Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord True and Lord Porter of Spalding

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Thursday 23rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I should appear to be sympathetic to anything that seeks to push power back into the hands of local planning authorities as regards their ability to reject a planning application and the Secretary of State having to support the decision. But I am worried about anything that would compel that, on the basis that if developers were not able to appeal to the Government to revisit the decision, they would go through the courts, at which point a council would not only have to employ planning people to deal with a planning appeal, it would have to pay for a barrister as well. So while I am sympathetic to the fact that planning applications which have been refused for non-compliance should not be routinely overturned, I would rather see the Government take a firmer hand with the Planning Inspectorate to ensure that when it does intervene in a case, it does so in a way that has been properly tested by the Secretary of State. I said on the last occasion that people in the outside world are saying that some planning inspectors have gone feral, and that position still pertains today. So rather than compelling the Secretary of State to support a refusal by a council, we need to encourage him to take a firmer grip of the Planning Inspectorate to make sure that in all cases it operates in the way the Government have sanctioned and not in a way that it chooses to sanction for itself.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to noble Lords for appearing late but I have been performing duties for what I declare as an interest, as leader of a local authority which is a London borough. On my way to the Chamber I was listening to the remarks of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege on the annunciator and I have considerable sympathy with the spirit and thrust of all she has been arguing for in this Bill and indeed in the amendment before us. I rather agree with what my noble friend Lord Porter has just said, and I will come back to that in the question of the real non-accountability of the system operated by the Secretary of State in terms of the inspectorate, where there are overturns. I am really addressing my remarks to Amendment 6.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord True and Lord Porter of Spalding

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I will intervene because, technically, my Amendment 123E would be pre-empted if Amendment 123D were agreed. I would be very happy if Amendment 123D were agreed and I support it. I am very grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench for what she said. Unfortunately, I was away from the internet over the weekend and was in the town hall until the House sat. Otherwise, I would have made it clear that I would have been happy for a number of my amendments to be in this group. It would have been more helpful to the House to have one debate. Indeed, we just have, because the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, spoke with great passion to his Amendment 123, which would leave out the whole thing but which is not, technically, before the House. The noble Lord does not need to repeat that speech on the next group, if such a debate happens.

In Committee, I raised a point which I believe to be fundamental, as does the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I was grateful for the opportunity to discuss it with the Minister and her officials. The planning system must not be seen by the public to be bought. The Minister has said absolutely clearly that the decision must be independent and taken by the local authority, not taken by or influenced by a paid advocate bought and working for one of the parties to an application. As I always say, good policy has to reflect what happens in real life. In real life, a developer will seek a planning application; many people will object to it. We may not agree with those objections but they will be made, so it will come before a planning committee for determination.

I spoke in favour of an experiment with the private sector, as did my noble friend Lord Porter of Spalding. I do not agree with the comminations from the other side, but my noble friend needs to go just one step further. That is reflected in my Amendment 121E, which comes in the next group. As I said in Committee, a report is tabled at a planning committee with a statement recommending permission or rejection. If members of the public, particularly those who are objecting to an application, come to the meeting and see that the recommendation is being made or spoken to by somebody who is paid to do a job by one of the parties to the application, that will be seen as unfair and corrupt, even if it is not.

I do not intend to press my amendments; I am quite happy not to move Amendment 121E if the Minister can say that the assurance she has given will also apply to advice to planning committees—that it should be perceived as independent and not given by a paid advocate who tables a report to members saying they should give permission. If she can, a lot of the objections would potentially fall away. Amendment 122A would be otiose, because it is designed only to ensure that if someone is paid to give advice, they should be made to declare that they are a paid advocate, rather than independent. We could then part happily. I might be interested in taking part in these experiments. I hope the Minister will also take heed of what the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said: there should be variety. My own authority, for example, is going into a shared management arrangement with another local authority. Inventive local authorities should be given the opportunity to suggest forms of experiment. That was an interesting proposal and I hope the Minister will be ready to listen to it.

Having been led to speak on the basis that one of my amendments would be pre-empted, I am essentially asking my noble friend to go one step further and say that the public who turn up will not hear or see a report saying “recommend” from somebody who is paid. If she can, much of the need for the amendments I have tabled would fall away.

If the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is going to lead a frontal assault, I certainly would not want my Amendment 124A to be grouped with his because I shall be voting against his proposal. However, how the fee arrangements would actually work needs further clarification; we have heard little from the Front Bench. My noble friend Lady Williams said that there would be no two-tier system. That needs clarification, but provided there could be assurance of further consideration of that point, when the time comes I would be prepared not to move my Amendment 124A.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 120A and 121. I was going to try to stick to the proper script but, given that everybody before me has left the running order and spoken about the things they are really interested in, I am going to do the same. First, I thank my noble friend the Minister for listening to what was said last week and to what local government has been saying for a number of weeks, and for clarifying how some of this pilot stuff will work.

Since I am on my feet, I am going to speak to fees. I am in favour of private sector competition on the basis that I honestly believe it will drive fees up. It is the first time I can recall having private sector competition to drive up the cost of a service, but I think this will do it. At the moment, we are spending about £150 million a year as taxpayers subsidising the planning system, and we have spent £450 million over the past three years doing it. Clearly, the fee structure does not recoup the full costs. If the private sector is going to come in and compete against us, it is going to want at least to cover its costs. Even if it is doing it for a few years as a loss leader, it is not going to want to lose a lot of money, so local government should be able to get its fees set at a much higher rate. That will allow us to staff our planning departments to a much more suitable level, given the demand that will be coming through, and that will allow local government to win the competition hands down because the public will trust what we are delivering and any sensible developer will want to go through an established route rather than risk competition in the private sector.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that an impact assessment had said that competition reduced the cost of refuse collection by about 20%. Ours has been brought back in-house since I have been leader and that has saved 20%. While private sector competition should be encouraged, it is not always the route that the final decision should go down.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord True and Lord Porter of Spalding

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I have an amendment in this group. It is a very important subject and it is a great pity that it has come up at this late hour. I quite understand why my noble friend wished to move it.

Under Article 4, for example, which is recommended on the process we were discussing earlier, you cannot charge fees in those circumstances. You cannot even charge the prior approval application fee. So in those cases, if we had not had that system, we would have been able to get fees of £380,000, whereas we actually got only £19,000 from all this work—on 234 prior approval cases. I do not want to go over all that again; it just accentuates the problem. I agree with my noble friend. I do not see why local authorities should not be permitted to recover the cost of this service.

In our authority, it costs us £1 million to provide this service. That is money that has to be cross-subsidised. So, in effect, while we are being told that we have to charge up to the level—charging old people full price for their services and so forth—developers and people who want to do extensions do not have to pay. The only people who are told that they must be subsidised are developers. It is in fact a pernicious cross-subsidy from adult social services and other key services into providing a cost on planning that is not the true cost.

This is not the occasion to have a long debate, but it is unacceptable that local authorities are not allowed to recover at least that cost—I would not be as ambitious as my noble friend. This is a matter that we must return to.

[Lord Porter of Spalding]

My Lords, I do not wish to drag this out any longer, but I feel the need to support this amendment given that I am the chairman of the Local Government Association and local government nationally is subsidising the planning system by about £150 million a year. As the noble Lord, Lord True, said, to make money on planning is probably a step too far, but we should certainly be in a position where councils are able to fully recover costs. I know that the previous coalition Government gave the first decent increase in planning fees for a long time, but that was a fair while ago, so it is about time someone looked at the way that we are dealing with planning permissions. I add my support to the previous two speakers to ask the Minister to make sure that when she is speaking to her colleagues this is something that is looked at.

It works in the industry’s interest to have well-resourced planning departments. It enables us to do planning permissions in a stronger, quicker way so that the industry benefits. I do not think anybody would suggest that we should make money on this, but we should certainly be able to fully recover the costs.