My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to move this amendment and, in so doing, refer noble Lords to the interest I have already declared as a trustee of the Crafnant Trust. The trust has responsibility for Lake Crafnant, a small reservoir in north Wales.
The amendment seeks to clarify the definition of duty properties as they appear in Section 101A of the Water Industry Act 1991 where an application is being made to connect premises to sewerage for the first time, and seeks to define “duty properties” as premises,
“with permanent use and generating domestic effluent”.
The Water Industry Act 1991 brought in a duty on water companies to provide a sewerage connection where the current arrangements were causing environmental problems, if that was the cheapest overall solution to the problem. Section 101A(1) of the Act states that,
“it shall be the duty of a sewerage undertaker to provide a public sewer to be used for the drainage for domestic sewerage purposes of premises in a particular locality in its area”.
Section 101A(2)(a) further defines the use of the word “premises” as,
“the premises in question, or any of those premises, are premises on which there are buildings”.
It is the use of the word “buildings” that has become problematic for some local authorities and a strict interpretation of the word has given rise to some environmental problems—problems that have caused conflict with the duties of local authorities under the Government’s own guidance, Planning Policy for Traveller Sites, issued in 2012. Under this guidance, local planning authorities are advised that they must have,
“due regard to the protection of local amenity and local environment”,
and that sites should be,
“sustainable economically, socially and environmentally”.
Chesterton Fen in south Cambridgeshire is a case in point, where conflict has been seen between the 1991 Act and the Government’s planning policy. The
Traveller site there has full planning permission and the caravan count in January of this year showed that there were 261 caravans on the Chesterton Fen Road site but, because very few of the premises there are “buildings”, none of these is connected to a main sewer and the owners have each had to make their own arrangements for sewage disposal such as small package treatment plants, cesspits and septic tanks leading to soakaways. The development there is close to the River Cam and, because the development is dense and low, there can be environmental problems. I am told that lagoons close to the banks of the river can become less than sweet smelling at all times of the year.
Local councillors petitioned Anglian Water in September 2007 to investigate whether it had a duty to provide a mains sewerage connection but Anglian Water turned the request down in 2009 and an appeal was lost in June 2011. The judgment hinged on the number of properties in the area for which the water company had a duty to provide this service under the Act. In short, most of the Travellers’ caravans or day rooms did not count, so although there are more than 250 caravan plots in the area, only 30 duty properties—houses and a few substantial mobile homes—were considered, and the economic argument was then that it was cheaper for these 30 to provide cesspits for themselves than to lay on a sewer. If all the caravans had counted as buildings, there is no question but that the water authority would have had to provide a sewer. After all, it is impossible to imagine permission being given for an estate of 250 houses without access to sewerage being part of that permission. Therefore, the whole issue revolves around the use of the word “buildings” and the lack of guidance around its definition. Many applications and appeals have had to resort to the definition provided under building regulations guidance, which is why successive applications and appeals have failed.
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Conscientious local authorities seek to adhere to and to carry out their obligations under the Government’s 2012 planning policy guidelines but in this case are prevented from doing so by Section 101A(2)(a) of the 1991 Act. Where caravans are occupied as permanent residences and have full planning permission, there is surely a case that residents should not be discriminated against and their premises should be classed as premises in,
“permanent use and generating domestic effluent”.
This amendment provides the opportunity to address that issue, which has two concerns; namely, the environment in which people live and the rights of people to be treated equally. I beg to move.