Sussex and Brighton Combined County Authority Regulations 2026

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Baroness Pinnock

Monday 23rd March 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to this statutory instrument, one in a series of statutory instruments creating county combined authorities that we have discussed over several months.

I start with what the Minister said about the purpose of this statutory instrument: that the Government wish to “widen and deepen devolution”. We Liberal Democrats support devolution and have long advocated for it. However, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee noted in its report on this SI that of the more than 6,000 responses received from the public,

“71% disagreed that it would support … local communities”.

The SLSC asked, given that local opposition—the overwhelming majority of those 6,000 responses not in favour—how the Government will ensure that the mayor has a “firm democratic mandate” and that local residents are able to “engage” with the system. That seems to be fundamental for any devolution proposal—that it takes people with them. Clearly, from the response to the consultation, that is not the case. I hope that the Minister has some responses to that committee’s report.

The Government have given a formal response to the committee’s report, which included a commitment to future strengthening of scrutiny. As the Minister will know, every time we discuss this, I criticise the scrutiny arrangements in mayoral authorities as being totally inadequate for the range and depth of functions that the mayor will have. One of the easy ways to improve scrutiny would be by ensuring that pre-decision scrutiny is the norm. I wonder whether the Minister can give us any hope that this will be the case.

I have a couple of other points to make. The financing of the mayoral model—if I have read it right—is to be from the constituent councils until the mayoral elections. If that is the case, can the Minister quantify the financial call on the constituent local councils until that time?

The main concern I have is that the Government are proceeding with mayoral devolution alongside very significant local government reorganisation. Two major reorganisations in local government are taking place in that area, which will inevitably cause increased expenditure in the first instance. Establishing the different and new authorities will inevitably be a call on the constituent authorities’ finances. It will not all be funded by grants—it never is—and that will inevitably mean a call on financing of basic public services. Does the Minister agree with that?

Finally, the Government and the previous Government are very keen on the mayoral model, but at no point have we had an assessment or a review of its achievements and its failures. Looking across the metro mayors that have been established, there have been some notable successes. The bus transport system in Greater Manchester has been a success, but there are other parts of the country—looking towards the north-east of the country—where it has not been such an overwhelming success and great question marks have been raised about the way that the mayor and the authority have fulfilled their statutory requirements. It is important that the Government do a review and an assessment of the various mayoral models that have been instituted across the country.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

I commend the Government on getting on with doing something on this agenda. I am a massive fan of mayoral authorities. If that is the price to pay to take power away from Whitehall and Westminster, it is a price worth paying. It could have been a bit cheaper, but nothing is cheap when you get it off the Government if the Treasury is involved with it.

I will ask a couple of questions. It will not start until 2028. That is unfortunate because 2027 is closer, so it would have been better if the department got its act together quicker, got the necessary work done and concentrated on those areas where it was doable. Sussex and Brighton are in a DPP area and are expecting an announcement on Wednesday this week about which of the six are likely to go ahead. There is money being laid now that it might be that five or fewer get announced. Do we know whether this is one area that will be announced? If it is going to be announced, do we know whether the constituent members are going to go from three to five? Does that mean that the council holding the ring on the pension pot will still be in existence after that process? If the constituent council is broken into more than one piece, where will the pension pot then sit?

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Baroness Pinnock

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 31st January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a councillor in the borough of Kirklees. I added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, because I thought that the iron fist might be more effective in this regard than my noble friend’s velvet glove. Those of us suffering as a result of appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and the Secretary of State have become as angry as the noble Baroness has with the situation that her village has faced.

The amendment highlights that the power of local people to determine the impact of planning on their area is constantly undermined, despite the Government’s commitment to localism and neighbourhood planning. Many of the parameters surrounding new development are set by government: planning legislation and the National Planning Policy Framework. All that is already in hand, and it is within that context that the local planning authority makes and determines through consultation decisions about its local plan.

It is interesting to remember how a local plan begins. It begins not with local people making decisions through their neighbourhood plan but with a call for sites, which means developers indicating which sites they would like to use and local landowners wanting to see the value of their land enhanced by putting it forward for development. I have no problem with either of those things; the problem I have is that they are the starting point. The whole purpose of the Bill seems to be to reverse that process and have neighbourhood plans as the foundation of a local plan. It puts local people in charge rather than developers and landowners.

When local councils come to determine the local plan, it includes not only land allocation but planning policies. In that is the formal consultation, which takes place several times, and then it is finally agreed. You would think that then, if the Government were sincere in their approach to localism, that would be the end of it: a huge document is produced which includes hundreds of detailed policies about what can be developed and where, and detailed maps of where land is allocated for business use, for housing, for flood prevention or whatever—and that would be it. After many years of consultation and consideration, one would think there would finally be an agreement, but no, that is not the end of it. Local people do not have a final say. There is then the examination by a planning inspector to test the development; for instance, on grounds of soundness. At that stage the developers have another go. Their site has been rejected so they bring it forward again. They obviously have a great advantage at that stage as they have expensive barristers at their side whereas local people just make their voices heard. Having gone through the earlier process, residents have a right to expect that their case should not be challenged any more.

Then we come to the question of appeals. Two points have already come up in our discussions today. The Minister said that a three-year housing supply is now the basis on which appeals can be made in regard to a lack of housing in a local plan. I seek clarification on whether that occurs only in relation to a neighbourhood plan or would cover the whole area of a local plan. That is very important, certainly in my district, where a number of appeals are going forward to enable developers to build on urban green space—the equivalent of greenbelt within an urban area—on the basis only of an alleged lack of a five-year supply, and despite the fact that a local plan has been agreed by the council and is awaiting examination. I hope that the Minister will clarify that critical issue because, as others have said, developers see a loophole enabling them to put forward plans on land that has in this case been set aside as urban green space for 40 years, and will continue to be so set aside in the next local plan, following its examination. However, a developer can put forward a planning application for that land and it is going to appeal—we await the result of that—on the basis only of this five-year supply issue. That is obviously due to the length of time that a local plan takes to go through the examination process.

As has been described, residents then feel thoroughly disenchanted with the whole process. Local residents who have been consulted through a local district plan, a neighbourhood forum or a neighbourhood plan have a right to expect that, having gone through all that and having made the compromises which inevitably and rightly take place so that development can occur, they should have their wishes upheld and not be undermined by what I regard as spurious claims by developers to override fundamental policies that have been agreed and contained in a local plan. That is why I support wholeheartedly the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify the situation as regards a three-year or five-year land supply.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I hope your Lordships will forgive me but I have not spoken in this Room before. It is my first time and if what I say is right, it is right, but if it is wrong, it is wrong. I declare my interests as the chairman of the Local Government Association until June—I hope—and as leader of South Holland District Council. In terms of what we are dealing with today, I am one of the four people who drafted the National Planning Policy Framework, so I know a little bit about what is in it and I certainly know what the intention was. It was to deliver sustainable development in places in the country where it is needed in a way that the people living in the local area could accept, to ensure that we get the homes we badly need in the most timely fashion.

I have to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that neighbourhood plans were not seen by all of us as the route for making that happen. I personally objected to putting neighbourhood plans in, but that was not because I did not want development, it was because I wanted to see more development and I thought that neighbourhood plans would be a route to slowing it down. But the Government pursued them, so it is incredibly bizarre that if a neighbourhood plan or a local plan has been drawn up in compliance with the NPPF, the Planning Inspectorate is allowed—and some would say sometimes encouraged—to overturn it. The inspectorate should not be able to do that.

There are people outside this Room who think that the Planning Inspectorate has gone feral. It is not working to direction from the Government because it has individual planning inspectors working to their own direction for their own aims. It is important that the Government should insist on the supremacy of the public’s ownership of the planning system. If someone has gone through the pain of making a neighbourhood plan, even though I disagree with such plans in principle, if that is what the Government are intent on using as a way of encouraging development at the local level, once those plans have been tested in public by an inspector and are found to be sound and in compliance with the local plan, if one is in place, or at the very least in compliance with the NPPF, the Planning Inspectorate should never be allowed to overturn one of those decisions except on pain of some form of proper cross-examination by the Government.

We all know that even though the Secretary of State has signed off a planning appeal, it is very rare for the Secretary of State to be personally blamed for that appeal, because generally it does not get anywhere near them. If a neighbourhood plan or a local plan is in place and the inspectorate feels that for good strategic reasons it has to overturn it, there should be some insistence that the Secretary of State should actually take personal ownership of it so that people can be sure that there is political oversight of the bureaucrats working in the planning department. On that basis, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Porter of Spalding and Baroness Pinnock

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

I largely agree with the noble Baroness: it is not right that local authorities are funding inefficient RSLs to make the discount up. The money should come first and foremost from the RSLs, but again, nobody on the other Benches is making that case. The case should be made that RSLs should be forced to sweat their assets properly. They are sitting on more than £2.5 billion on their balance sheets in cash, plus the unsecured money that they have that they could take out against those properties. That is where we should be coming from. If we do not stick to taking just them on, then we could come back to the Government and say, “Actually, the state’s sitting on a lot of land that is redundant and not used for the purpose that it was originally bought for. It is sitting there undervalued”. We should then purchase it or give it to local authorities to increase its value and then use that money. Again, nobody is making that point. Noble Lords are challenging the right to buy itself; that is not where the fire should be. The country voted to extend right to buy. We should be challenging the Government to find a way to fund it that is more appropriate and sustainable.

[Baroness Pinnock]

The noble Lord, Lord Porter, has not listened to what I said. Not one word did I say in opposition to right to buy. I did say that there was not the opportunity, once you have released that equity, necessarily to house a family. What happens, certainly under right to buy, which is the experience we have for council housing, is that councils are fearful—in fact, they would be foolish—to build houses subject to future right to buy because they will be constantly losing the equity value of it. It would be under right to buy constantly. Certainly in my experience of councils in West Yorkshire what is happening once a house is sold is those councils are either building properties that are not subject to right to buy or putting the equity into a community housing group so that they cannot be subject to right to buy. That is one of the problems that I have urged the Government to look at.