My Lords, we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Tope, in Committee on a similar amendment proposing a period of 18 months. The intention is to give early warning to local authorities, so that they have an opportunity to improve with the help of other local authorities, the LGA, and possibly even the Government.
The thrust of the amendment is entirely reasonable. We suspect that the Government’s response will be that authorities will know in good time. Designation will be based on two years’ data and authorities will know the results of the first of these years. If they are failing the criteria for year 1, the danger signals will be there for the end of year 2. Councils will be able to seek to improve. This does not address the position at the start of the scheme where, before the ink is dry on the legislation, the die will effectively be cast.
At a recent meeting, which was kindly organised with the Planning Minister, it was hinted that there might be some easement in the early period. Perhaps
the Minister will tell us whether there are any such developments. In any event, on an ongoing basis, knowing in year 2 that year 1 criteria have not been met may not give the local planning authority sufficient time to improve. Improvement may in part depend on the nature of any new applications. Tardy dealing with the major development submitted in year 1 may affect the data for year 2. For a small local planning authority, staff sickness and the timescales to recruit new staff are factors which anyway could mean that a local authority has insufficient time to turn things around by the end of year 2.
If the objective is to encourage sustainable improvement in local planning authorities, the rigid application of the criteria could be counterproductive. The noble Lord’s amendment seems to give an opportunity of improving that situation under these arrangements. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, that if we do not get a satisfactory answer from the Minister today, he should consider testing the opinion of the House on this proposition.
That leads to our Amendment 15, which requires the serving of a notice of intention to designate but then, crucially, a chance for a local planning authority to make representations as to why designation would be inappropriate—not for an extensive period but for just four weeks in this case. We know that the Government will argue for the importance of transparency and certainty in the process but they should also recognise that a range of factors could affect the timeliness of dealing with applications—difficult development, statutory consultees, extended and iterative community consultation, to name but a few. It might be argued that anyone served with a prospective designation notice is bound to make representations but of course not all will be justified.
In any event, at a recent meeting, we heard from the Planning Minister that although the number of likely local planning authorities to be designated has crept up—I think that he suggested 20—that surely is not too large a group for there to be the opportunity to make representations. We should think of the damage to and the demotivation of a planning team which gets designated through no genuine reasons that it could influence.
Perhaps I may again take the noble Baroness back to our deliberations in Committee when she said:
“There are usually reasons why planning applications are delayed, and one may be that an application will take longer than the normal consultation period. Before an authority is designated, it will be allowed to put that view forward and say that it has not been able to deal with certain applications because it has agreed that the process will take longer, or there may be some other reason. A portcullis will not just come down; discussions and explanations will be possible”.—[Official Report, 22/1/13; col. 1032.]
That seems to be pretty clear and suggests that there should be scope for precisely what the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and our Amendment 15 seek. Unfortunately, from all that we have heard so far, it seems as though the portcullis will just come down and that there will be no stay of execution on this.