Localism Bill

My Lords, I am very pleased to be moving and speaking to the very last amendments to this Bill, after our many months of discussing it. This gives me the chance to say to the Minister, to the Ministers who have supported her, and indeed to the government Ministers in another place, that this Bill has been enormously improved during its House of Lords stages. Indeed, the key role of this House in scrutinising legislation has been wonderfully illustrated by the progress of the Localism Bill. I have been given a list of 10 major issues that were originally of considerable concern to the Local Government Association, for example, and on which that body, representing local authorities up and down the land, now feels reassured and to a very large degree satisfied with the legislation as it now appears. The same kind of list could have been devised by a number of external agencies, with the same satisfaction rating at the end of that. It has been a long slog, with meetings all through the Summer Recess, and Ministers have worked incredibly hard. The outcome is a Bill that has been transformed. Both thanks and congratulations are in order, very much including congratulations to the opposition Front Bench, and, if I may say so, to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, in particular, who handled this process with great care, courtesy and skill to very great effect, as have been the efforts of external bodies that have made their representations to us so helpfully and so effectively. Turning, therefore, to these last amendments, and slashing my speaking notes by at least two-thirds, let me say that considerable progress has already been made in allaying fears about the subject of these amendments: referenda on neighbourhood plans. I have been concerned that the excellent efforts envisaged by the Bill to see a whole change of culture and attitudes toward development through locally driven planning processes could be sabotaged by divisive local referenda after a neighbourhood plan has been painstakingly devised. Having met the good people in one of the front runner pilot schemes for neighbourhood planning, I was greatly impressed by the hard work and local sensitivity that goes into mediating and negotiating a new plan in order to balance all the local interests and opinions. However, I have noted the potential danger that a referendum, after all the consultative meetings, the trade-offs and the intense discussions, could mean all this hard work being for nothing. I can see that if a neighbourhood plan is opposed by the local planning authority—the elected local authority—it ought to be tested through the mechanism of a referendum. However, if the council itself supports the local group, the parish council or the neighbourhood forum, then, as my previous amendments have tried to establish, there should be no question of opening it up to a local referendum that could lead to neighbours falling out and communities being divided and that could undermine the good work of the local people who have struggled to bring it all together. A referendum also involves the council in considerable expense. I have received considerable reassurance on this issue, and getting the position clearly on the record this evening will be extremely helpful to worried parish councils and potential neighbourhood fora everywhere. My amendments tonight will, I hope, enable the Minister to confirm the following. Where the local authority and parish council agree on the proposals in a draft neighbourhood plan or order, there is no need for a referendum. The neighbourhood plan policies can be taken forward by the local authority as a development plan document, which is subject to independent examination but not referendum. The permissions in the neighbourhood development order can be taken forward as a local development order, which is subject to neither examination nor referendum. This means that the local authority can take forward planning proposals that the neighbourhood forum or parish council has produced in partnership with the wider community and the local authority, without needing to hold a referendum into those proposals. Confirmation from the Minister for this interpretation of the position would be the final bit of good news after the Government’s extremely positive approach to the whole progress of this Bill.