My Lords, I will speak very briefly about saturation areas and Article 4 directives that already exist under the planning system. I support the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath. It is important because it would enable neighbourhood plans to include policies relating to the proportion of dwellings that may be second homes and short-term holiday lets under a use classes order proposed by other new clauses in this set of amendments.
Saturation areas already exist and can be defined under the licensing system—for example, for outlets serving alcohol. They operate under the licensing system. Houses in multiple occupation are also subject to a licensing system, but, in my city of Newcastle upon Tyne, they now use the planning system as well, following a lot of work that the administration that I led undertook. Under the Article 4 directives, permitted development rights can be restricted where the conversion of a family home into a house in multiple occupation would continue a trend of making family homes very expensive to buy and not easy to obtain. Without those Article 4 directives, the nature of a neighbourhood can change significantly.
So I ask the Minister what the difficulty is, in principle, over second homes and short-term holiday lets. As we have heard, there is fairly widespread support now for giving local councils and local planning authorities greater powers to restrict long-term residential homes being converted into short-term lets or second homes. There is a range of principles that I think local authorities should be able to decide for themselves. They may decide that they want to encourage short-term lets and second homes because it might increase the number of people who are buying services from local retail outlets and local leisure outlets—restaurants, pubs and so on. There is some evidence in some places that I know that that may be the case, but surely it should be for the local planning authorities themselves to be making those decisions.
The simplest way is through the use classes orders that we have heard about, but the principle already exists within existing legislation, both within the licensing system and within the planning system. My noble friend Lord Foster said that more needs to be done, and that is absolutely the case. Whereas I would support a higher council tax payment for second homes—I think there is justification for that—I am not actually convinced that it will solve the problem. I think we have to use the planning system to resolve the difficulty we face, so I hope very much that the Minister will give further consideration to this issue, which is affecting so many small communities, particularly in rural and coastal areas. The time has come for the Government to act.