My Lords, this is Third Reading and there is other business before the House, so I shall endeavour to be brief on this matter. However, it is important. I shall seek not to repeat points that I made on Report and on previous Bills. The subject that I have been trying to deal with is the problem in parts of London in particular, but also in other high-value areas, where there is arbitraging under the current very
free prior approval system and where you can switch without planning permission from office to residential, taking a very large profit—threefold or fourfold—and in so doing throwing out of premises businesses that in some cases have been established there for a very long time. I have argued for many years that this was an abuse. In our case, in my authority of Richmond—I declare an interest as leader—we have lost 30% of our office space. As I explained to the House before, in half of those cases the offices were partly or wholly occupied by businesses.
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I have been very grateful, in pursuing a way out of and a resolution to this injustice, for the support from the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Shipley, on the Benches opposite. This started about four years ago, when they were my noble friends, although I hope that they are still my friends. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—he is understandably not able to be in his place—who is also a London councillor and gave a great deal of support.
The amendment before the House is not intended to be perfect or to be included in the legislation. I reiterate in the absolute strongest terms my sense of gratitude towards my noble friend on the Front Bench and to his colleague, my noble friend Lord Young, for the way in which they and their officials have conducted themselves on this legislation. Following our debate on Report, my noble friend gave hope that if I took away the amendment, he would give consideration with colleagues to addressing the two key issues that are highlighted in this amendment—or at least two of the key issues. The first is the inability of the local council to address this problem. We discussed the difficulties with Article 4 and I am hopeful that we may get some suggestion that those difficulties could at least in part be addressed. Second is the fact that local authorities lose an enormous amount of money when a developer goes round through the prior approval route, as they do not have to pay planning fees. I gave the figures in a debate at a previous stage—hundreds of thousands were lost to my authority alone, where it would have been a clear open and shut case for the developer to get planning approval because the offices were clearly not of strategic purpose. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause refers to that issue.
I bring this back before your Lordships, having been encouraged to believe that when my noble friend responds he might give me some hope, short of seeking to take a legislative route through your Lordships’ House today, that there may be some meaningful and positive response from the Government to help local authorities address this issue and for redress—sadly, the stable door has been open for a long time—to lift the fear that some small businesses still have of this threat coming their way. I beg to move.