Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Adonis

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 48ZC, 48ZD and 48AA. These amendments repeat amendments that I moved in Committee. They would exclude quarrying and open-cast mining from the definition of business and commercial developments; require regulations to limit the definition of business and commercial projects in order to exclude areas of special historical or environmental importance from the type of applications that could be permitted to bypass the local authority; require the Secretary of State to publish the reasons for his decision to assume authority to decide the outcome of an application, including the reasons for which he considers the application to be nationally significant; and request that the local plan will have primacy where there is no existing national policy statement of relevance.

I thought it important that even at this late hour we had an opportunity to debate what is quite a significant change brought about by the Bill. There is one specific issue arising from Committee that I would like to clarify with the noble Baroness. I am not sure who to address and I have got it wrong each time so far. The noble Baroness and the noble Lord are confusing us by changing between Committee and Report. They are clearly able to cover the waterfront between them.

The subject of opencast mining is extremely sensitive and controversial in the communities where it takes place. The current issue is whether this will or will not come into the definition of business and commercial development. In Committee, the noble Baroness was vague on this point. She said:

“We therefore consider that some minerals schemes could be capable of being of national significance, but again we wish to consider the consultation responses before we reach final conclusions about the forms of development”.—[Official Report, 4/2/13; col. 62.]

Is she able to say whether that further consideration has been given and what kind of mineral schemes, if any, would in the Government’s view be capable of being of national significance? This is a new issue which was left very much in the air after Committee and I hope that if she is not able to give me a reply today she will be able to write to me afterwards. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 48A, which is grouped with these amendments. This re-examines the situation where there are commercial and business projects with housing. I am grateful to the Minister for her letter yesterday. There is this tension between projects which include housing and which are therefore excluded and those that do not include housing. In her letter the Minister does not say what consultees felt about the moving of housing from the scope of Clause 24, only that there was comment on whether the exclusion of housing from the regime, although widely supported, would limit the number of mixed-use schemes.

This amendment would be a useful way of dealing with projects that are nationally significant commercial or business projects being considered under the Planning Act, but it would also strengthen the “town centres first” approach in the National Planning Policy Framework. Despite what the Minister said in Committee, it does not counter the Government’s line that planning for housing should remain a core responsibility of local authorities, as set out in the NPPF. They do have a role, but it would be useful to hear the Minister’s comments as to when there is a small housing element within a larger development. I look forward to what the Minister has to say in response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for the work that she has done and for being able to convince the Department for Transport to support this very sensible amendment. I hope that it will enable a proper, modern and efficient tolling system to be installed on the proposed new road in east London, the river crossing in east London and any other projects that come up. It is a major step forward, and I am very grateful.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I echo what my noble friend has just said. This is a very sensible amendment, and we thoroughly support it.

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Berkeley and Lord Adonis

Monday 4th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I will speak to the six amendments in this group standing in my name. The question before us is what projects should be considered nationally significant and therefore subject to the Planning Act 2008, as amended in this Bill, and therefore subject to a national rather than a local planning consent regime. The 2008 Act permits this change to projects of national significance in respect of infrastructure. Clause 24 extends this to business and commercial schemes.

The thrust of my amendments is that Parliament should not give the Secretary of State such wide-ranging powers without defining their extent carefully in the Bill. In the Bill, discretion as to what constitutes national significance is left almost entirely to the Secretary of State. The only substantial limitation is that regulations may not encompass projects that include residential dwellings. My amendments are all probing and I look forward to the Minister’s response to the substantial points underlying each.

Amendment 77ZJ would exclude from the new arrangements sites of special environmental or historic importance. Amendment 77AB would exclude developments that involve surface mineral extraction or quarrying. Such applications arouse especially strong local feeling, and to circumvent local planning entirely for such schemes is bound to give rise to acute concern. Amendments 77AA, 77AC and 77BA would remove the Secretary of State’s discretion to define what is meant by business or commercial and to permit the bypassing of a local authority, because Amendment 77ZA and other amendments in my name specify the definition in the Bill.

Amendment 77ZA seeks to define business and commercial projects of national significance, rather than leaving it entirely to the discretion of the Secretary of State. Under my amendments, these projects could be subject to the national process only if they are in specific areas—largely those set out in annexe A of the Government’s consultation on what should constitute nationally significant infrastructure projects in the business and commercial sphere.

That leads me to the Government’s consultation on those projects. The Government will no doubt respond to my amendment by saying that they have consulted both on categories of development and on thresholds within those categories in terms of the number of square metres that might apply in determining whether a commercial or business development application is of national significance. Last week, the Government published their analysis of the responses. However, they have not yet said how they intend to proceed. A key issue for us in this debate is to know what the Government’s response will be to the consultation that they carried out on types of development and thresholds. I will welcome the Minister’s response to the question of what the Government intend to do in respect of the types of development and thresholds set out in annexe A of the consultation. If the Minister is not able to give me a response now, I would be very grateful if he would write to noble Lords before Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 78 in this group, which is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding. It is yet another attempt to change the definition of what type of project could be included in the extent of the Planning Act. It relates to commercial and business developments that require consent under the national significant infrastructure regime.

The issue that I would like to raise is that of mixed-use schemes that have some housing or retail element. They should be able to take advantage of the regime for nationally significant infrastructure projects. Any retail element is excluded from the proposed list of development types set out in annexe A of the recent CLG consultation on extending the Planning Act regime. I imagine that this could always be reversed if the Government were minded to do so, but the Bill prevents any housing element being included in regulations.

I believe there is a large number of potentially significant business and commercial developments that will have some retail and certainly some housing element in them, even if it is only a caretaker. In theory, if there is just one property in a development, it cannot qualify for going down the nationally significant route. It is important for such developments to be able to include some housing element and to go for the nationally significant approach. An awful lot of time and cost could be saved if this were possible. The original prohibition of housing was well intentioned, and clearly big housing projects are not what the nationally significant definition is for, but it is a problem because if there were just one or two houses in a big development, it would be excluded.

That is what this probing amendment seeks to achieve. I hope that the Minister is willing to look at this again. Perhaps we can discuss whether there is some better wording that could be applied on Report.