Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, for raising as powerfully as ever this very important issue. The Government have been looking at the current processes for publication of statutory notices for some time, and I am very sympathetic to the intentions behind the noble Lord’s amendment. In 2007, the Cabinet Office produced a report entitled Informing the public in a multi media age, which contains recommendations broadly in line with the noble Lord’s amendment. This report recognised that a mandatory requirement for statutory notices to be published in the local press is not necessarily the best way to ensure community involvement in all cases. The Cabinet Office is currently looking at how to move forward with statutory notices in a joined-up way across government. It will be writing to all government departments soon to ask them to review the mandatory requirement in light of policy areas and related legislation. My own department has commissioned an independent report which, among other things, looks into statutory notices in a planning context. As the noble Lord has already rightly stated, planning notices make up between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of all statutory notices. We are committed to ensuring that local people are not kept in the dark in relation to planning statutory notices. The Killian Pretty review, Planning applications: A faster and more responsive system, made a number of recommendations. Recommendation 11 in the report was clear that, to help improve the effectiveness of community engagement, local authorities should be given greater autonomy and flexibility to determine the best approaches to use in order to notify the public about planning applications, including allowing them to decide whether to use local newspapers or not. This report also recognises that local authorities’ planning authority web pages should be easily readable and understandable, with clearly presented information—for example, being able to resize text or view the page as ““text only”” for those with visual impairments. The department is considering that very positively. However, although a large proportion of statutory notices may relate to planning and highways, there are many other kinds of these notices and they will need to be dealt with in different ways to ensure the highest level of community involvement. For instance, a planning statutory notice which was relevant to a small group of residents would need to be treated differently from one relating to a major development or a licensing statutory notice affecting an entire unitary council area. I am therefore concerned that to try and legislate for all of these may not work in the way intended by the amendment. There would need to be analysis of how it would work in each case, and we might need to amend each piece of legislation separately. Therefore, more preparatory work will need to be completed before we can confidently legislate in this area. There may be other ways of doing so which do not require primary legislation, such as by order under the Electronic Communications Act 2000. The amendment restricts the framework to notices produced by local authorities or authorities included on the ““duty to involve”” list; it does not make mention of notices produced by the Secretary of State. The Government would like to investigate further whether notices laid by the Secretary of State should also be included in any change to the rules around statutory notices. I mentioned that we are looking in depth at these issues and will soon publish our own report outlining how we plan to move forward in this area in relation to planning. I would very much appreciate all noble Lords’ views when the response is published, particularly those of the noble Lord, Lord Low. I shall ensure that a copy of the response when published is sent to the noble Lord in a format suitable to his requirements. The noble Lord’s amendment raised another interesting point that needs further thought by the Government. It aims to ensure that statutory notices can easily be reused by third parties. We would like to look at that in more detail to see how best it can be encouraged and what its benefits would be. I reiterate that, while I sympathise greatly with the noble Lord’s amendments, I do not believe that they are the best way to address the issue, given the current review work across government and the need to ensure that it is considered in the broadest context. I hope that my response has gone some way to reassuring the noble Lord that the Government will seriously and carefully consider the process for publishing statutory notices, and look especially at increasing community involvement in decision-making. I appreciate the noble Lord’s raising a very important issue, especially in relation to the Bill’s emphasis on local democracy. However, I hope that, with the reassurance that I have given him, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.