Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, this is a matter of view between us. Our view is that things will become clearer over the coming months and local authorities will know whether they are bordering on designation. They will know that help will be available if they are designated and that they will be encouraged to improve. That will be the tension. The designation can cease following an annual review. I do not think that that will be too much of a tension if we decide not to accept the amendment and the promoters agree with that.

I have an enormous number of points here in front of me on questions that have been quite general. I could make a Second Reading response if the Committee would like that, but we are trying to deal with the performance of local authorities and planning authorities. We also note that some local authorities will receive only a small number of applications, and that is one reason for looking at the figures over two years. We accept that there are differences between one local authority and another.

My noble friend Lord Deben, who is my real friend, also suggested that this power was anti-localism. It is not. It does not take away a local planning authority’s ability to continue to deal with planning applications, but it provides that if an authority is designated, a developer has the right to decide whether it wants the local authority to carry on dealing with the application or take it to the Secretary of State. Developers already have the right to go to the Secretary of State if an application is not completed within 13 weeks. That will of course be one means whereby local authorities can be designated if they are not performing within a statutory area.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have sat through the whole debate and I keep asking myself a simple question: how can we be sure that there will be no political consideration when a Secretary of State decides who is to be designated? How would one authority know that it had been treated as fairly or unfairly as another, given that the information is to be held within the department regarding the extent to which an authority breached the criteria that are the subject of the consultation?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, that relates to the consultation, which we are moving on to in Amendment 2. Perhaps we might follow the amendments in order, because people have gone to a lot of trouble on that.