My Lords, I speak to my Amendment 287, which would achieve a planning fee system that would cover costs for local planning authorities. It largely mirrors Amendment 267 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and my noble friend Lady Thornhill. I concur entirely with his arguments, but have some additional points to make in support of the plea to enable local planning authorities to set their own fees.
Too often planning applications, especially those that are complex, such as a major commercial development, have a set fee that nowhere near covers the costs, simply because there is so much more to planning applications than simply considering the plan details submitted at the first stage. I give an
example of a recent application near me for a very large commercial development of 1 million square feet—probably a bit more than that—with a fee of £300,000. That is, and sounds, a considerable sum. However, in the end there were more than 200 different elements of the planning application to consider, 96 of which were amendments to the original plan. One of those, which I endeavoured to read, was of itself more than 100 pages long.
Understandably, these applications are hugely complex and require considerable expertise within the local planning authority to understand and respond to them. They are not just about the design and features of the building itself—there is also highway access, road safety, landscaping, biodiversity, trees, noise and light pollution, and the impact on the landscape. In my local authority, they have to consider drainage and, in this instance, 14 attenuation tanks had to be built in the end to deal with run-off from the development. Hugely complex issues are being considered, and it all has to be done within that set fee, regardless. It took nigh on two years for that application to be fully considered and ready for a planning committee. Clearly, the fee failed to cover the costs of the details of the application.
There are implications to all this. The Royal Town Planning Institute reckons that there were 42% cuts in planning budgets over the 10-year period from 2008. There have been increases since, not all of which have been directed towards day-to-day planning officers. Digitisation was one of the issues rightly being considered by the Government. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, has said, the information is that local council tax payers are subsidising planning applications. If I told local people where I am that that was the case, they would rightly be very concerned, when other vital services have insufficient funding.
The RTPI research showed that one in 10 planning officer roles was unfilled. The reason for that is that so many expert planning officers find life much better rewarded—in many ways, not just financially—in private practice. The draining of local planning officers from the system is putting immense pressure on dealing with planning applications, and the timeliness of those, which again is hindering the Government’s aim to build more housing. None of this is helpful to achieving that.
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We need local planning authorities to be able to set their own fees, not to make a profit but to cover their costs. I obviously support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, which my noble friend spoke to, because that too makes good sense. Why should Natural England, Historic England and all the other statutory consultees have to fund advice to planning applications from their own budgets? That does not make sense when planning applications are a commercial business. There is a really good argument for enabling local planning authorities to set their own fees and the statutory consultees, such as have been described, to recover their costs as well. I hope the Minister will be able to respond positively to all the amendments in this group.