Housing and Regeneration Bill

One of the problems, of course, is that one person’s failure is another person’s alternative policy view. That dilemma comes to planning communities probably more than anything else. Yesterday I tabled an amendment—from memory, I think it was Amendment No. 51D—but it was in the wrong place and so I ignored it. Essentially it was the same as my noble friend’s Amendment No. 73C, which seeks that the actions of the HCA should be within the development plan. I said the local development framework but, in practice, it is the whole development plan. This is a crucial issue which ties in with the suggestion that in areas where there have been designation orders the HCA should be not only the development control authority but also the plan-making authority. This is bound to lead to fears that the existing development plan will simply be swept aside and a new one put in place. This will clearly take some time but, nevertheless, it will be done by riding roughshod over all possible local democratic views. Most places will have different views anyway but, nevertheless, it will be riding roughshod over them. The noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, referred to eco-towns. These are lurking as an ongoing issue while we are debating the Bill but they do not appear in it. However, it is not clear—perhaps the Minister will provide some elucidation—how far the Homes and Communities Agency is expected to take part in producing the five eco-towns and then the 10 eco-towns—or however many are produced—by 2020. Will the eco-towns be a central function and a central policy objective of the Homes and Communities Agency; or will it be involved in some of them and not in others; or will it not be involved in any of them? If the HCA is going to be the main driving organisation behind the eco-towns in all cases, it will result in a great increase in that area of activity on a par with the first and second waves of new towns. That is something that we have not seen recently. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, made some interesting comments. She mentioned Milton Keynes and praised the Liberal council there. She can praise Liberal councils as much as she likes—I do not mind—but the point about Milton Keynes is that the development there was carried out by agreement; it was not imposed. This is fundamental to the eco-towns argument. It is not clear how much of the new legislation in the Bill will be used for eco-towns, how much will be done through the forthcoming Planning Bill and the new Infrastructure Planning Commission, or whether it will be a combination of both. It would be interesting if, either now or at some point, the Minister could tell us exactly how the eco-towns are going to work. I have read the debates in the House of Commons and elsewhere about eco-towns: there is a great deal of discussion about whether they are a good or a bad thing but there is less discussion about how they will come about. The noble Baroness, Lady Ford, made the interesting and basic comment that there is a shortage of experienced planners, which there is. I sit on an authority which constantly trains development control officers. They then move on to bigger authorities which pay more money or to the private sector and we have to train up more. That is the only way that we can possibly keep an establishment of development control officers in the authority. This is a basic issue. Saying that the really good planners should go and work for the HCA and concentrate on the parts of the country that the Government think are important is not an answer to the problem of not enough planners. The answer to that problem is to train more planners and perhaps pay them more.