Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Swinfen Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Swinfen (Con)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. A local village pub gives the opportunity for people to go out for a drink, and possibly a meal, and to walk home rather than having to drive. If you go out for a meal and cannot or should not drink because you have to drive home, it can wreck the evening for at least one member of the party. If you walk home then even if someone has had a little too much, they can be helped quite easily. The local pub is a very useful institution. In the 40 years that I have been in my village, three pubs have closed down and we are now left with two. One provides some form of entertainment at least once if not twice a week throughout the year and the other, as well as being a pub, has a very good restaurant and rooms for people to stay in—so they serve different communities. The village had five pubs in the past because it is on the main route for pilgrims coming from the continent to Canterbury Cathedral. Nowadays, they come in on coaches from Dover and do not use their legs, which perhaps might atrophy in due course. For these reasons, I support this amendment.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate but I do so in support of the amendment, mainly because I am very fond of pubs. I am a great pub user and always have been—paying great tribute to Adnams bitter in Suffolk is, I think, in order.

Perhaps it is necessary for us to appreciate just how important the pub is in village life. The local post office is too, but we are talking about pubs. In modern terms, you either get that or you do not, but it is absolutely crucial. In my village of Mellis in Suffolk, we have a pub called the Railway Tavern. Many years ago it broke away from the brewery. That was a problem because it had to buy all its alcohol from it, which affected its profitability. That did not work and it was boarded up for a while. It was then bought, but that landlord did not make it work and it was boarded up again. Then the village got together and, with the present landlord, ran it for two to four weeks to get it going—such was the village feeling about the pub. It is now going well and Frank, the present landlord, does an extremely good job. The pub does everything: it has wi-fi, fish and chips regularly on a Friday night and quizzes. It really is the heart of the village.

Noble Lords have referred to the number of village pubs there used to be. We could all talk about our towns and villages that used to have 20 pubs and now have only one. We have reached the stage where this is very serious. Those who feel strongly about the role of the pub in towns and villages—about how crucial they are to village life—must stand up for them. If this amendment will do anything to make it a little more difficult to transform a pub quickly and commercially into something else, I am all for it. I therefore very much support the amendment.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Swinfen Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Thursday 23rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I, too, support the intention of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner. She is right that probably all good planning authorities do this already and take it into account. Perhaps where it does not happen it is more by accident than by intent. One of the more serious points behind this is that we know that there is, sadly, a deep-rooted distrust of planning authorities. Whereas something may have happened by accident, the public are only too ready to believe that it is a conspiracy. This is a fairly simple measure. Amendment 9 certainly is. On Amendment 10, we may need to consider a little more what constitutes the holiday period. The intention of these amendments is very good and would perhaps go some small way to restore public trust in the planning process or at least to weaken the distrust in that process. So I hope the Government will take seriously these two amendments and look at how the intention can be met.

[Lord Swinfen (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments. They appear to be drafted in favour of the person who has made the planning application, but let us not forget that council officers also need family holidays, and they may not be there to consider the application and to give it the proper consideration that it requires—or not all of them, or not the relevant individual. So this amendment, although simple, is very sensible.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes for tabling these amendments and the noble Lords who participated in the debate: the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Tope, and my noble friend Lord Swinfen.

In relation to Amendment 9 relating to public holidays, as I indicated in Committee, I have sympathy with it. It seems to be a common-sense provision. I am more concerned about Amendment 10 in relation to August and Christmas. It makes assumptions about holidays which, while often true, may not always be true. There are other holiday periods. So I am more concerned about that, but I am very happy to talk to my noble friend about it.

I will undertake to implement the provision in relation to public holidays by the end of this year. I would like to be able to talk to local authorities about it. With the firm undertaking that we will implement this in relation to public holidays later this year, which we can do by secondary legislation, and my offer to talk to my noble friend about August and Christmas, which I want to have a discussion about because the amendment raises wider issues, I hope that she will withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I had not given it much thought; obviously I have quite a lot on between now and Third Reading. On the basis that my noble friend has the undertaking that we will definitely do what she wants us to do in relation to public holidays by the end of the year, the discussion is less urgent because this would not be something that we would do at Third Reading. However, if my noble friend particularly wants to meet before Third Reading—we do not have a date for Third Reading yet, with any certainty—I would be happy to do so.

[Lord Swinfen]

Before my noble friend sits down, what is the difficulty? Surely all the planning authority has to do is to stick a red marker on the planning application that says, “One extra day is allowed”. It is a matter of practicality and a bit of common sense.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

The difficulty relates to the other amendment. It is only fair that we inform local authorities and have a discussion with them by the end of the year. I do not think that that is unreasonable. If my noble friend is asking about the other provision, it raises other concerns. The other provision is a common-sense provision, but I would like to make sure, in accordance with my approach, that we have an appropriate dialogue with those who are affected.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Swinfen Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley]

There are many types of property in this country that have different constraints on them, and from my point of view pubs should be one of them because they are a very important part of the community. These are reasonable amendments and I fully support them.

[Lord Swinfen (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke briefly on this in Committee and I will not weary your Lordships by repeating what I said then. I shall say simply that I support the amendment, and if there is a Division I will vote in favour of it.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I should perhaps also declare a non-interest: I have never been involved in any way in running a pub but am simply an occasional and perhaps too frequent consumer.

I do not think any of us here are suggesting that all pubs should be preserved in aspic regardless of circumstances. Of course pubs become unviable for all sorts of reasons, such as different social trends or changes in the local neighbourhood. There are all sorts of reasons why a pub genuinely becomes no longer viable. However, there is a big difference between “not viable” and “not as profitable as it could be”. In other words, a building can certainly be used more profitably as something other than a pub; the site on which a pub stands could certainly be developed more profitably than by being retained as a pub. That is the difference, but no one here is suggesting that pubs should be retained regardless of local circumstances.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, referred several times to new, additional legislation. I suppose, since we are considering legislation, it is in a sense new legislation, but actually the effect of what is being proposed is simply that the consideration of any demolition or development of a public house should go through the normal planning process. I am not sure that strictly speaking that is what I would have understood by “new legislation”. What we are saying is that the local community should have its opportunity to give voice to its views on any proposed development of a public house in the normal way through the normal planning permission. The position at the moment is that through permitted development rights the owner or someone else has the right to demolish or develop the pub regardless of the local planning authority or the local community’s views. That is what is objectionable and it is one of the reasons, though not by any means the only one, why so many pubs are disappearing—because there are more profitable uses for the building and/or the site. That is what is causing so much concern.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is probably right that some local authorities have possibly used the device of assets for community value rather too liberally or generously. Maybe so, but there is a good reason why they are doing that: it is the only way that they can avoid the problems with the permitted development rights. I think “assets of community value” was an excellent measure, introduced as it was by the coalition Government through the Localism Act—“localism”, incidentally, is a word that we do not hear very much these days—but it was put in there for rather different purposes than a blanket position to refer to all pubs in a particular local authority area regardless of circumstances.

All that is really being suggested here is not strictly new legislation but rather that we revert to the situation that used to apply that, if you wish to make appropriate changes to a building—in this case a public house—whether by demolition or redevelopment of the site, you apply to the local planning authority. It goes through the normal planning process; the local community has its opportunity to make representations and the planning applicant has its opportunity to make representations and the elected planning authority makes the decision. That is what is being proposed here—not that all pubs should be preserved regardless of circumstances or, alternatively, that all pub site owners should have the right to develop regardless. I very much support the amendments and I hope that they will be put to the vote. I hope, of course, that that vote will be successful, and I hope then that the Government will consider very seriously what seems to be—we may be about to prove it—a majority view on all sides of this House, which is most certainly the majority view in most if not all communities.