Local Government (Review of Decisions) Bill

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Friday 24th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Spencer]

Before my hon. Friend moves away from donkeys, I should draw the House’s attention to the fact that this could be the first time that donkeys have featured in debates on two consecutive Bills. I wonder whether the fact that we are prevented from bringing hot beverages into the Chamber is a health and safety issue, or whether it prevents Members from having our own little picnic and not concentrating on the business of the day.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that is not the case.

[Brandon Lewis]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend’s desire for a hot toddy late on a Monday evening is one that I will leave him to debate with the relevant authorities in due course.

Let us move specifically on to chips not being served in a paper cone—something that would ruin my Friday afternoons most weeks when I am not here. When ordering chips from a chip shop to take away, a customer asked for her chips to be just put in paper and wrapped in a cone, rather than having them served in the normal plastic tray, so that they would be easier to eat and carry as she walked round the shops. However, she was told by the lady serving behind the counter, “We can’t do that. It’s against health and safety, in case you burn yourself on the chips.” She was advised that once they served them to her, she was more than welcome to remove the tray and wrap them up herself.

The Health and Safety Executive is obviously no stranger to how best to enjoy this traditional treat. I should say that that did not happen in Great Yarmouth. We are very good at looking after our customers, as my Yarmouth Greats campaign has shown, with our great chip shops. The HSE considered that the customer made a perfectly sensible request and there was no health and safety reason that would prevent the shop proprietor from doing as requested. It concluded that such cases of poor customer service need to be wrapped up and thrown in the bin—I am sorry, but I could not resist that.

Fancy a swim to work off those chips, as some Members might argue I should do more often? Just make sure you take all your own equipment. A poster at a public swimming pool stated:

“Due to health and safety regulations, we are unable to lend floats, goggles or woggles.”

I leave Members to look up the meaning of “woggle”. The Health and Safety Executive was having none of this. It was clear that no health and safety regulation prevents the loan of goggles and flotation devices at public swimming pools. Many public swimming pools continue to provide these aids to swimmers without a problem.

Then there was the case where a council managed to use not only health and safety but planning as an excuse to annoy the very community that it should be serving. As the planning Minister, I found this example astounding. A council planning department asked the public not to remove out-of-date planning notices in public areas. The public were doing this in an understandable effort to clean up their community, proud of the area in which they lived. The tone of the Health and Safety response can be described as indignant. Stopping these community-spirited people makes no sense at all, it wrote. The council should cut through some of its own red tape and support well-meaning local volunteers. Removing redundant planning notices as part of a community clear-up poses no significant health and safety risks and should not be an issue.

Finally, there was a case that illustrated not health and safety gone mad, but a sensible approach to a problem which, by the way, turned out to have nothing to do with health and safety. A borough council hung bunting carrying 20,000 small knitted Tour de France jerseys on lamp posts, but the county council asked for the bunting to be taken down owing to concerns about the structural integrity of the heritage-style lamp posts. It appeared that the problem in this case was not the use of bunting, given that the council was distributing quite a lot of it, to its own design, but the use of wire under tension to attach it to heritage-style lamp posts. Given that the lamp posts were seen to be leaning under tension, it was probably a good idea to remove the bunting. The solution lies in suggesting alternative means to display the magnificent work of the locals in creating their own tribute to the tour.

These cases demonstrate that the risk-averse culture extends beyond local government. If reports are to be believed, it can even extend to our chip shops. We in local government and central Government set a trend. We have the ability to set the tone and the direction of travel for others so that they understand the need for common sense, but it is clear that councils have proved particularly adept at banning or prohibiting things on the grounds of health and safety. What the Health and Safety Executive’s replies show, and it should know about these things with the experience it has, is that we can and should trust people to get on with things and look after their own lives. There is risk, and there is also reasonable risk. People should be free to enjoy gardening, donkey rides and hot snacks served in newspaper, should they so choose.

Simply put, this risk-averse culture must be halted, and if by means of the Bill we can introduce measures that will halt it in councils, we will have made an excellent start. Councils have authority. When they set a bad example, it is easy for others to follow. Let us encourage them to set good examples, to let children do gardening and to let their own public-spirited residents remove out-of-date planning notices if they want to. The story of the knitted jerseys in particular illustrates reasonable risk prevention. It was not the fantastic bunting that was the issue, but the decision to suspend the bunting using tension wire. One can understand why a local authority may take issue with suddenly being famed for its leaning lamp posts, but a simple solution was to use a different type of wire.

Reasonable risk, communities coming together, enjoyment and celebration without frustration—that is what the Bill seeks to achieve. It is true that there are stories about councils banning activities on health and safety grounds that, on closer inspection, turn out to have more to do with the desire to publish a good story than with what might actually have taken place. But what does the story about the council that required a pancake race to be held at walking pace tell us about health and safety? It sounds much less plausible than the story about a killjoy council stopping children enjoying a donkey ride, but it is true—that actually happened—and it is not the only example.

In short, there is a culture of local authorities making decisions about events based on the over-enthusiastic application of a risk-averse health and safety culture. Those decisions have a real effect on people and our communities. We have a great tradition in our country of communities coming together to celebrate, have a good time and raise money for good causes while doing so. It is wrong for councils for no good reason to prevent community celebrations and events that draw communities together.

The problem is this: local authorities have become overly cautious in respect of health and safety; not in all cases—let me be clear about that—and not all over the country, but certainly on too many occasions. Where health and safety is used as an excuse to stop an event taking place, or to place restrictions on it, it is right that such decisions should be transparent and challengeable.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood mentioned, and as I have made clear, the Bill does not seek to ensure that the very sensible health and safety regulations that apply to the workplace, to public areas, to our streets and to our recreation spaces are disregarded. Rather, we want to ensure that on the occasions when health and safety is used as an excuse to ban or restrict an event—when the application of health and safety concerns is over-zealous or disproportionate, or when the restrictions on the event are unreasonable, either by requiring a fee or restricting an activity—the authority must first justify its decision and then, if required, review it. That process should bring accountability to health and safety decisions and, in so doing, result in minimal recourse to seeking to review a health and safety decision.

The proposals are straightforward, sensible and proportionate. The Bill requires authorities to undertake certain actions when they ban or restrict events on health and safety grounds. In particular, it requires that if an authority decided to prevent an event from being held, or imposes restrictions or conditions on it, it must put the reasons for such a decision in writing, electronically or otherwise. That written notification of a ban or restriction must be sent to either the person who made the application or the organiser of the event if no application was made. The written notification must be sent on the day the decision was taken or, if that is not possible, the first working day thereafter.

The requirement to issue written notification extends not only to a ban that prohibits an event, but to restrictions that might be judged so unreasonable as to amount to a ban. If the person who made the application, or the organiser of the event, is unhappy with the authority’s decision to ban or restrict the event on health and safety grounds, they may request that the authority reviews the decision. The authority must complete an internal review as soon as reasonably practicable after it receives a request for a review and, in any case, within 15 days of receipt of the request, and on completion of the review it must give written notification, in electronic form or otherwise, to the person who requested it. The outcome of the review is that the decision may be confirmed, withdrawn, replaced with another decision or varied, but only varied so far as the decision could have been one reached in the first instance.

Local authorities are accountable to their electorates for the decisions they make, so it is not unreasonable for us to expect an authority to put its reasons for refusing or restricting an event on health and safety grounds in writing for the people affected. That is the sort of good practice that authorities should be following—many already do—in bringing transparency to their decision-making process. True localism is about embracing the wishes of local communities. The provisions in the Bill put in place a framework that will allow localism, and not a risk-averse culture, to flourish.

Briefly, on the role of the local government ombudsman, we consider that it is right that local issues should be resolved at a local level, without a member of the public needing to have recourse to a national body such as the ombudsman.