My Lords, the amendments in this group concern the examiner. The examiner comes into the scene quite late on when a neighbourhood plan is being drawn up. The examiner looks at the plan; he arrives; and in our case he did not talk to anybody. We were told that he had driven around the area, but we did not know that. We never saw him, met him, or explained to him what we were trying to achieve. He disappeared and left us with sweeping changes to the years of work that had been undertaken by good people in the community—people who were the first to admit they were not professional planners. But our examiner was never seen. People say that their examiner did not understand. We hear people say that. The question is how to get this to work in a much more inclusive way, because the volunteers who make the development plan need to talk to the person who is examining it. The examiner needs to talk to the community to understand what it is trying to achieve.
There was a problem in our community because our village was at the vanguard of making a neighbourhood plan. When the examiner came in and made these enormous changes, of which we knew nothing until we received the written material that he gave us, we were completely dumbfounded. This was not the neighbourhood plan that we wanted to put to the public. It was a plan that was written by the examiner, who deleted pages and pages of our plan which we felt were informative and useful to the local community when it came to vote in a referendum.
I have probably been unfair and too hard on examiners, but I think that they have been tied up in a process that has not been inclusive and which Ministers, not least my noble friend, have recognised as unsatisfactory. Of
course examiners must respect planning policy in law and need to make sure that neighbourhood plans are sound and respected, and they do that. However, they do not take on the wishes and aspirations of the community. The makers of the plan have their expectations and it is right that the examiner should at least hear them and meet the community that is drawing up the plan.
The amendments that I am putting forward in this group are designed to bring mutual understanding and realise the aspirations of both parties. I am very pleased that my noble friend the Minister has encouraged me to negotiate with his department, following our debates in Committee. We may well see that we have a basis for agreement on these terms. His department was very kind to me and gave me a flow chart that was hugely helpful, showing how the process should work.
The first part of what I am trying to achieve is a pre-submission health check, which is offered through the department and done by an experienced examiner, drawn from a pool of examiners. This examiner will not be involved later on, but is there to make an initial assessment—a health check—concerning the ideas that are being put forward by the neighbourhood plan makers. Secondly, I think that there needs to be a clearer duty on the local planning authority to assist the qualifying body—the neighbourhood plan makers—with drafting, so that there is much less need for modifications later in order to satisfy the basic conditions. We have had an earlier debate on modifications and I have not put down an amendment on this occasion because I accept what my noble friend the Minister said about that issue. The third thing that is needed is a provision requiring the examiner to meet the qualifying body in advance of submitting a draft plan to the local planning authority. The purpose of this is to help avoid the need for technical modifications later and after the plan is submitted to the local planning authority and public representations are invited.
The fourth element is a duty on the examiner: where he is minded to delete or amend a housing or economic development policy, he should seek to reach agreement with the local planning authority and the makers of the neighbourhood plan about alternative locations and about the phasing of the plan. The fifth is a provision requiring the examiner to share a draft report, with proposed modifications if he feels that they are necessary. He should be open to suggesting alternative ways of meeting the problems identified, before signing off the examination. This is of course very common practice in the finalising of local development plans. Lastly, I think that there should be a duty on the examiner that, where there are concerns that remain about the drafting, he should seek to find alternative wording to achieve the aims of the plan-making body, rather than recommending crude deletions.
I have had a lot of discussion on this and I have very much welcomed the advice that I have had from my noble friend Lord Bourne and his department and I think that, if he were to consider some of six elements that I have put forward, we could come to some really good agreement at Third Reading. I beg to move.