My Lords, I support Amendments 6A and 6B. For the purposes of this Committee, I declare an interest as a farmer and landowner. Both amendments are about ensuring that the procedure governing an examiner’s report on a neighbourhood plan allows the neighbourhood to meet him halfway, as it were, or allows him to make helpful compromise amendments rather than full-scale deletions, which I gather is all too often the case.
As has been said frequently today, planning is a very complicated subject for the average lay man—that very definitely includes me. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, said that he was not a planning expert. If he is not a planning expert, I am a babe in arms. I have heard planning described as a minefield covered in a mist. In spite of this, villages, communities and neighbourhoods work really hard to master this misty minefield and over a long period of time—two years, five years, whatever it might be—they try to get to grips with the complications of the planning system, not to mention the complications of the diverse needs of their community and the divergent local views on how it should be developed, in line, of course, with the local plan and the NPPF. That point has been made several times and I thoroughly endorse it.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and I have been in communication with a friend of mine, one Richard Wakeford from Winchcombe Town Council in north Gloucestershire. He is a trained planner and used to work for the department. He worked with me in the Countryside Agency as well. He said that he helped his community and town council to develop a neighbourhood plan. It involved developing lots of houses but those houses were then knocked off the plan. His letter to me says:
“In Winchcombe, for example, the Town Council proposed a significant development site to meet the needs of older people. Close to the centre of town, a development of small housing units and an associated care home—in line with an emerging Joint Core Strategy—would have helped to attract residents to downsize, freeing up homes for families”.
He went on to explain that the plan was co-ordinated with the local planning authority, the developer and the town. It was almost a done deal. His letter continues:
“And yet, the Examiner recommended the policy for deletion—not as a matter of principle but because some of the words used were not defined clearly enough … there were suggestions … that the development could not be viable given the number of conditions set out in the draft plan. The community’s constructive engagement with the proposed developer”—
and the local planning authority—
“was simply written off with the stroke of a red pen”.
He goes on to say that the examiner simply deleted large elements of the plan. The town council essentially had no further say because reinstating the proposed development site would require another 12 months’ work. They had assumed that the examiner would make amendments if necessary and that if he needed further information to understand their wording he would have arranged a hearing. They were pretty disillusioned, which is not very surprising.
It seems very wrong that after often two or three years—or more—of work it should all be undermined at the stroke of a pen without any discussion or comeback. That may take a few days longer but then we in this House indulge in issues such as ping-pong and on the whole the result we get is better for that. Some sort of ping-ping ought to be allowed between the examiner and the relevant neighbourhood planning body, which is very often the town or parish council. The examiner should not have the right to summarily undermine the whole neighbourhood plan without giving the neighbourhood a chance to amend or alter the plan in line with his views to make it acceptable to him. If only there were a bit of discussion, I am sure they could make the plan fit. However, there does not seem to be any need for discussion and that is what these two amendments try to put right.