Housing and Regeneration Bill

moved Amendment No. 55: 55: Clause 10, page 4, line 31, at end insert ““, provided that in exercising the power to give consent, the Secretary of State shall take into account the benefit to the community where such disposal takes place”” The noble Lord said: The flip side of land purchase is land sales, and Clause 10 deals with restrictions on the disposal of land. Clause 10(1) says: "““The HCA may not dispose of land for less than the best consideration which can reasonably be obtained unless the Secretary of State consents””." This is a probing amendment to try to find out what considerations might be in the mind of the Secretary of State and, equally importantly, that the needs of the community adjacent to the site—it might be a disused commercial site of some sort that the HCA wishes to take over for redevelopment—in particular can be taken into account. The business value of the site is always very difficult and subjective. I assume the situation to be that, by and large, the Homes and Communities Agency is not in the business of having a major land bank for development in the way in which commercial developers might. If it purchases a site, it will develop it. That is why it has purchased it, and that would be an entirely natural and normal process. One can see that there might be occasions when some of that site would be seen by the local community as somewhere that might give it the opportunity to have a play area or something of that type in the district, which would diminish the best commercial value. If you said that an area of 50 yards by 50 yards, which is not a big area—it is perhaps two-thirds of an acre—could be set aside on a site for a play area, that is fine. But if that happens to be in an urban area and the alternative development happens to be residential, that site is worth more than £1 million an acre and that bit of ground is worth, say, £0.75 million, which comes off the overall value of the site. It may be in the interests of the community to have that site sold for less than the best value that could be obtained in order that the community could get a real and genuine benefit from it, even though it might affect only a small part of the site. We tabled the amendment to explore with the Minister—I hope he will not mind my exploring with him in this way—what might be in the mind of the Secretary of State when we have to deal with the matter of the HCA perhaps not being able to dispose of land for less than the best consideration that can reasonably be obtained. Clearly, there are circumstances in which the community interest might indicate that the sum that should be obtained for the site should be less than it appears to be in this subsection. I beg to move.