Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Bates Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I saw this only a few minutes ago when I was alerted to it by an e-mail from the Bill team. I congratulate them on doing that, since, along with the Minister’s comments, it gives us the opportunity to debate this under a rather different and less dramatic amendment from that of the noble Lord on the Labour Front Bench.

Having now read the Statement while the discussion was taking place, the proposal that is being put forward seems quite extraordinary. Anything that is announced as a new state-funded school and has the support of the Secretary of State for Education goes ahead outside the normal planning system. That is, I understand, exactly what is being proposed at least for the first year. Presumably it will apply to all of them and not just to those which are said to have had problems opening on time because of delays in the planning system. Once again, we find that if there is a problem with planning—which is presumably caused by something real and is not invented by the planning authority—it is the planning system that is to blame. As the Prime Minister said quite recently, the planners should be removed from the scene. Those were not his exact words, but he said that they should be swept away—that they should get out of the way and let growth commence.

If that is what parts of the Government want, they should be fairly clear and overt about it and we can have debates about it. However, what is happening is that bits are being chipped away here and there. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said that it is eroding the power of local authorities. I would say it severely undermines the whole reason for and purpose of the planning system. If it is to be undermined for somebody who wants to run a small business that does not really affect anybody else, and that person wishes to run that business in very unsatisfactory circumstances—in a condition of squalor—I suppose that is their business. However, we are talking here about schools, children in schools and the people who live in the neighbourhood around schools. Even if it is a small free school, it will inevitably have some impact on the people who live around it.

I read that these changes will be subject to a prior approval process to mitigate any adverse transport and noise impacts. I am not quite sure how that will work. Presumably, if there are adverse noise impacts, they will come under environmental health legislation anyway, but I am not sure how the prior approval process will mitigate any adverse transport impacts and what that means. Perhaps the Minister can explain exactly how that will work.

For everything else that might result from a change of use to a school, not necessarily with changes of any sort to the building, presumably you just close down whatever it was previously and move in. It could have been offices, hotels, residential institutions, secure residential institutions—perhaps they are appropriate for some schools, but I will not comment further on that—or used for assembly and leisure. These uses can be converted overnight to a school without so much as a by-your-leave other than prior approval to mitigate any transport and noise impacts. Surely this is fundamentally wrong. It is stated that in a small number of cases free schools have had to delay their opening because there were planning problems; that may be the case. If there were problems, whatever they were, that suggests that that opening should have been delayed and those problems should have been sorted out, just as with any other change of use that would take place.

The Minister’s Statement, headed “Planning and Schools”, says that the Government believe,

“that the creation and development of state-funded schools is strongly in the national interest”—

—we all agree with that; it is a question of how you create and develop them—

“and that planning decision makers can and should support that objective, in a manner consistent with their statutory obligations”.

I think that is referring to the planning decision-makers, but this proposal would abolish their statutory obligations, at least for 12 months. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, a free school supported by the Secretary of State for Education which opens without planning permission in the first year has to spend that year getting planning permission. If that planning permission is turned down because the premises are obviously unsuitable to be turned into a school, for whatever reasons, the idea that that will go to appeal and the inspectorate will uphold the decision of the local planning authority is not likely. The inspectorate will get its firm instructions. It is quite clear that the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government are in cahoots over this. The planning system is being pushed to one side.

Yet the Statement goes on to say:

“Experience to date has demonstrated that with the assistance of the Education Funding Agency new state-funded schools, and free schools in particular, have been successful in identifying sites that have gone on to secure planning permission”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/1/13; col. 25WS.]

Presumably we can discuss this further on Report, but since we are discussing it now, it seems that at the very least the Minister needs to be clear and tell us how many instances there have been, out of all the free schools which have been set up, of them having their opening delayed because of planning problems? Where is the evidence that this is happening? What is the scale of the evidence, and what were the circumstances in each of those cases? I suspect that there are not very many of them.

This is a shambles. It is a Secretary of State for Education and a Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, as I said, in cahoots, driving a coach and horses through the normal planning system. The problem is that if government policy always trumps good planning, where will it end? It will not end with free schools, it will end with anything that any Secretary of State thinks is a good idea and pushes through, regardless of the effects on the people using the premises and on the local community.

[Lord Bates]

Could I clarify one point in what the noble Lord is saying? He seems to suggest that this is something that the Secretary of State is imposing on a local community, whereas the whole point of free schools is that the demand for them comes from within the community; local parents of local pupils will have indicated their desire to see a school established. Contrary to the notion that this is top-down, this is therefore surely something that supports local people in their local community getting access to the education that they want for their children.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I do not think that in this Committee we want to go too deeply into free schools and whether what the noble Lord just said is true or whether other factors are involved and to what extent. Free schools exist and, whether some of us like them or not, they are part of the system now. I am not in any way arguing about that in this Committee because I do not think that it is our business. What seems to be happening, however, is that in certain circumstances, when a proposal for a free school comes forward, whatever the instigation or motivation for it, the Secretary of State is saying that the normal planning system will not apply for at least the first 12 months. That is the problem.

I believe that the two Secretaries of State are clearly in cahoots over this, although people might want to use a slightly less emotive term than “in cahoots”. They are, perhaps, working together across departments, which some of us sometimes complain they do not always do. Nevertheless, they are clearly doing this and saying that in those circumstances the planning system will be set aside. That is obviously what is being said. If I want to set up a free school and Mr Pickles thinks that my free school is a good idea, I will not have to get planning permission before it opens. In the circumstances of a school, with children being educated and with the potential effect of a school on the local community, pushing aside the whole of the normal planning system seems to me to be outrageous.