My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 504 in this group, standing in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook. Nothing is more exasperating and debilitating for residents than to suffer prolonged disturbance, noise, vibration, lorry movements, dust, aerial pollution, and traffic jams et cetera from developments in their neighbourhood. As I know from my time as a constituency MP, life can be made an absolute misery for residents.
Some local authorities set extremely high standards, and impose planning condition requirements on developers to mitigate all those nuisances that I mentioned. For example, most of the councils in Norfolk and East
Anglia will have in place the practice of imposing these high standards and making sure that the planning conditions are imposed.
It came as a surprise to me when I researched this that some councils do not adopt the same practice, and that includes, for example, many London councils, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea being one. Councils that do not adopt this practice rely on what I would describe as a hopeless and outdated system whereby developers are encouraged to submit applications for prior consent under Section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, which was enacted a long time ago. Failing this, councils can issue a Section 61 notice, and consents then create legal obligations on developers, and councils can take action. However, they can do so only if they have been notified, and often the system is completely useless if consents and notices are not published on their websites. How, therefore, do local residents find out? The answer is that, unless a local board member tells them or unless they hear from other sources, most residents very often do not find out what is going on, so they cannot take action.
My and my noble friend Lord Northbrook’s solution is very simple: under our amendment, local planning authorities “must”—at the moment under the legislation, they “can”—publish such consents and notices on their websites and not then remove them. Back in the days of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, the internet did not exist and councils did not have websites. My noble friend and I are simply updating the law to make life a lot easier for residents who suffer this appalling nuisance. I really do not see why the Government could have any objection to this amendment. It would be an improvement for many local residents and residents’ associations up and down the country and make their lives a great deal easier, at no cost whatever to the local planning authorities. I commend it to the Committee.