Localism Bill

Lord Boyd of Duncansby Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 153B, which is grouped with the amendments of my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, although it is on a rather different theme. I believe that this amendment has the support of most of those concerned with the cultural heritage of this country, and certainly of those concerned with the understanding of the prehistoric and early historic past of our land. It is needed to ensure that the Bill ensures that heritage issues are not ignored in the course of development.

Members of your Lordships' House will recall that the Heritage Protection Bill, which was supposed to be given consideration in the previous Parliament, had the intention of placing the maintenance of the historic environment record as a statutory duty upon local planning authorities. That did not happen, nor is it proposed here, but it is imperative that all developments have some regard to the historic environment and take steps not to damage it, or at least to do so only after careful consideration and with any necessary actions by way of mitigation.

These obligations do not appear on the face of the Bill and it seems very desirable that they should do so. It seems that as part of the new neighbourhood development plan process there will be no opportunity to carry out pre-application assessment in the same way as for other development under the normal planning application process. This is all the more serious since most archaeological sites are undesignated; that is, they are not scheduled monuments or otherwise protected. This point was discussed earlier in relation to Amendment 145B. This leaves a glaring loophole in the Bill.

My amendment is drawn up in such a form as to place on the developer the obligation to seek the advice of the local planning authority about the historic environment. That implies that the local authority must have access to the relevant historic environment record. This amendment deliberately sets no obligation upon each local planning authority to maintain such a record. Ideally, each will have its own record, but there may be cases where two or three local planning authorities can share a single historic environment record. We are not setting out to be prescriptive in that respect, but it is implied in the amendment that the authority shall at least have access to such a record. Is it conceivable that development should go ahead without the local authority giving consideration to the historic environment on the basis of good and up-to-date information?

[Lord Boyd of Duncansby]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 153AM and to express some sympathy with it. I very much welcome the principle of pre-application consultation in a range of applications, particularly for major projects and so on. It has been working in Scotland and there are some benefits to that because there is the ability then to take into account at an early stage the product of that consultation and to feed it back in.

My worry is the one expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about the rigidity that can creep into the statutory provisions that can sometimes provide a hurdle for developers to get over—and, frankly, they cannot do without lawyers’ advice. While I am more than happy for lawyers to be employed on this, there are limits.

I ask the Government to see whether or not we can get a system that puts the principles into the statute but leaves a lot of the way in which it is done to guidance, and we should not thereby get into a situation where applications fail because one person who might have been expected to be consulted has not been—or something of that nature. That is not to detract in any way from the principle that there must be adequate consultation and, within it, an obligation on the individual developer or applicant to respond positively to the consultation exercise. Let us not get into a rigidity.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, we support the thrust of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, about local planning authorities having access to the relevant historic environment records. That must be right, and it follows on from our earlier discussion. I do not know how practical or easy it would be to put in place, but it is something we should require and strive towards.

As to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, he posed a conundrum about the operation of proposed new Section 61Y, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I thought that I was sure of my ground on the first amendments relating to retaining in statute the issues about requiring pre-application consultation. It is therefore with some hesitation that I disagree with my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd. I can understand the need for a degree of flexibility, but I do not see within the amendment something that is unduly rigid, although I am prepared to be swayed on that issue. However, I would need some persuading that we should adjust the Bill in that respect, but the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has raised an interesting point on new Section 61Y and the possible conflicts therein. I wait to see how that is to be resolved. I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 166D, I wish to speak to a large number of amendments in this group. With this amendment we turn to Schedule 13, which covers amendments to the Planning Act 2008 dealing with the new arrangements to replace the Infrastructure Planning Commission with a new process whereby the members of the commission are transferred to the planning secretariat. However, the decisions on these major infrastructure projects will be made by a Minister who is accountable to Parliament. At Second Reading, I remarked briefly that I was extremely pleased with the way that the members of the IPC have conducted themselves and with their readiness to accept the new process. However, there is still a lot of anxiety which has been expressed to me by the CBI and by lawyers at a City firm in London who have expressed considerable doubts as to whether the Bill adequately provides a seamless transition from the old process as set up in the 2008 Act to the new process set out in Schedule 13 to the Bill.

The Committee will be relieved to hear that I will not discuss this large group of amendments in detail. I have discussed the matter with my noble friend on the Front Bench. It is clear that she and her department are well aware of the arguments that have been advanced. I have been given an assurance that she and her department are very ready to speak to those who have put their views to me and which are reflected in these amendments.

The purpose of the amendments is, first, to ensure, as I said, a seamless transition, but it goes wider than that. The amendments also seek to remove the need for parallel and separate consent requirements so that the development consent orders regime is truly a one-stop shop, which was what was originally promoted by the previous Government when they brought forward the 2008 Act.

Secondly, they seek to introduce some limited flexibility regarding compliance with what is currently a one-size-fits-all set of procedures and requirements for applications. Thirdly, we want to clarify the ability to modify draft development consent orders as they are going through the process and to replicate other order-making regimes in terms of what criminal offences development consent orders may include; and generally remove what is regarded as unnecessary gold plating now that decisions are being returned from the Infrastructure Planning Commission—a quango—to Ministers. This was something for which a number of us argued fiercely during the passage of the 2008 Act. I am delighted that it is now being implemented in this Bill. That is what we are aiming to do here.

I shall not go through the details of all the amendments, but I should like to say that I am grateful for the offer made by my noble friend on the Front Bench that the Government will consider this matter. I am sure that we will be told that the Bill in fact provides the seamless transition from the old to the new. Nevertheless, anxieties remain. It is a hugely important matter that concerns all major national infrastructure projects such as major airports, new power stations, major transmission lines and so on. It is very important that there should be no hiatus in the process that transfers from the existing system the new.

Before I sit down, one amendment in this group also amends the Planning Act 2008 and concerns minor electricity distribution lines. The Act originally made provisions relating to a new transmission or distribution line that was,

“expected to be less than 132 kilovolts”.

My Amendment 166VZA suggests that it should,

“be 132 kilovolts or less”.

It may seem that there is no difference, but there is in fact a considerable difference. I am told on good authority that Ministers in the Department for Energy and Climate Change are wholly in favour of that amendment, and I hope that perhaps it might be accepted.

However, the bulk of amendments in my name in this group refer to the matters that I have described—the need for a seamless and, I hope, simpler transition from the existing responsibilities of the Infrastructure Planning Commission to make planning decisions for these major projects to its different role of preparing the matter and making recommendations; and the Secretary of State will make the decisions. I beg to move.

[Lord Boyd of Duncansby]

My name is also associated with Amendment 166U. At one stage, I had thought that I had put my name to one or two of the other amendments and it indeed appeared in earlier versions of the Marshalled List. However, for some reason my name seems to have been disassociated with those amendments. Nevertheless, I support the thrust of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and I emphasise the need for a seamless transition.

I do not want to take up the time of the Committee at this hour of night but I wish to mention two amendments in particular. The first, Amendment 166R, raises an important point of principle on the extent to which a development consent order can deal with all the consents—the one-stop shop that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, mentioned. This was particularly important in the setting up of the Planning Act regime. Noble Lords will recall from the debates at that time that the Terminal Five proposals involved 37 different applications under, I think, different pieces of legislation. The beauty of the development consent order is that it was supposed to bring all this together. The problem is that quite a number of consents are outside this process, particularly those involving the Environment Agency and Natural England. For example, under Section 109 of the Water Resources Act, the Environment Agency deals with consent issues where there is construction work in or near principal water courses. Thereby, if a nationally significant infrastructure project is next to a water course, there is a separate application to the Environment Agency.

I submit that that does not make sense. Adequate protection can be given within the development consent order. By way of example, if the Minister is taking this away to think about it, I mention the London Gateway Port Harbour Empowerment Order 2008, which was made under a similar process: the Harbours Act 1964, where adequate provision is made for the Environment Agency consents.

I mention a second matter. Amendment 166J concerns Section 114 of the 2008 Act. At present, there is concern among developers that, in effect, you get one chance to get the application right. If you have to make amendments to it, the issue then becomes whether they are substantial and, if they are, there is no way of amending the proposal properly in the process. In effect, you go back to square one. It is a bit like snakes and ladders, except that they all go back to the beginning.

I do not expect Ministers to comment on live cases, but one issue has arisen in the past few days with an application before the Infrastructure Planning Commission. It has refused to allow an amendment to an application. Does the developer then go back to square one to propose a development that the applicant presumably believes is inferior to the one they seek? I ask the Ministers to take that away to see whether they can give any flexibility in the process.

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and my noble and learned friend Lord Boyd on these amendments. They are terribly important to help to provide, as near as possible, the one-stop shop for big developments and to give business confidence in the process. As we have said in previous days in Committee, that is one of the most important things: to help get projects developed quickly—and the reason for the 2008 Planning Act and the changes proposed through the Bill.

I shall speak to two groups of amendments in my name. The first is Amendments 166UAA, 166BA, 166 UBB, 166UCA and 166UE, which concern the proposal that the national policy statements should be approved by both Houses of Parliament rather than just the House of Commons. It is interesting that, yesterday, the House of Commons debated and approved the six national policy statements for energy. They have been around for a long time in draft form and been subject to consultation, and it is good that the House of Commons debated them, but I suggest that there is an equal need for this House to debate such national policy statements, because there is a great deal of expertise among your Lordships about issues that are likely to come within the national policy statement framework. It seems equitable that we should debate them too. I am sure that noble Lords will have good contributions to make, and I hope that the noble Lord or the noble Baroness—I do not know which of them will reply—will take that seriously. It should have happened under the 2008 Act, but it did not, so here we are today.

The other amendment in my name, Amendment 166VZB, was proposed to me by Network Rail—which, as the Committee will know, is in the private sector but receives about £4 billion of public money. As the Committee will also know, the Government are rightly putting great pressure on Network Rail to save money. It is involved in a large number of usually quite small investments to create more capacity, meet growing demand and improve network reliability. Of course, many of these investments require planning permissions and other consents to deliver the works effectively on time and within budget. This amendment is designed to facilitate the process and, clearly, to reduce costs.

I am afraid that I have to go into a little of the background on this. Network Rail is the statutory successor in title to the original railway companies and it has fairly extensive permitted development rights, or PDRs, which confer the necessary planning authority, subject to prior approval in some cases, for works. However, it is often necessary to seek additional powers to supplement those powers both for related works outside the existing rail corridor and to acquire land and rights over land.

The methods for seeking authority for railway works has historically been by means of Private Bills—which we do not often see these days, other than for very big projects and then they tend to be hybrid Bills—and more recently under the Transport and Works Act 1992. In England, the procedure is currently also covered by the Planning Act 2008, which requires consent for developments that are, or form part of, a nationally significant infrastructure project, or NSIP, to be authorised by a development consent order. An NSIP is a project for the construction or alteration of a railway, but not where the alteration of a railway is authorised by permitted development rights. Of course, there is no national policy statement for railway projects at the moment. Whether there will be in the future, we do not know, so further guidance is not available. Therefore, many of the Network Rail schemes will not be covered by PDRs, and it will need to seek development consent in addition to using existing PDRs.

It is interesting that, for example, Network Rail is, as noble Lords will know, in the middle of a project to electrify the Great Western main line. It involves demolishing a number of bridges, some track widening and lots of little bits of work over 100 miles or so of track—two track or four track. Discussions with the IPC and the Department for Transport have revealed some questions about the interpretation of the rules in relation to the delivery of rail projects. Most of them are covered by PDRs but some elements of this scheme may not be. They may include a mixture of works authorised by PDRs and those to be authorised in other ways. Where works are covered by PDRs, the Planning Act is not clear whether they can be, or whether they have to be, included in a development consent application as part of an NSIP. That is causing delay and quite a lot of concern.

Network Rail clearly needs flexibility. If it takes, say, two or three years to go through a process between a design being sufficiently advanced and the start of construction, that is going to cause a lot of delay to its projects. Experience to date suggests that the time to be allowed for the full IPC process, from consultation to authorisation, is approximately 30 months. Whether the process would be quicker with a hybrid Bill, as is proposed for the new high-speed line, I do not know. I suspect that it is a bit quicker but no one is suggesting a hybrid Bill for the Great Western.

A procedure carried out by means of permitted development rights can be completed within a matter of weeks where proposals are notified as a matter of policy. Where prior approvals are required, it may take a little longer, but it is also a lot quicker.

There is also the question of minor works. There is no threshold for rail schemes requiring development consent. Where PDRs do not exist, minor works such as alterations to structures, which are not nationally significant, might be caught up in the definition of an NSIP and therefore require consent. Therefore, this all needs clarification.

I am pleased that Network Rail welcomes the changes that the Localism Bill will make to the planning Act, but there need to be further discussions between the Department for Transport and Ministers to clarify some of the issues which I raised and which this amendment would help to satisfy. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response. I am happy to have more discussions, but I hope that they will take Network Rail’s concerns seriously in this regard.