Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I, too, declare my interests. I am a member of a unitary local authority, Cornwall Council. I am a substitute member of the planning committee. Because I am a substitute, I thank goodness that I do not often have to attend in terms of that particular function, but I went through all the training and did all of that. I also have a role which in some ways is on the other side: I chair a commercial development company with interests in the south-west, which applies for a number of planning permissions to do with commercial development.

Something that particularly struck me about the timing of this Bill is that, although it seems a long time ago—in politics I guess it is—it was only in March last year that the National Planning Policy Framework was decided, and the Minister delivered it and made a Statement. I will come back to that Statement. It was a mere 10 months ago that we completely revolutionised the planning system. I was very iffy about what would come out of it and was one of the many people who, when the Government started to move into consultation, thought that we would have rip-roaring development; that the sustainable part of development would be forgotten; and that the Government, for good reasons in many ways but with a bad effect, would not pay a lot of attention to the consultation.

However, my cynicism was absolutely wrong. The Government came out with an extremely good and balanced planning foundation that set a course that I think will be successful for the future. It was well balanced, and it took away the sclerotic planning system and all the different policies and recommendations that local government departments had at the time. It was also absolutely clear where government planning policy was going.

I took the opportunity of reading the right honourable Greg Clark’s Statement to the House of Commons. He was very good in outlining what the reforms were about. There were three fundamental objectives. The first was,

“to put unprecedented power in the hands of communities to shape the places in which they will live”.

The second was,

“to support growth better to give the next generation the chance that our generation has had to have a decent home, and to allow the jobs to be created on which our prosperity depends”.

That is very much what this Bill is supposed to be about, but we will have to see whether it achieves that.

The third objective was,

“to ensure that the places we cherish—our countryside, towns and cities—are bequeathed to the next generation in a better condition than they are in now”.

That time dimension incorporates an understanding that planning is not just about now, or about economic growth now, but about sustainability for the future in terms of the environment and about long-term environmental viability.

Greg Clark continued with what to me is the key sentence. He said:

“A decade of regional spatial strategies, top-down targets and national planning policy guidance that has swelled beyond reason—over 1,000 pages across 44 documents—has led to communities seeing planning as something done to them, rather than by them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/3/12; col. 1337.]

I think, “Hallelujah, that is absolutely right”. I have been involved in European-level politics, national politics and local government politics. That is exactly how it is: local government feels that it is done to it rather than by it.

That is why this Bill really disappoints me in terms of what I see as the Government somehow, after only 10 months, losing confidence in that very clear vision that they had at the time—and that I hope that they still have. It seems that they have somehow shifted into reverse gear. I will not go through the clauses in detail because noble Lords have done so already. Clause 1 enables the Secretary of State to take over the planning functions of failed authorities and to delegate upwards to the Planning Inspectorate.

As regards the information requirements, again I come back to the National Planning Policy Framework document. Paragraph 193 states:

“Local planning authorities should publish a list of their information requirements for applications, which should be proportionate to the nature and scale of development proposals and reviewed on a frequent basis. Local planning authorities should only request supporting information that is relevant, necessary and material to the application in question”.

I do not think that anyone could disagree with that; yet somehow we are trying to redefine that in this Bill when we have already cleared out past policy and made it very clear.

My local authority is very aware that if Section 106 agreements do not work or are not working, they should be up for review. I take absolutely the instance that what that should not do—but what it risks doing—is, as has just been said, to make the bad deals done by developers in the past somehow too big to fail. The moral hazard issue comes back there. In terms of Clause 24, I find it very concerning in that here we are dealing with the major infrastructure planning regime that we went through in the 2008 Act under the previous Government. Perhaps unlike some of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, I strongly believe that some national projects—perhaps on energy or transport—did not fit well into local planning and that there needed to be an alternative approach. I get very concerned when that now could apply to commercial and industrial developments, which by their nature have a local basis. I believe that there are a number of dangers here.

In terms of planning at the local authority level, we should decide that if it is broken we should not put another infrastructure above it but should fix the problem where it is at the moment. In particular, we should give the National Planning Policy Framework time to work. Where are we at the moment? As far as I am aware, we have not had even one neighbourhood plan agreed. Yet we have that balance between local communities being able to produce their own plans and having to make sure that they do not opt out of all the obligations of a community but have to tie up with the broader local plan, which I think is the right balance. We have not given it time to be implemented. As to bad planning decisions and whether they are made by the national inspectorate or are outside the community’s control, we are stuck with them for decades once we have made them. That, too, is an issue we have to remember.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, mentioned the proportion of land that is industrialised or developed at the moment, which is relatively low. On one point I particularly agreed with him: even in rural areas—the NPPF does this—we have to be aware that there is proper development. I believe that the NPPF already does that. I suggest to the Government that an area they really want to look at is something like vexatious judicial reviews on planning, which can happen through very rich, narrow interest groups that are trying to stop community developments. Perhaps the three-month limit should be reduced.

The main thing that I will say is that I am a complete convert to the Government’s planning policy. I just wish that this Bill would conform to their own views on planning for the future.