Buckinghamshire County Council (Filming on Highways) Bill [Lords]

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Gillan]

May I commend my right hon. Friend, who takes a great interest in motoring matters and who I know has a fine collection of cars himself? The council has a code of practice, readily available on its website, entitled, “Filming on Highways: Buckinghamshire County Council Code of Practice”. The council has already drawn up draft proposals in the eventuality that the Bill is passed by the House. When consulting the Department for Transport, it has entered into provisions and given undertakings about placing well-sited notices and giving as much warning as possible. Like my right hon. Friend, I know how annoying it is to find one cannot go somewhere, and one can see all the film vans. I therefore hope that the notices will have been adequately covered in the rules and guidelines that will be readily available to the public, and the council gave the Department for Transport assurances about notification to fire, ambulance and police services, and so on. We hope that the disruption will be minimised and a great deal of thought will be given to road users, as my right hon. Friend wants.

[Mr Christopher Chope]

(Christchurch) (Con): The film order can last for five days—or is it seven days?—and there can be six film orders each year, adding up to 42 days a year. If someone can find ingress and egress from their home interrupted for 42 days a year, is that proportionate?

[Mrs Gillan]

Before I reply to that intervention, may I thank my hon. Friend for the helpful advice he gave when he was approached by Buckinghamshire county council to discuss the Bill? His expertise in opposed private business has always been invaluable, as was his contribution to the Bill prior to that.

I think that closure for 42 days must not be taken in isolation. Do not forget that the council has to consider section 122 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, which also applies. That section puts a duty on the council

“to secure the expeditious, convenient and safe movement of vehicular and other traffic”,

including providing adequate pedestrian access to people’s homes and taking into account the needs of the disabled. In practice, because the council must give consideration to the provisions of section 122, closure of such duration would be unlikely and would probably not be demanded.

The provisions of the Bill have the effect of extending, with modifications, the existing powers of the highway authority to close roads for special events. Those powers were brought in specifically to enable a wonderfully successful event—the Tour de France—to be hosted in England for the first time in the 1990s. I am sure we all saw the great success of the recent Tour de France in this country. The relevant provision of the 1984 Act also allows closures to facilitate the holding of “a relevant event”, which is defined as

“any sporting event, social event or entertainment which is held on a road.”

The council takes the view that, sadly, that does not include film-making. The Bill would have the effect of categorising the making of a film as a relevant event, thereby allowing the council to make the subsequent closure orders.

The Bill goes a little further than that, in the same way as the Acts for London, Kent and Hertfordshire, by allowing what will be known as “film notices” to be issued where it appears to the council that it is expedient for the closure to come into effect without delay. As I mentioned, that is particularly useful in the film industry because of the unpredictability of our weather. The existing restriction, which allows special events orders to continue in force for up to three days, is altered to allow for seven days for a film order. Similarly, a restriction on the number of orders that can be made in any year on any stretch of road is relaxed to allow for up to six film orders. Under the existing rules, only one special event order can be made per annum, but that number can be increased with the consent of the Secretary of State.

How will our residents who are affected by this legislation be treated? As I have indicated, whenever the council exercises the powers under the Bill, section 122 of the 1984 Act protects the users of the highway. That, I am sure, is the safeguard we would be looking for, because it requires the council to have regard to the desirability of securing and maintaining reasonable access to premises.

As I said, the council has made a commitment to the Department for Transport that it will follow the procedures that it has to follow for temporary street closures under other legislation. I referred to the code of practice for location filming in Buckinghamshire, and I want to give the House a bit more detail on that. It includes, for example, provisions about litter removal, historical or cultural and protected locations, night filming, noise and nuisance, and parking. It also contains a section about residents, including disabled residents, and businesses requiring consultation. The code has recently been updated, as requested by the Chairman of Committees when the Bill was considered in Committee in the Lords. As I understand it, we would be perfectly prepared to place a copy of the draft rules and regulations, and the code, in the House of Commons Library if that was wanted.

[Mr Chope]

Does this require consultation with residents associations? Is there any provision to ensure that residents associations can be compensated for the inconvenience that their members encounter? There is a lot of filming in the area where I live, and there is provision for residents associations to receive money from the film company.

[Mrs Gillan]

I will place the code and the terms and conditions in the Library so that my hon. Friend can read them, because I am getting to the end of my speech and I want to allow enough time not only for any colleague who wishes to speak but for the Minister to respond.

In order to understand whether there was support for the proposed Bill, throughout the summer of 2012 the county council held a six-week consultation, and a huge number of bodies were consulted. A total of 19 responses were received. Nine responses were absolutely positive, seven were positive but expressed some concerns which have been addressed, one was neutral, and two were negative. It was considered that none of the concerns raised was significant enough to prevent the promotion of the Bill. Given that no one has objected to the legislation, it is good to see that it is welcomed by the people of Buckinghamshire as much as it has been in Hertfordshire, Kent and London.

I hope that I have done justice to Buckinghamshire county council in sponsoring this Bill. It is a simple Bill that has precedent. I hope that the House will find favour with it and give it fair passage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

rose—

[Hon. Members]

Too late.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pity that I was too late to intervene on the Minister, but perhaps he will intervene on me.

The leader of Buckinghamshire county council, who knew that I had concerns about the Hertfordshire County Council (Filming on Highways) Bill, wrote to ask me what I was going to do about the Buckinghamshire Bill. I said that I thought it would be much better if Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire got together to promote a joint Bill, because that would be much less expensive, but Hertfordshire did not want to play ball. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) said on introducing the legislation and as the Minister has just mentioned, there is now a competitiveness issue.

[Mrs Gillan]

Perhaps I may tell the Minister that the idea of bringing forward a Bill for the whole country is perfectly sensible, because the issue is important. I appreciate that such locations are not just in Buckinghamshire, although Buckinghamshire is best. The Road Traffic Regulation (Temporary Closure for Filming) Bill, which has been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), would cover the whole country, although as a private Member’s Bill it may not get through and as yet no Bill has been published. As there is only one day a year on which a Bill of this nature can be published, Hertfordshire went ahead and published its Bill, so Buckinghamshire had no choice but to publish its own Bill on the due date the following year. That was a long intervention, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her short intervention, but in a sense I am even more disappointed. Why did the Minister not refer to such a private Member’s Bill? It might well deal with the issue by giving all local authorities a power to introduce such provisions without the need to use the private legislation route.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that if we had a Bill covering the whole country that perhaps gave councils the power to preserve outdoor film sets by banning unsightly wind farms, the House might pass it with acclamation?

[Mr Chope]

I look forward to supporting my right hon. Friend’s Bill on that topic. I think that there may be a chance to present such a Bill even on Friday if he gives notice of it tomorrow.

To return to the point about the private Member’s Bill, the Minister did not say whether the Government will support it, which is rather a missed opportunity, if I may put it like that. Whether in relation to pedlars—we know all about such iterative Bills—or filming on highways, it is much better to try to have general legislation to which local authorities can opt in if they wish, without the need to engage in the expensive and often protracted process of private legislation.

Having said that, because there are no petitions against the Bill, it will go to an unopposed Bill Committee and will not even come back on Report unless the Committee finds some reason to amend it, and it will then go straight through on Third Reading.

However, that is an expensive process. I hope that by the time the Bill returns for Third Reading we will have more news about the private Member’s Bill to which my right hon. Friend referred. [Interruption.] I see the Minister nodding in agreement. Private Members’ Bills are often rather extensive in ambit, and therefore controversial and difficult to get through, but it sounds as though that Bill will have a narrow ambit. If it is supported by the Government and the Opposition, it could have a fair wind and result in our spending less time looking at private legislation.

[Sir Greg Knight]

If this Bill goes ahead, is there not a case for giving the council more powers? Clause 6(2) allows it to impose a charge for placing objects on the highway, but only to cover its reasonable expenses. Taking into account my hon. Friend’s earlier point about local community groups, perhaps the council should be given the power to levy a fee that includes a donation to the local community.

[Mr Chope]

I am against that, because I do not see why we should burden the blossoming British film industry with additional stealth taxes. However, I support film companies working closely with residents and residents associations and, where appropriate—I think that this is best practice in the industry—making ex gratia payments to compensate them for the inconvenience.

That happened recently in a street that I am familiar with where a company is shooting a film about the Krays—“Legend” is the working title—which I think will be very popular. The buildings in the ganglands where the Krays operated have long since been demolished, so the company had to find some lookalikes. They came along to the street in question and painted all the houses grey in order to make them look as dingy as they must have done in the 1950s. This is not an advertisement for “Legend”, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I wanted to explain that the film company, in order to ensure that local residents did not feel that they had been taken advantage of, made a donation to the local residents association as well as to individual residents who were particularly inconvenienced. If you would like to speak with me afterwards, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will give you the details of the residents association and the fantastic Christmas parties it can throw as a result of the donations it has received, and not only from that film company, but from many others.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I can see that you feel that there comes a time when all the points that need to be made have been made. I made many of the points that I would like to have made on this Bill when I spoke to the Hertfordshire County Council (Filming on Highways) Bill. In conclusion, I hope that this is the last time we have to deal with the Second Reading of an individual local authority Bill for filming on the highways and that in future they can all be dealt with under delegated legislation.