Lord Lucas
Main Page: Lord Lucas (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Localism Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I follow the noble Lords, Lord Jenkin and Lord True, in expressing some concern about the relationship of the various amendments and clauses that will ultimately emerge, particularly in relation to neighbourhood development areas and business areas—if I might use that shorthand term. It seems that we could have a situation in which, under the later amendment that the noble Baroness will be moving, a business area could be declared on the basis that it is wholly or predominantly a business area, which sort of makes sense, I suppose. However, another amendment refers to a situation in which there might be two referendums in the same area because there is a business area and a neighbourhood development area, which implies that it is not just a business area, or that there is some sort of overlap.
I think of a situation in the ward I represent where you have a business area—a shopping street—on either side of which there are two distinct residential communities, both of which regard the shopping area as common, as it were. However, each has its own separate issues which might encourage it—this would no doubt be welcome—to seek area status in a development forum for each residential side of the road, as it were. I do not see how this fits together, particularly having regard to Amendments 148ZA and 148ZB, which the Minister will move later. I mention this at this stage to give her a little time to think, or be advised about, the relationship between these issues. It seems to me that this could lead to considerable confusion because, on the one hand, business areas are supposed to stand alone whereas, on the other hand, other parts of the Bill suggest that they will not stand alone. You might then have competing neighbourhood forums sharing, as it were, a business area. It would be helpful to have elucidation of this rather complex situation and how it might work on the ground as I fear that it will confuse rather than clarify the situation for those occupiers—be they residential or business occupiers—who want to progress with the development of a plan for the area as they see it.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I thoroughly agree with my noble friend Lord Newton of Braintree. Good existing relationships ought to be encouraged but where they do not exist the idea that we should have to go the whole hog and create neighbourhoods as set out in the Bill will be a very difficult thing to do, particularly in cities. Where I come from in Hampshire, localism at present consists of the parish council saying, “We’d like this”, and the district council ignoring it. Therefore, I look forward to the full variety of localism down in Hampshire. However, I understand that Richmond may well be a happier and more coherent place under my noble friend’s management. Certainly when it comes to cities, as we will see in some of my later amendments, I very much support the idea that there should be a proper recognition of what you might call interim, less formal neighbourhood arrangements than are set out in the Bill. Beyond anything else, they will be a great deal easier to manage and a great deal less expensive. If the local community can get what it wants without having to go through the whole process of putting a plan together, agreeing it, having it inspected and going out to referendum, but can just do it by means of conversations with councillors and local meetings, that seems to me entirely preferable.
As regards some of the points raised by my noble friend Lord Greaves, I say go for parishes. We have a well set-out system in an Act passed by the previous Government to enable parishes to be created in urban areas. If you use that, you will have the democratic structure you are looking for.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville
My Lords, having listened to the other speeches that have been made on amendments in this grouping, it is clear that this is a thoroughly valuable grouping. I am speaking to Amendment 148AZZA, which was prompted by the Heritage Alliance. I was prompted by the UK Association of Preservation Trusts and the Heritage of London Trust. The amendment is supported by a rainbow alliance in all four corners of the Chamber. This has had one slightly untoward consequence in that, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and I have waited on about four different occasions over the past 10 days to move this amendment, he eventually ran out of time and asked me if I would take over the gist of his speech. That was a helpful and constructive suggestion, except that I have mislaid the merged article. There will therefore be a slight quality of improvisation to my remarks.
The heritage sector has been arguing for a local approach for the past 11 years, since the publication of Power of Place in 2000—a report that was facilitated by English Heritage and represented the views of a wide part of the heritage sector. It was followed by A Force for Our Future, published by the DCMS and the then the DTLR, which included the observation:
“There is a very large body of research that demonstrates the great economic sense of conservation-led regeneration. As stated by the Government, ‘policy-makers need to regard the historic environment as a unique economic asset, a generator of wealth and jobs in both urban and rural areas’”.
That report was followed in 2004 by Recharging the Power of Place: Valuing Local Significance, published by the National Trust, the CPRE and Heritage Link—which underpins what is now the Heritage Alliance as a whole.
Heritage is a limited resource, and international organisations such as the International Council on Monuments and Sites, once remarkably led by the late Bernard Feilden, recognise it as a fourth component of sustainable development. When the Prime Minister, on 23 November last year, made his speech on the Government’s agenda for well-being, he indicated that the historic environment was a major contribution to people’s sense of well-being. Power of Place research by MORI showed that people consider that,
“the historic environment represents the place in which they live”.
Power of Place and successive reports have had an important effect on the way in which the historic environment is perceived as being local as well as national.
The heritage sector is concerned to achieve a balanced approach to public and private financing of neighbourhood development plans and orders. The Government’s emphasis on economic growth as their particular imperative is totally understood, and is to be welcomed and supported. However, heritage is not a psychological addiction or obsession; it has a practical perspective in these matters.
When I began subscribing to life membership of the various heritage societies some 40 years ago, I recall the chief planning officer of the City of Bath, when criticised for the fact that he had caused to be knocked down a large number of Georgian artisan dwellings, said that he would be happy not to have done so if the city fathers had provided him with a number of Georgian artisans to occupy them, and that since they were not available the redevelopment had to occur. In Northern Ireland, planning regulations were massively relaxed during the Troubles, simply as a stimulus to economic activity. I therefore recognise that there are occasions when you have to eliminate some of the rigour that you would normally have.
However, in the past 25 years, both the Landmark Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund, in the money that they have poured into the infrastructure of our heritage, have created a great deal of enjoyment and pleasure, as well as constructive economic activity. The churches are a superb exposition of the development of the British, especially English, vernacular tradition in which our heritage has unrolled harmoniously over the centuries. The essence of the amendment to which I am speaking on behalf of the Heritage Alliance is to make sure that there is a consideration of cultural well-being in addition to the considerations that the Government have placed in the Bill.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, lots of areas are places where people would like to live and where they aspire to live. Neighbourhood forums may know some people like that. It is not a brilliant definition, so if I can get a better answer, I will do so.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, perhaps I may pick up on what my noble friend has been saying. I am puzzled as to how business gets involved when a parish is the foundation for neighbourhood planning. A particular example would be this. What happens to the strawberry and cherry growers of Kent? Noble Lords may have a view of strawberry fields and cherry orchards in Kent as they remember them from their youth, but if they went there now they would see polytunnels full of Poles, which tend not to be popular. Well, the Poles are popular locally, but the polytunnels are not. It would be very difficult, under a neighbourhood planning regime, to get permission for a new strawberry field and the polytunnels involved if there was no business influence at all in a neighbourhood planning environment run by a parish council.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have a few brief points. I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in the debate. Other parts of this Bill and other legislation are probably going to lead to an impetus in some areas for the creation of new parish councils. But it is true to say that over three-quarters of the population of England do not live in a parished area, so there is a serious problem of the democratic deficit here.
I am extremely grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her detailed answers to questions I and other Members put to her, but this issue is so complex that I shall have to take her responses away and read them. We will do that, and perhaps we will have the whole summer for it. However, I am not sure that the Government have yet really got a grip on the question of the democratic credibility and legitimacy of neighbourhood forums. The amendments I put down to take away the limit of 21 were not because I want to go back to three, but because I think that 21 is far too small.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I confirm that I was right that wards can divide themselves or be divided into more than one neighbourhood forum, which may pick up on some of the points that my noble friend Lord Newton has made. There is a certain coherence within ward boundaries, but that coherence may be of people having more than one sense of community to come together in a forum within those boundaries.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, raised the point about the coming together of the public services White Paper and this legislation. I have not read that White Paper in huge depth but I am sure that somebody has. My sensible answer is to say that we will look at that to see whether there are overlaps or differences. Parish councils are going to be the main type of council in the country that has a mandate to undertake a neighbourhood plan because I gather that, by definition, most areas anywhere in the countryside are parished.
Amendment 148ADCAA is intended to allow a neighbourhood area to cover more than one parish area, where two or more parish councils make a joint application. As I think I said in reply to the previous debate, we are pretty content with that. Our position on many existing town or parish council boundaries is that they will form logical boundaries for neighbourhood planning. I appreciate that there is a great difference in the numbers that are in parish councils, but they will be able to divide themselves into one or two if they wish.
I am not going to comment on all the amendments, as I am told that we have to keep to a very tight timetable. I hope that most of my remarks cover most of the sense of the debate. Perhaps I should quickly respond to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. He asked whether a neighbourhood plan could be produced covering a parished and a non-parished area. The answer to that is no. The Bill already allows for parishes to work with non-parished areas in preparing comprehensive neighbourhood plans covering both parished and non-parished areas. Neighbourhood forums should be able to become parish councils and we hope that many neighbourhood forums will take the opportunity of producing a neighbourhood plan to consider becoming a new parish council. The Government are required to provide resources to local authorities in respect of any new statutory duty under the new burdens scheme, so the answer to the question of whether there will be financial support is yes.
I hope that with that noble Lords will be happy to withdraw their amendments.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very disappointed that my noble friend is not paying more mind to the amendments of my noble friend Lord True. Life is complicated out there. I know that Kensington and Chelsea are pretty uniform places, but even if she were to stray south of the river into Battersea, where I spend some of my time, she would find that it was very difficult to draw boundaries that will have any sense of agreement. There will be a tendency for fragments of local communities to try to grab territory for themselves in an unco-ordinated way. That will apply particularly in the deeper inner cities where community tends to be defined by origin rather than by geography. Under those circumstances, it would be very helpful to have a local authority—which after all is used to dealing with the coherence of the area and how it works—setting out at least some framework by which people can operate. They can always propose something different if they feel that they need to, but to have that coherence offered by a local authority would be immensely helpful.
As regards overlapping areas, how do you deal with somewhere like Winchester, say, which is obviously too big to deal with as a neighbourhood but needs coherence over that area when it comes to neighbourhood planning? Going back to a point that I think the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made on the previous occasion, how do you deal with areas where there is a city or a large town which is confined within boundaries that are too tight and needs to work with its surrounding areas to expand? Under both those circumstances we are going to need to think of local flexible solutions that work with the grain of the neighbourhood and produce the right solutions for those circumstances. We are going to need flexibility. I am very disappointed that my noble friend the Minister does not think that that is required.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. Amendment 151 is quite simple. I am interested in the Government’s views on how strong a neighbourhood plan will be. If someone has been left out of a neighbourhood plan and still wants to develop their property, will they have the same scope to go for a departure as they do at the moment, or will there be a strong presumption that the neighbourhood plan prevails?
Amendment 152ZB deals with the way in which neighbourhood plans intersect with development orders. A lot of planning permission goes through under development orders which, quite rightly, a district, a county or a borough will not have a particular interest in, but which a neighbourhood will have an interest in. Neighbourhoods are very interested in the way in which their local shopping streets develop, for example. Many things that can happen to a shopping street can happen under the general permissions given under a development order. I am interested in the way in which those two intersect.
Amendment 152 is a little more complicated than that. Rural and semi-rural parishes, where there is a lot of scope for development, will become wealthy—that is the wrong word; they will have a lot of money at their disposal as a result of this Bill. A typical parish will go round its residents and ask what they want and will also go round all the neighbouring landlords and say, “If we give you the sort of permissions you are looking for, what will you do for the community?”. That is the only way it can work, because if that did not happen, any landlord who had a deal to offer could upset the referendum by saying to people voting in it, “Why are you voting for this and giving Farmer Jones £1 million as a result of the development? If you had asked me, I would have said that you could have had £0.5 million towards the village hall, a new village shop or to subsidise the bus service and that I would require only £0.5 million if you put those houses on my land”.
Inevitably, there has to be that kind of negotiation with all the local landlords. The neighbourhood plan, when it emerges, will be a document which results in a very substantial flow of funds from landlords to the community. In what way they will provide those funds, whether by permissions or by being prepared to build things for the community or subsidise things for the community, will be a total re-establishment of relationships between landlords and the community and a much more equal appreciation of sharing benefits and burdens of development. I reckon that you would probably get the planning game settling down at about 50:50 between the landlord and the community.
Incidentally, this will render entirely unnecessary the argument that we had a few days ago about the community right to bid. Most of my noble friends were worrying about relatively rural communities. They will be in a position to buy. They will have funds potentially sitting around to buy the cricket pitch. They will not be hanging around waiting to see whether they can raise money. They will be well off and have a great deal of flexibility where such things are concerned and anyone wanting to sell local property will start to think of the local community as being a place to find a purchaser. Under those circumstances, inevitably one gets into a position where there is scope for corruption. We have to be careful that that does not occur. In a small community, people by and large know each other's business: but everything ought to be open. It is essential that when one deals with these sums of money—hundreds of thousands of pounds—everything ought to be open for inspection, so that everybody can see what deals have been proposed by landlords, what the basis is for choosing particular deals that have gone into a neighbourhood plan and what deals have been cast aside. Nothing should be hidden, everything should be open. That way, at a neighbourhood level, we will have pretty good insurance against corruption.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I listened very carefully to what the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Lucas, said on this grouping. My conclusion is that the developer who offers the most money to the community will get his planning permission. It sounds like a Dutch auction, with very little to do with the sustainability arguments that the Committee talked about in the past two days. Perhaps I have got it wrong; I shall be very interested to hear what the Minister says in response.
Lord Lucas
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is being entirely too untrusting of communities and of the structures in the Bill. First, the wider issues of sustainability clearly come in to the examination of the plan. A site on a flood plain, for example, which has been proposed merely because the landlord is prepared to offer 70 per cent of value rather than 50 per cent, will clearly not get through the process. Secondly, communities will make a judgment. Sustainability is a concept that has a meaning for a community that is not there in its wider application; it is how the community evolves and flourishes. There will be many aspects of that which will apply to individual sites and bear as heavily as the amount of money that may come out of the site.
Communities will take a sophisticated judgment on which plans they wish to have. They will be well aware of the advantages and disadvantages to them of putting a development in a particular location. Landlords will likewise be able to see, for example, that this is the obvious place to put houses and so they do not need to give the community as much. If the neighbouring farmer wants to have a development on his land and it is slightly more of an eyesore, he will be asking the community to accept a greater burden in having the development there, so the community will need a greater benefit. That is the fundamental of neighbourhood planning. Under the current system, the farmer gets all the benefits and the neighbourhood gets the burdens. Under this system, the benefits are shared. How great the burden is should be reflected in how great the benefit is.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I will start with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Certainly, neighbourhood development orders will be effective within the terms of local development plans. These plans will designate areas for development. Although a neighbourhood development order will be able to point to where the community feels it would be appropriate to have development, it can do that only if it coincides with the local development plan. Therefore, it can grant planning permission only where it is doing that in accordance with what has already been agreed. There are also safeguards in place to ensure that proposals contribute to the delivery of sustainable development. We do not expect communities to plan for an unsustainable future. As my noble friend said, with mega-developments the money will not go directly to the community but will go through CIL, as we have discussed. That will be the charge on the development. The community then will get a proportion of that to help with whatever it is deemed to require.
Neighbourhood development orders have to be in general conformity with the strategic policies of the development plan and with national planning policies. We discussed that earlier. We want to make it clear in the Bill that neighbourhood development orders are very flexible. They can permit different types and classes of development. For example—I was asked a question on this—a community could decide that it wants to use neighbourhood development orders to give full or outline planning permission for a specific development scheme, for several types of development schemes across a wider area or to extend permitted development rights more generally across the neighbourhood area. However, that has to be done within the plans that it has already put forward and agreed with the council and the community through the referendum. Legally, a neighbourhood development order can grant planning permission under the terms. A development order can only grant planning permission for development specified in the order and could still permit a whole class of development, for example a change of use.
The Bill’s provisions seek to ensure that a neighbourhood development order cannot grant planning permission for a development that already has planning permission. I think that that makes sense. If a planning authority has already given permission for a development on a site, for example, that planning is already in place and it cannot consequently be changed unless the applicant makes changes to the plans, which then would need to be dealt with in the neighbourhood order.
I have already said that the community will decide whether it wants to use neighbourhood development orders to give full or outline planning permission.
The test of general conformity with strategic policies in the local development plan currently in place in the area covers what I said. I was asked whether the local development plan has to be conformed with, and we have said yes several times.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made a short contribution about developers buying off the community. There are crucial safeguards in place to ensure that proposals contribute and are kept within the confines of regulations.
I think that that more or less addresses the questions that I was asked. I will also have to move two government amendments: Amendments 148ZA and 148ZB. I wrote to noble Lords with an explanation of what the amendments do. Therefore, with the leave of the Committee, I do not propose to go into much further detail. However, I am happy to write to noble Lords on any detailed questions that they may have subsequently. I therefore beg leave to move my amendments, which I do formally.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I understand that we are under pressure of time and I am totally in support of getting this Bill through. However, that should not reduce us to the sort of Commons Committee stage format we seem to be reaching of no answers being given to amendments that have been moved and spoken to. I do not feel that I have been answered in any respect in any of the amendments that I raised. The Minister has available to her the option of agreeing to write in detail to noble Lords to cover points she has not answered. She also has the option of suggesting meetings between now and Report. I very much hope that she will avail herself of those, because otherwise I shall feel the need to speak at much greater length to make sure that my points are properly recorded.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I thank the noble Baroness for her response. The more we got into the amendments moved by the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Lucas, and some of the responses that came forward, the more complex this issue became. I am still not clear what the boundaries of the neighbourhood development order will be in all respects and why it could not be used simply as a tool to deliver the development plan policies or the neighbourhood plan policies as a more efficient and effective route of engendering neighbourhood planning. However, I will read the record and consider whether we need to return to this on Report.
The exchange between my noble friend Lord Berkeley and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, around financial consideration is extremely important, because we are going to come on to what I think will be quite a substantial debate on Clause 124—I was going to say shortly, but hopefully at some stage before we rise tomorrow. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made an important point about making sure that transparency is absolutely key for there to be confidence in whatever system we have.
The idea of financial inducements flowing from all of this—as I understand it, and I am not a planning lawyer—takes us down a rather sticky and difficult path. We have issues around CIL and Section 106, the application of which has been narrowed. If this is seen as an opportunity for there to be inducements beyond those related to the development, that is quite a significant departure from where we have been in planning policy since 1947. Perhaps we will have the chance to expand on this in a later debate. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“61GA Neighbourhood areas designated as business areas
(1) Whenever a local planning authority exercise their powers under section 61G to designate an area as a neighbourhood area, they must consider whether they should designate the area concerned as a business area.
(2) The reference here to the designation of an area as a neighbourhood area includes the modification under section 61G(6) of a designation already made.
(3) The power of a local planning authority to designate a neighbourhood area as a business area is exercisable by the authority only if, having regard to such matters as may be prescribed, they consider that the area is wholly or predominantly business in nature.
(4) The map published by a local planning authority under section 61G(8) must state which neighbourhood areas (if any) are for the time being designated as business areas.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, since the noble Baroness has not spoken to this amendment, perhaps I may ask a question. Would she regard Kensington High Street as a business area or are we talking about areas like Westfield? In other words, how little interaction has there to be with a residential neighbourhood before it is allowed to be a business area?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, somewhere with as much residential accommodation attached to it as Kensington High Street might not necessarily fit into the business category. We have already talked about areas which are mainly shopping areas, and the noble Lord mentioned Westfield as an example. Practically all of it is a business area rather than residential. That is more what we are talking about.
Lord Lucas
“( ) after subsection (4) insert—
“(4A) If there is no neighbourhood development plan in force, such documents as the local authority considers reflects the interest of the community.””
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I shall speak also to my other amendments in the group.
Amendment 150 is, to some extent, an echo of the first amendment that we debated today which was tabled by my noble friend Lord True. It looks at ways of dealing with neighbourhood planning in cities, where it will be quite difficult to get the impetus to create communities. In towns and villages, the extent of the planning gain which will be available to the communities and the way in which they care about how their open environment is developed will produce strong motivations for communities to engage with the Bill. However, that is not so in cities. Even in areas such as Battersea it is not so, let alone the poorer parts of cities. In those areas, we need to have ways of creating communities which are more attuned to what is going on in the cities, to the needs of the citizens and to their particular cares.
Amendment 150 and, more particularly, Amendment 167 attempt to produce a structure to allow a local authority to have regard to community views on planning, which are expressed in a less formal way than that set out in the Bill. There would be none of the structure of having to go through gathering all the voices, an examination and a referendum but something much more suited to an area where there is no existing geographical community and where the community will never put together the effort to go through the procedures in this Bill because the gains are too small and its own structures are too weak. Those communities should be able to gain what they can from the direction of this Bill through their more gentle expressions of opinion, which should be taken properly into account in planning decisions. Of my two amendments, Amendment 167 is the one for which I have the most affection.
On Amendment 152ZC—an amendment is never the easiest thing to find in this Marshalled List.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
I think you will find it at the bottom of page 13.
Lord Lucas
Amendment 152ZC looks at how you take the structures of this Bill and produce something of interest to local neighbourhoods. Straightforward planning and dealing with planning permissions, and their outcomes, is not really what a city neighbourhood is about. It is about its environment much more generally. When it comes to the streetscape, it is a question of whether a particular street should be pedestrianised, narrowed or given a 20 miles an hour limit. It is a question of how traffic regulations are enforced. This is a particular plague in some bits of London where councils seem to have forgotten that businesses need trade and that local people sometimes need to park in order to visit shops or neighbours. Neighbourhoods have a lot of interest in the way in which traffic regulations are set out and enforced. If one had that as part of the scope of this Bill—I understand that it may be and I look forward to what my noble friend the Minister has to say—it would produce a package which gives this Bill a much greater chance of succeeding and producing the same sort of vibrant communities within cities as I am sure it will produce in the countryside and towns.
My final amendment is Amendment 152A, which picks up on a point that has been made several times; namely, that we should find ways within the procedures set out in this part of the Bill for our neighbourhoods to become parishes. They have to go through an enormous number of hoops and great effort to produce a neighbourhood plan under this Bill, which is much more than is required by the legislation for the creation of parishes, particularly given that, having created a plan and a direction for the neighbourhood, the animal created under this Bill then dies. It is a great shame that all that effort comes to nothing. The Bill should be directed at creating a parish where the people involved want some form of continuity but it should be made easy and obvious how a parish can appear out of a neighbourhood plan in an area which is not parished. I beg to move.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I was discussing this matter when, some time ago, the Chief Whip suggested that I should sit down and that we should move on. I thought that that was a bit unfair but I will briefly make two points. The important point made by my noble friend Lord Lucas is that of linking neighbourhood planning with the formation of new parishes. Earlier, my noble friend Lord Shipley, who is not in his place, said that a mechanism to do that would be extremely valuable. At the moment, the problem with creating new parishes is that it requires a local governance review by the principal council, the district or unitary council, which can take quite a long time.
These principal councils are not always terribly enthusiastic about creating new parishes. If someone comes along with a petition or whatever, they will be forced to have a local governance review but they may not take it very seriously. There are a number of instances where there has been a clear demand for a new parish council on the ground and the principal council responsible has simply blocked it and said “No, you can’t have it”. If this new Bill is to be a stimulus for the creation of lots of new parishes, of which I am certainly in favour, there needs to be a way in which the Government can link that to this legislation, whether in primary legislation or in some other way, and perhaps change the advice that is given to councils about local governance reviews, thus making it much easier to carry out the review and to create the parishes. I say that as someone who lives in a borough which is now totally parished. The fact that it is totally parished is not entirely unconnected with my activities in the past 30 years.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I am not aware that there is anything to stop views being gathered up about neighbourhood plans in whatever way. However, ultimately they have to fall into some sort of structure in order for people to understand what is going on. Whatever the observations made during these discussions, ultimately they will form part of the neighbourhood plan and will have to conform with the local development plan. With all the policies in respect of neighbourhood planning there is a great deal of flexibility as to how things are done and how they are brought to bear on it. I have tried to make that clear throughout this afternoon, although I am not sure that I am altogether persuading my noble friends behind me.
We absolutely agree that community views are core to effective planning. They are embedded in the planning system already, and we expect people’s views to be taken into account in whatever way they can be. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires councils to prepare a statement of community involvement and that is precisely what it has to be—the community involvement has to be organised in a way that makes sure that all those community views are put forward on planning matters before any statement is constructed. I do not think the amendment is necessary from that point of view, because, as I say, the flexibility is there to ensure that views—however they are collected—must be taken account of.
The noble Lord also raised the matter of traffic regulations. I hear what he says and know that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has views about how things should be done in respect of traffic in particular. However, I am not sure that traffic regulation orders could become part and parcel of the neighbourhood orders. They are, by and large, either controlled by by-laws or by national legislation and create criminal offences, so are probably not something that can just be tinkered with so that they affect only small areas. If the by-laws are used inappropriately, they can have a significantly adverse effect on the local environment, so they should be employed only when all other measures have failed. We ought not to be tinkering with them at a local level.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, raised the question of parish councils and their creation. That process is probably going to take almost as long as, or longer than, creating neighbourhood forums and making the representations where there are not parish councils, which would be largely in cities. I hope that with those remarks, the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am a little puzzled, because the noble Baroness was kind enough to allow me a meeting with her officials a few days ago. I am always capable of misunderstanding things, but I had expected rather different replies from those that she has given today on the subject of how far one could reach in neighbourhood plans in order to affect things related to the local environment; such as the two illustrations I gave of the way in which streets are used, speed limits, pedestrianisation and the way in which parking rules are set out and enforced. I am clear that both those things belong with the local council but I certainly came away with the impression that neighbourhood plans could be written in such a way that they had an influence on such matters. I also came away with a much more positive view on parishing and the department’s attitude to it than the noble Baroness has conveyed today. I am puzzled by that.
Coming back to my general purpose in these amendments, we have to look carefully, if we think this is a beneficial thing—which I very much do—at how we make it beneficial within cities. There is an awful lot to be said for the amendments of my noble friend Lord True in this regard on how local neighbourhoods get designated and the flexibilities that exist as to their extent and overlap, as well as other aspects reflecting life in cities. If we are to have a process that results in a referendum, there is also a great deal to be said for saying there must be incentives for the people involved and those voting, in terms of the referendums being about things they really care about. If we go back to Battersea, what do I care about planning? The place is built up and there is no space to put anyone else. There are only little bits and pieces, which the council deals with perfectly adequately, in terms of access to light and disputes between neighbours. There is no incentive there to go through the whole process that is in this Bill. By contrast, other things about the environment and the way the council interacts with the neighbourhoods that make it up are matters of extreme concern to locals that they will pay a great deal of attention to.
My noble friend’s answers do not encompass any offer of further consultations and do not seem to incorporate the consultations that I have already had. I remain puzzled and not a little bruised as to why the Government think this is for rural communities only. I can see the advantages and importance of that, but where we need community and where coherence and community understanding are important is, by and large, in cities. Villages have pretty good communities for the most part—they can be argumentative or constructive, but villages get together at frequent intervals, in my experience, to celebrate various things or do things together. Getting them together is easy. Within cities it is much harder to do those things and it is much more important to set about creating communities. I am really concerned at the difference between the replies from my noble friend and what I had thought was the underlying direction of her department; and about the lack of interest in using the period between Committee and Report to extend this. I am also somewhat puzzled by the lack of interest from the Labour Party in how one develops communities within cities. Perhaps there is a belief that all wisdom resides in councils.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I am not quite sure why the noble Lord concluded that we have a lack of interest in developing communities within cities. I would have thought that we could demonstrate lots of places up and down the country where we have been very supportive of developing communities. I am not sure I have convinced the noble Lord here and now, but I hope to reassure him. I can see that the noble Lord is getting ticked off by his noble friends on the Front Bench—perhaps I ought to sit down or they will start on me soon.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am happy to accept that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Best. He made a powerful statement about the importance of good design and referred to architecture and design. Since we are discussing the Localism Bill, I hope that my noble friend will be able to reassure me as regards the importance of using local materials and local design when building locally. When I hear about national policies I slightly fear that there will be a national standard of good design which will not reflect the building styles and building standards of different parts of our country.
One of the most depressing aspects of the present situation is that if you were blindfolded and put down by helicopter in a perfectly nice new development, whether it was in Truro, Norfolk or Newcastle, you would not be able to tell where you were because we are now building to standard designs, built by national housebuilders, which do not greatly reflect what goes on in the locality where they are based. Therefore, historic traditions of building which are different across the country are gradually being wiped out to the detriment of local pride and local community feeling. I hope that the Minister will reassure us on that when she winds up.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to Amendment 153. I would be very grateful if my noble friend could enlarge a little on the relevant strengths of “having regard to” and “in general conformity with”. To take a particular illustration, Hampshire has a policy that there should be no new development in the countryside. Does that mean that there is no point in neighbourhood planning in Hampshire?
Lord True
My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. On Amendment 153ZC, which relates to the weight given to emerging documents, I think that that has been discussed and I will not pursue it at this point. I have been reassured that emerging documents are given weight. Amendment 153ZD is relevant to the short debate we have just had about design, which strikes me as being a rather pleasant and agreeable way of spending an afternoon in the Moses Room when the Education Bill is not being discussed there. I do not want to detain the Committee on that, but I am absolutely certain that what my noble friend Lord Hodgson, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others have said must be right because if this Bill is about localism the vernacular should matter. Local people like their vernacular and they like building that is in keeping, whatever the design is, if that design is good. Local authorities as well as national housebuilders have failed in that respect over the years. I do not mind a little cajoling to them in the Bill, but we have to be careful because design, as I think Lewis Carroll said, is probably “what I say it is”. There is a problem there.
Amendment 153ZD is related to that because it is about how the examiner deals with neighbourhood planning orders. A case in our authority involved the Government intervening on our existing core strategy to say that it must include high-rise building. Notwithstanding that there was cross-party agreement against it and that hundreds of people protested against it, a planning inspector imposed an extension of the ugliest building in our borough on the basis that the existing core strategy provided for such buildings. The local authority, with the strong support of local people, is trying to revise its plans. It takes a long time to revise a local development framework and my right honourable friend Secretary of State has said that he hopes to accelerate it.
There will be circumstances in neighbourhood planning where local communities say, for example, “We do not want any more high-rise”. However, if an examiner looks, as that examiner did, at the previous building and says, “Your existing plan says let’s have some high-rise”, then unless we include a provision such as my Amendment 153ZD to allow a local authority to assent to an order that is not in compliance, we may find that neighbourhood planning is defeated. Perhaps I am being oversuspicious, but there might be circumstances where the will of the local community is clear and the examiner should be able to give weight to that informal opinion.
I will deal with Amendment 153ZE very briefly. It refers to the situation in London and the definition of localism. I am simply saying that if an emerging policy is not necessarily in compliance with the higher-authority policy and there is tension between the policies of the mayor and the borough as regards its neighbourhood plans, then the examiner should, in circumstances where those matters are being considered, give greater weight to the more local of the two emerging policies. I do not expect an answer from my noble friend on that or the other amendment to which I referred, but both are significant.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I shall certainly do that. With those replies, I hope that my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for her answers. I shall write to her saying what else I need.