Lord Burnett
Main Page: Lord Burnett (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Lord Burnett Excerpts
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that very detailed discussion of the amendments and the clause. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have supported the amendments and to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for raising a slightly different issue, which he himself suggested would not necessarily be solved by this clause. Some planning authorities are finding it difficult to maintain an adequate standard of service at the moment. There is no doubt about that. I am not sure that that is only rural councils. In the past few days I have been told of a council that has only a handful of development control staff. Most small councils are in the same position. The council has reduced the establishment and encouraged people to take redundancy and so on. A high proportion of its few existing staff have got jobs in other places, which means that that authority is now down to one development control officer. That is clearly a fairly parlous position to be in. I am not quite clear how this clause will assist that local authority.
Having listened to the debate, I am coming to the view that, even if I were in any way tempted to seek to divide the Committee on clause stand part today, which I am not, I would be less likely to do so because it is less necessary. The more I think about the clause, and what it does, and listen to the experience of noble Lords around the Committee, the more I think it will not make very much difference at all. It might cause one or two authorities, which take a fairly slapdash approach to this and send a list without thinking about what is on it, to think a bit more sharply. However, in most cases it will not make very much difference. The more I think about it, the more I come to the view that I cannot tell the difference between it being reasonable to think it will and to think it is likely to be. Nevertheless, it was a useful discussion.
I am not sure whether we have an infestation of animals here now. No, my noble friend has dropped a sweet on the floor.
