Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak to these amendments and I do not really want to, but I need to refute the claims that councils pass planning applications on the nod. The vast majority of planning applications are quite clearly policy-compliant, which is why almost nine out of 10 are granted. They are not passed on the nod but passed by delegated powers because they are planning-compliant. The ones that are controversial either locally or, more importantly, because they are not policy-compliant will be the ones dealt with in planning committees, which do not need to see all the planning applications. They need to have faith in the professionally trained planning officers to be able to work to policy-compliant applications. I just do not want any of your Lordships to be under any misapprehension that councils pass planning applications on the nod.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, if I might share just one thought with the Minister, does this amendment not chime nicely with the Government’s oft-stated desire to empower local communities at grass-roots level, as we have heard, and to give them a voice in these contentious planning decisions? The Government seem to have talked quite a lot about this in recent months and in building up to the election.