Localism Bill

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

I certainly have doubts as to whether we need a list of assets of community value and a list of things that are not of community value. We already have a lot of lists and a lot of local knowledge. As I said at the conclusion of my remarks, neighbourhood planning should lead to greater local awareness and involvement. It may be a better mechanism for releasing resources and it would be on a better timescale, because this is, essentially, emergency legislation and you have six months to save it. That is how it all started. Compiling the lists is extremely complex and would relate to any use to which any of the land could be put. It states in the discussion paper that the local authority could consider former or current use, any planning policies, any use for the asset that the nominator is proposing, community support provided by the nominator, any statutory provisions affecting the asset, or any alternative sites in the neighbourhood that could serve the same purpose. I wonder whether some of the people who drafted this Bill would care to volunteer to give their time to some of the local authorities in this country to prepare for and work on those kinds of lists.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I rise briefly to underline the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, that once the shop or pub is closed the game is almost certainly over. It is certainly past half-time, and every month during which they are closed makes it less likely that they can recover. It is absolutely astonishing how quickly shopping and drinking habits change. I referred on Tuesday to my involvement with a pub company. We inevitably have a continuous refurbishment programme for our 2,400 pubs, involving putting in new lighting, carpets and so on. We have to go in and get out very quickly. If a pub is closed for refurbishment for a couple of weeks, people start to drift away. They know it is going to be reopened and that it will be better, because that is part of the programme, but you have to be incredibly quick about it. The noble Lord made a powerful point that we have to take into account when considering this matter.

Perhaps I may say to my noble friend Lord True that the arrival of Tesco damages not only in terms of shopping patterns but in the pricing of the beer and alcohol it sells, which undermines all local pubs because it sells virtually at cost price.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, this is such a complex part of what is in any event a complex Bill with a new concept of localism, but I confess that it is extremely difficult to know where to start on this chapter. I begin with the three words to which I should like to bring back the Committee’s focus—assets, community and value. Each word opens up a raft of complex and interwoven considerations. I am pleased that the noble Lords, Lord Cameron of Dillington and Lord Greaves, have brought forward this series of clause stand-part debates to deal with the chapter as it is important to see it as a whole.

On the question of assets, one might ask, “Whose assets?”. Are they land or are they services and facilities? The two are not the same. Are they intrinsic assets, are they activities or are they something that indirectly protects some other asset? Is it a current asset, a potential asset or a previous asset that has been lost? I do not need to say more, other than that it is always very difficult to turn the clock back. As to “community” as a term of art, in this part of the Bill one might ask: how local is it? How representative is it? What are its objectives? Is an objective stance being taken on behalf of the community? “Value” is a word with which I, as a practising valuer, am very familiar. What is the purpose? To whom is it of value? What is the time horizon and what are the constraints relating to it, including planning issues?

I turn to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. I spent the first seven years of my professional life working out of an inner city area. I spent the next four-and-a-half years working mostly in Greater London. I can relate to the issue of redundant land and wasteland. Even if they cannot immediately be used they have a negative effect by blighting the appearance of a neighbourhood. I wondered whether “asset” also meant the converse—the non-assets that detract. If so, we need to be much more careful about what we are defining.

Wasteland often relates to orphan sites that have somehow been left over. I alluded to this on Tuesday in connection with bits of rural verge. The same thing happens when urban land is built out. During the great expansion of the Victorian era, all sorts of things were left behind and no one knows who owns them. It may be that there is a case for adopting a sweeping-up principle but, if so, I would follow the dictum of the noble Lord, Lord True, that the issue is not for this Bill. It must be dealt with somewhere else.

However, perhaps the former statutory undertaker on redundant utility property land and that owned by charities, religious foundations and government agencies should have a specific social responsibility to make that land available to the community as a first choice. I point the finger at the privatised utilities in that respect. But that raises all sorts of issues, because privatised utilities are now large companies. They may be owned by French conglomerates or Scottish power companies. It is difficult to turn the clock back because the horse has gone from the stable. It does not matter what we do about the stable door, we cannot deal with that problem. As has been mentioned before, peer pressure or government pressure on companies may procure better social responsibility concerning some of that land. Again, we cannot put that in the Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, touched on a matter which I first thought might be dealt with under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act: that the future use of land can be governed by legal agreements. The problem is that the legacy of past practice did not foresee where we are now. Again, it may be difficult to turn the clock back. It is possible that what we are considering is not relevant under planning law. There could be a lacuna here that we have to deal with.

I cannot remember which noble Lord mentioned Ministry of Defence land. Try getting the Treasury on side. A little thing called best value and getting the proper return for the taxpayer is trotted out. If any Member of your Lordships' House has a sure-fire way of getting hold of the Treasury, I have another proposition that I was not going to float. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, knows what it is. If you give a douceur for offering land or assets to the community—a tax credit or tax break—you might find people making an orderly queue instead of running a mile. I have no confidence that Her Majesty's Treasury will be brought on side for that. I am also confident that it lies outside the scope of the Bill.

A county officer of parish and town councils told me not long ago that he had been approached by a parish about whether this chapter, once enacted, would enable a parish to bid for land where the recalcitrant owner was threatening to sell his paddock to Travellers. I dare say that that was a wind-up by the owner, but it brings into question whether such negatives are part of the concept of asset or something different. I think that the parish was told that the council did not think that the Bill was the right vehicle for that. I point out that relationships are not necessarily always lovely between private individuals, as owners, and communities, in either urban or rural areas. I cannot help pointing out the possibility of what I can only describe as sharp practice, where a local commercial interest gets alongside a community interest with the intention of collaborating over the ultimate division of spoils of a land development project. That is not as far-fetched as one might think. It operates as, “You, the community interest, use your neighbourhood planning and asset nomination rights and we, the commercial interest, will put in some funding and technical backing”.