Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 79 and 80. Amendment No. 79 deals with an issue that my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding raised on Second Reading and pursued in Grand Committee. I am speaking to it in his unavoidable absence today. I declare an interest as a former Member of Parliament for 24 years for the City of London, an interest which will likewise apply to Amendment No. 80 in this group and subsequently to Amendment No. 91, which stands alone, on both of which I shall also be substituting for my noble friend. On Amendment No. 79, we now have the benefit of the new draft of the Mayor of London order. That was circulated last week, after my noble friend had tabled his amendment. He was very pleased—a sentiment shared by the City of London and by me—that the draft order provides for a revised height and size threshold in the City of 150 metres and 100,000 square metres of floor space. Subject only to the confirmation of what I believe to be the case from the draft order that these revised thresholds will apply to the Mayor’s power to take over applications as planning authority, as well as his power to direct refusal, I would be happy to withdraw the amendment. In doing so, I record my thanks to the noble Baroness for responding so positively. Amendment No. 80 seeks to exclude planning applications for relatively modest developments down to 2,500 square metres from the definition of ““potential strategic importance”” unless they depart from the City’s development plan or are prejudicial to the plan’s implementation. The objective is to avoid a situation where applications which could in no way be regarded as strategic on account of their size become subject to reference to the Mayor as the result ofan inconsequential departure from the City’s development plan. To appreciate the reason for the amendment, perhaps I may detain noble Lords for a moment with the relevant text of the latest version of the draft order. Category 3E of the schedule to the draft order provides that a development becomes referable to the Mayor where it, "““does not accord with one or more provisions of the development plan in force in the area in which the application site is situated and . . . comprises or includes the provision of more than 2,500 square metres of floorspace””." In responding to the amendment tabled in somewhat different terms by my noble friend Lord Jenkin in Committee, but addressing the same problem, the Minister said that category 3E would not apply to the Mayor’s power to take over planning applications but would apply to his power to direct refusal of planning applications. The latest draft of the order reflects that position. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, also referred in Committee—on 8 May, at column 174 of Hansard—to the fact that the Mayor’s power to direct refusal had existed without apparent difficulty since the original Mayor of London order was made in 2000. It is true that the Mayor has until now adopted a relaxed attitude to his involvement in smaller applications in the City, but the fact that there may have been an element of Nelson's eye so far is not a good yardstick for the future. Attitudes could change—indeed, Mayors could. If strictly applied, many relatively minor applications would be subjected to unnecessary notification to the Mayor. That would simply make the whole process needlessly bureaucratic. In addition, as a result of changes made by the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, "““the development plan for the area””," is now taken to mean the unitary development plan plus the Mayor’s spatial development strategy known as the London Plan. The practical consequence is that there are now far more policies to take into account—around 400 in the City—and a much greater chance, therefore, that any given planning application will not comply with the letter of all of them. I am relying on happenstance. In other words, going forward, far more applications will become susceptible to mayoral involvement than was the case when the original mayoral order was made in 2000, even if Nelson’s eye continues to be applied. As for the amendment of my noble friend Lord Jenkin, to which I am speaking, I hope that the Minister feels the criteria to be appropriate. Instead of the trigger for mayoral involvement being departure from one or more of the provisions in the development plan, the amendment requires the departure to be significant—contrary to the plan itself or prejudicial to its implementation. That will raise the barrier in order to capture only the more strategic applications, which is what, as the Minister has made clear in all our debates, the Government intend.