My Lords, when I first saw the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Cameron, I was not sure that I would be able to support it. However, in his introduction to the amendment he certainly clarified some points, and I agreed with a lot of what he said. However, I see both good and bad points in this short amendment, and would like to offer two comments. First, I declare an interest as a landowner who has recently benefited from a housing development planning application.
On the one side, there are often planning circumstances in which a housebuilder will submit a new, revised planning application on a site where he already has planning permission. This could perhaps be to squeeze in more houses, to improve the layout or to take account of a potential Section 106 condition. The real aim, of course, is to increase profit on the scheme, which is often to the detriment of the vendor of the land.
The disadvantages of the amendment arise where it talks about the “area”. I am not sure whether there is a definition elsewhere of the word “area”, but I take it that it means the local authority area or the district council’s geographical area. Large national housebuilders may have various schemes on the go throughout an LPA, the aim of which is to provide more houses of the type that we really need, as we have already heard. The amendment could thwart these types of concurrent developments, to the detriment of aspiring occupiers. Therefore, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.