Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan—especially during Wimbledon and on the day of England’s critical game at the European Championship. It causes me to wonder whether the expansion of sporting facilities is encouraged at all by the new permitted development rights.

I rise mainly to speak in support of the regulations. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his clear and succinct explanation. I have an interest as the chair of the new House of Lords Built Environment Committee. We have today announced an inquiry into “Meeting the UK’s housing demand” and hope to hear from as many people as possible. Our first oral hearing is next Tuesday, 6 July, and subsequent ones are at 9.30 am on Tuesdays.

One strand of our work will be on skill shortages and assessing whether the professional and other skills required to meet housing demand—for example, in the construction, planning and design sectors—are being tackled adequately. One of the issues we face is a dearth of planning staff following pressure on local authority budgets, Covid and the need to consider and process development applications across the country, partly as a result of the changes that provide the context for today’s draft regulations.

I support my noble friend the Minister’s proposals to charge fees for these new areas of work. It is essential that planning departments have the capacity and professionalism to do a proper job. Planning fees are an important source of finance for councils seeking to provide a good and timely service. My only question is whether the fees are high enough. Take a proposal to add storeys to a home, terrace or block of flats. There may be quite a lot of factors to consider, such as light and design, and representations to process—for example, from those who live underneath the new developments. The Minister may like to comment on this and any plans he has to keep the fees under review.

I thank the Minister for the full explanation of the regulations in the paperwork that has been circulated and the impact assessment relating to the original order, which I found very interesting. I note from page 8 of the Explanatory Memorandum that another impact assessment is being prepared and submitted for independent assessment. Why is this not available now? The whole point of these assessments is to inform intelligent decision-making. It is virtually pointless ex post.