Planning Bill

We resume debate on this long and varied group of amendments on applications for development consent and consultation on them. The lead amendment in the group was moved some hours ago by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith. We have a number of Liberal Democrat amendments, 10 in total, in the group, to which I shall speak in a minute. In addition, my noble friend Lady Hamwee and I have added our names to the three amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, to which he has already spoken. I am not sure that the digression into building a highway tunnel under the Lake District was entirely appropriate in this debate, and I do not think that the Minister would want us to go that way. The idea of a road tunnel being built under Great Gable and Bow Fell would not immediately gain our support—we wonder where it would come out at each end. As somebody who has been peripherally linked to a campaign against building a similar road under the Vignemale in the Pyrenees, I would not support it. However, we support everything else said by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, with great enthusiasm. I also added my name to the two amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about national parks. I will briefly return to the issues that we talked about on Tuesday relating to national parks, parishes and consultation. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, this is part of the Bill where it is most important that a statutory right to consultation exists, because it is about development control. They will be called applications for development consent, but in practice they are applications for planning permission for big nationally important projects. At the moment, if someone comes along and wants to build a new road, power station, railway or whatever in a parish, the parish council has a statutory right to be consulted on that planning application. Unless it is written into the Bill, that is an existing right of parish councils that would be taken away. That is the fundamental point. Surely the Government do not want that. When we were talking about the Local Government Bill on Tuesday, the Government said that they did not have a national database of parish councils. I have been thinking about that since then. Parish councils must be the only organisation or group of people in the entire country that the Government do not want to have on their new super database. However, if that is the case, as I pointed out previously, local planning authorities would do the job for the applicants if that was a way round it, but it has to be in the Bill. The argument about national parks, of course, is that they are the local planning authorities in terms of planning implications. They are the local development control authority within each national park. It would be extraordinary if the body which, at the moment, is initially the body to which application is made, should be cut out of the process altogether and should not even have the right as a consultee. These are important matters and I hope the Government will reassure the Committee, or I have a feeling that we will have to return to them. The issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, is very important. He asked about the relationship between these new national planning applications—applications for development consent—in relation to existing local development frameworks, which are a part of the existing planning policy system. But the issue is wider than that because the existing planning policy system, which is fairly complex as we all know—some would say inscrutable—essentially consists of three layers. There are the national policy statements or planning policy statements, the regional planning policy statements or regional spatial strategies and then there are the local development frameworks which will all develop within the regional spatial strategy. If you are considering a planning application as a local planning authority, those are all important material considerations. You look at the local development framework, you look at the regional spatial strategy and you look at the planning policy statement. Sometimes, they conflict. Together with all the other material considerations, you decide whether to pass the planning application. However, I am not clear about the new system. One thing that is clear is that the new national policy statement will be up-front and will be the first thing that the Infrastructure Planning Commission will look at. It is the number one material consideration, although others are listed in the Bill. However, if you have a planning application for a new power station or railway line, for example, it is most unlikely that all the considerations to be taken into account to deal with that application will be in the national policy statement. By its very nature, the national policy statement is a more strategic document. Even if it is pushing people towards specific sites, it is still an overall policy statement. Everything else connected with it is probably not in the national policy statement, such as the materials in which a building will be built, for example. Some of these other issues may be found in planning policy statements, regional spatial strategies and local development frameworks. I cannot find in the Bill the role and relationship between the Infrastructure Planning Commission and the existing policy structure set out within the planning system. That is the fundamental issue in the narrower amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, which talked specifically about local development frameworks. It would be helpful if the Minister could send round one of her famous circulars explaining how the provision will work, because we need to understand it. If it is not clear at the moment, the Bill should be amended so that it is clear. I now move rather more rapidly, I hope, towards the amendments in my name. Amendment No. 178 relates to the consultation report that follows the consultation. We must remember that there is a great change of emphasis on consultation under this new system compared with the existing planning application because the onus is on the applicants to carry out the pre-application consultation. At the moment, there are occasions when applicants do that. We have just had a new supermarket application in Colne and the applicant, Sainsbury's, put in a lot of local consultation. But the danger is that the consultation will not be seen to be unbiased. If a company proposes to build a nuclear power station and that company—presumably EDF or whatever it will be called in this country—puts in an application, and then does the consultation, people will simply not believe that it is not rigged and that it will be fair, open and transparent and that people’s views will be fairly listened to. The amendment suggests that the consultation report must include not just the results of the consultation but an explanation of how that consultation has changed the application in any way. If it has not changed, it must explain why the consultation has been ignored. That is the purpose of that amendment. Amendment No. 183A relates to the point I previously made about who carries out the application. All that we are saying is that the applicant can do the consultation themselves, as the Bill suggests or it can appoint some other quite independent body that is seen by people to be independent to carry one out on their behalf, which would be in the interests of applicants. That is the purpose of that amendment. It is important that the consultation is seen to be fair and impartial. The specific example put forward by my noble friend was BAA submitting an application for expansion of an airport—if I were to think of one at random it would be Heathrow. People throughout south-west London will not believe that BAA itself would carry out a fair consultation exercise, but somebody else might on its behalf. On Amendment No. 184, at the moment, Clause 41(1) says that the applicant must consult, "““such persons as may be prescribed””." We would like to add the words: "““who shall include persons living within the area of each local authority that is within section 42””—" —in other words, local residents within the local authority concerned. We are not suggesting that everyone necessarily has to have a door-to-door leaflet about it, although in some cases that might be appropriate—that is what Sainsbury's did in Colne. There are local newspapers and other means of publicising things. The important thing is that everybody who lives in the area should be told about the application and have the opportunity to respond. There is a Conservative amendment on a similar point. I would simply tick the box and say about the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, on marine issues, that we share his concerns. A later group of amendments will look at that in a bit more detail. Amendment No. 193 is about categories for the purposes of Clause 41(1)(d). It puts the onus firmly on the applicant to make a diligent inquiry as to who the owners, lessees, tenants and occupiers are in order to consult them. At the moment, there is no duty on applicants to make reasonable efforts to identify these people; without such a duty, they will miss out people, who will be miffed. Large organisations or those rich enough to do so might go to the courts; others will feel that the planning system has failed them. Amendment No. 198 relates to Clause 44, on the timetable for consultation. The Bill defines the consultation documents as, "““the documents supplied to the person””." We want to strengthen the definition to mean all the documents required to be supplied. That ties in with Amendment No. 202 to Clause 47, on the duty to publicise the application during consultation. Clause 47(1) says that regulations will be prescribed. We would like clarification of whether that prescription would be by the Secretary of State or the infrastructure planning commission. We assume that it is an order by the Secretary of State. There is ambiguity about whether the overall supervision and monitoring of the consultation is in the charge of the Secretary of State or whether it is devolved to the infrastructure planning commission. We would like clarification. Clause 47(2) is the only specific requirement in the Bill under these regulations, if that is what they are. It provides a deadline for the receipt of responses. Amendment No. 202 would add the words, "““the scope and content of consultation documents to be provided under sections 44 and 46””." The scope and content of the documents are vital. You could post a postcard through people’s doors and say ““That’s it”” or you could give them various types of access to consultation documents. It ought not to be left to the applicants to decide the content of those documents; the regulations should clearly prescribe the minimum information that people must be given. Amendments have been added to this group about the minimum number of days in which to give a consultation response. This was raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Jenkin and Lord Cameron, who tabled amendments on it. We propose that the minimum number of days for a consultation response, whether by statutory consultees, such as local authorities, other organisations or members of the public, be raised from 28 days to 90 days. We do not hold firm to the figure of 90 days, but 28 days is not long enough by a substantial degree. The noble, Lord Jenkin, suggests 12 weeks and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, 56 days. I am sure that we can agree a period, but it should certainly be more than 28 days, especially given the effort needed to give a reasonably detailed and coherent response to a planning application for a power station, a railway line, road or any of the other infrastructure projects mentioned. If the period of 28 days is included in the Bill and adhered to rigidly, the system will be brought into disrepute. The Government cannot countenance that happening as a result of people not believing that they have had enough time to take part properly. People need to spend time deciding what to do when they get notification of an application or read about it in the paper, possibly a week later. Local authorities would have to call meetings to decide what to do and to gather evidence. If the application is for a big development such as a nuclear power station, district councils would probably have to appoint consultants to assist with the response. It takes time for authorities to do their work, make decisions and submit a report. It is simply not acceptable to ask even a local authority to respond within 28 days to huge, major proposals in their area; nor is it acceptable for ordinary people, local groups, parish councils or even national campaign organisations. Of course there are always applications submitted on 20 December or just before the summer holidays, and people go bananas, quite rightly, because they cannot respond. I have spent some time talking about these amendments because they are very important; they are at the heart of the system. There is huge suspicion about the new consultation system because it is to be organised by the applicants. If it does not work and is not seen to be fair, transparent and effective, the whole system will go into disrepute very quickly.