Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Turner of Camden Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Burnett]

I am extremely grateful to my noble friend. I feel supported and vindicated in the thrust of the points that I was endeavouring to make to the House.

[Baroness Turner of Camden]

My Lords, I support the amendments spoken to by my noble friend Lord McKenzie this afternoon. Clause 1 gives the Secretary of State powers to take over planning application decisions, as I see it. Why? I thought that the Government were in favour of localism—a point that has been made by a number of speakers already. Planning applications are surely best handled locally. They should normally involve a consultation process involving the local community. That is certainly the situation in our area.

There is a housing crisis in London. Everything has become incredibly expensive, and developers have become very greedy indeed. They take over large houses when they become available and attempt to extend and develop them, often to the disadvantage of adjoining property. They are not developing affordable housing—quite the contrary. When local residents object, the local planning authority has to pay attention to what the local community has to say.

As a matter of fact, I have recently been involved in such a situation in an area where there are quite old houses, and where the developers are attempting to build basements in places that were never intended to have basements. This destabilises the houses next door, and of course the residents have all been objecting. If the Government really respected localism, they would not attempt to undermine the procedures that are provided by Clause 1. The residents in the case I refer to are certainly not against social housing. They are simply against a large fortune being made by developers trying to profit from scarcity, which is the situation in London.

In the circumstances that have been explained by a number of speakers this afternoon, the amendments submitted by my noble friend Lord McKenzie would substantially modify the provisions of Clause 1, and that would be to everyone’s advantage. It would give the local authority the right of representation before the powers were assumed by the Secretary of State, and there is provision in Amendment 32 for a proper consultative process. I therefore hope that the Government will look with some favour on these amendments, because they modify the thrust of Clause 1, I think to the advantage of everyone.