Localism Bill

My Lords, I am very disappointed that my noble friend is not paying more mind to the amendments of my noble friend Lord True. Life is complicated out there. I know that Kensington and Chelsea are pretty uniform places, but even if she were to stray south of the river into Battersea, where I spend some of my time, she would find that it was very difficult to draw boundaries that will have any sense of agreement. There will be a tendency for fragments of local communities to try to grab territory for themselves in an unco-ordinated way. That will apply particularly in the deeper inner cities where community tends to be defined by origin rather than by geography. Under those circumstances, it would be very helpful to have a local authority—which after all is used to dealing with the coherence of the area and how it works—setting out at least some framework by which people can operate. They can always propose something different if they feel that they need to, but to have that coherence offered by a local authority would be immensely helpful. As regards overlapping areas, how do you deal with somewhere like Winchester, say, which is obviously too big to deal with as a neighbourhood but needs coherence over that area when it comes to neighbourhood planning? Going back to a point that I think the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made on the previous occasion, how do you deal with areas where there is a city or a large town which is confined within boundaries that are too tight and needs to work with its surrounding areas to expand? Under both those circumstances we are going to need to think of local flexible solutions that work with the grain of the neighbourhood and produce the right solutions for those circumstances. We are going to need flexibility. I am very disappointed that my noble friend the Minister does not think that that is required. Clause 101 agreed. Schedule 9 : Neighbourhood planning Amendment 148ZZEA Schedule 9 : Neighbourhood planning Amendment 148ZZEA Moved by