Lord Best
Main Page: Lord Best (Crossbench - Life peer)Localism Bill
Lord Best Excerpts“(3A) Subsection (3) shall not apply to those policies in an approved regional strategy that have been specifically referred to as part of the policy content of a Local Development Framework submitted under section 20(1) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 (independent examination) in advance of the coming into force of this section.
(3B) Subsection (3A) shall apply until whichever is the earlier of—
(a) at the end of the period of three years starting with the date on which regional strategies are revoked under subsection (3) above,(b) the day when in relation to a policy covered by subsection (3A), a new policy which expressly replaces it is adopted or approved.”
Lord Best
My Lords, Amendment 147FG relates to Clause 94 and the abolition of regional strategies. I fully accept that regional spatial strategies are to be abolished and the Government will not want to extend their life. However, there is a danger of a hiatus before the issues currently covered by the regional spatial strategies can be properly incorporated into new local development plans by the relevant local planning authorities.
Quite apart from the many cases where no local development framework has been completed, there are the situations where a local development framework has been properly finalised, but refers specifically to items in a regional spatial strategy which will now disappear, or where the local development framework is silent on an issue because it is addressed by a regional spatial strategy and those preparing their local development framework were encouraged to exclude matters already set out in a regional spatial strategy, particularly relating to environmental aspects of the plan. The local development framework has gone through its planning inquiry exercise with evidence in public and endorsement by the planning inspectorate. If it wishes to change its contents now to take on board those items which the abolition of the regional spatial strategy means are no longer in place, it has to go through a partial review, through the whole consultative process all over again. With cuts in staffing levels, not least in growth areas, through the loss of the previous planning and housing delivery grant for extra staff and IT, getting into a new local development plan exercise will be expensive and problematic.
My amendment to Clause 94, Amendment 147FG, would mean the retention of those items in regional spatial strategies which local development frameworks relied upon, but which will evaporate with the abolition of the old regional spatial strategies. This transitional measure would stay in place for up to three years, giving local authorities the chance to produce a new local development plan that can take into account the fact that the RSS no longer exists. I have resisted suggestions that I table an amendment that would retain regional spatial strategies until such time as all the new local development plans are prepared and approved. Indeed, it will be necessary for local development plans to embrace the new national planning policy framework’s content in due course and this will include the definition of sustainable development, which will thereby be incorporated into local development plans. However, all this is some months away. Nevertheless, I do not think that hanging on to the regional spatial strategy would be acceptable to the Government. Instead, I am hoping that the Minister likes this way of approaching the transitional problems that particularly face the 40 per cent of local authorities that have been efficient enough to produce their local development framework. The amendment would let them avoid having to go through the LDF process all over again simply because some words in the regional spatial strategies were not repeated in their own local development framework.
The Royal Town Planning Institute feels that this amendment would be of considerable help and I hope that the Government will look sympathetically at it in order to help local planning authorities get through this transitional phase to the new system. I beg to move.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, this is a very important amendment and it is supported by other organisations as well as the RTPI. I hope that the Government will take this in the spirit in which it is intended. I believe that this is an oversight, in fact, and one which, unless it is addressed will really make life difficult for, ironically, the very assiduous local authorities which completed their LDFs, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, says. I will not say that we have given up the case, because I believe that regional spatial strategies had a great deal to offer, but we are not revisiting that debate at all here. This is about a transitional situation, where a local authority has its LDF in place, but where it has preferred, to save itself time and resources and to be consistent, to use the content of the RSS as a way of indicating what its policies—on housing supply and distribution, on climate change—will be. It is now in a very difficult position, if there is this lacuna, because, obviously, with the RSS having gone, the content has been abandoned as well, or put into some strange sort of limbo.
It is very important that we do not waste those resources, such as the information and the data sets. More importantly, the local authority should not have to waste time and resources by revisiting those matters or by reiterating the process through a partial review. That would not make any sense. Therefore, it is extremely important that the Government look closely at this provision to see what can be done, which I suspect would not be too difficult to do. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Best, has a good amendment here.
Lord Best
My Lords, I must confess to being a bit disappointed. I clearly did not explain the position adequately. When I asked the people behind these proposals what they expected the Government to do about this, I was told that they thought the Government would be very pleased not necessarily to accept the wording of the amendment but to have a peg to hang something on to handle the transitional problem that faces local authorities. It faces in particular the good guys, who have already prepared their local development frameworks. Just for a partial review of the local development framework, they will have to go through the whole process of hearing evidence in public, getting the planning inspectorate back again and allowing all kinds of people to come and make their case. They may need that partial review just because the framework had referred to a regional spatial strategy that suddenly did not exist and could not be referred to any more, or because it was silent about a particular ingredient because the authority was encouraged by the DCLG not to put in something that the regional spatial strategy already had in it. Those are technical changes that will require a whole bureaucratic process to be restarted, when we could have a quite simple transitional arrangement.
I had rather hoped that the Government would say, “We will fix this, maybe not in the way that you suggested—but we absolutely understand that nobody wants to go through all that bureaucracy just for nothing, since it is a very expensive exercise. We will sort it”. I confess to being rather disappointed at this stage, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.