Housing and Regeneration Bill

My Lords, the Government are indeed to be congratulated on the Bill as a way to make homes more affordable and available. It is long overdue and will bring fairness back into the housing pool. Social housing is essential to satisfy the needs of poorer people in our communities and the Bill deals comprehensively with that issue. The Homes and Communities Agency follows in the footsteps of the urban regeneration agencies. As a former chair of Catalyst Corby, I saw at first hand the excellent work done by a URC, which has transformed the entire town of Corby from a rundown to a vibrant town. I know that the HCA will draw on the experience of URCs. Outcomes are achieved by outstanding teamwork. All the key agencies—the Government, local government and voluntary organisations—came together in Corby to give unprecedented cohesion in planning and delivery of what is now virtually a new town. We were fortunate to gain the fullest support from local residents and, importantly, from the media. Everyone got behind the initiatives and we were doubly blessed to have Bob Lane as our chief executive and Phil Hope as our MP. I urge anyone involved in regeneration to take the train to beautiful north Northamptonshire and see Corby now, with 22,000 new homes being built, a wonderful new shopping centre, a new academy being built and stunning new recreational facilities coming into being. Possibly more crucial than anything else, a new passenger railway station is coming to fruition at long last. So, HCA, please take our lessons to heart in this regeneration game. We learnt some hard lessons early on and you can certainly gain from our experience. I am taking a rather unusual route via the Bill to urge the Government radically to change the planning procedure in respect of existing local sports clubs seeking to regenerate and modernise their facilities. I hope to use Section 2 in Chapter 1, which states that the HCA objectives include securing the regeneration or development of land in the UK, clarifies the inclusion of social and recreational facilities and goes on to propose that the HCA has the power both to provide and repair infrastructure. In making that case, I am indebted to both the Central Council for Physical Recreation and the Lawn Tennis Association. I have been working with those two organisations for the past eight years—at last we have an opportunity to express our views here tonight—to highlight the plight that is caused by planning guidelines to local authorities, which candidly are not fit for purpose. I hope to give some examples of the problems, but first I remind noble Lords of the difficulties that arise and why they arise. I will use tennis clubs as my model, simply because I have been involved with dozens of them, and they have sought my help, for many years. Noble Lords should be assured that tennis clubs are not the only clubs caught in this planning maelstrom; all sports clubs that seek to upgrade their facilities fall foul of the same obstacle. This obstacle is the nimby—the neighbour who invariably lodges an objection to any upgrading, be it floodlighting, new playing surfaces or the improvement of social facilities in the clubhouses or pavilions. In many cases, the local planning authority recommends acceptance of the plan, but the local residents, who are powerful and often well resourced, combine to defeat their neighbouring club. What is the significance? The situation is dire. Hundreds of tennis courts, in clubs and in public spaces, have been sold and built on in the past few decades. Successive Governments have rightly been pilloried for selling off playing fields. The problems that those same Governments have inflicted on clubs are far greater. Quite frankly, it has been scandalous. There must be change. The benefits of these clubs, which are often small and are in both urban and rural areas, are immeasurable. They tick virtually every box in the current social climate: sport for all ages, inclusiveness, active play in an age of obesity, the acquisition of skills for whole life and proximity—the list goes on and on. All that is provided in the main by volunteers who give up their time and expertise for free to a sport that they love. We slam the door in their faces. I could give noble Lords chapter and verse on the miserable experiences of clubs up and down the country, but I shall give just one thumbnail sketch of the most recent club with which I became involved, just this month. I received an e-mail from Linda Faulkner, the secretary of Endon Tennis Club. I have never visited the club, nor do I know Linda, but her determination to fight for the club where she has played for 40 years is an object lesson in doggedness. Here is the Endon saga. First, the club was established in 1920. There were no surrounding houses then, so anyone living in the houses either facing or backing on to the club knew that the club was there. The club is the only club in Staffordshire without floodlights and the only club to play in the top league without lights. It applied to the local authority for floodlighting in 1986, 2001, 2002, 2007 and 2008, with appeals in between. In 2001, it was refused on the grounds of light pollution by floodlights. In 2003, there were no objections to floodlights—the new technology had overcome that problem—but the application was turned down on the grounds of noise. In 2004, the club employed a specialist surveyor, who revealed that there was no substantial noise problem. At the local council planning meeting in 2005, the councillors voted five to four in favour of the application. At that point, one of the objectors stood up and shouted that she was going to sue the council. The chairman then ordered the councillors to retire to discuss the issue further. They came back a short while later and voted six to four against. I know that this sounds like Zimbabwe and that we must remind ourselves that this is Staffordshire. Undaunted, the club reapplied in 2007. All was going well until the 11th hour, when an objector lodged another complaint that there were bats in the club grounds. There was more delay. The club spent £450 on research, which showed that there were no bats in the area. But last week there was triumph and planning permission was granted—but at what cost in terms of effort and exasperation? There were eight years of grossly unfair treatment in the local planning procedure, which was shown to be completely inept. How can we make sure that the planning guidelines are modernised? It is imperative that we do so. Looking at the Olympics and its legacy, can we justify not supporting clubs for which the legacy of the promotion of sport is being so cruelly denied? Finally, I went to Goring-on-Thames yesterday for the Goring Tennis Club’s 40th birthday party. I went as the president of the Oxfordshire Lawn Tennis Association. It is everything that you would hope for in a club. It is lively and fun and it encompasses all age groups and skilful players, who are very proud of their club. When I asked about their plans for future projects, they said that they feared that they would never get planning permission and so would not apply. That is a fact. For every Endon that sticks to its guns, hundreds of clubs do not even bother to apply, because they take the view that the likelihood of success is virtually nil. Such clubs will wither and fail because they will not attract the new generation, who expect more than the conditions that I remember starting out with, where the local tennis club had an Elsan lavatory in a wooden hut. I look forward to the Minister’s reply. We are seeking better planning guidelines with fairness at their core. We want sagas such as that at the Endon club to be a thing of the past and the future to be positive and successful for all sportsmen and sportswomen at every club in the country. It is a real objective for regeneration. I hope that the Minister will give us some support and some hope for the clubs, which would make an excellent Bill even better.