My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend that it is very important that parish councils are notified of the making of any legal orders affecting rights of way and other highways serving or crossing a parish and indeed of any town and village green applications relating to land within the parish. It may be helpful to the Committee if I set out how the process works to ensure that this is the case.
First, as regards rights of way creation, diversion and extinguishment orders, paragraph 1(2)(b)(ii) of Schedule 14 to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and paragraph 1(3)(b)(ii) of Schedule 6 to the Highways Act 1980 require the order-making authority to serve notice on,
“every council, the council of every parish or community and the parish meeting of every parish not having a separate parish council, being a council, parish or community whose area includes”,
any land affected by a rights of way order.
As regards orders for stopping up or diverting highways for the purposes of development—that is, Section 247/248 orders—Section 252 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requires that, before making an order, notice be served on the local authority in the area of the proposed stopping up or diversion of a highway. Therefore, the notice of a stopping up or diversion is served on the parish council in whose area the development lies.
For town and village green applications, existing regulations require notification of Section 15 applications to parish councils. Specifically, the Commons Registration (England) Regulations 2008, which apply to registration authority areas in England in respect of which the registration provisions in Part 1 of the 2006 Act have been commenced—known as “pioneer areas”—and the Commons (Registration of Town or Village Greens) (Interim Arrangements) (England) Regulations 2007, which apply to other authority areas in England, require notification of such applications to parish councils.
Schedule 14 to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and Schedule 6 to the Highways Act 1980 require that, before a rights of way creation, diversion or extinguishment order is confirmed by either the Secretary of State or the order-making authority, notice shall be given in the prescribed form: first,
“stating the general effect of the order and that it has been made and is about to be submitted for confirmation or to be confirmed as an unopposed order”;
secondly,
“naming a place in the area in which the land to which the order relates is situated where a copy of the order and of the map referred to therein may be inspected free of charge … at all reasonable hours”;
and, thirdly,
“specifying the time (which shall not be less than 28 days from the date of the first publication of the notice) within which, and the manner in which, representations or objections with respect to the order may be made”.
The notices shall be given, among others, to,
“every council, the council of every parish or community and the parish meeting of every parish not having a separate parish council, being a council, parish or community whose area includes”,
any of the land to which the order relates.
The Commons Registration (England) Regulations 2008, which apply in the pioneer authority areas that I mentioned earlier, require, in Regulation 22(1)(a), an applicant to serve a notice of any application to a registration authority under Part 1 of the Act,
“on each of the persons specified in Schedule 6”.
Schedule 6, as it applies to Section 15 applications, requires the notice to be served on any local authority other than the registration authority in whose area the land in question lies. “Local authority”, as defined in Regulation 2 of the 2008 regulations, includes a parish council and the chairman of a parish meeting.
Finally, the Commons (Registration of Town or Village Greens) (Interim Arrangements) (England) Regulations 2007, which apply to the non-pioneer authority areas, require, in Regulation 5, a registration authority to send notice of an application in the prescribed form to every “concerned authority”. In this case, “concerned authority” is defined in Regulation 2(2) as,
“a local authority … in whose area any part of the land affected by the application lies”.
“Local authority”, as defined in Regulation (2), includes a parish council.
I believe that what I have illustrated answers my noble friend’s questions. With those assurances and the details that I have provided, I hope that he will be happy to withdraw his amendment.