My Lords, perhaps I can help the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. Lots of guidance on this issue is already available. I believe that Clause 5 is unnecessary in what, if I may say so, is a pretty unnecessary Bill, so I support the amendments, particularly Amendment 55 and, indeed, the proposal that the clause should not stand part of the Bill.
As I say, quite a lot of guidance is already provided in the NPPF to local authorities on information requirements, and we need to allow some time for that to bed in before taking any unnecessary legislative steps to control local authorities in the information that they may seek. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, it is possible to see what the evidence is that local authorities are being overly prescriptive and requiring information that is otiose, irrelevant or unreasonable. I have had experience across the planning system, mostly from the point of view of organisations requiring information from applicants through local authorities, and I would say that it is the lack of information, or delayed or poor quality information, which creates uncertainty and causes delays that result in poor quality decisions and make it virtually impossible for other interested parties to have a full and fair view of the impact of an application. That is particularly true for some of the environmental requirements that local authorities seek from planning applications.
With regard to “reasonableness”, I am sure the Minister will say that reasonableness is reasonable, but that the wording removes from the local authority the ability to be the final arbiter, to be in the driving seat and to be able to reduce the level of uncertainty that can cause these adverse consequences for decision making. It would be much wiser to allow the guidance
that has been issued so recently time to work through in order to see whether local planning authorities are making overly onerous information requirements. If they are, the guidance should be tightened because this issue is much more appropriate for guidance than for primary legislation.
It is interesting that the Royal Town Planning Institute is against Clause 5. Even the Law Society, while supporting Clause 5, quite rightly notes that careful guidance will be needed to avoid this provision becoming a new judicial-review weapon for third parties to stall developments. As an old hand at judicial review as a weapon to stall developments, I would not like to think that we were creating more opportunities to do that.