Localism Bill

My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the more or less general support for what we have done, and, in my turn, I thank all those who have diligently attended meetings—not only the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, but my noble friends Lord Gardiner, Lord Cathcart and Lord Howard of Rising. I fear that I may have forgotten someone but there have been great consultations, mostly over the summer, and I am very grateful for the time that noble Lords have put in to ensure that these provisions do not have the unintended consequences that were anticipated. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was the only person to pose questions and perhaps I may turn to those. His amendment would give landowners 60 days to request the local authority to carry out an internal review of its decision to list an asset. We are now going to move from 28 days to six weeks, which is a bit longer, but we think that that will give a landowner time to decide whether he needs to appeal the decision. The details of the procedures for carrying out an internal review, including who can do it, will, I am afraid, be in regulations. I am sure that we will have an opportunity to talk about this further before then, but it is anticipated that that is what will happen. The process will be that the landowner will first be contacted by the local authority if the land has been nominated by a community group. Therefore, in practice, landowners will have been aware of the process well before they receive the formal notice of the local authority’s decision. Once a review has been requested, it is proposed that the local authority will have six weeks to conduct the review. We also intend to provide in the regulations that, if a local authority and the landowner agree, this period can be extended. Therefore, I think that flexibility is built into that system. I was also asked who can nominate an asset and about the voluntary and community body. Conditions will be set out in the regulations to demonstrate a local connection. The intention is to ensure that such groups are genuinely concerned with the social well-being benefit of their community and that they are based in the relevant community or neighbourhood. This may include unincorporated groups, so as to allow groups that have recently been set up to help save an asset. There are many examples that have already taken place where people have set up a group to try to save their pub or an asset. We know that that can and has happened. We do not feel that we ought to stand in the way of such groups. However, we will look to see whether we need to place stricter requirements on them as to whether they need to be incorporated or recognised, very much as the noble Lord has said. I will come back to him on that as we make those regulations. I am extremely grateful to all those who have given their time to do this. I hope that we have more or less answered their concerns. I know you can never be 100 per cent sure—there is bound to be somebody round about who does not think we have quite gone far enough—but I think we have addressed all of the concerns that were raised.