Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, this amendment would remove the Mayor’s ability to enforce the provisions of obligations attached to the planning permissions which he grants. He would have to rely on the borough to do so in each case. It would also prevent the Mayor receiving any of the sums due under a planning obligation. Although I cannot accept the amendment because removing the Mayor’s ability to enforce the terms of planning obligations would open the door to a worse situation where the provisions of any planning obligation attached to a planning permission granted by the Mayor might be at risk of being unenforced, I hope to be able to reassure the noble Baroness in due course. The result could be development that harmed the local environment or the capital’s wider planning interests contrary to the intention of the planning permission. This would be in the interests of neither the Mayor nor the boroughs. During the Bill’s passage we have discussed planning obligations and mayoral involvement, and there has been some confusion. It may therefore be worth while briefly reiterating some of the key points on planning obligations. Planning obligations are private agreements negotiated usually between local planning authorities and developers or offered unilaterally by developers for the benefit of the local planning authority. In previous debates there seemed to be real concern that the Mayor could somehow run away with the money from planning obligations. However, strict parameters govern when planning obligations are appropriate, and they are set out in Circular 05/05. We are not changing that. For example, the circular states that planning obligations are to be sought only when they meet all the policy tests. An obligation has to be, "““relevant to planning; necessary to make the proposed development acceptable in planning terms; directly related to the proposed development; fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the proposed development; and reasonable in all other respects””." Those are tough tests to fulfil. The purpose of an obligation is to mitigate harm that might arise from a planning proposal and to make it acceptable in planning terms; for example, a proposal that otherwise could be refused planning permission might provide open space to mitigate for the loss of such space. The amendment would leave all enforcement actions to the borough. In most cases that will be the best and most effective way forward and, significantly, it will be the route that we expect to be followed. The problem is that it may not be the route in all cases, such as where the borough’s enforcement team is overstretched or in the unlikely event of a lack of co-operation between the two parties. We have had to provide a fall-back for such cases. The clause as drafted does not substitute the Mayor for the borough for those applications decided by the Mayor, but it provides the Mayor with enforcement powers that parallel those of the borough. We do not envisage the Mayor employing large numbers of enforcement officers, and we are not providing funds for that. This is simply a sensible safeguard to ensure that development takes place in the terms for which permission was granted. I shall deal with the substance of subsection (4) of the amendment, which removes the Mayor’s ability to receive funds due under a planning obligation, when we come to Amendment No. 89. I shall not rehearse those arguments here. We are convinced that, for entirely practical reasons, it is necessary for the Mayor to do so. I must therefore resist the amendment.