Greater London Authority Bill

I begin with an apology for jumping ahead of the game a few moments ago. As I explained earlier, it was partly because I am not sure how much of what is going on I can hear accurately, but I do my best. I have five amendments in this group and I hope that the Committee will bear with me if I spend a few moments explaining what they are about. They are all of enormous importance to the planning regime in the City of London. I shall start with a quotation from a very interesting article in today’s Financial Times by Sir Stuart Lipton, who has perhaps contributed more to the development of the City—a greatly praised contribution—than almost anyone else. He writes: "““The City of London's planning regime has played a vital role. It is the only local planning authority whose elected members have a direct representative link with the business community. They understand that the City needs to grow and adapt in a rapidly changing business environment, with a planning regime and a decision-making process that provides certainty and speed””." I imagine that most Members of this Committee would endorse every word of that. I shall first address Amendment No. 92A to Clause 31(2), which inserts a new Section 2A into the Town and Country Planning Act. Subsection (2) of that new section provides that a direction by the Mayor that he should take over the role of local planning authorities in deciding planning applications must include the reasons why the Mayor is giving the direction. However, the Bill does not say anything about the nature of the reasons and, in particular, about how convincing they need to be. I acknowledge that some guidance is to be found in Article 3 of the draft Town and Country Planning (Mayor of London) Order and some of the discussion we will have may be more relevant to the order than to the Bill. However, the Bill is the only opportunity we have to say anything about it. The order states that in deciding whether to give a direction, the Mayor is to take account of the extent to which the local planning authority is complying with the targets set out in his spatial development strategy for the capital, the so-called London plan. Although that is welcome, it is only one reason and neither the Bill nor the draft order state that it will be the only one. If the Major is to give a direction that he is going to take over an application falling within any of the categories of application listed in the draft order, it needs to be really clear why he is doing so. Article 8(1) of the draft order states that the Mayor may take over a planning application from a local planning authority, "““if he considers that any of the issues raised by the development to which the application relates is of such a nature or scale that there would be a significant impact on the implementation of the spatial development strategy””." Those are very broad words indeed and they could be stretched to cover a multitude of circumstances. I am not at all clear how that could be translated into reasons for taking over an application in any given case. To reduce the extent of the elastic and to provide greater definition, Subsection (1) of Amendment No. 92A makes clear that there should be sound planning reasons for taking an application away from the local planning authority and subsection (2) enables those reasons to be clarified through the order. It may be that the Minister is proposing that this sort of issue should be dealt with through planning guidance and that may well be a perfectly acceptable way of doing it. It would be helpful if, in her reply, the Minister could give us some indication of her plans in that regard. I turn to Amendment No. 92B, which deals with timeliness. This amendment and others in this group arise from the terms of the draft order. It proposes that if the local planning authority has not determined a planning application within 16 weeks, the applicant can ask the Mayor to take the application over. That is under Article 8(5)(a) of the order. My amendment extends that period to 20 weeks. The provision in the draft order appears to want to make sure that planning authorities process applications efficiently, and we would all support that. However, the time limit for processing applications before the ability of the Mayor to take them over is triggered is not understandable. The order proposes 16 weeks, which is simply too short a period for the kind of complex planning application of strategic importance with which the Mayor would be concerned. It may be perfectly all right for the general run of planning applications, but here, particularly with regard to developments in the City, we are, by definition, dealing with what could be complex and time-consuming processes for the City’s council to deal with. The Government’s own targets recognise that there has to be some flexibility about this because their performance target for local planning authorities requires only 60 per cent of major planning applications to be determined within the 13 weeks that apply to them. For the remaining 40 per cent, there is clearly some recognition that the time may be extended. It is a reasonable assumption that the Mayor will be dealing, by definition, with the more complex and therefore time-consuming applications. A suspicious mind might wonder whether, as the order is currently written, that is an indirect method of getting the local planning authority bypassed. However, I do not believe that that is the case, because I believe that the Ministers involved in this recognised the importance of the City’s planning regime, both as a planning authority in London and for the country as a whole. Therefore, to impose an unreasonably short time limit in this will lead to greater uncertainty and, therefore, inefficiency in the planning system. Perhaps I may mention one or two figures. In the City of London over the past 20 years, 4.4 million square metres of office floor space has been constructed. That is three times the amount that has been built at Canary Wharf and, of course, it is in an infinitely more challenging environment. There have been hardly any appeals on planning applications on grounds of non-determination. On the basis of that experience, the City is entitled to be of the view that a more reasonable period would enable the planning authority to process a major application before mayoral involvement. The period that I have suggested in the amendment is 20 weeks, which I hope will be acceptable. Amendments Nos. 93A and 94A are intended to take up the points that noble Lords will remember I raised in my Second Reading speech—the question of the thresholds that should be met before a planning application is regarded as being of potential strategic importance. The order which governs the Mayor’s current limited power to intervene in planning applications by directing a refusal already differentiates the City from the rest of London in terms of the size and height of the buildings. For the City, the height threshold is 75 metres and the size threshold is 30,000 square metres of floor space. By comparison, for central London outside the City, the threshold is 30 metres and 20,000 square metres. Outside central London, it is 25 metres and 15,000 square metres. Therefore, Parliament already recognises the distinctiveness of the situation in the City. Amendment No. 93A increases the thresholds for the City triggering mayoral involvement to a height of 150 metres or 100,000 square metres of additional floor space. Of course, that will not apply right across the City. One amendment in this group seeks to protect the Thames-side environment, which has always been recognised as having to be maintained. It is also right to point out that there are many other restrictions on development in the City and I need mention only one, which I think noble Lords will recognise—the question of being able to maintain the views of St Paul’s. Whatever the size of the building, I remember the cry of horror that went up when those buildings were erected on the north side of Fleet Street many years ago and obscured St Paul’s from a long distance. I think that the restrictions that now apply within the City of London are much more effective, and they will go. Indeed, I am told that something like 60 per cent of the City is already covered by these other restrictions. Here I am looking for something comparatively limited in relation to that part of the City where there are already very tall buildings. I listed some of those buildings when I spoke at Second Reading. In that sort of area, the existing limits on height and floor space are totally inappropriate. We are seeking to increase the limits to 150 metres and 100,000 square metres, as set out in the amendment. At Second Reading, I listed a number of the buildings. I certainly would not dream of taking time to list them again as they are all on the record. Then, the Minister was kind enough to say that she recognised that the Government were committed to getting the thresholds right and that they were considering whether changes were justified. I hope that she will be able to share with us her latest thinking on that. As I said, this is a matter for the order and not for the Bill, but we can raise the issue only by amending the Bill. Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 93B. When the order was published with the Bill in another place, it had what has come to be called a catch-all provision, and has given rise to a great deal of anxiety. It proposes that a development of more than 2,500 square metres—that is smaller than some of the apartments listed a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours—which does not accord with one or more of the provisions of the development plan for the area should trigger the mayoral reference process because it is of potential strategic importance. It should not be regarded as of potential strategic importance at that low level and certainly not because it happens to contravene one of the very many planning policies that the City may have. At Second Reading, the Minister indicated that changes will be made to the draft order. She said that, "““the new power should not apply to the vast majority of thresholds set out in parts 3 and 4 of the schedule””.—[Official Report, 28/3/07; col. 1701.]" Although we have yet to see the new draft order, I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm that this provision will be within what she called the ““vast majority””. That catch-all provision is giving rise to wide anxiety. I offer the Committee two more quotes. One is from Ed Balls, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who said last April at the London Development Agency conference, "““we … face the challenge of implementing the GLA Bill, now moving to the Lords, and ensuring that the devolution of powers to the city level works to the benefit of London’s economy””." If that catch-all provision were to be operated as drafted, I do not think that Mr Balls’s hopes will be realised. My last quotation is from Sir Stuart Lipton in the Financial Times. He said: "““The priority must be to ensure that the City’s planning system remains quick and certain, with schemes only referred to the mayor in exceptional circumstances because of their strategic importance to the capital. The mayor has indicated that this is the approach he will take, but this is not reflected in the proposed legislation””." Therefore, if that is the intention of Ministers and of the Mayor, we must have amendments.