Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the Government’s partial, if deathbed, conversion to doing something about these proposals. I certainly endorse many of the comments that have been made about the problems that remain apparently unresolved. I particularly join the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in strongly urging the Government to look again at the issue of conservation areas, unless it is capable of being clarified that the proposals will not apply to conservation areas.

I draw particular attention to the wording of Amendment 7B, where in the preamble it says to insert:

“Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1), a development order may include provision for ensuring”,

the safeguards to which the Minister referred. Why is that “may”? Why is it not the case that the development order will include these provisions rather than there being an option? It seems to me that it would be all too easy to evade the consequences of the partial progress that the amendment produces if it remains an option simply not to provide that in the subsequent development order.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, very briefly, in my 26 years as legal eagle on the “Jimmy Young Show” on Radio 2, there was no issue more sensitive and more repeatedly brought up than neighbour disputes relating to the extension of premises. It causes immense angst among our fellow citizens. People have mentioned rights of view and rights of light; there is no right of view, of course, and rights of light are notoriously difficult to judge and adjudicate on. I am entirely in favour of my noble friend the Minister trying to ensure that what comes out in the wash—I am thinking particularly of the subsidiary legislation—leaves minimum room for aggravation and disagreement.

For example, can anything be done about defining,

“the curtilage of a dwelling house”,

and the boundary of this? Those sorts of details may not seem important to us here because, I suspect, most of us live in rather spacious houses with gardens, but in terraced accommodation par excellence these issues are of huge importance. I am delighted to hear that the notice period is going to be 28 days but, to be honest, it needs to be 56 because these things can move very slowly and it takes less sophisticated mortals a long time to find out how to deal with some of these matters.

[Lord True]

My Lords, in rising, I feel rather like the ancient prophetess who went to see King Tarquin with the Sibylline Books and saw six of them promptly burned, only to have them accepted at the last minute. Like her, I am grateful for that. I thank my noble friend Lord Tope, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for their support for this proposal at an earlier stage.

Of course, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her amendment. Unlike some in this debate, she has always understood the practical, human issues that are involved in seeking to end the rights of objection to developments which, as some have pointed out in this debate, may take more than half of a neighbouring back garden. Crucially, these may also create precedents in local planning in relation to character and new lines of building, which may well affect the person next door but one, who, under the proposal before us, still has no right to a say.

Parliament has secured some movement and I think many householders will thank goodness for your Lordships’ House for the role it has played in securing that. My view has always been—and remains—that faced with potentially overbearing developments, neighbours should have the right to defend the value and amenity of a home. For most of our population, that home represents the focus of all their lifelong work and aspiration and the bulk of their family’s wealth. That is the fundamental point. With the help of colleagues in another place and many of your Lordships, people in the Local Government Association and the local government world, and so many other people—ordinary people—this has finally been vindicated. I am very grateful to the Government for laying an amendment to protect these rights.

The question is: what do we do now? The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, to whom I pay tribute for his role in not only this but all our local government debates, says that we should insist on the amendment for which I secured your Lordships’ support at an earlier stage. It is true that the Government’s amendment was laid before the House at the last possible moment last Friday. I might agree with him that it would have been better if it had come sooner. I myself suggested a way forward in which both sides would withdraw their amendments so that more timely discussion might take place on an agreed draft regulation specific to this issue, which could be debated later in both Houses after proper consultation. I actually think that would have been a better and more orderly course in Whitehall terms, but that is not where we are.