Assets of Community Value (England) Regulations 2012

Lord True Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Shipley]

I shall follow on from the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on the rights of voluntary and community bodies not just to nominate assets for listing but to convert themselves into a community interest group. My understanding of the regulations—the Minister explained this very clearly—is that voluntary and community bodies can nominate assets for listing and that those bodies will include parish councils and can include unincorporated local organisations with at least 21 individual members who are on the local electoral register.

The regulations require a community interest group which can bid to be a charity, a company limited by guarantee that does not distribute profits, an industrial and provident society or a community interest company. Voluntary community groups are going to have to convert themselves into community interest groups to bid and sometimes the timescale could be very tight. I wonder what help the Government plan to give, or to advise local authorities to give, to enable the regulations and the principles behind the Localism Act to happen reasonably easily and to make it more straightforward than it otherwise would be for a voluntary or community group to bid successfully and to manage the outcome of that successful bid.

I noticed in the regulations that it is estimated that some 700 assets will be listed each year and that 94 assets may be bid for each year. It is not clear where those numbers came from, but they clearly have some credibility. I understand that where there is a parish council, there is a structure in place. My concern is where there is not a parish council or where the body that wants to bid is not the parish council but is another voluntary or community group. How do we make sure that people are enabled to make a success of this legislation when there is an extra hurdle from nominating a building or a piece of land to an asset register to the point where that group can then take over the running of that building?

[Lord True]

My Lords, my noble friend anticipates one of the things that I was going to ask in relation to non-parished areas. I was not intending to intervene. I endorse what was said by my noble friend Lord Gardiner and other colleagues. I welcome the efforts that my noble friend Lady Hanham has made to reduce some of the worst threats, as some of us perceived them in the debates on the Localism Bill. The stripping down of the proposal to the essentials, at least in terms of those assets to which it might apply, is very welcome. None the less, declaring an interest as leader of a local authority, in some circumstances, local authorities could find themselves as piggy in the middle in operating this process with a community group on one side and the landowner on the other. We simply do not know how onerous these duties are going to be. Some local authorities find it hard to determine planning applications in eight weeks. There are figures of eight weeks and six weeks in here.

We are adjured to make further major savings in local government spending—we are debating this on the Local Government Finance Bill—to which I have no objection, but as we go forward I hope my noble friend will give a firm assurance that she will be careful of the burdens that are imposed on local authorities in administering the system because the paradox we are living with is that in the planning system we have had a massive simplification, in theory, of the planning system nationwide but on the other hand we are creating extraordinarily complex structures, such as some of those coming out of the Localism Act. In these quite complex regulations, we are having regulations to decomplicate them and take some of the other things out. This world will take a little time to settle down. I think we will all try to make it work. Localism is important, and we do want to protect assets of local importance, but I hope that my noble friend will resist the blandishments of the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, to tighten up even further the requirements on local authorities to respond.

One has to live with the art of the possible. Local authorities will, within the resources available, try to make this work, but in some circumstances, all the appeals systems, the registers and all the things that have to be done will take time and it may even require the recruiting of new local authority staff in some areas where this thing takes off. With that rider, I associate myself with the remarks of other noble Lords and thank my noble friend for the time and attention she has given to avoiding some of the potential abuses of the system as originally designed.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her very full explanation of these regulations. They relate to legislation that we support, as my noble friend Lady Thornton said, and we wish them to work effectively. A policy to assist local community groups and to preserve buildings or land of importance to their communities and social well-being is clearly important. It is of course not a right to buy, nor is there any obligation on the owner to sell.

As my noble friend and other noble Lords have said, this is a very complex piece of primary legislation, as are the regulations before us. It is to be hoped that that complexity will not deter engagement. There will inevitably be complexity around issues relating to land law and charity law. To a certain extent that is unavoidable, but I hope that some simplified guidance will come out. The noble Lord, Lord True, said it is quite difficult to gauge how onerous the duties on local authorities will be in practice.

A number of noble Lords posed a series of specific questions, and I await the Minister’s answers with some interest. In fact, I wanted to ask some questions myself. The first relates to the right to nominate. The regulations and the Explanatory Memorandum state that a neighbourhood forum is included among those who can nominate. Does that right extend to a neighbourhood forum that is designated as a business area?

Paragraph 7.14 of the Explanatory Memorandum refers to the powers relating to the fact that non-community nominations have not been used. Perhaps the Minister can remind us of what the intent of including such a possibility in the legislation was and why it is not being taken up.

I should also like to understand a little better the exemptions for disposals by one body corporate to another. Specifically, is a disposal of the shareholding of a group company into which an asset has been transferred a relevant disposal for the purpose of these provisions? Clearly if that was not the case, there is a gaping hole in the legislation.

A number of noble Lords touched upon compensation issues. It is clear that the claim for compensation is rightly limited to delay wholly caused by delay under the Act, but if there are joint causes for the delay, assuming that one can apportion the effect of those joint causes, is the part attributable to the delay caused by the Act still capable of compensation; or would the fact that there is another contributory factor, even if the value of it can be stripped out, deny that compensation?

I want also to make sure that I understood what happens as regards the difference between a freeholder and a leaseholder. As I understand it, if there is a freeholder and a leaseholder, the ownership of a lease that was originally granted for 25 years would be deemed to be that of the leaseholder, because one would look to have one owner for the purposes of the operation of these provisions. If that is right, what would be the position on the grant of a new 25-year lease at the point of expiry of the original lease? Would that be a disposal? How does that work under these provisions?

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recites the one-off and ongoing costs, and other noble Lords have referred to that. We have an assurance that those costs are going to be met by DCLG, at least during the course of this spending review. I do not know whether that means that it definitely will not under the new spending review or whether we simply have to wait and see what that review entails. I will be interested in the Minister’s answer on that point.

This is something that we want to see work and we are supportive of the Government in seeking that, but there are a number of technical issues here on which we need to be satisfied that we are not opening up easy routes out of the application of this legislation that the wise, or at least the well advised, will take every opportunity to use.