Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Earl of Lytton

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 17th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope (LD)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for raising this issue today, and to the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, for explaining it so fully and clearly. We have come a very long way in a fairly short time from the days when it was thought to be a good idea for people going on holiday for, say, a month to let out their home for a month to help cover the costs of the holiday, and everybody was happy. I recall lively debates in your Lordships’ House during the Deregulation Bill, as it then was, when we did away with the requirement for planning permission to be granted if a home in London was to be let for more than 90 days. That was thought to be one of the regulations that should be done away with, and so it was.

Although this may have happened anyway and is not a consequence of that, there has been an explosion—perhaps I should not use that word, but that is the way it has been—in the number of properties being let, initially primarily in central London, then increasingly spreading to the suburbs of London and now, for some time, throughout the United Kingdom, particularly in areas of high visitor attraction. Properties that are no longer, frankly, people’s homes, are let; probably most of these properties are not lived in by anybody who could conceivably be called an owner-occupier, as the people living in them change, often quite literally night by night.

If you talk to the Covent Garden Community Association, for instance, they will give you some considerable horror stories of the sorts of things that go on in that particular part of central London. We see whole blocks of flats where there is not a single resident—or, worse, there is a single resident surrounded by people who change on an almost nightly, and certainly weekly, basis. So it is a considerable issue, far wider than the very important one raised by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Mendelsohn, and I am grateful to them for spotting this particular loophole, if it is a loophole—this gap in the legislation.

We need to recognise that, for better or for worse—probably for better and for worse—it is no longer simply a question of people letting their home while they are away for a temporary period. This is now big business, and there seems to be a significant and important gap in the legislation. I hope the Government will, if not agreeing to this particular amendment, certainly recognise that this is a very important issue throughout the country, that it needs to be dealt with very urgently, and that this is an opportunity to do so.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest here, as a co-owner of holiday cottages. I reassure noble Lords that for many years now these have been subject to precisely the type of matters raised by the noble Lord, Lord Mendelsohn, such as electrical system and appliance safety and smoke and carbon monoxide detection, which lie behind the amendment. To be honest, this is no more nor less than good practice; however, success depends on how intrusive the measures might be under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order. There are, as I mentioned earlier, some good precedents for a degree of self-assessment.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in ably moving this amendment, referred, I think, to hotel standards in comparison with Airbnb. I suggest that trying to apply hotel standards for something that is purpose-built for that type of operation, and with the numbers involved, is probably a different situation. However, some of the principles undoubtedly apply. One of the most important factors is that, unlike the homeowner in their own flat, the visitor is not necessarily familiar, at any rate initially, with the layout of the building. It so happens that every time I have to rent a property such as an apartment, or take a hotel somewhere, I usually make it my business to work out where the fire escape is, because one hears so many horror stories about these things. Generally, it is fine, but I make that point.

The point has already been made [Inaudible.] flip in and out of principal or second home status largely undetected. A point arises as to whether, in every case, the mode and category of occupation by somebody who is paying to stay is actually different, whether they are a tenant on a short-term holiday or something even shorter than that, such as Airbnb. The important thing is that the amendment does not need to capture premises that are outside the intentions of noble Lords or, for that matter, fail to capture those that should properly be brought into it.

If I may digress, I make a plea for consistency in the way some of these regulations are applied. I shall use electrical systems as an example. Recently, I was alerted to the need for a certain type of electrician qualification because of a query from building insurers. It transpired that accreditation for an electrician to self-certify their own installation work does not automatically permit them to inspect and certify somebody else’s. Even electricians do not understand this, let alone householders, so knowing what to ask for is a science in itself, and I think that sort of thing needs to be resolved. To stay on that subject, just about every electrician I know is already tied up doing landlord testing, so getting anything in addition done is not at all easy, because there is not the manpower capacity in the system. Personally, I would not want some quick-fix form of training and accreditation on electrical matters, other than by somebody who had a background and a proper qualification in electrical installation.

Finally, however safe the system may be, occupiers bring in equipment of their own, or may do things that are unsafe. There should be a certain amount of saving provisions for that sort of eventuality. I think of a typical example: you go and do your regular inspection of a holiday home and you find that the cover of the smoke alarm is dangling, with the battery missing. It may be that somebody removed the battery because it was bleeping—although, because you put the battery in only three months ago, that is not a terribly likely situation. Then it occurs to you that perhaps the battery was needed for some child’s toy and it was removed for that reason. Occupiers can do silly things, particularly when their minds are on holiday. If the noble Lord were to press the amendment, I am not sure at the moment which way I would vote, but I do think there is an issue about compliance in this case that needs to be addressed.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Earl of Lytton

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

It may well do, my Lords, but I will resist the temptation to be distracted in that direction.

At the beginning of the debate my noble friend Lady Bakewell set out the Liberal Democrats’ view on this; a view which is clearly very widely shared—dare I say it?—right across the House. We accept that the Government have a manifesto commitment to give people the right to buy their own property. However, it is the funding of that that is the problem we are debating. We are being very gentle in referring to it always as a levy, rather like the way some people used to talk about a community charge. But calling it a levy does not make it any less of a tax—and that is exactly what it is: a tax. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for making it very clear that it is a tax and that it does not necessarily bear any relation at all to the realities of the sale of so-called high-value properties. It is simply a tax. It is there to achieve a financial objective, not to relate particularly to the sale of high-value properties. I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Young, is optimistic, but perhaps he is hopeful that it might not necessarily mean the sale of high-value properties, or indeed of so many high- value properties.

I make particular reference to London. It has been recognised many times in the process of this Bill that there are very particular problems in London, not least the number of so-called high-value properties, however one defines “high value”. But an added problem—certainly a welcome problem if it is achieved—is having not a one-for-one replacement but a two-for-one replacement. However, experience thus far in London has been that the previous one-for-one replacement programme has not exactly been an outstanding success. In fact, it has not really been achieved at all. Therefore, to double that and look for a two-for-one policy—which would be welcome if it is achievable—must be doubly difficult.

Let us look for a moment at what that could mean. As has been said so many times in this debate, we again await crucial detail on how this is going to be implemented. I do not actually know whether the definition of “high value” will apply on a London-wide basis—in which case, good luck to Westminster and to Kensington and Chelsea. When we first thought that that would be the case, my own borough of Sutton thought that it probably would not have to sell any properties, but, demonstrably, that is not going to be what happens. However, we await confirmation in London of whether this will be done on a borough-by-borough basis, some sort of subregional basis or what basis at all. What is the definition of a “high-value property” in that context? There is a huge difference between, in my case, the London Borough of Sutton, or that of Barking and Dagenham, and, at the other extreme, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Camden and so on. So we are going into the dark in London, with no idea what this will actually mean.

London Councils, which represents the 33 London authorities, has said that,

“it is critical that this policy delivers: An increase in housing supply … A net increase in affordable housing … No loss of London’s social mix … London’s funds reinvested in London”.

I pause for a moment on the issue of the social mix. A little while before the general election, I talked with the then chairman of Westminster Property Association, a major property developer in the City of Westminster. He wrote his own manifesto, expressing considerable concern about what he felt was happening in Westminster—his city. Before the general election and before the introduction of this policy, he said that before very long Westminster would be a city for either the very rich or the very poor, and that the great number between those two extremes—whether we call them the middle classes or whatever; the people who make up and who are active in the community—would be driven out and have to leave Westminster. That is a social conclusion with a profound effect.

This policy is not just about whether the sale of high-value properties will produce a two-for-one replacement in Sutton or somewhere else in outer London where land values are less but, crucially, whether it produces the same replacements in the City of Westminster, in Kensington and Chelsea, in Camden and so on and maintain the same social mix that is rapidly being lost. Or are we in fact accelerating the drive of people ever further away from the centre of London and therefore further away from the places where many of them have to work? Indeed, central London, as anywhere else, is dependent on people on low incomes to support our many services.

A similar problem is that the replacement homes need to be provided swiftly—not in years to come, although that would be welcome, too, but swiftly. There is inevitably a gap between the sale of the property and its replacement either by one or two similar properties. They need to be similar properties and they need to be in the same area. Again, what is the definition of an area when applied within Greater London? Does it mean a borough? Does it mean a particular part of the borough? Does it mean south London, north London? What does it mean?

I hope that the Minister will be able to give us greater clarity on when we will get those definitions and when we are going to know, because London borough councils—and I am sure this applies to local authorities throughout the country—are really worried about the effect of this policy in their area and their inability, simply through lack of knowledge and lack of detailed information, properly to be able to plan for what is to happen, however unwelcome it is. I hope that the Minister will able to go some way, if not all the way, to clarifying those important details.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for being late on parade this morning due to my travel arrangements.

It is tempting from these Benches to have a bit of a dig at manifesto commitments, bearing in mind that I made my maiden speech in this House in my previous incarnation here on what became known as the poll tax, so I know that political expediency often overrules practical reality.

Your Lordships will know that I come to this matter with a certain area of technical expertise in relation to development matters. It seems to me that there is more than a hint of evidence that a sale by a housing association of a property at a 20% discount is not a self-sustaining model without the cross-subsidy, notwithstanding the fact that many housing associations are involved at the commercial end of residential property development and are in competition with other private sector operators in the market for the same sites—therefore, one can reasonably suppose that they are making some developer-type profit out of that.

Given that most local authorities now no longer operate on that basis—your Lordships’ Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment had evidence brought before it that indicated the sharp fall-off in local authority construction of new homes; the evidence from the graphs that we were shown was incontestable—it follows that the sale of a local authority house on whatever level of value is also unlikely to be self-sustaining. More to the point, it does not have the cross-subsidy from the allied sector—or any sector really. There will either be an attrition in the numbers replaced—not one for one—or an attrition in quality, AKA size; whatever way you want to do it. It might be both. That might result in a cheapening of the housing stock to the potential detriment of the built environment and the long-term value and therefore sustainability in terms of people’s willingness to maintain and look after these places.

The noble Lord, Lord Tope, referred to something that I know as market drag, which is when something is sold and there is a period when one tries to organise where to reinvest the money and things happen. The market may move forwards or backwards, as the case may be, financing arrangements may change, opportunities that may have been counted on may disappear or new ones may arise. One therefore cannot easily say that £20 today will give £20-worth the day after tomorrow. It does not work like that because of the very high number of price-sensitive factors involved in the development world. In any event, we do not know how many high-value council house sales will take place, and we have heard that we do not know what high value is intended to mean. Is it in absolute terms—the largest four-, five- or six-bedroom house in a council’s stock? Or, more disturbingly, could it be a relative test by reference to a series of sub-categories of housing? We do not know.

When the Minister held a series of meetings before Second Reading of the Bill—and I give great credit to her for organising those—it became clear that there was a great deal of unfinished business in terms of getting the information back from local authorities about how this would work in practice. We do not have a worked model and I wonder what that means in practice. I remain to be convinced that reinvesting in social housing is more than a short-term fix. I mentioned at Second Reading that the precedents are not that great. I referred to the proceeds of council house sales. First of all, councils were able only to spend the interest that arose on the capital sum. Then they were not even able to use that and finally the Government of the day in 2000, as far as I could see and this may be an oversimplification, popped the lot into the Consolidated Fund. Thereafter, we had the business of developers somehow funding this social element because the entire stock of billions had disappeared. I do not know what it was spent on because of course the Consolidated Fund does not tell us that. The Treasury does not like hypothecated figures in its Consolidated Fund: it wants a big bank account on which it has great flexibility. I can understand that.

I feel that smoke and mirrors are involved here. What I am really getting at is that if there is a 20% discount at every turn—so that a house is sold at a discount and the money is reinvested in something else that is then discounted at another 20%—I do not see that that is viable. I would really like the Minister to ask her officials whether we could see a worked model of how that would function in practice because I strongly suspect that what is involved is forward guessing on increases in property and land prices.

As a registered valuer and thus being subject to all sorts of things that registered valuers are subject to, I absolutely proscribe forward guessing future rises in value: the value is what it is today. If I am reviewing a value the day after tomorrow, it is the value for the day after tomorrow, but on day one and on any accounting basis, to forward guess an increase in value is an extremely risky and perilous operation. But I sense that that is what lies behind this, because the numbers do not seem to add up. I fear that that is what is implicit in this. I ask the Minister again: I would really like to see a worked example of how it will be done.

I am not against the principle of the Government’s manifesto commitment, but I sure do not want to be here trying to sort out the debacle that might arise if we get into a situation of relatively static house price increases and land values, which we might. Then the year-on-year increase that might implicitly be built into this model evaporates and it fails. While I do not wish to say whether I am necessarily for or against this series of amendments, they raise a very important point about the underlying financial principles that are involved.

Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Tope and Earl of Lytton

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I expect we all welcome the intentions of the amendments: I certainly do. I must confess that my first response when I read about this was a little surprise that they were considered necessary. I am sure the vast majority of authorities of all persuasions are already doing this. It may well be that, in some cases, their standing orders have not been brought up to date, but I am sure that most are doing it very willingly. However, I then reflected on my early days as a councillor, quite a long time ago, when all council and committee meetings were open to the public, as required—if I remember rightly—by a Private Member’s Bill introduced by the then new and young honourable Member for Finchley, Mrs Thatcher. The one committee not open to the public was what was then called the planning committee; it would now probably be the development control committee. This was, arguably, the committee of greatest interest to members of the public but it was the one to which they were not allowed access.

Those days are, fortunately, long gone but it reminded me that we need to ensure we keep up to date with the times. I am sure all noble Lords welcome the good intentions of these amendments. The key will be in the drafting of the regulations. I am not sure why any local authority or council would wish to stop someone tweeting during a meeting or, if they did, how they could implement it without the most draconian measures. That is well and good, but the difficult part will be making regulations that require the greatest openness but do not allow the avoidable disruption of meetings.

I hesitate a little, because a fundamental part of our democracy is the right to be irritating and to annoy. I think the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is suggesting that I am doing this at the moment. We all know from our local authority experience that there are some people whom everyone agrees are simply a nuisance. It will be quite tricky to balance the regulations to ensure that the person—it is usually an individual rather than a collection—has a right to be a nuisance and be irritating but does not disrupt the good order and procedure of the meeting. I imagine that the decision will be in the hands of whoever is chairing the meeting. They have the right now to have disruptive people ejected, as happens occasionally, and this will, no doubt, still be the case. However it will be quite difficult to draw the balance between allowing the maximum openness and transparency at meetings, which we would all endorse, with not allowing individuals —I stress, individuals—with a cause from unnecessarily and avoidably disrupting proceedings.

We look forward with interest to seeing the regulations. I am delighted that the Minister has made clear that there will be wide consultation with the local government associations, NALC and other bodies in the drawing up of these. We look forward to seeing the result.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I relate to what the noble Lord, Lord Tope, has just said. I have a mental image of the small parish or town council, with its quite limited premises, taking on progressively more functions and finding itself in the centre of some awfully controversial measure. The premises might, quite literally, be crowded out by people with cameras or wanting to record: the sort of thing one sees on television outside the courts of justice when a person of fame—or infamy, as the case may be—has received a decision. The scrum that goes on out there is the sort of thing that slightly worries me, particularly, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, with development control, which in many instances is highly contentious.

I will not ask the Minister for an answer at this juncture, but could she bear in mind that uniformity of regulations across the whole of local government might be difficult to achieve, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Tope? There is also a question of how open-ended this public right is. There will clearly be instances—I am sure we have all witnessed meetings of this sort—where it can be thoroughly disruptive and an impediment to the sober and conscientious consideration of matters on the agenda. Perhaps there must be some limitations. Like the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I look forward to seeing the draft regulations in due course. I appreciate what the Minister has said about the process for that: would she perhaps clarify the timescale for it? That would be very helpful, particularly for parish and town councils, a bigger proportion of which may be affected by this measure than principal authorities which, in many cases, already have generous facilities for public access and the recording of proceedings.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord in thanking the noble Baroness for her unfailing courtesy, and that of her Bill team, and particularly for keeping me in the loop as matters have proceeded through the other place. That was very welcome and I am extremely grateful for that, and I am sure I can say the same for the parish and town council movement for her consideration and care over this matter.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, lest my silence should be misunderstood, I echo those sentiments from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I began this evening by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and wishing well to our Minister now, the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, who has performed eloquently this evening and succeeded in passing more than 100 amendments, which is getting close to a record. I echo the thanks that have been given to the Bill team for the great help they have given all of us in understanding this most interesting Bill.

Local Audit and Accountability Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Tope and Earl of Lytton

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, this amendment returns to an issue that was flagged up by more than one noble Lord at Second Reading—the question of mission creep.

One of the problems of local democracy is the perception that there is very little for the elector to influence beyond which party happens to rule the roost. The process of localism—and indeed the fruits of the Government’s initiatives on this—must surely be to redress this balance. That means having current, live and important issues, including matters of expenditure, at stake in local elections. I will return to this subject in respect of Clause 39, so I will leave it for the moment.

If the role of the National Audit Office is allowed to expand, as would be possible under this Bill, the question that the Local Government Association has asked—indeed, this amendment comes with its imprimatur—is: what is left for the voter to determine? Democracy and democratic accountability are clearly in point here.

The Local Government Association’s second question is: what is there to prevent the National Audit Office effectively replicating the investigative adventurism— my words, not those of the Local Government Association—of the Audit Commission? On our first day in Committee, the Minister said that a recreation of the Audit Commission by the back door is to be avoided and I entirely understand that. Just so, the recreation of its functions by an expansion of the National Audit Office is equally to be guarded against.

Amendment 18ZA would restrict the role of the National Audit Office to prevent this mission creep and the potential erosion of the proper function and role of local democracy. Its scrutiny would therefore apply to expenditure, principally that from central government. I will speak also to Amendment 18ZB, but on the detail of Amendment 18ZA I can see that the Minister may feel that this is too wide a get-out clause. However, if he could indicate whether the principle might be acceptable, I dare say that we could talk about the detail of the wording and how we can deal with that as the Bill proceeds.

Amendment 18ZB has been tabled, of course, to prevent mission creep, to which I have referred. It seems that the Bill effectively risks reintroducing some of the intrusive and costly activities that the abolition of the Audit Commission was supposed to have removed. Looking at the overall geometry, as the LGA would put it, the role of the National Audit Office would be restricted to evaluating expenditure that has a majority of its funding from the central government grant. It goes on to say that the NAO should be precluded from replicating the activities of the Audit Commission under its previous assessment and inspection regime.

I will leave it there. I dare say that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, may have some comments to make, as will other noble Lords. I beg to move.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for moving his amendment, to which I have added my name. I endorse all that he said and, in deference to the Grand Committee, I will not repeat it; I will simply add a number of points.

The amendments of course come at the instigation of the Local Government Association, but reflect fairly widespread concern, based upon experience with the Audit Commission, about what is termed “mission creep”. Most, or perhaps all, of us would agree that the Audit Commission started very well. It did some very good work and continued to do so, but its mission and role expanded to such an extent that the Government, without too much objection elsewhere, have determined that it has now reached the end of its useful life. There is concern, whether well founded or not only time will tell, that the same experience could come to the National Audit Office—that having now got the limited role that was intended, over time, just as with the Audit Commission, the mission will expand.

I have had a useful briefing from the National Audit Office. It was mostly factual and very reassuring. Paragraph 2 states:

“The NAO considers that any future responsibilities it takes on within the Government’s new framework for local public audit should … align with the NAO’s core role of providing assurance to Parliament and holding Government to account over its use of resources”.

That is the intention behind Amendment 18ZA: to try to give effect to that. It may not be the best way of doing so; I do not know. However, the intention is there to say that if the NAO’s role is to Parliament in respect of the use of government resources, then those resources which are raised locally—which in some authorities are considerable; it varies—are outside the core role of the NAO as defined by Parliament and repeated by the NAO itself.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Earl of Lytton

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord True, feeling as strongly as he does and with as much sadness as he has expressed. Like him, I am a councillor in an outer London, suburban authority. Indeed, I am a former leader of that council. Like him, I have campaigned and been elected many times on the commitment to preserve back gardens, which is a crucial issue in most suburban authorities and no doubt elsewhere.

The noble Lord, Lord True, spoke very eloquently and very fully on the issues here. I shall try not to take so much time or to repeat too much of what he has said. He referred to the origins of this proposal last summer. It seemed a good idea when government circles were scratching around trying to find anything that would stimulate growth and this proverbial young Kensington councillor to whom he referred came up with this jolly wheeze. Frankly, it would have been much better had they listened at that time to the strong and unanimous reaction right across all parties, across local government and, indeed, across the country pointing out what a silly idea it was. Sadly, that did not happen. People somewhere in government dug in on it. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, we went to a hastily contrived consultation lasting six weeks, ending on Christmas Eve. At Report, the Minister told us that there had been 1,000 responses. It has been 13 weeks since that six-week consultation ended. We have no idea today, and I suspect that we will have no better idea by the end of today, what those 1,000 replies said. Surely somebody somewhere could simply have divided them into for, against and not quite sure. We could at least get some indication of what that response is, unless we have no indication. If we get no indication in the reply to this debate, we are forced to conclude that a very substantial number of those 1,000 replies have been put in the against pile. For what other reason have we had no indication in the 13 weeks since the consultation closed?

I share the affection of the noble Lord, Lord True, for the Minister. We were London borough council leaders together for many years, and I know very well what her views are, even if she is not allowed to tell us from her present position. At Report, she said that the proposals were to,

“extend the localism rights”.—[Official Report, 12/3/13; col. 197.]

The only rights that are being extended here are to home owners—the right to do as they wish. It may well have sounded good when it was first suggested, but the rights being taken away are the rights of the neighbours to those home owners to have their say on those proposals—and usually there are rather more neighbours than there are home owners. So, in fact, more people are losing rights in this alleged extension to localism than are gaining them.

Among the rights being taken away is the right to have a say. The Minister expressed a hope, which we would all have, that neighbours would talk to each other. Of course that happens, and we would all want it to happen. Quite often, those discussions take place and can be resolved in an amicable way between neighbours; that is what we would all desire. But we all know that, outside that ideal world, it does not always happen that way. The rights being taken away are the rights of the neighbours to be able to appeal for arbitration from a local planning authority, and to ask the house owner who wishes to extend the property properly to take into consideration the interests, wishes and concerns of their neighbours. If they know that they do not have to apply for planning consent, there is no incentive to do so other than to wish to be a good neighbour. If they think that their neighbour is reasonably or unreasonably going to object to their plans for the extension, it is unlikely that they will voluntarily submit to such consultation.

The Local Government Association and the Minister have commented, I am sure correctly, that 90% of such planning applications are currently approved. That is a very good record, which suggests that there is not too much wrong with the present system. But why is there such a high approval rate? It is simply because of the need to have planning consent, and the opportunity that is given to neighbours to have their say and for the applicant to know that the neighbours will have their say, as well as for the role of the local planning authority not just to be able to arbitrate but to be able to mitigate, negotiate and, one hopes, to resolve any outstanding concerns.

This proposal comes as part of a Growth and Infrastructure Bill, and is supposed to incentivise growth—and I think that, to be fair, everyone would agree that it does so in a relatively small way. Presumably, it would do so not for the major developers of the land but for the small builders. I have the good fortune quite often to talk to or, more usually, to be talked at, by quite a number of small builders in my role as a councillor. When I ask them—although I do not usually need to ask them—what they wish the Government would do to make their business more successful, or indeed to keep them in business, not once have any of them said, anywhere in the list, that they wished that the Government would remove the requirement for planning consent. It simply does not happen. If you ask any small builder what they want, there is a whole range of things they would want—VAT is usually mentioned—that would come long before the need to remove the requirement for planning consent.

Are the Government seriously suggesting that somebody considering an extension to their property refrains from doing so simply because of the added cost of a planning application? I do not think that anybody is suggesting that; it would be ludicrous to suggest that the planning application fee is a serious inhibitor to going ahead with the extension to a home.

Article 4 is then pleaded in aid by the Government, who say that it can be used as a way to get around this. My noble friend Lord True has dealt with that very well and very fully, and I am not going to repeat those arguments. But I, too, had the letter from the Minister yesterday, for which I am very grateful, which dealt at some length with unanswered questions from Report about Article 4. As I said, the noble Lord, Lord True, has dealt with many of those, but it also gives us the figures for the use of Article 4, which some of us had said was little used. Well, these terms are relative. I will interpret the figures in the letter in a different way from what was intended. They show that barely one-third of local planning authorities have used Article 4 directives at all in the past three years, and that those that have done so have used them less than once in each of those three years. I would suggest that Article 4, by common consent, is not heavily used. Why? Because it is slow, bureaucratic, ineffective and inefficient, and again using the illustration of the noble Lord, Lord True, it can prove very costly in terms of compensation.

If an increasing number of local planning authorities start to use Article 4 directives when these proposals come in, will the Secretary of State continue to refrain from intervening, as he has up until now? Will he actually be content to see local authorities using Article 4 in effect to get around the proposals that the Government have just introduced? I would suggest that is highly unlikely.

As the noble Lord, Lord True, has said, today’s amendment provides a truly localist way of allowing the Government to introduce these proposals, if they are determined to do so, but also allowing local planning authorities to recognise that one circumstance does not fit all. Of course, different areas have different circumstances; the situation in rural Lincolnshire may well be very different from that in suburban Richmond or Sutton. It gives the local authority the right to choose what they do in terms of their local circumstances.

The Government proposals will set neighbour against neighbour, they will take away people’s rights to object and get a hearing, they take away the local authority’s power to arbitrate and mitigate, and they do absolutely nothing for growth. This amendment enables local authorities to decide how best to deal with these issues in accordance with their local circumstances. I am very pleased to support it.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I, too, willingly added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord True. I stand before your Lordships as a technician, not a politician. As a practising chartered surveyor with a specialised involvement with boundary matters, and as chair of my professional body’s panel on this matter, I can speak with some knowledge of what happens in practice. The professional panel I chair deals with boundaries, party walls, land registration and rights to light. I, too, thank the Minister for a very useful explanatory letter and a copy of the Article 4 procedural guidance. She referred to a condensed version, if I may put it that way, which the Government are intending to bring out. I have not seen that, but no matter because I shall stick with what the Minister has sent me.

The first point is that the desire to deregulate, however objectively beneficial it might seem, should not equate with no oversight whatever. That is the risk the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Tope, have identified. It may be populist, but it is not good government.

The second point is that back garden space is an important mutual asset that underpins value and market appeal. We cannot get away from that. Of course, the situation varies according to location, as the noble Lord, Lord True, has said, so a one-size-fits-all approach does not really work. Rural village properties are totally different animals from those in London boroughs in terms of the built and human-scale environment.

The policy of deregulation does not guarantee a positive net present value, if I may use a piece of valuer’s jargon. One poor extension can blight neighbouring properties, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord True. Moreover, poor design and poor positioning are potent sources of neighbour disputes, and that is where people like me get drawn in. They produce serious stress not only between neighbouring householders but within families. I have seen families almost taken apart by the stress that has been occasioned. Such disputes often lead to expensive legal battles, in which I have to say the only gainer is the legal profession.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Earl of Lytton

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. He referred to the fact that he is, in another life, the leader of Richmond Council. For many years, I was the leader of the council in the London Borough of Sutton and, indeed, am still a councillor there. For all those years there has been a usually friendly rivalry and some competition between the two authorities. Certainly within my party, Richmond seems to alternate every election between who is going to run the council; I am pleased to say that the electors of Sutton have remained more consistently true, at least for the past 27 years, as to who would run the council. That competition continued back in the summer, when the Government made their announcement, as to which of our authorities would be the first to condemn it. I think on that occasion the noble Lord, Lord True, won the competition but probably only by hours rather than by days.

We are at one in finding the Government’s proposals incomprehensible and in condemning them roundly. What are they for and what are they seeking to achieve? That condemnation is obviously not confined to two London borough councils but is, as far as I am aware, universal throughout local government, regardless of which party happens to be in control of the council. This is a unified view, across local government, which is very strongly against the Government’s proposals.

That is due first to incomprehension. This is being put forward in the context of growth, but does anyone seriously imagine, as the noble Lord has explained very well, that allowing extensions into back gardens will make a significant difference to the growth of the nation? Of course it will not; it is laughable. What it will bring about a considerable growth in is neighbour disputes. I can think of no single measure more likely—indeed, one might say more designed—to set neighbour against neighbour, particularly when they find that there is actually no court of arbitration. They would expect the local planning authority to be able to hear both sides of the case and to make a judgment, as with the normal planning process. When neighbours find themselves in this position and discover that that power has been taken away from the local planning authority, and with it therefore their right to make representations to anyone, I can think of little better designed to cause neighbour upset and to damage community cohesion, for no purpose whatever. I am very keen to support the noble Lord, Lord True, on this.

The noble Lord made reference to the Government’s explanation that Article 4 directions can deal with this. As he has rightly said, that is a slow, expensive, bureaucratic and cumbersome route, which is unlikely, frankly, to make very much difference at all. He is quite right and I support him wholeheartedly. We had felt until recently that the Government were at least starting to listen—commendably so, and we have said much of that today—to move and to be willing to search for compromise. Therefore, I am very disappointed to learn from the noble Lord, Lord True, as he said when introducing this amendment, that his attempts at compromise—that is what this amendment is; I do not think he or I would pretend it is what we want—have been “spurned”. That was his word. We are very disappointed with that. I hope that when the Minister replies, we can get at least some comfort from him that spurned is too strong a word, the debate and argument are still open and it is not going to be as bad as it presently seems.

However, I certainly have no hesitation in supporting my noble friend and the leader of Richmond Council, knowing that both London borough councils will, for once, be united between the two parties in agreeing with both of us.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I support the thrust of this amendment because my professional work puts me at the sharp end of the fall-out from precisely this type of policy. As the noble Lord, Lord True, has said, we risk in effect a flip-flop from avoiding the regulation of the colour of front doors and replacement windows to no control at all. If ever there was an example of parliamentary process being a blunt instrument, I suspect this is one.

I have problems with this area of government policy in its cumulative effects. We seem almost to have a good cop Government wishing to deregulate, which I can understand and sympathise with, and conferring additional free development rights on householders. However, I am bound to say that I do not see the noble Lord, Lord True, and the LGA in the opposite camp of bad cop either. One of the great virtues of planning policy, among all the things that I, we and clients regularly curse about the intrusiveness of it, is that it has actually protected the built and the semi-natural environment of the urban and rural landscape. It has done so in such a way that our European neighbours come over here to see how we have managed to do it all the years since the post-war era when the first planning Acts came in.

The real possibility here is the increasing urbanisation of domestic back gardens and the materially increased density of that whole built environment. That is not without consequences, as the noble Lord has consistently pointed out on this and previous occasions. I recently attended a number of meetings at the Minister’s old stamping ground, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which has a basements working group. Your Lordships might wonder what basements have to do with all this, but I can tell you that a lot of basements are constructed in back gardens, so the thing is not entirely without its relevance.

A number of things came through there which I think were very interesting and that have to some extent informed my views. First, there is a risk that open space between buildings for light, air and privacy might be compromised, and the only thing that stands between the general rights of permitted development and getting a fair balance between neighbours is some intervention by the local planning authority. It is a matter of scale and proportion, but of course it has visual and amenity consequences. Beyond that, in valuation terms, the mercantile gain for one person who happens to construct their particular scheme might lead to the erosion of the visual appeal and consequential value of neighbours’ property, unless, as I say, they are carefully regulated and kept in fair proportion.

Technically—this is where I pick up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, made—it brings additional pressures on the limits of property ownership, particularly in relation to boundaries. We already have a substantial amount of that in the more expensive parts of inner London boroughs. Property values as an impetus already cause serious friction between neighbours. I know this because a good deal of my professional work relates to neighbour disputes.

That might not matter if we had a land registry title plan that was a precise guide to ownership. Unfortunately, such plans do not provide that. Even in an urban area of 1:1,250 mapping scale, there is an error factor, as set out by the land registry own guidance, of plus or minus 1 metre on the ground either way. On a plan of that scale, that represents 0.8 millimetres thick, plus or minus. It is no idle suggestion, therefore, that this might increase neighbour disputes, because the process of establishing precise ownership is sometimes clear but sometimes very far from clear, and the registered title does not help.

Local Government Finance Bill

Debate between Lord Tope and Earl of Lytton

Monday 16th July 2012 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Lytton]

I rise simply to refer to the points that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, made. I attended the excellent meeting that he convened with London Councils. Its views on the problems of the lead-in time for dealing with IT have been corroborated by the views of the Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation. Larger authorities might well have significant IT capability in their own right, but that cannot be said of all authorities, and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was saying that while some authorities are clearly getting on with the work, others will lag behind until a package is available to them. That is where the fear is.

In the period leading up to when an authority has a useable IT system, there is a question of a brief, and possibly of tendering and commissioning. A programme has to be written, or there has at any rate to be some sort of alteration to an existing programme, which has to be tested, and the staff have to be trained. At the moment, we are right on the edge of the summer holiday period when a lot of people are likely to be away and capacity in all areas of commercial endeavour, not least in the IT world, will be challenged. I simply echo what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said and ask the Minister whether any investigation has been done on the realities of preparing the IT, bearing in mind that all local government finance is heavily dependent on it. What reassurances can the Minister give the Committee?

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, my name originally appeared on Amendments 78 and 79, and I am concerned that it still appears on Amendments 85 and 88A. That was a mistake. To the extent that I may have had a part in that, I apologise to your Lordships. I do not support postponement and had never intended my name to appear on amendments in this group. I want to say why. I am pleased that we are having the debate. This is important, so a debate on the amendments is necessary.

Had the Government been minded in, say, May or April, while the Bill was in the other place, to postpone the implementation day, I would not have been too unhappy. Indeed, I would probably have been happier if they had abandoned this part of the Bill altogether, but that was not to be. I might have been happier for that to happen provided that the £500 million reduction was also going to be postponed. That, of course, was never going to happen—and we knew that. I have therefore always been at best ambivalent about postponement. That was certainly an earlier view generally across local government. I do not for one moment claim to speak for all local government, but that of which I have any knowledge and contact broadly does not support postponement, for some of the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, alluded to when speaking to the amendments in his name.

Let us deal first with the issue of software. Back in February, when the Local Government Chronicle article was written, there was certainly considerable concern, not least among the suppliers, about whether the software could and would be completed in time. We all know that the record on IT systems has not always been perfect. I hope that the Minister, who must be better informed than me, will be able to comment on this, but my understanding—both from my direct knowledge of my own authority and one or two others that I know a bit about, but more particularly through the LGA, which has been in discussions with the software suppliers—is that that concern is considerably less now than it was in February or more recently. As much as anyone is brave enough to be confident before these things are done, there is no longer the level of concern and alarm about the issue that there once was. However, I speak only with limited knowledge and not with any personal authority. I hope that the Minister can assure us on that very particular point.

The other concern, quite rightly, is whether local authorities would have all the information that they needed before preparing and consulting on their draft scheme. I hope, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, that the Minister will reassure us about the information that is not yet published. Much of it is already published and more is to be published this week, perhaps even today, but I have not been able to keep up with that. The noble Lord referred to the autumn. Let us say that by the time we return in October, all the necessary information will have been published as completely as it can be before enactment.

In view of that, we once again look at being where we are rather than where we might wish we were. Quite a number of authorities, including my own, have accepted that it is going to happen in April and have drawn up a consultation scheme. My own authority agreed its consultation scheme in June with all-party agreement—which, in my authority’s case, is both-party agreement—and is now out to consultation on that scheme. Later, our neighbouring authority of Kingston did the same and drew up a slightly different scheme, and that scheme is out for consultation.

I know that many other local authorities are in a similar position—we might wish we were not, but we are. The process is now under way. The considerable work under pressure that has been alluded to, quite correctly, is now under way. My personal view, and the impression I have from those with whom I am in touch, is that at this stage we would not welcome postponement. We might have done a month or two ago or even a few months ago, but at this stage we are so far down the road that we need to accept that this is going to happen. There are different views about that, but we are well down the road on it and we need to get on and make the best we can of it.

Local authorities of all political persuasions generally have a very good record of coping with what is often thought to be impossible, or certainly very difficult, whether that is the front-loading of the budget reductions that we have all experienced or the many other difficult measures. The fact that local authorities quite rightly protest when these measures are proposed and implemented, but when the time comes have to buckle down and deliver, does not mean that they were wrong to protest in the first place. It simply means that local government actually has a very good record of achieving these things. I therefore hope that if this is going to happen in April and proceeds with few, if any, problems, it will not be thought by central government that local government is again crying wolf. It is not; local government is actually getting on and delivering in the way that it always has.