My Lords, I support the thrust of this amendment because my professional work puts me at the sharp end of the fall-out from precisely this type of policy. As the noble Lord, Lord True, has said, we risk in effect a flip-flop from avoiding the regulation of the colour of front doors and replacement windows to no control at all. If ever there was an example of parliamentary process being a blunt instrument, I suspect this is one.
I have problems with this area of government policy in its cumulative effects. We seem almost to have a good cop Government wishing to deregulate, which I can understand and sympathise with, and conferring additional free development rights on householders. However, I am bound to say that I do not see the noble Lord, Lord True, and the LGA in the opposite camp
of bad cop either. One of the great virtues of planning policy, among all the things that I, we and clients regularly curse about the intrusiveness of it, is that it has actually protected the built and the semi-natural environment of the urban and rural landscape. It has done so in such a way that our European neighbours come over here to see how we have managed to do it all the years since the post war era when the first planning Acts came in.
The real possibility here is the increasing urbanisation of domestic back gardens and the materially increased density of that whole built environment. That is not without consequences, as the noble Lord has consistently pointed out on this and previous occasions. I recently attended a number of meetings at the Minister’s old stamping ground, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which has a basements working group. Your Lordships might wonder what basements have to do with all this, but I can tell you that a lot of basements are constructed in back gardens, so the thing is not entirely without its relevance.
A number of things came through there which I think were very interesting and that have to some extent informed my views. First, there is a risk that open space between buildings for light, air and privacy might be compromised, and the only thing that stands between the general rights of permitted development and getting a fair balance between neighbours is some intervention by the local planning authority. It is a matter of scale and proportion, but of course it has visual and amenity consequences. Beyond that, in valuation terms, the mercantile gain for one person who happens to construct their particular scheme might lead to the erosion of the visual appeal and consequential value of neighbours’ property, unless, as I say, they are carefully regulated and kept in fair proportion.
Technically—this is where I pick up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, made—it brings additional pressures on the limits of property ownership, particularly in relation to boundaries. We already have a substantial amount of that in the more expensive parts of inner London boroughs. Property values as an impetus already cause serious friction between neighbours. I know this because a good deal of my professional work relates to neighbour disputes.
That might not matter if we had a land registry title plan that was a precise guide to ownership. Unfortunately, such plans do not provide that. Even in an urban area of 1:1,250 mapping scale, there is an error factor, as set out by the land registry own guidance, of plus or minus 1 metre on the ground either way. On a plan of that scale, that represents 0.8 millimetres thick, plus or minus. It is no idle suggestion, therefore, that this might increase neighbour disputes, because the process of establishing precise ownership is sometimes clear but sometimes very far from clear, and the registered title does not help.
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Allied to this is the generally held belief that if you do not need local authority consent, you do not need to ask anyone about anything. Policies of this nature risk seriously eroding the basic principles of property rights and obligations, and the mutual respect that
they require. As a result, all sorts of issues crop up, such as those relating to surface water drainage, rights of light, impacts on property security and, in some instances, the integrity of buildings and privacy issues.
This is a matter which I and colleagues at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Boundaries on the party walls professional panel, which I happen to chair, have to wrestle with. We had to wrestle with it when, I think in 2009, there was a relaxation on building regulation requirements for additions to homes. We have been there before. We know what the effects are.
My next point relates to some other principles of urbanisation and the effects on the environment. During the discussions on the basements policy with the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, a letter came in from Savills, the agents acting for Thames Water. Savills is a very large international firm. It pointed out the potentially deleterious effects of developments in domestic gardens, the consequences for compromising infiltration of rain into the subsoil caused by impervious surfaces, and the outcomes for public drainage capacity.
Furthermore, it flagged up what I will nickname the “Chelsea sponge” effect: the overall cubic capacity of the subsoil available to absorb and then gradually lose and release surface and ground water. I am certain that there is a Richmond sponge, a Wandsworth sponge, and a Sutton sponge. There is certainly an Exmoor sponge, about which I tendered a paper some time ago. It applies all over the place. Thames Water also volunteered that, in its view, some 20% of the green space in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea had been lost over the last 20 years. Therefore, it viewed with some concern the interruption and the covering of these areas with if not hard surfaces then impervious objects below the surface.
That has some bearing on Thames Water’s Thames tideway scheme. It is significantly affected—I will not say largely because I am no water engineer, I must admit—by the fact that there is an old combined surface water and foul water system. Therefore, what runs off more quickly into the Victorian sewerage system has a material effect on its ability to cope.
My view is that the relaxation of planning rules on back gardens cannot safely be made on the basis of a global sweep of the hand. I do not think it is reasonable to abolish controls and then expect local planning authorities to pick up the pieces via an Article 4 direction. An Article 4 direction requires a process that may be subject to challenge, and it will allow all manner of expectations to be built up, which may in turn affect the ability to achieve this, because the potential compensation implications for householders who have proceeded in the expectation of being able to get development are removed by any Article 4 direction. Much better that this is not removed wholesale but that the discretion is placed in the hands of the local authority.
I will finish with one particular example. Your Lordships will doubtless remember the “Oxford shark”, which the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, reminded me of when I was talking to her a few minutes ago. One fibreglass shark sticking out through the roof of an Oxfordshire terraced house may be regarded as a joke, two might be more of a conversation
piece, three would almost certainly be a bore. Bad design, poor siting and a bad choice of materials affect long-term values. For sharks, read home offices, overlarge extensions, treehouses, things being built hard on boundaries that should have been kept back from them, and the loss of privacy, amenity and spatial consideration between buildings that that would entail.
I do not know whether the Minister will accept this amendment or give the noble Lord, Lord True, some indication that some discussion and compromise can be achieved here. However, if the noble Lord decided to press the matter, I would be very inclined to follow him into the Lobby, subject to what the Minister may say, because this is a matter of considerable social, economic and practical importance in terms of the good governance of what we are actually talking about, which is scarce spatial resources within the built environment.