Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications and Deemed Applications) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I shall rise briefly on these regulations; I do not think that they are particularly controversial. In fact, many elements of them are welcome. I thank the Minister for the way in which he set out the rationale behind the regulations. It is notable that the Government acknowledge that there was an error in raising the threshold in the first place. It is always encouraging to hear that kind of admission and a desire to correct the error. Also encouraging is the fact that there seemed to be a meaningful consultation exercise. As the Minister said, local planning authorities’ representations were taken into account as a result of that and changes were made to the proposals. The way in which the exercise has been conducted is encouraging also because it is likely to save applicants substantial amounts of money in the planning process. The overall saving is estimated in the impact assessment to be between £4 million and £14 million per annum—although that seems a pretty broad range —with administrative costs for business being reduced by between £5 million and £18 million per annum. Again, one has to applaud all that. These matters are important because the consultation document shows a worrying trend which I hope the Minister will comment on when he responds—if he can; he is not to worry if it is not possible. The schematic shows that the number of applications which have progressed has declined from a high of 65 per cent in 2003-04 to half that in the third quarter of 2008. We do not have later figures but it would be interesting to see them. In 2007-08, over 1,000 major applications were progressed; that number has fallen to fewer than 200. Those figures reveal the true impact of this. If it is possible for the Minister to update those figures, it would be extremely welcome. While it is very good news for business that the cost of applications is being reduced, there are fewer applications. The fee income from applications is an important revenue stream for local government. What consideration has been given to the impact of the reduction in fee income on pressures that may occur elsewhere in the budgets of local authorities?