Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow 11 minutes of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, explaining the amendments. I have tabled amendments in this group and supported others because of the potential importance of strategic planning in tackling the climate emergency. We need to embed it in everything that councils do, alongside solving the acute housing crisis in this country.

Mine are probing amendments to find out how the Government see the role of county councils within the production of a joint spatial development strategy. County councils sit one tier above planning authorities, but many have strategic functions—for example, transport, health, social care or education. It seems slightly odd that they do not have a planning role as well.

Schedule 7 as currently drafted would need participating planning authorities to consult the county council once a draft strategy has been produced. It seems to me that this perhaps misses the opportunity to involve county councils actively in the development of the strategy, which I think they could very much contribute to. Taken to its highest level, the county council could even initiate the process and convene the planning authorities to work together. It seems to me that that is likely to happen anyway.

I would like to know the Minister’s thinking on how the Government see the role of county councils in strategic planning and whether they might explore the opportunity of more fully involving counties in spatial development plans.

For most Bills, the more I get involved the more fascinating they become. This Bill is an example of that not working at all. I am finding it incredibly difficult, and I sympathise with the Minister dealing with it. It is very difficult to find a coherent thread through this whole Bill. I applaud her and the Labour Front Bench for toughing it out.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder if my noble friend would accept that it sounds a bit odd to those of us who live in the countryside that counties should be left out. I know why it was; I can see the civil servant saying to her, “Well, you know, counties don’t have planning powers, except for minerals, so it really doesn’t count here. It’s the district councils that have it”. I know what they have said; they would have said it to me all those years ago—that is what they would do. I say to my noble friend that I will not easily be dissuaded from the fact that the county council is crucially important if you go in for spatial planning. I do not see how you do it otherwise.

Take the planning authority for Ipswich. Several of the housing developments and industrial sites that anybody else would have thought were in Ipswich are not; they are outside it, in another district council. The county council has to provide many of the services that service the whole group. If the county council is excluded from this, it is not just a bit odd but it will not work—the county council is crucial.

The second reason why I ask my noble friend to look again is a simple matter. We had the welcome announcement of a new relationship between national and local government. I am distressed by the way that national government often treats local government as if it is a sort of incubus, and I am afraid that civil servants often have a view of local government officers which is other than entirely polite. They say, “Better not, Minister—you never know what they might they do. Therefore, don’t give them any powers without us being able to pull them back.” I am afraid that is the view of many of the civil servants who serviced Ministers and continue to do so, so I want to break into that.

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I thank my noble friend Lord Deben for supporting this. I reassure him that, through the Bill, the rural county areas will now have the opportunity to have powers similar to those of Manchester and the West Midlands, as they can go forward to a county combined authority—CCA.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My noble friend has just said how much she wants the counties to be involved, but why can they not just be part of it? I do not understand this—it seems that there is no reason for it, except that it is in the Bill.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I disagree. The district councils, about which we have been hearing, are the planning authorities in those areas, and the county council is not. So it is important that we make sure that this is district-led but that the county has the important role of statutory consultee. But that will be different in different counties, depending on whether they are unitary authorities; in which case, they will of course be the planning authority and therefore can lead on this spatial strategy.

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[Lord Deben (Con)]

The county authority is the mineral planning authority, so how can we talk about spatial planning if we exclude the things for which the county authority is a planning authority. Making the distinction between being consulted—having a consultant role—and being part of the decision-making seems to me to be a false distinction. As the planning authority for minerals and similar things, it has to be part of such a spatial plan. I just do not understand the distinction.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not think that there is a distinction. They can be, and will be, part of it. I am sure that they will be part of whether that particular geographic area or group of councils will decide to go to a spatial strategy in the first place—that is how local government works. But I will give it some more thought; I am sure that we will come back to the issue on Report.