In moving Amendment 60A, I shall also speak to Amendments 60B and 60C, as well as Amendments 71 and 71A. I present the apologies of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, who is unavoidably away today. Amendment 71A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, is in practice virtually the same as Amendment 60A in our name, but the grammar in his is better than the grammar in ours.
Amendment 60A would allow local authorities to set their own permitted development rights. It is a logical extension of the Localism Act, because what is and is not permitted development should be decided locally. The current system allows central government to set out permitted development rights and provide local authorities with limited mechanisms to amend this. We noted the debate in your Lordships’ House on Monday about free schools and the powers of government over permitted development rights, and the limited powers that local authorities can sometimes have. We shall debate that issue further, but allowing permitted development to be managed by a local authority at a local level would mean that individual local issues and differences such as between rural and urban, suburban and city and town centres could be considered.
I accept that the proposal is a significant change to the planning system, and there may be concerns about that both from professionals and from the Government. Any change would need to be accompanied by robust consultation before commencement, but there is a principle behind this that permitted development should be decided at a local level.
Amendment 60B would remove the need for the Secretary of State to give approval for local development orders. Local authorities can currently restrict or extend permitted development rights via the use of an article for direction or a local development order. That can be important when, for example, a council could better
support local economic growth. But the procedures that have to be followed are complicated and time-consuming and rarely used by local authorities. I have been concerned by the length of time that it can take to get a conclusion to a consultation on an Article 4 direction from the beginning of the consultation. Removing the need for the Secretary of State to give approval for each and every local development order as it is implemented across the country would make the procedures quicker and more effective.
Amendment 60C would remove the need for an individual annual report on all local development orders. I question whether those annual reports are necessary. If there was a problem with the local development order, I think it is inevitable that councillors and planning officers would know about that. However, Schedule 4A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 states that an annual report must be produced detailing,
“the extent to which the local development order is achieving its purposes”.
The schedule also states:
“The Secretary of State may prescribe the form and content of the report”.
This is very centralist, and I think that the provision could be safely removed from the statute book in order to speed up the process of extending and relaxing rights better to support growth. At a time of constraint in local authority staffing and planning departments, it would also free up considerable local authority resource and time. As I said a moment ago, councillors and planning officers will know whether a local development order is not working properly.
In the absence of the noble Lords, Lord True and Lord Tope, both of whom are unavoidably unable to be here, I wish to comment on Amendment 71. This amendment would offer local discretion on permitted development reforms. As I am sure my noble friend the Minister knows, there is great concern about this. The amendment would offer councils the local choice whether or not to introduce the permitted development changes which the Government are seeking to introduce. It is not clear to me, and has not been throughout the process, why the Government want to do this. It is supposedly to have a positive impact on growth. It is not clear to me how the Government’s proposals would have a positive impact on growth. I have concluded that permitted development rules should not be changed by Whitehall, since such a move cannot take account of significant local differences. As I said a moment ago, city centres, suburbs, town centres, urban areas and rural areas may all have different requirements, and councils are best placed locally to make these judgments. This is a very important issue, and there is a very important principle at stake. If we believe in localism, surely we should permit a planning authority to have local discretion on permitted development schemes. I beg to move.
6.45 pm