Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

With some regret, I confess that I have sympathy with the noble Lords opposite in their demands, but not with their attacks on my neighbouring authority, Salford. I dissociate myself from those remarks. Like everyone else, Salford has a way of dealing with petitions that is its own. It is right, and I share the Government’s desire, to have a duty for local authorities to respond to petitions, but we need an appropriate and minimum amount of guidance for them to do that. I ask my noble friend to think about whether measuring how local authorities respond and seeing whether that response is adequate could become part of the comprehensive area assessment. Someone will be making sure that there will be a system, which will be different in each authority, but it could be tested independently and we would not rely on local authorities to do it. I share the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, to be clear about what we mean by petitions, although I hasten to add that I do not believe that his subsection (9) would help; if two neighbours complain in writing, that is a letter. Local authorities should respond to letters, but it is not a petition if it involves only two households. We need to understand petitions, because there is a variety of reasons why people petition. They may want a new level-crossing, as the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, suggested, which can be dealt with in a particular way, but it may be about a planning application or the closure of a facility, which is time-limited. Unless the authority deals with that within the appropriate timescale, the planning application has already been dealt with or the facility closes. We need to understand that; timeliness could be important. I was interested to read Amendment 79B. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will tell us where proposed new subsection (8) is, or is it too secret for us to know?