My Lords, I am totally supportive of this clause, but I am vague about how it will work as it is without any form of back-up information. It may be my ignorance of the planning system because I come to it from, as it were, the other side of the desk as an applicant rather than a local authority or planning officer. I am particularly concerned about small developments in rural areas, and here I ought to declare an interest for the purposes of this Committee as a farmer and landowner.
In many rural areas, which are of course underfunded as the result of an unfair and imbalanced central government funding system, planning departments have inadequate resources, staff and expertise. I believe that some local planning authorities are reluctant to engage in pre-application advice; indeed, they cannot afford to do so. I am concerned about the first encounter with the local planning authority for small applicants when they submit an application. It is likely that they will find themselves having to pay, say, 30% to 50% of the costs of a project—we must bear it in mind that these are small projects worth £50,000 or even less—in order to conform with the demands made by the local planning authority in terms of reports and consents. The project, of course, is also greatly delayed because they have to get all the answers needed to complete these reports. It seems to me that the belt-and-braces, tick-box approach applied by local planning authorities is not necessarily in order to cover themselves in case of a comeback on the result of an application, but all too often because they lack the expertise within the department to know what is relevant. That is why they
take a belt-and-braces approach. The fact that, due to the costs, a small project is killed before it even gets off the ground is often the cause of a secret sigh of relief in an overworked and underfunded local planning authority. In these circumstances, you have to ask yourself where our much-needed development will come from.
In my experience when talking to councillors—I have never actually been a councillor—I have found that few of the reports that are asked for are read by the members of the planning committee. One might say that that is fair because they are reported by the planning officers who know all about them, but even that is not necessarily always strictly accurate. I have known reports to be asked for by planning officers which are already in the file; in other words, the officers have not read the file. I have some questions. How is an underfunded rural local planning authority without knowledge and expertise to apply this clause? How will an overworked planning officer apply it to the multitude of different sorts of application that he has to deal with in a rural area? Is this clause all there is? Should there not be more guidance, which is what I would really like to see?
As I say, it may be perfectly clear to those who have worked for a local planning authority and are used to being on the other side of the desk, but it seems that we need a bit more detailed guidance. However, I repeat that I am totally supportive of this clause.