My Lords, I will say a few words which I think will help the House in the context of my noble friend’s amendment. I am very grateful to her for the time that she has spent with me and my officials and for her championing of neighbourhood planning. However, contrary to the advice that she has had, I cannot say anything about her neighbourhood plan. I wish I could because there are things that I would deploy but the matter is sub judice and subject to appeal.
As I said, my noble friend has been extremely generous with her time on this important matter, meeting me five times in recent days to scrutinise the current framework for neighbourhood examinations, and has put her arguments forward for their reform. I am grateful to my noble friend and the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy, Lord Shipley and Lord Stunell, for the time they have given to work with my department to identify possible solutions to address their concerns. They brought practical experience and wisdom, for which my department has been most grateful.
I will take the opportunity to set out what we are already doing in response to these concerns because that is relevant to this amendment and others. I also want to be clear that I am continuing to look further at this matter and will keep noble Lords informed. It may be helpful if I put this in context. We are consulting in the housing White Paper on what changes may be needed to ensure that consultation and examination procedures for all types of plan-making are appropriate and proportionate. This provides an opportunity for communities and others with direct experience of the examination process to inform any reforms. I take this opportunity to encourage contributions to our consultation. Building on our discussions with my noble friend, we are also considering what additional material to support this consultation could be made available on our website.
I have also been talking directly to examiners to understand what action they will take now, independently of government, to ensure that communities and others have confidence in the examination process. Indeed, I had the first of these meetings yesterday with representatives of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which manages the neighbourhood planning independent examiner referral service, and with a number
of examiners. The referral service is one of the main providers of examiners used by local planning authorities. I am pleased to inform noble Lords that, in response to our discussions, RICS has committed to producing procedural practice guidance on examination by the autumn for the examiners it works with. The guidance will provide clarity and reassurance that an open and transparent process will be consistently applied to the examination of neighbourhood plans. I will endeavour to supply additional detail to noble Lords who have participated in discussions on the Bill as to how that will pan out.
We will also amend planning guidance to clarify our expectations of local planning authority engagement with neighbourhood planning groups before and during the examination process. We have already made amendments to the Bill in Committee that will enable the Secretary of State to, for example, require authorities to set out how they will provide advice to neighbourhood planning groups on the relationship between a neighbourhood plan and the plans that the authority has prepared or is preparing.
My noble friend and other noble Lords have also highlighted the technical knowledge needed to prepare a neighbourhood plan and the challenges that groups can face without access to specialist skills. We confirmed in the housing White Paper that we will make further funding available to neighbourhood planning groups from 2018 to 2020 and we are continuing to develop the tools and support available to neighbourhood groups. We are already doing more to promote the availability of these tools and resources.
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In addition, noble Lords have highlighted the need for technical support for neighbourhood planning groups and the need for a “health check” before a plan goes to examination. Importantly, we are making it easier for priority groups to get technical consultancy support, including all groups using their plan to allocate housing. The health check is available to anybody, and it is available to priority groups without charge. A health check is designed to identify critical issues at an early stage so that these can be addressed, thereby reducing the risk of significant modification of a neighbourhood plan once it has been submitted to a local planning authority.
I want to set out the context in which we are seeking to address concerns that have been brought forward. Work is continuing: the department has spent a lot of time with my noble friend, working very constructively together, and will continue to do so. I wanted to put that in context and I am grateful.