Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord True Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I declare an interest as leader of a London borough council which is also a planning authority. I will not follow the noble Baroness opposite on Clause 27, but will say that I hope my Front Bench listened to the brilliant and humane speech made on this subject by my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft. I share the objectives set out in the title of the Bill, although perhaps the PR people might wish that the title had been preserved for something that goes a little further towards the great leap forward than the contents of this Bill.

From the start, we heard eloquent speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Tope, about their fears that centralism was creeping back. It is impossible to deny that that feeling has been very strong in this House throughout the debate and I share it. However, I will confine my comments to certain of the planning aspects of the Bill and will not go over the whole ground, because I recently troubled your Lordships with some detailed comments on the ideas put forward, rather suddenly, lately by Mr Boles. Some of those ideas are in the Bill but others, such as those relating to the protection of our suburban environment and permitted development in back gardens, are not currently included in the Bill and are intended to be the subject of secondary legislation. However, they are clearly in the scope of the Bill, given the long title relating to the carrying out of development and the Government’s own provisions on reforming PDOs in Clause 4.

I have not lost hope of persuading the Government to drop this—in my view—foolish plan, which is wholly irrelevant to growth, to extend rights to building in back gardens without the need for planning consent. I do not understand why my Government want to set neighbour against neighbour in this way or side with those who do not wish to play according to the rules. Removing such local controls, as is being proposed, and then saying you will let them be reintroduced in a far more costly and cumbersome way by use of Article 4, seems a very bizarre way to proceed. It smacks rather of the old ways of the 17th century, when the Government passed legislation but the Crown said that certain people did not need to adhere to it. If there is no sense in it, I hope my noble friend will agree it should be dropped or at least consider methods to allow local authorities to opt in to any changes the Government may propose and so leave the decision as a local one. If I cannot, in the course of the Bill, persuade the Government to change their mind on this, I must give notice that at a later stage I will consider laying my own amendment to enable your Lordships to express a view on whether unrestricted development in back gardens of this kind should be allowed. “Unrestricted” is not quite the correct word—“greatly derestricted”, perhaps.

Consultation on these proposals closed on 24 December —always a suspicious date, in my mind, for consultations to end. Can my noble friend, in responding, say when the Government’s response will be published? Ideally, this should be before Committee stage, but certainly in good time before Report, to enable proper consideration of this outside the very restricted and unamendable procedures of secondary legislation.

On permitted development, I am grateful to my noble friend for indications she has given in relation to points that I and other local authority leaders have made about the freer change of use from employment to residential, especially in parts of London and other cities, where there is limited employment and commercial space and the scope for creating it is restricted. So I also ask my noble friend to indicate whether, before we reach Clause 4, she will say how the Government intend to address this concern, for which they have expressed sympathy. I would welcome a chance to discuss that with her in her usual open manner.

Like many others who have spoken, I am not a great enthusiast for Clause 1. It certainly is a setback for localism. Like others, I can see the attractions to central government of a potential stick with which to hit the worst-performing authorities, whoever they are—we will hear that shortly, I understand. We are told that its use will be limited. In fact, the unelected Planning Inspectorate could be absolutely overwhelmed by this legislation if a future Government took Clause 1 powers to their potential end. As it legislates, the House should understand that while this Government may intend to restrict the use of this, a future Government could extend it by waving an unamendable wand in secondary legislation. I am also interested in the point raised by my noble friend Lady Eaton and the noble Lord, Lord Smith, about how a planning authority will be able to get out and be disgorged from this position.

I welcome the provisions on disposal of land, which are a great step forward. The small provision on stopping-up orders is very welcome. I disagree with some of those who have opposed the question of acting on village green applications. I very much welcome the Government’s action here. Some have expressed concern about precisely how this would operate, and we can look at that in Committee. Certainly, no one wishes to weaken village green protection but there have quite clearly been abuses of such powers by campaigners against development in some places and the Bill points towards finding the right balance.

I also understand the Government’s wish, expressed in Clause 5, to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy in relation to requests for information. That is a perfectly reasonable aspiration. However, good decisions require good evidence and accurate information. As has recently been said, many of us thought that this had been addressed in the NPPF; paragraph 193 was quoted and is very clear on this subject. My fear is that, perversely, this clause may lead to more confusion and, worse than that, recourse to the courts as the emerging definition is tested through review. If that happens, it will be precisely at the time when we want the Bill to work in order to encourage growth, and there is a risk that we may encourage more legislative action.

While I agree that bureaucracy should be avoided, what I miss in this Bill is a recognition that much of the delay in the development process comes not from local authorities but from others in the planning process, as the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, said. For example, I could cite the cumbersome process of judicial review, on which I greatly welcome the current consultation launched by my right honourable friend Mr Grayling, and indeed the often time-consuming requests and slow responses from statutory undertakings. Try getting information from the lower ranks of some of our statutory undertakings in relation to implementation of conditions, or indeed whether they wish to exercise rights as statutory consultees. There are many other sources of delay in the process, and if this clause is to stay, perhaps the Bill can be amended at a later stage to address some of those other issues, rather than just bashing planning officers.

On the subject of statutory undertakings, like others, I do not support the sweeping provisions in Clause 8 on broadband boxes. Of course we need good infrastructure. Local authorities are actually friends, not enemies, of this. But do the Government understand how unpopular many activities of statutory undertakings are, how unaccountable, and the great cost to the economy that arises from their frequent wilful refusal to negotiate and poorly co-ordinated action between them? Removing totally the need to negotiate reasonable sites with representatives of local communities will lead to wholly capricious, absurd and illogical outcomes —as I have shown my noble friend’s honourable friend the Minister in photographs—such as pavements obstructed to the disabled or boxes placed in front of listed facades and free-standing on greens when they could quite easily have been placed nearby.

If this clause is not to be omitted, it would benefit from amendment to impose on the undertakings a reasonable duty to consult local and other competent authorities in conservation areas, parks and other places of outstanding beauty. Quite frankly, most of these issues could be sorted out in a day or two by two competent project managers, one from the regulatory authority and one from the undertaking, rather than what I fear we have: well paid directors going off to the Treasury to mutter in the ears of officials and be rewarded with a free hand.

To conclude, it is important that this Bill receives close examination in Committee. I have no doubt that it will. I hope I will be proved wrong that it seems based on a false prejudice that local authorities are an obstacle to growth rather than, as I believe, that the planning system is a method to secure orderly public consent to the kind of growth that we all wish to see.