My Lords, I have Amendment 38 in this string of amendments. With one in six homes at risk at present, it is quite clear that homes need to be built which protect residents from increasing flood risk. I have put down this amendment because I noted that the Government, both on Report and in Committee in the Commons, were remarkably un-keen to delete this clause, so my thinking is that there is more than one way to skin a cat. If one feels as I do about the issue of flood risk, there is perhaps the potential for exemptions. I have tabled this amendment because all the evidence from around the UK shows that we need drainage standards and designs for drainage
to be agreed up front. If they are not, it is not good for the housebuilder or the local authority, and it is certainly not good for the home owner.
In Scotland there is a legal requirement to have sustainable drainage on any development, but developers are not obliged to engage with Scottish Water on the design and building up front. This results in housebuilders producing their own designs, which Scottish Water then has issues with. The result is that 90% of these drainage systems are not adopted by Scottish Water. In Wales, however, developers have to have an agreement with the sewerage undertakers on a specific design before they start on-site. This system works and does not hold up developments. This shows that the designs for sewerage and sustainable drainage need to be settled at the beginning of the process, and local authorities need the powers to enable that to happen. If the prohibition on local authorities imposing pre-commencement conditions goes ahead, that cannot happen. What then will happen is that developers will not be certain about the drainage, the adoption or the maintenance, there will be commuted sum disagreements, developers will in all likelihood put the arrangements into a private company with no quality assurance on the drainage—it will probably end up being a tank somewhere in the ground, rather a scheme that enhances the environment or the area for the homeowner—and future flooding issues will be left for the local authority and the homeowner to pick up.
The Government have given us no evidence that there is a problem. The examples the Minister sent round in the letter to noble Lords were just a series of quotes, mainly from the annual reports from the housebuilders. I have gone through the government consultation and there is no indication of the scale of the so-called problem, and no single citing of a concrete example. It is therefore no surprise that only a minority—44%—of those who undertook the government consultation supported the proposal to prohibit local authorities from imposing pre-commencement conditions. Therefore, there is not majority support from the Government’s consultation for this measure to go ahead.
Of course, planning conditions imposed by local planning authorities should be reasonable and necessary. However, as the Government themselves said on 24 January in response to the EFRA Committee’s report on flood prevention,
“the robust planning approach in place is the best way to control development so that it does not add to flood risk”.
As such, pre-commencement conditions should be seen as a positive tool to deliver this, as well as to ensure that permission can be granted.
To be blunt, this approach is also putting the cart before the horse. After a battle with noble Lords, Clause 171 of the Housing and Planning Act requires the Government to review planning law on policy relating to sustainable drainage in England. That review by DCLG and Defra is currently under way and is due for completion by April. At this point I must say that I am grateful to the Minister for the offer of a meeting on that issue, which I understand is now scheduled for later this week.
The Government have provided no real evidence that there is a problem. Evidence from Scotland and Wales shows that we need to ensure that flooding conditions are settled up front, and there is a real risk here of pre-empting any decisions following the Government’s own review, which we are expecting in the next few months. On that basis, it is absolutely essential that the Government address the issue, and if they will not go as far as removing the whole clause, they should make exemptions for important issues such as dealing with flood risk; otherwise, we will be putting home owners of the future in real danger.