(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberReading new clauses 7 and 8 carefully, I am not sure they cover the situation to which the right hon. Gentleman has adverted. Briefly, in the Tettenhall area of my constituency, the local neighbourhood plan had a more than 50% turnout on a referendum in July 2014; the local neighbourhood plan goes through; there is then an application for a site called the Clock House; the local authority refuses planning permission; the case goes to the Planning Inspectorate in Bristol, which, in a 17-page decision, makes two brief references to the neighbourhood plan—and allows the appeal. Can the right hon. Gentleman assure me that new clauses 7 and 8 would deal with the local neighbourhood plan being overturned by the Planning Inspectorate in contradistinction to the planning authority—in this case, Wolverhampton City Council, which refused the application?
It may be a weakness in these new clauses that they may not deal with a situation where the Planning Inspectorate takes such a decision. I will not be tempted down a line I have pursued in the past, which is to question whether we should have a Planning Inspectorate at all under the provisions of localism; indeed, one Conservative manifesto promise was to abolish the power of the Planning Inspectorate to rewrite local plans, but we seem to have lost sight of that.