Lord True
Main Page: Lord True (Conservative - Life peer)Growth and Infrastructure Bill
Lord True Excerpts“Development orders: development within the curtilage of a dwelling house
(1) Section 61 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (development orders: supplementary provisions) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (3) insert—
“(4) Any development order or amendment to an existing development order made after 1 January 2013 that grants planning permission for development within the curtilage of a dwelling house shall not apply within the jurisdiction of a local planning authority if that authority has resolved that it shall not.””
Lord True
My Lords, I declare an interest as leader of a suburban local authority that is also a planning authority. I thank the leaders of many other local authorities, along with the Local Government Association, who have given this amendment strong support.
This is Third Reading, so I will not go over all the arguments heard before on this issue, but I hope the House will allow me some indulgence, as this is the first time after nearly 40 years of service to my party and 20 years as an elected representative that I find myself contemplating dividing against my party. Your Lordships’ debate on Report in which Peers from all sides spoke was a devastating rejection of the Government’s wish to impose this idea, and I agreed with all that was said.
I had great sympathy for my noble friend Lady Hanham that day. I respect her hugely, as she knows, for the way she has handled this Bill. We all know that she did not cook up this idea. Indeed, I am pretty sure that if, when she was leader of Kensington and Chelsea, some bright young councillor had come to her and said, “Hey Joan, I’ve got a great modernising idea. Why don’t we take away the rights of neighbours to object to big extensions?”, that clever young man would have been sent away with a flea in his ear by his leader, yet that is the extraordinary proposition that I draw to your Lordships’ attention today.
Before the dust had settled on our debates on localism and the NPPF with the sensible liberalisation of planning therein, out popped a big new idea to sweep aside the newly entrenched localism and use Whitehall diktat to double the amount of back gardens that could be built over without planning permission and take away the rights of immediate neighbours to have a say or to object. That was not in any manifesto or in the coalition agreement. All those documents pledged to protect back gardens, and I, and perhaps others in this Chamber, looked people in the eye in 2010 and made that pledge on doorsteps. For my part, as an elected representative, I propose to stand by it.
My amendment is modest. It is a compromise. I think the Government are wrong to want to take away a neighbour’s right to comment on an extension that could be 50%, or technically in some cases a little more of a small neighbouring garden in a terrace. Back gardens are an important reinforcement of mutual value and of the character of an area. My amendment does not block the Government’s wish to do that. I say to my noble friends on coalition Benches that no one who votes for my amendment today, if I press it, will be preventing the Government from making such an order, nor would they be stopping anyone applying for an extension. It merely moderates a one-size-fits-all approach and allows local decision: localism. It states that if a local authority thinks that extending permitted development in gardens to this extent is not appropriate for its area, it may opt out. What is it about this small thing on which this great Government will not compromise? Do they not understand how people live cheek by jowl in the suburbs? I am beginning to wonder whether someone who had an extension refused got stroppy with some Minister or a top civil servant over dinner.
I did not press a similar amendment on Report for two reasons. The first was because I still hoped that the Government might listen, but late yesterday I received a letter from my noble friend making clear that they would not. Secondly, our debate on Report left open a number of questions about what in the jargon is called an Article 4 direction. My noble friend very kindly provided material on this in her letter. Having read it, I remain unconvinced that it provides a sensible answer to an unnecessary question.
I also remain puzzled by the logic of the Government’s position. My noble friend implies in her letter that Article 4 directions are quite easy and normal and can readily be used if councils do not want to extend permitted development. That might be read to imply, although crucially she does not say so and did not say so when asked directly on Report, that all such local directions to opt out would be supported by the Government. Then her bosses handed a file to my noble friend marked “resist” on an amendment that allows a faster, simpler route to the same opt-out point as Article 4 would offer. It simply does not add up. I fear that the truth is that someone deep in Whitehall, while singing the song of localism, wants to keep a hold over local authorities to modify or cancel an Article 4 direction at any time, in which case on this matter Article 4 would be mere fool’s gold.
I do not wish to detain noble Lords with detailed debate on Article 4, because the small print is a diversion from the main principles of localism and householder rights that are engaged here. I must point out that my noble friend’s letter did not mention the complication arising from rights to compensation that may come with Article 4 directions when planning approval is approved. Leeds City Council alone has calculated that its potential exposure in relation to one aspect of policy is between £1.5 million and £3 million. Nor did it mention the lost planning fees—perhaps £250,000 a year in my authority alone, according to my officers—and there will be no less work to be done, for you can be sure that time saved on planning control will be time increased on building control, as neighbours who have not had opportunities to comment on proposed extensions will ask the building inspectors to look at whether the work is being done properly. Of course, even on my noble friend’s best-case presentation of Article 4 directions, it is a process that takes many months.
When the Government commend Article 4 against the faster, simpler approach to local choice that I and my noble friends propose in this amendment, it is as though a man had stopped his car and asked for directions to a town. Instead of saying “Oh, it’s just there, over that hill—it’s about half a mile away”, a bystander deliberately points him around 10 miles of byways, consuming quantities of petrol on the way, with a possibly impassable ford lurking on the route. It seems wasteful and pointless. Every argument the Government make that Article 4 is a good way to opt out is an argument for the simpler, faster route proposed in this amendment.
I return to the fundamental arguments. The Government have suggested a world where in close suburban neighbourhoods people can put up a six or eight-metre back garden extension, and people living in the house to which they may be attached have no right to a say in this or to object. It is not hard to imagine the shock and dismay that some people will feel if they ever find out that it is happening to them. They will feel powerless and angry.
This proposal is not about growth; it is ludicrous to argue that a few back garden extensions would kick-start the economy. It is not about localism and community; it denies localism and avowedly reduces community rights—Ministers say that it does. It is not about new housing; not a single new upstairs bedroom will be built in Britain as a result of this proposal. It is not about making it easier for people to improve their homes; they have every right to do so now and still would if my amendment were passed. It is not even about property rights, for it transfers power and rights from those who lose most directly from any development and adds to the gain of the richer and more assertive, who would gain anyway.
This proposal takes away a neighbour’s right to have a say on a big and potentially overbearing extension shoved up outside their back door. What is more, it removes that vital process of moderation and conciliation that the local planning system provides in these matters. How often do those who have been upset by a planning proposal next door go away finally satisfied if a small condition is added, a modification made, or just by the simple expedient of being able to have their say before the local planning committee? Paradoxically, at this micro-level, a planning hearing can be an enabling process that allows arbitration and reconciliation, without which, in those small, precious, suburban communities, neighbour would be set against neighbour in perhaps lasting resentment.
For those who have worked hard and striven to buy and maintain a home, it is the most precious possession they have. Restricting their right to have a say in what so directly affects it will strike at their most basic instincts of what ought to be secure and what they see as fair. Good policy should surely have a sense of how things work at the human scale, and it is at that level that this proposal so conspicuously fails. To me, there is a principle of equity here, and it is on just such matters that your Lordships’ House has always been a voice of wisdom and held out a hand of protection for the rights of a citizen to come before a tribunal, as a planning committee is, and be heard. I ask your Lordships, in so close an interest for every homeowner, to consider that civilising and reconciling right.
Lord True
My Lords, I thank my noble friend on the Front Bench for the characteristically courteous and thoughtful way in which she has responded. My difficulty is that the response has been a response in style and that she has, unfortunately, not been permitted to respond on the substance of the matter. I did not create this situation. A pronouncement came from the Government that they intended to withdraw the rights of neighbours to object to extensions on this scale and thus oust their right to go to a tribunal, which is the planning committee. The planning committee process acts as a mode of reconciliation in itself. Compromises are made and often the matter never goes to a formal hearing. It is a way in which neighbours are reconciled in these situations.
Of course, I hear what my noble friend Lord Deben said. Arbitration is used. I certainly do not claim that a local authority is the beginning and end of all wisdom. I spend half my time as a local authority leader trying to involve local people and local communities in taking decisions for themselves. I am absolutely convinced that a local authority will have rather more knowledge of what is acceptable and appropriate in its local area than a Minister sitting in Whitehall pronouncing an order of this kind. That is my difficulty with what my noble friend said.
I am extremely grateful for all the speeches that were made so very supportively. I thought that they made a compelling case, taken together, for the Government to listen to the arguments we are putting forward. With some modesty, as a policy-maker in the past, I think that at some point Governments gain in authority when they show that they have the grace and wisdom to listen sometimes on small things.
I will not detain the House further. The Minister said that it was worrying that local authorities might wish to opt out of a pronunciamiento about planning—to have a different view. How recently it was that we debated at such length the principle of localism. While I do not contend that local authorities have the whole answer, I do not think that Whitehall having the answer is necessarily right. The House can decide only on what it has before it. I have had the temerity to raise this issue because it is clear that we have not seen the results of the consultation and it has been confirmed that the Government intend to plough forward to regulations, which are unamendable. I have had the temerity to put this before the House partly because it is a matter of great importance to people who live in small properties, cheek by jowl in the suburbs of this country, partly because Members of Parliament, who are elected and responsible to those people, as I myself am, might have a view on this matter and partly because I do not think that the Government have the full answer, any more than local authorities do.
I repeat what I said at the start. It is with the greatest reluctance, sadness, difficulty and regret, after 40 years working for my party, representing it in elected chambers and now having the great honour to be here, that I say I cannot accept the advice of my noble friend. I would like to test the opinion of the House on this matter.