Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Stuart Andrew and Clive Betts
Mr Betts
I want to say a little about the “alternative provider” clauses and the relevant Lords amendment, which I understand that the Government will be accepting.
I continue to be concerned about what I consider to be a most peculiar form of privatisation. Normally, in cases of privatisation, the council is able to choose the companies or organisations that will provide the service and put that service out to tender. In this case—very peculiarly—the applicant will decide who will conduct the process on behalf of the council and eventually, presumably, supply information and advice to the planning committee. In other words, the council which is ultimately responsible for making the decision—and that, I think, is what the Lords amendments further clarify—will have no role in deciding which organisation will be involved in the process of working with the applicant to decide, eventually, what the recommendation on the application is to be.
There seems to be an idea that suddenly, at the end of the day, a recommendation comes out of thin air. It does not; it results from a very detailed process involving a major application, in which a planning officer and an applicant work through all the details of the scheme. The Bill, however, proposes that that should be done by an alternative provider appointed by the applicant. I think that that is a very strange process, and one that is difficult to justify.
There is also a potential conflict of interests. The alternative provider in one council who advises the planning authority about a scheme could also be a consultant operating directly on behalf of someone in another authority making a very similar application in relation to a very similar scheme, and being paid for doing so. We should be very aware of that possible conflict of interests.
The Lords amendments clearly state that the council—the planning authority—is ultimately responsible for making the decision, and nothing that the alternative provider does should bind the council. I want to know whether, in the context of the pilots, the Minister intends the alternative provider to do all the work and make the recommendation to the planning committee, or whether the alternative provider will make information available to council officers who will independently make a recommendation to the planning committee. I think that that is incredibly important. Will a councillor who receives an application and a recommendation receive the recommendation from a council officer who is independent, on the basis of advice from the alternative provider, or receive it directly from the alternative provider who is appointed by the applicant? That is a fundamental point, which has not been clarified even by the Lords amendments.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
I want to speak briefly about Lords amendment 97. The issue of planning has been at the forefront of the minds of people in my constituency. I have often said in the past that my constituents felt that planning was something that happened to them rather than something in which they could become involved. I therefore welcome the move towards neighbourhood plans.
Much of this has come about because we have had masses of development on old brownfield sites. That is, of course, a good use of such sites, but we now face the prospect of having to build 70,000 homes over the next 14 years, as that is the target that the city council has set itself. There is a great deal of concern in the constituency that we are going to have to release green-belt land to match that demand.
This has galvanised a lot of local action, and I pay tribute to those involved in the Aireborough neighbourhood development forum and in the Rawdon and Horsforth parish councils who are now working hard to develop local neighbourhood plans. However, their experience in the past has been that the city council can turn down an application on very good grounds, only for it to go to an inspector who will turn it around. Those people want to feel that they have all the necessary support and tools at their disposal to defend their neighbourhood plans. They feel that this is far too often a one-way process.