Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

I bring this back before your Lordships, having been encouraged to believe that when my noble friend responds he might give me some hope, short of seeking to take a legislative route through your Lordships’ House today, that there may be some meaningful and positive response from the Government to help local authorities address this issue and for redress—sadly, the stable door has been open for a long time—to lift the fear that some small businesses still have of this threat coming their way. I beg to move.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I find myself once again in tandem with the noble Lord, Lord True. He said correctly that we have been pedalling together on this issue for, I think, about four years now—mostly against a very strong headwind, it has to be said, both under the coalition Government and the present Government. I join him in welcoming, shall we say, a slightly less strong wind, a gentler breeze, on this occasion.

I still have the view that the question of the conversion of offices to residential—which is in many cases entirely desirable, where there are redundant offices, and so on—should be a matter for the local planning authority to determine in the light of local circumstances and to get such planning benefit as may be appropriate and possible. I understand that the breeze is still too strong for us to go quite that far, but when the Minister replied to our debate on this on Report—indeed, we have debated it at every stage of this Bill—he made some sympathetic and encouraging noises to encourage us to withdraw our amendment, which we of course intended to do anyway.

I would like the Minister to clarify two particular points for me, both of which I mentioned on Report—I will not go over all the ground again. I made the point that Article 4 is usually cited as the answer to all questions on this matter, and I related the experience of my own borough. Incidentally, I should once again declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The following is no longer a declarable interest, but I was for many years a town centre councillor, and indeed leader of the council, in a south London borough not too far from the borough of the noble Lord, Lord True, and I have seen the effect of this measure on the ground there. When my then authority applied to introduce Article 4, the Government of the day made it extremely clear that they would certainly not counsel an Article 4 direction for the entire borough. They said that to a number of other London boroughs, and no doubt other authorities too. Indeed, they would not even allow it to cover a wider area within the borough and insisted on it being very tightly drawn around the town centre. That provision has had inevitable effects since it came into operation in our town centre area. It has now spread to the district centres, where Article 4 does not apply, and where we have seen an alarming spread of offices being converted to residential use. These are not empty, redundant offices. The figures I have cited several times in this debate applied to our town centre. While we waited for Article 4 to take effect, 28% of the office space in the town centre was lost. That was not redundant space; two-thirds of the offices lost were in active use at the time and the businesses in them had to move.

I hope the Minister will tell us what the Government’s attitude now is towards local authorities that wish to introduce Article 4 over a wider area, or indeed over the whole local authority area, particularly where local authorities like mine have achieved, and indeed exceeded, the housing targets for many years. We are more than meeting government and London government requirements on housing targets. Will we now be allowed more leniency in the areas in which Article 4 may apply?

Secondly, as I have already mentioned, in the period we had to wait to implement Article 4, we lost 28% of the town centre office space. There was a reason for that. If Article 4 is introduced immediately, the local authority is liable to pay compensation, which could run to very considerable sums. Therefore my authority, and most, if not all, authorities, give 12 months’ notice of the intention to apply Article 4. It is inevitable that if you give 12 months’ notice of the intention to apply restrictions, landlords and developers with a mind to convert offices to residential use are bound to go ahead in the period before Article 4 takes effect, especially if that is as long as 12 months, as it has to be. I hope that when he replies the Minister will say something about this long period. If local authorities are still to be required to give 12 months’ notice, can he say anything about their liability for compensation to those who feel they may have a case for that compensation?

I conclude, as did the noble Lord—my noble friend—Lord True, by thanking the Minister in this place and the Minister in another place for taking a very much more sensible and realistic attitude to this issue and for listening to actual experience on the ground. I hope they will be willing to adopt measures to improve this situation. I thank the noble Lord, Lord True, for his very considerable persistence and perseverance on this issue throughout the previous four years.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I support the amendment and I hope the Government will react sympathetically to the objectives that noble Lords outlined. We certainly are at one with them. I speak from my experience in Newcastle. It is important that the Government should see the logic of the case that is made in the amendment, and I hope they will treat it accordingly.