Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

There is a lot of good in this group of amendments, and I am very glad that we have been able to discuss them this evening.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has made a very important point about Amendment 204A, which I will speak to, as well as Amendment 204B tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. I spoke on those amendments in Committee, and wish to do so again. The point that the noble Earl made is important because Amendment 204A calls for a public consultation. I think there would need to be one, given the potential scale and scope. I think that point has been taken; there have been discussions as to whether you might take 1948 as the date. It could be that you take a much earlier one, in the Victorian or pre-Edwardian period; you might wish to consider that. There needs to be a debate about that very issue, so I take the noble Earl’s point.

Nevertheless, I strongly support the principle behind Amendment 204A and the detail of Amendment 204B, as I did in Committee. It is particularly important now because of the huge public interest in the way that demolition is permitted development, enabling buildings of local historical value to be knocked down. The example of the Crooked House pub has really energised public opinion, and I very much hope that we hear something from the Minister that would be helpful in preventing that sort of situation arising. That would lie in Amendment 204B, because it would

“remove permitted development rights relating to the demolition of a heritage asset which has been placed on a local planning authority’s local list of assets which have special local heritage interest”.

It is clear to me that, in the case of the Crooked House, that would apply, but of course it would have to be placed on the local list.

I am grateful to the Minister for the meeting we had just before we went into recess, when we discovered that quite a lot of local planning authorities do not have local lists. Of course, you need to have a local list if you are to use it. One of my motives now in supporting Amendment 204B is that it may encourage many more to have local lists because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said, not everything that you want to protect will be nationally listed. It is not like that, and yet many buildings have strong local support.

This is a way forward that would not be a bureaucratic scheme but would give local control. It could be led by civic society; it would not have to be done by the planning departments. The authorisations and so on with committee approval would have to be done by them, but you could use voluntary organisations to do a lot of the work in identifying the buildings that should be protected.

The point here is that we have a dysfunctional system. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said that we have a gap in the law. We do. The current system is dysfunctional, and I think the general public have now acknowledged that fact. I hope the Minister is going to take advantage of the huge opportunity that he has now been given and that, when he replies to the House, we will hear something hopeful.

[Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support, as I did in Committee, to Amendment 204A by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and, with a little more reluctance, to Amendment 204B, which is a compromise that is better than nothing but not as good as the original amendment.

We discussed this amendment considerably in Committee. I spoke on it then and do not intend to repeat what I said. However, it is important to remember that what we are talking about are not buildings and structures that are listed or currently protected but those that fall outside the normal protection system, though they nevertheless have streetscape value and are important, given their location and interaction with the buildings that surround them. They are also buildings that people feel emotionally attached to and which have a historic significance in the local community.

Why are those buildings under threat? Because if you are a developer and you buy a property that is going to be more valuable if you can rebuild it, the first thing you will do is to knock it down. You then have a vacant site—ideally, from the developer’s point of view, in an eyesore location—and you can then go to the planning department of a local authority and say, “I want to build this building that you do not like but which would replace an eyesore that I have created. Give me my planning permission, please”. Sadly, that happens all too often.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, mentioned the Crooked House pub in the Black Country. Curiously enough, I know the Black Country rather well. That type of building is very common in the Black Country—there are a lot of them that look like that. A lot of those have been destroyed, but they have a local community value for the very closely structured communities in the Black Country that have been there for several hundred years.

As I understand it, the Crooked House pub was up for listing. It is quite clear that, if you are a developer and you buy a building that is up for listing, you are likely to get it cheaper than if it were not up for listing, because other potential purchasers will look at it and say, “I won’t be able to do what I want to do to maximise its economic value if it’s listed”. So you as a rogue developer buy the property; then, under permitted development, you knock it down so it cannot be listed. You have bought it cheap so, when you redevelop it, your profits are that much bigger. The current system actually encourages you to behave in an outrageous manner. That is the problem.