My Lords, throughout this Bill we have discussed the importance of local plans in setting out the vision for a local area and providing certainty to communities and businesses as to where new homes and other development will go. Local planning authorities are required to prepare and maintain a local development scheme. This sets out the development plan documents—the documents that make up a local plan—that an authority intends to produce and the timetable for producing them. Existing powers enable the Secretary of State, or the Mayor of London where the local planning authority is a London borough, to direct a local planning authority to make amendments to their local development scheme. Clause 129 amends that power to ensure that the Secretary of State can direct amendments that relate to both the subject matter and geographical coverage of the documents specified in the scheme.
I propose minor amendments to Clause 129 to enable the Secretary of State to prepare a local development scheme for a local planning authority and to direct an authority to bring that scheme into effect. The amendments ensure that where an authority has failed to set out publicly its intention to produce a local plan and indeed a timetable for doing so, we can take action and provide certainty for all communities that a plan for their area will be prepared and that they will have an opportunity to get involved in the plan-making process. I beg to move.