we do something.
Lord Tope
My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said. We might wish to be where we are now but none of us would wish to be where we are with the Bill, if I can make that distinction. We are where we are. We on these Benches remain committed to completing the Committee stage of the Bill as soon as possible. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, there are a number of options available to enable us to do that before the Recess. We are willing to stay as late as may be on Wednesday evening and if necessary to come back on Thursday or take what other measures can achieve that. It is not for us to determine the progress of other Bills or where they may be taken but we and your Lordships’ House can urge the Government and the usual channels to co-operate with each other to ensure that we achieve the objective that we all share: to complete the Committee stage of the Bill as soon as possible before the Recess.
Localism Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
“Duty to consider requests
(1) A relevant authority must consider a request in accordance with this Chapter if—
(a) it is submitted to an authority by a parish or town council, and(b) it is made in writing and complies with such other requirements for requests as the Secretary of State may specify by regulations.(2) In this Chapter “request” means a request to a relevant authority that it should provide a service or perform a function (being a service or function that it already provides or performs, or is entitled to provide or perform) in a specified manner.
(3) A relevant authority in receipt of such a request shall accede to it unless doing so would—
(a) result in net additional expenditure or net reduced revenue, or(b) adversely affect that authority’s wider interests or policies.(4) In reaching a conclusion under subsection (3)(a), the relevant authority shall take into account all consequent changes in expenditure or income, including any amounts that the parish council is prepared to pay the authority, except that it may not take into account any net reduction in revenue resulting from the enforcement of civil penalties.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the amendment gives a town or parish council the power to put in a request to its superior council, whether that is the district, county or city council, to say, “We wish you to provide your services in a particular way”, or, “We wish you to exercise your functions in a particular way”, and for it to be imperative on the superior council that it accede to the request unless doing so would cost it money or interfere with its wider interests.
There are three principal themes behind the amendment, all of which we will come to in my later amendments. First, there is much to be said for producing something between the current status and some of the cathartic remedies offered in the Bill—in this case, the community right to challenge. It is a serious prospect to ask a small Hampshire town to take on rubbish collection, parking control or any other services that are provided on a large scale by the local authority, and probably belong at that scale, but it is quite reasonable for it to say to the local authority, “When the dustmen come round and spill a bag, we would like them to pick it up rather than leaving the contents on the ground, as your current contractor does”, or, “Please can you desist from parking control on Wednesdays, when we like to allow everyone free rein to get into the shops in the town centre”. To my mind, such requests should be acceded to, but we will never do it through the community right to challenge.
I propose this as a more gradual way, an in-between solution. We are giving such power and influence to town and parish councils that they will over the next decade or so grow much stronger than they are at the moment. There are many other things in which people have an interest locally—not just planning but the whole way in which their local services are provided—and it seems unreasonable that the only way they should have to influence those things is in trying to put together a consortium to take over from the superior council the whole provision of those services. If they can find a solid way to influence the services, if they can make a definite promise to their electorate that they will go to the superior council to ask for that to be done and to have every indication that it will, that will contribute to building strength at the bottom end of the council structure. That will produce a much more robust council when it comes to taking all the decisions that will be asked of it under neighbourhood planning. In strengthening communities and the basis for neighbourhood planning, the amendment has a role.
The third role concerns cities. In neighbourhood planning, we are producing a structure that will work very well in the suburbs and the countryside, where there is a great deal of value to be extracted from the planning process and where communities have a close interest in the way that development takes place. That is the case not only in the inner cities but in places such as in Battersea in London, where I lodge. There is really no interest in controlling development because it is a matter of minutiae and individual planning decisions. The place is built up, except for Clapham Common, and no one can touch that. There are no big decisions to be taken in our neighbourhood; there is no incentive to get together as a community under the provisions of the Bill. However, if the neighbourhood was to be granted any sort of control over the enforcement of parking, 50 per cent of households would come out to vote tomorrow.
I want the capabilities of neighbourhoods under the Bill extended to include the sort of things that people will care about in cities. In places such as Battersea, that is parking, music in pubs and licensing, and other such local authority functions. In the more impoverished parts of the inner city, it is likely to be education and provision for youth. Those are the sort of things that a community will care enough about to want to influence and that will provide the motivation for the creation of the sort of active neighbourhoods that the Bill is intended to achieve.
Lord Shutt of Greetland
My Lords, I believe that is the case. I do not see that that should be disturbed by anything that the Bill is doing. The noble Lord talked about it the other way round, saying that sometimes district councils try to offload and the parish says, “No, we would sooner you kept doing this”. I do not see that there is any reason why that cannot be done under present arrangements. The right to challenge is a different principle. There is a risk that this amendment could catch relevant authorities in an endless and burdensome cycle of considering requests and counter-requests from different parish councils in their area that have different ideas and preferences as to how services should be run.
Finally, the amendment would risk cutting across the community right to challenge as a whole. Requests from parish councils to provide services differently, which might include the service being provided by the parish council or by another organisation, would potentially override expressions of interest from other relevant bodies. I hope that in the circumstances the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
I thank my noble friend for that reply but not for the content of it. We will come to these matters again. I understand what he is saying, but I think that the Government are falling short of the ambitions that they should have in his saying that. We are taking a step towards making parish councils serious bodies for which serious people in the community stand and expect to do serious things. To put them in a position where the only thing that they can promise their electorate is to take a particular attitude on planning is seriously missing a trick. There are many other things that good people in a community should have an influence over. They should feel that they can go to their electorate and say, “I will do this for you”, and not just, “I will go cap in hand to the district council” but “I will make a request that the district council has to consider”, or some equivalent. We ought to be looking at ways of empowering parish councils and particularly town councils in relation to the districts and the counties that sit above them. I am sorry that the Government feel that they have gone far enough in this legislation. I hope that when we get experience of parish councils and town councils being what they can be under this legislation, we will take a step forward.
It is not so much the problems of the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, that I am thinking about. His sort of parish under this Bill will become rich in opportunities to raise funds as a result of development, which will enable it to do whatever it wants with its verges. It really will not be a problem for them, but the Bill is a serious problem for city parishes, first of all because there are no parishes. If you look at my bit of Battersea, there are no lines drawn other than the ward boundaries, and they change every time the Electoral Commission has hiccups. There is no community on the ground, and Battersea is a relatively homogenous corner of London.
There are bits of London where you have an enormous mix of different communities with strong ties within them and very few ties between them and to the locality. To build a community there which can take advantage of the facilities in this Bill to influence planning requires that the organisations we create can have influence beyond mere planning. Most of the lives of people in the community are dictated by the ways in which the local authority chooses to spend money on them, to police them and to require things of them. If they want to do something as simple as having a real influence over the provision made for their children, particularly in terms of early years, youth clubs, youth provision and help into work, all of which are substantial programmes going through Government and through local authorities, they have no right to do so. No one can promise that under this Bill the neighbourhood will have a real influence on those sorts of things. Unless we offer communities that ability, we will never create the communities to take advantage of this Bill. This will be a Bill that does not happen in the cities because no one ever gets going because no one can create the consensus because there are no powers on offer that are relevant to the local communities.
I think that is a serious problem with the Bill and one that I hope the Government will think about. I hope that the Opposition will think about it, too, because I associate the Opposition with having some interest in cities from time to time. I was particularly disappointed by the noble Lord’s lack of interest in this amendment. I hope I manage to interest him in some of my later ones. It seems sad to me that the Opposition are just interested in the rural vote and have no care left for cities. Perhaps that is being left to the Liberal Democrats, for whose support I am grateful. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment for now.
Localism Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Byford
My Lords, I have waited very patiently because my name is not added to any of those amendments, but I support the amendments tabled by my noble friends. I will pick up on what the Minister said to us earlier. In some ways it was a shame that my noble friend Lord Cameron was not allowed to express his broader concerns on the whole of this section. My noble friend quite rightly said that the Government have it in mind to introduce a right of appeal, so clearly they recognise that the Bill, as currently laid down, is far from satisfactory, and that we will get a compensation scheme later. My question to the Minister is: how soon will we have sight of what a compensation scheme might be, or when will we know what right of appeal will be formally moved hopefully between now and Report?
I have a farm in Suffolk that is listed in my interests here, but in this particular context I have no interests that are particularly relevant to this. However, I was formerly one of the patrons of ViRSA, which the noble Lady, Baroness Thornton will recognise. We dealt for many years with post offices being squeezed and unable to make a living in support of their long-term well-being—we are talking here of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. In his amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, clarified quite well the difficulties that we face with this Bill. Are we talking about the loss of a facility that is established within one’s own community, or are we in fact looking at a facility, such as a post office, that is also someone’s dwelling place? Those are two very different issues, and my noble friend, when she comes to wind up, might perhaps enlarge upon that because it is crucial that we know exactly where we stand. For example, in some areas that I know, post offices that have been under threat have managed to relocate into shops, churches, or wherever. Provided that we keep them, it is very good that they have been enabled to remain and be a vibrant part of that particular community. To me, therefore, there is a great difference between a particular service that is offered and the buildings in which it is set. This has been touched on, but I would like the Minister to address that particularly.
My noble friends also expressed concern about land, and to a certain extent about personal privacy, and about investigations that could be made under the proposals in this section of the Bill that would also worry me. We know only too well of investigations of things that are held on computer disks and things that get moved around. Some of this might not be well held in the public domain, to be honest. This is the balance that we have to get right in the Bill. I support the Bill. As I said earlier on, I am a great believer in localism in its truest sense and from the lowest level. Noble Lords who have not heard me say before will hear me say now that, at the parish level, whether in cities or in country areas, localism is most important.
To pick up on a point made earlier, within local councils, authorities or parishes, there will be different interpretations of how they want to proceed. Again, I would be glad if the Minister could reflect on that in her response.
Lastly, I am concerned—not from my point of view, because we have no interest in it—that that could well have an effect on the land value or the land market of people's private, individual holdings. I hope that the Government will reflect on that.
As I said at the beginning, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Hanham for her statement on inheritance and gifts between families and trusts and considering the question of the holding for a limited time if those assets are bid for. I cannot see any reason why you would bid if you are not going to buy. There is no logic.
Baroness Byford
As my noble friend says, it would be the price, but one is not going to bid for something unless one has the ultimate purpose of wanting to buy.
I, too, am sorry that we are discussing this very important part of the Bill at this time of night, but we are. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken and seek clarification from the Minister on many of the points made, which I fear will make us rather late finishing tonight. I thank my noble friends for proposing their amendments, which I support.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, this is going to make for a very interesting Division on Report. It will be fascinating to see who ends up in which Lobby.
I should declare an interest that I own an asset of community value—a woodland in Kent. I would be happy to go along with the Bill’s provisions but that is for me. It is my decision and my feeling about my relationship with the community. Any suggestion that assets of community value are restricted to assets that are already in community use when it comes to land is extremely dangerous. It produces exactly the side-effects that all my noble friends have been talking about of immediately causing assets to be withdrawn from community use.
There is no great function for this part of the Bill when it comes to rural communities anyway. Under the neighbourhood planning provisions rural communities with a lot of land and space to spare, and therefore an ability to develop, will be in a very strong position to do deals to support the businesses that they want to support and mould communities in their own ways. They are the great winners from neighbourhood planning. I suspect that suburban communities with decent amounts of space will do equally well. I am concerned about the example that was adduced about the problems that arise in cities where neighbourhood planning has very little to offer. Such communities by and large will not have the ability to tackle these things proactively, to accumulate wealth to be able to support or buy assets as and when they are wanted and to think ahead in the way in which it will happen in rural communities. I do not have an answer to the question posed by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about what happens in cities, but for rural communities this part of the Bill is entirely unnecessary, as neighbourhood planning will do it all.
Lord Patel of Bradford
My Lords, I will be very brief as the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, covered many of the points succinctly. First, I thank the Minister for her intervention earlier. It was very helpful, but I think that we need to study the note in the Library. I have a feeling that this will be an iterative process. We would certainly welcome involvement in that and further meetings.
Notwithstanding the benefits that my noble friend Lady Thornton pointed out in respect of this clause to local communities and local areas, we recognise the good intentions and the thrust behind many of the amendments and the arguments that have been presented, together with carefully crafted amendments. We obviously need to look carefully at the practicalities of what this means. I can say certainly that the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, struck a chord. It is clearly an issue that we need to take further and seek more clarification from the Government.
We agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, in respect of the centralised delegated powers. We are completely on board with that. That issue has kept coming up throughout all the debates and needs to be looked at very carefully. As I say, I think this is going to be an iterative process. The amendments pose some very serious questions that we need to explore further, and I look forward to what the Minister has to say about that. We will certainly want to sit round the table with the Minister and others and look at this a bit more carefully.