Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Bridges of Headley Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord True. It is an excellent idea. I hope the Minister will come back, as the noble Lord suggested, with some suggestions for what could be done in the next few months with local authorities.

When I go to Lewisham Town Hall, I get off at Catford Bridge station and walk past a scruffy bit of land clearly owned by the railway that you could easily get six or seven houses on. It just sits there and irritates me every day. The railways have bits of land near them. On a number of sites in Lewisham you could build some houses. We are in the midst of a housing crisis and there is no good reason that this land just sits there. I hope the Minister will respond favourably to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord True.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)]

Well, my Lords, that was very brief. I, too, will try to be very brief. Before addressing the amendments in this group, I want quickly to update your Lordships on discussions I have had since Committee. In Committee I promised to write to my noble friend Lord Carrington of Fulham to clarify the position of the Corporation of London, given its unique hybrid nature. I take this opportunity to reassure the corporation that our intention is to apply regulations under this part of the Act to the corporation in its capacity as a local authority only, and that the drafting of the Bill allows for this.

Turning to the amendments in this group, I will start with Amendment 129 in the name of my noble friend Lady Williams. Clause 185 provides a power for the Secretary of State, in circumstances to be specified in regulations, to direct a relevant public authority to take steps for the disposal of the body’s freehold or leasehold interest in any land. At present, the regulations setting out these circumstances will be subject to the negative resolution procedure. Amendment 129 amends Clause 185 to require the affirmative procedure to be used instead, as recommended by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

I thank my noble friend Lord True—he is indeed a friend—for his arguments and concerns regarding Amendment 129YE. I entirely agree with him and the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, that surplus land held by public bodies should be brought forward for development without delay, and that local authorities, which are indeed expert on local planning matters, should be able to make their voice heard. That is why we are introducing the duty on Ministers to engage with them under Clause 183.

I assure your Lordships that the Government are equally committed to making sure that more public land is brought forward for development and that surplus land is released for development, including for housing, without delay. I think we all share the impatience for this to happen, and Clauses 184 and 185 will help to deliver it. Clause 184 will ensure that relevant public bodies report any land which has been held as surplus for two years or more—six months for residential land—and the reasons why.

It pains me to say that my noble friend’s amendment could risk undermining this—he himself said it was defective—by giving a local authority the ultimate power, if it does not accept the reasons put forward by the landholding body why the land should not be developed at this time, to force development to proceed. I fully accept that most local authorities would not use this power for mischief making, but the potential would exist. More pertinently, there would be cases in which a fine balance of judgments would need to be made regarding a public authority’s total land asset requirements, at a national level, now and in the future. Given their local focus, however well meaning they may be—and they are well meaning—local authorities are not that well placed to make these judgments. Getting them wrong would undermine carefully planned land disposal strategies across the wider public sector.

The Government’s view is that this power should sit with the Secretary of State, who is best placed to take a balanced judgement on a given public body’s need for the land, taking account of their broader functions, future plans and assets. However, there should be no doubt about our commitment to ensuring that unused public land is put to good use.

My noble friend Lord True has also tabled Amendment 129A—

[Lord True]

I apologise—I had intended to de-group that, so I did not speak to it. I could speak to it in its place.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

Amendment 129A, to which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has added his name, would remove Clause 186 from the Bill. This clause mirrors Section 86 of the Climate Change Act 2008, which requires the Minister for the Cabinet Office to publish an annual State of the Estate report setting out progress in improving the efficiency of the civil estate.

Local authorities are already subject to a number of efficiency and sustainability requirements, such as producing energy efficiency certificates for their buildings. The new duty draws on these and requires authorities to publish reports to enable local people to hold them to account for the use of their assets. I reassure noble Lords that any additional costs to local authorities will be met by central government. DCLG is currently undertaking a new burdens assessment of Clauses 183 to 187 to determine which of the provisions create new burdens, and their extent.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 129ZA, proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, which would remove Clause 185 from the Bill. The power to order disposals was brought into effect through the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980. The power underpins the community right to reclaim land, which enables people to hold public authorities to account for their use of land. Under this right, communities can drive improvements in their local area by asking the Secretary of State to direct that underused or unused land owned by public bodies is brought back into beneficial use.

Since 1 April 2011, when the National Planning Casework Unit was tasked with considering requests under the right, we have received 106 requests. Only one of these resulted in the power being exercised, over a piece of land of 0.26 hectares in Tiddington, near Stratford-upon-Avon—no doubt a blessed plot. A great deal of effort has been expended by those making requests, and by the casework unit in considering them, for very little gain. This is why the Government wish to strengthen the existing legislation—to enable people to challenge their local authorities to release land, even where it is used, if it could be put to better use. Far from being centralising, Clause 185 gives more power to local communities.

The 1980 Act already provides important safeguards which will continue to apply to the new provisions. Public bodies must be notified of the Secretary of State’s proposal to exercise the power and are given 42 days in which to make representations. If a representation is made, the Secretary of State may not give a direction unless he is satisfied that the disposal can be made without serious detriment to the performance of the body’s functions.

All this shows that we are determined to ensure that public land is used as efficiently as possible, and that where it can be made surplus and put to better use, especially in building more homes, this happens as quickly as possible. These clauses are essential to that agenda, and I hope that noble Lords will be fully reassured by the explanations I have given.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, before the Minister sits down, I was a little disappointed by his response to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord True. The bits of land I am talking about are not big or strategic. No one wants to use them. They have sat there for years. There are now trees growing there. That is of no benefit whatsoever. The Minister suggests that this power should be held by the Secretary of State and that local councils would be mischievous. This is about us building three or four houses and getting a bit of scruffy land cleaned up, sorted out and into use. I cannot see why that would be better in the hands of the Secretary of State than the local council.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I understand the point the noble Lord is making, but when we are talking about public authorities’ land that may stretch the entire breadth of the country, the Government believe that it is in our interest to ensure that the Secretary of State takes that decision.

[Lord Shipley]

Before the Minister sits down, I point out that the Government are very critical of builders who hoard land, but are they critical of Whitehall departments that also hoard land? Is there a list, a register, of all the pieces of land the Minister is talking about? If power is to reside with the Secretary of State, the following question must be: how does the Secretary of State know what needs to be done? Is it not better to accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord True, which gives the responsibility to initiate the procedure to the local authority?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am sorry to say that I disagree with the noble Lord on his final point. We are indeed looking at the land that the Government hold at national level very carefully indeed. As the noble Lord will have seen, Table 1.12 in the Autumn Statement catalogues what each department is being expected to provide in land for housing and land surplus to requirements, which we will be looking to dispose of.

[Lord True]

My Lords, obviously, I am slightly disappointed by my noble friend’s reply. I am gratified he recognises the problem and thinks that local authorities might be useful, but he thinks that it is too risky to allow them to do anything. That is the disappointing part of his reply. I want to take the spirit of my noble friend’s answer, rather than the letter. I like to think that further thought will be given to this problem, because it will remain and I will not cease to put the case for local authorities to be able to take the initiative.

I had intended to speak to my other amendment in its place but, as my noble friend has already spoken to it, it will perhaps be for the convenience of the House if I respond now, and then we can move on. My reason for criticising Clause 186 is that, as my noble friend acknowledged, it is potentially a major new burden on local authorities. He did not address that; he said that money would be provided. I question whether it is necessary for money to be provided. One of the achievements of the Government after 2010 was to sweep away the nonsense of a process called asset management strategies and asset management plans, where every local authority was required regularly to submit to the Government what they were doing with their land. This is simply officials in Whitehall reviving that process under another name. It was one of Gordon Brown’s most disliked operations, and local authorities were very glad to see it go.

It is absurd to expect the Cabinet Office to monitor all the bodies in Schedule 22 to check whether authorities are reducing the size of their estate. Ministers in the Cabinet Office are going to check, every time that a local authority changes building, that it is in the top quartile of energy performance. This will be an interference with local authorities’ ability to use their land efficiently. We must explain. Let us say that we wanted to take leasehold space in a building to use our estate more profitably, but it was less energy-efficient. My officers have to file a report with the Cabinet Office explaining why we have taken three rooms in a block of flats to put some officers there briefly.

I will not press the amendment, because I read in the commencement clause that it does not come into force on the day on which the Bill comes into force. For that reason, I will withdraw the amendment, but I urge my noble friend to think about the bureaucracy being recreated here. Section 7 is in any case defective because a building can be part of an authority’s estate where two authorities are working together. An authority may well have a building in a partner authority’s area and may have an interest. Say if Richmond were partnered with Wandsworth and using a building in Wandsworth, according to the amendment as drafted by the Government, that building would not be classed as part of Richmond’s estate. That is absurd, and officials need to look again at the drafting of this legislation.

I am disappointed by seeing this bureaucracy returning, albeit under the guise of climate change, but I hope that before this comes into force my noble friend will give more consideration to it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.