Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord True Excerpts

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

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, I should appear to be sympathetic to anything that seeks to push power back into the hands of local planning authorities as regards their ability to reject a planning application and the Secretary of State having to support the decision. But I am worried about anything that would compel that, on the basis that if developers were not able to appeal to the Government to revisit the decision, they would go through the courts, at which point a council would not only have to employ planning people to deal with a planning appeal, it would have to pay for a barrister as well. So while I am sympathetic to the fact that planning applications which have been refused for non-compliance should not be routinely overturned, I would rather see the Government take a firmer hand with the Planning Inspectorate to ensure that when it does intervene in a case, it does so in a way that has been properly tested by the Secretary of State. I said on the last occasion that people in the outside world are saying that some planning inspectors have gone feral, and that position still pertains today. So rather than compelling the Secretary of State to support a refusal by a council, we need to encourage him to take a firmer grip of the Planning Inspectorate to make sure that in all cases it operates in the way the Government have sanctioned and not in a way that it chooses to sanction for itself.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to noble Lords for appearing late but I have been performing duties for what I declare as an interest, as leader of a local authority which is a London borough. On my way to the Chamber I was listening to the remarks of my noble friend Lady Cumberlege on the annunciator and I have considerable sympathy with the spirit and thrust of all she has been arguing for in this Bill and indeed in the amendment before us. I rather agree with what my noble friend Lord Porter has just said, and I will come back to that in the question of the real non-accountability of the system operated by the Secretary of State in terms of the inspectorate, where there are overturns. I am really addressing my remarks to Amendment 6.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, raised the point about local planning authorities and their own facilities, which I know has been an issue. As I say, the Secretary of State has a discretion to call in any power. Local authorities should have Chinese walls in place; they should make sure that they are not in any way making a decision about their own property without a proper Chinese wall between those selling the property, as it were, and those making the decision. Again I will cover how that Chinese wall operates in the system: I think there are appropriate safeguards, although I appreciate that this is a very material point, but I will cover that in a letter ahead of Third Reading. With the assurance I have given to my noble friend Lady Cumberlege and the promise of a letter taking up those points I have not addressed in the debate, I ask my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord True]

Before my noble friend sits down, I will say that I am grateful for the measured tone of his response. As this is Report I will not take up the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—although I would not always assume that the Secretary of State will be friendlier to local interests than a local authority that owns the land.

The Minister gave a partial response on the point about the accountability of inspectors. He referred to the mystique of the system and said, quite rightly, that inspectors are highly professional. The difference between the inspectorate and the judiciary is that the judiciary is subject to testing by a higher instance, but in this case it is a one-off shot. It need not necessarily be in the context of the time between now and Third Reading, but it would be helpful to have some reflections from my noble friend on how one might shine a little more accountability on the system, because there is divergence of practice. My local authority had considered publishing league tables but we thought that it would not encourage an enthusiastic or friendly approach from some of the inspectors named. If might be interesting if the Minister could reflect on how there could be greater accountability.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I thank my noble friend very much for that point and I apologise for not picking it up in my earlier response. I will go away and reflect on it. Certainly, it would be helpful if we could give more information about how this process operates—how people are qualified, what the training is and so on. Perhaps we could do that on the website. I will look at that and I thank my noble friend also for the constructive discussions we have so far had on the issue of permitted development, which I know is of concern to him.