Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Greaves(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
My Lords, this little group of amendments raises some important and fundamental issues relating to the community right to challenge. I shall speak also to Amendment 197DA. I think that there is also a Labour amendment in the group.
We are back in the Alice in Wonderland world of relevant bodies, relevant authorities and relevant services. Amendment 197CA would leave out the provision that two or more employees of a relevant authority—a local authority—can be specified as a relevant body, in other words, a body which can challenge to run a service. The Bill defines “relevant body” as,
“a voluntary or community body, … a body of persons or a trust which is established for charitable purposes only, … a parish council, … in relation to a relevant authority, two or more employees of that authority, or … such other person or body as may be specified by the Secretary of State”.
The term “two or more employees” of a relevant authority does not seem to fit in with that list of defined bodies. One assumes that the other bodies defined by the Secretary of State will be community bodies. Employees are different.
That is not to say that there are not circumstances in which employees can, and indeed ought to, take over responsibility for the running of services on behalf of the principal council. Many of us would like to see far more organisations such as mutuals and co-operatives, which provide what, in a long lifetime ago in the Young Liberals, we used to call worker control—my noble friend Lord Tope remembers all that. Employee bodies or groups of employees taking over the running of services in a co-operative way is a perfectly valid and desirable way in which, in appropriate circumstances, public services can be run. They may be arm’s-length or more than arm's-length bodies.
However, it is our view that if the Government are interested in that—they have given some indication that they may be—that should be addressed as a separate issue. It is not the same as allowing a couple or half a dozen employees to go off on their own initiative and to do their own thing regardless of what the rest of the staff think. The Labour amendment in this group suggests that any such initiative should have the support of at least half the employees. On the face of it, that seems sensible.
There is concern that a small number of employees could act as a proxy for commercial companies coming in on the back of the provision. In our discussion with Ministers and civil servants, we have been given many assurances that safeguards are set out in the Bill to avoid that happening. The Ministers we have talked to have been absolutely clear that they do not see that as desirable, that it ought not to happen and that it can be prevented. I am asking my noble friend today not just for a statement that the safeguards are there but for a clear explanation on the record of how local authorities will be able to prevent that possible abuse. It is possible, as Ministers have told us, that that is unlikely to happen very often, but that is not a reason for not taking action to prevent it.
As for the process in which the community right to challenge will take place, I am widening the debate slightly to avoid saying quite so much on the next group of amendments. The first process is that a relevant body has to be approved by the council. If it is a parish council, it is automatic. If it is a community or voluntary body, the principal council will have to approve it as being a relevant body. The second part of the process is that a relevant body may make an expression of interest to run a service and the principal council has to decide whether to accept that expression of interest. So long as it fits the rules and regulations, it will not be able to reasonably refuse it. The third part of the exercise is that, having accepted an expression of interest, the principal council has to carry out a procurement exercise.
The concern that a lot of us now have is not about the processes in this Bill for approving a relevant body, which are full of all kinds of safeguards, with the possible exception of the provision relating to employees. We are not too concerned about the process of accepting an expression of interest, which again seems to have a number of safeguards written into it. It is in the procurement exercise where the problems seem to lie. Once the expression of interest is accepted, the procurement exercise comes into effect automatically. It seems to us that safeguards against abuse of the process are crucial.
Amendment 197DA is a different amendment. In Clause 69(8), “community body” is defined as,
“a body that carries on activities primarily for the benefit of the community”.
This amendment would add on the end of that,
“and is actively engaged in doing so in the area in which the relevant service is being provided”.
The amendment restricts the definition of a community body to a body which is active in the community referred to. It restricts it to local bodies or to wider bodies which are already active in the area. Otherwise, it would be wide open, for example, to a large national charity that has no presence whatever in an area to move in and try to take over services. If it is about community bodies, surely it is about bodies which are already active in that community.
I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that and in particular to his explanation of how the safeguards will apply to prevent abuse, particularly of a small number of employees putting in a bid for a service. Also, in general, what safeguards will there be against large commercial companies using this operation to sweep up services, which is what Ministers are repeatedly telling us they do not intend to happen?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I face in a slightly different direction from my noble friend Lord Greaves. I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench can give me some comfort that, when the regulations are set out for this, they will have in mind how desirable it is that we should encourage the creation of neighbourhood-based community organisations to take on services currently provided by the state. One of the difficulties that we face in cities is that people have become used to the comfort of state provision, although they are getting extremely grumpy in some cases with the way in which it is provided.
If a community in a city is to get together and go through the process of preparing to bid for a service which it values, it is going to need considerable comfort and assistance in the regulations to make sure that it is not going to get tripped up on technicalities and that the local council can offer advice rather than having to stand back and treat this strange creature as a competitor to any commercial interests which may come along to bid for it afterwards. We need to be equipping ourselves in this Bill to nurture local enterprises and communities in cities to give them a chance through the provision of services to generate a surplus for reinvestment in the community. That is what we are doing elsewhere in this Bill for rural communities, which will generate a comfortable surplus out of planning permission, but we are doing nothing for inner city communities. This is the bit of the Bill where we give relatively compact communities easy access to a diversity of resources. Cities exist because they have that advantage over rural communities.
We need to give the local elements of those communities a real chance to get involved in providing local services and in that way generate surpluses which they can reinvest in the community and do the things that they want to do. I should like my noble friend to give me comfort that the department has urban communities in particular in mind in this part of the Bill.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Greaves
Lord Lucas
My Lords, perhaps I may pick up on what my noble friend has been saying. I am puzzled as to how business gets involved when a parish is the foundation for neighbourhood planning. A particular example would be this. What happens to the strawberry and cherry growers of Kent? Noble Lords may have a view of strawberry fields and cherry orchards in Kent as they remember them from their youth, but if they went there now they would see polytunnels full of Poles, which tend not to be popular. Well, the Poles are popular locally, but the polytunnels are not. It would be very difficult, under a neighbourhood planning regime, to get permission for a new strawberry field and the polytunnels involved if there was no business influence at all in a neighbourhood planning environment run by a parish council.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have a few brief points. I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in the debate. Other parts of this Bill and other legislation are probably going to lead to an impetus in some areas for the creation of new parish councils. But it is true to say that over three-quarters of the population of England do not live in a parished area, so there is a serious problem of the democratic deficit here.
I am extremely grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her detailed answers to questions I and other Members put to her, but this issue is so complex that I shall have to take her responses away and read them. We will do that, and perhaps we will have the whole summer for it. However, I am not sure that the Government have yet really got a grip on the question of the democratic credibility and legitimacy of neighbourhood forums. The amendments I put down to take away the limit of 21 were not because I want to go back to three, but because I think that 21 is far too small.
Lord Lucas
Amendment 152ZC looks at how you take the structures of this Bill and produce something of interest to local neighbourhoods. Straightforward planning and dealing with planning permissions, and their outcomes, is not really what a city neighbourhood is about. It is about its environment much more generally. When it comes to the streetscape, it is a question of whether a particular street should be pedestrianised, narrowed or given a 20 miles an hour limit. It is a question of how traffic regulations are enforced. This is a particular plague in some bits of London where councils seem to have forgotten that businesses need trade and that local people sometimes need to park in order to visit shops or neighbours. Neighbourhoods have a lot of interest in the way in which traffic regulations are set out and enforced. If one had that as part of the scope of this Bill—I understand that it may be and I look forward to what my noble friend the Minister has to say—it would produce a package which gives this Bill a much greater chance of succeeding and producing the same sort of vibrant communities within cities as I am sure it will produce in the countryside and towns.
My final amendment is Amendment 152A, which picks up on a point that has been made several times; namely, that we should find ways within the procedures set out in this part of the Bill for our neighbourhoods to become parishes. They have to go through an enormous number of hoops and great effort to produce a neighbourhood plan under this Bill, which is much more than is required by the legislation for the creation of parishes, particularly given that, having created a plan and a direction for the neighbourhood, the animal created under this Bill then dies. It is a great shame that all that effort comes to nothing. The Bill should be directed at creating a parish where the people involved want some form of continuity but it should be made easy and obvious how a parish can appear out of a neighbourhood plan in an area which is not parished. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I was discussing this matter when, some time ago, the Chief Whip suggested that I should sit down and that we should move on. I thought that that was a bit unfair but I will briefly make two points. The important point made by my noble friend Lord Lucas is that of linking neighbourhood planning with the formation of new parishes. Earlier, my noble friend Lord Shipley, who is not in his place, said that a mechanism to do that would be extremely valuable. At the moment, the problem with creating new parishes is that it requires a local governance review by the principal council, the district or unitary council, which can take quite a long time.
These principal councils are not always terribly enthusiastic about creating new parishes. If someone comes along with a petition or whatever, they will be forced to have a local governance review but they may not take it very seriously. There are a number of instances where there has been a clear demand for a new parish council on the ground and the principal council responsible has simply blocked it and said “No, you can’t have it”. If this new Bill is to be a stimulus for the creation of lots of new parishes, of which I am certainly in favour, there needs to be a way in which the Government can link that to this legislation, whether in primary legislation or in some other way, and perhaps change the advice that is given to councils about local governance reviews, thus making it much easier to carry out the review and to create the parishes. I say that as someone who lives in a borough which is now totally parished. The fact that it is totally parished is not entirely unconnected with my activities in the past 30 years.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Greaves(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have some amendments in this group, which I shall try to rattle through as quickly as possible. I start by saying that we support the broad thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has just said.
Amendment 148ZZBBB is a kite-flying amendment that would include building improvement and renovation of housing. The noble Lord has spoken more eloquently than I would have done, so I shall say no more about that. However, this is a very serious problem with the new system.
Amendments 148ZZBBA and 148ZZCA, are very similar to amendments that were tabled in the House of Commons by my right honourable friend Simon Hughes. He asked us to table them again here, since he was given a fairly sympathetic response by the Minister when he talked to him about the amendments—they were tabled in the Commons but they were not debated there. They would widen the possible use of the CIL. Amendment 148ZZBBA leaves out the words “providing infrastructure to support” and inserts the word “supporting”. The proposed provision refers to the development of an area. In other words, the amendment would allow the CIL to be spent on projects that support the development of an area, and not just what might be narrowly defined as infrastructure. The amendment would amend Section 205 of the Planning Act 2008.
Amendment 148ZZCA makes a similar amendment to Section 216 of that Act, which at the moment—ignoring the preamble—reads:
“CIL regulations must require the authority that charges CIL to apply it, or cause it to be applied, to funding infrastructure”.
Amendment 148ZZCA would add “or any other matter”. That means that CIL could be used to fund things that are desirable in the area but not necessarily described as infrastructure.
Many areas, particularly big cities, do not necessarily require extra investment in their infrastructure, but that does not mean that local residents are not inconvenienced by development. They might be inconvenienced by noise, dirt or dust, or there may be nuisance from the operation of the development. A supermarket could have people coming in and out all the time, and making noise around closing time. This could be mitigated by investment in, for example, double glazing. However, this is not currently allowed under the legislation; it is not regarded as infrastructure. In reality, councillors with the opportunity of getting CIL will always levy it and will always find ways of spending it. However, they will not necessarily spend it on the best and most useful thing that they could spend it on if they have to stay within the narrow definition of infrastructure.
Amendments 148ZZBBC and 148ZZCC just propose replacing “ongoing” with “continuous”. I regard “ongoing” as being an unpleasant American word that came in probably several decades ago—I do not know—but the English word is, in my view, “continuous”, which would be better and more elegant.
Amendment 148ZZCD refers to regulation-making powers in the Bill that refer to passing CIL,
“to a person other than that authority”.
I am not trying to remove that provision, and I should say that this is a probing amendment to find out what that phrase means and who these other persons might be that the authority would or might have to pass the CIL to.
Amendment 148ZZBAZA relates to the same argument about authorities being able to make up their own minds after a charging scheme has been examined by an examiner and to obtaining their recommendations. It is the same argument that was made two groups ago, and I will not say any more about it. I do not imagine that the Government will agree with me about that, but it is important. The next amendment in the group is about the same matter, so I shall not speak to it any further.
Finally, I speak to Amendment 148ZZZBE. On page 77 of the Bill, proposed new subsection (7A) to Section 211 states:
“A charging authority must use appropriate available evidence to inform the charging authority’s preparation of a charging schedule”.
That seems to be garbage. Why does that have to be in legislation? There are then eight indications of what CIL regulations may make provision for. I shall not read them all out, but only a couple of them to provide a flavour, including,
“provision as to evidence that is to be taken to be not appropriate”,
and,
“provision as to how evidence is, and as to how evidence is not, to be used”.
They are all like this. Finally there is,
“provision as to how the use of evidence is to inform the preparation of a charging schedule”.
They are the kind of quite extraordinary provisions that ought not to be in legislation.
It is insulting that local authorities cannot make sensible decisions on their own without being given such minute and detailed instructions on exactly what to do. If the Government are to respond to all the criticisms made in this Committee about the detailed regulations that are being imposed, I hope that they might look at this provision as being at best redundant and at worst quite ridiculous.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I wish to speak to my Amendment 148ZZCBA. It proposes to remove subsection (3)(b) of Clause 100, not, as my noble friend might think, in protest at the word “ongoing”, although it is an entirely unnecessary word. Perhaps the clause should refer only to future costs. What costs would be in or out, or out or in, because of “ongoing” being in the clause? The word is totally unnecessary. However, I want to mention this matter because it is a breach in the whole principle of CIL, which should deal with the infrastructure costs that are caused, or need to be contributed to, as a result of the proposed development.
Once you start to allow consideration of future costs, you will allow the whole CIL to be diverted to revenue and you will not get the infrastructure that you are supposed to get, and you will create a large deficit in the provision of infrastructure, because cash-strapped local councils will just hang on as long as they can without building the infrastructure. They will allow the roads to become more crowded and the schools to become fuller until the local authorities have to do something, and spend the CIL money on current costs. This is the sort of budgeting for which we criticised the previous Administration. I am very surprised that we are contemplating it ourselves.
Localism Bill
Debate between Lord Lucas and Lord Greaves
Lord Lucas
I very much support what my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor said. It is terribly important for the neighbourhood planning parts of this Bill that sustainability should be able to be interpreted at that level. At the moment in Hampshire it is part of the local policy that there should be no development in the countryside. If that is allowed under the new system, it will completely wipe out all neighbourhood planning in Hampshire. The argument is that development should take place in towns, where it is more sustainable, but if one applied that nationwide we would choose the wettest, least attractive part of the country and put all development there. It must be possible to focus down on a neighbourhood and look at what is sustainable for that neighbourhood.
Lord Greaves
Can I ask the noble Lord to decouple the words “wettest” and “least attractive”? Some of the wettest parts of the country, such as the Lake District and the Pennines, are some of the most attractive.
Lord Lucas
I am sorry if I coupled those words in the wrong way. I meant that it had to be both. It has to be the wettest because clearly we do not want to put a lot of houses where there is a water shortage. Having decided where it is wet enough, you then choose the least attractive place. I am sure that we can all have arguments about where it should be, but clearly it is not Kent or Norfolk.