Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord True and Baroness Morris of Bolton

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, if Amendment 97D in this group is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 98 for reasons of pre-emption.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I will be brief and I will not repeat the rather impassioned speech I made another day on why these wretched registers cannot be more dynamic and give local authorities a bit more power and action to get on with the job.

The thing I am rather curious about is: what happens as time progresses? If we are to list on a register land that is said to be suitable for housing and over time there is a great demand for free schools and population growth in urban areas—it is very tight—the local authority might look at that and say, “Well, actually, that could be a school. That might be better than what we were thinking of before as housing”, and might want to delist and deregister. Once it is on the register, in a sense it acquires a “resi-value” because it is listed there as being for housing. But planning is dynamic and evolving.

I do not necessarily expect my noble friend to answer now, but I would like to know how these clunking registers are manoeuvrable when local needs and priorities change—or is it that once it is there for housing, it has to be housing for ever and we just have to get the numbers? Where is the flexibility in changing?