Planning Bill

I am grateful to noble Lords for addressing their amendments succinctly. Some of this reiterates our earlier discussions. It is rather a large group of amendments and I shall follow them in the logical sequence of the Bill. I shall deal first with the handling by the commission of an application and then the notification and publicising of accepted applications. We are concerned with probing questions about the nature of consultation and the need for noble Lords to be secure in what the Bill will deliver. We talked on previous amendments about the safeguards set out in Clause 53—the series of conditions that must be met before the IPC can accept an application. The commission must be satisfied that the application is in the correct form and that the applicant has complied with the pre-application procedure, set out in Chapter 4. In deciding whether that is the case, the IPC is required to have regard to any representations from local authorities about the adequacy of consultation. I am sure that local authorities will not be slow in coming forward there. That consultation will be carried out under Clauses 41, 46 and 47, which relate to the promoter’s duty to consult statutory consultees and local communities and the duty to publicise the proposed application. Most of the amendments to Clause 53 therefore propose to extend the requirements placed on the commission when deciding whether to accept an application. I want to address the central misunderstanding in Amendments Nos. 215 and 216. I reassure noble Lords that the reference to ““local-authority consultee”” in Clause 53(4) would not prevent either party from submitting representations about the adequacy of the consultation, nor would it mean that the commission could ignore them. The references to Clauses 41, 46 and 47 in Clause 53(5) would not prevent the other parties from making representations saying that the promoter had not had due regard to the responses to consultation, nor would it mean that the commission could ignore them. I thought that that was the noble Baroness’s concern when she spoke to her amendment.