My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving us a detailed and thorough response, in spite of the late hour. It is much appreciated. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, this is an important clause in the Bill and we want to support it, because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that the way that development corporations work has generally been very effective. It has not worked everywhere, but in most places it has been very effective and has delivered at scale. It has
created not just dormitory areas but real, proper communities, with all the infrastructure, which is exactly the model that we want to see for at-scale housebuilding going forward. We really want this to work; it is very important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised the issue about Teesside, as I did. This is very important. It has made us all quite nervous to see the lack of transparency that there appears to have been in some of the decision-making there. That is making us concerned about this, so I hope that our amendments and the questions we have asked help us to clarify our thinking.
The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, raised the issue, as did I, of parish and town councils. That needs some thought: as the noble Lord rightly said, if we have specific mention of county councils and district councils in the consultation and it is not just assumed that they will take part, that should surely apply to parish and town councils as well. I do not see any reason why not. The Minister indicated that that might come through in a later statutory instrument, but we will be more reassured if the other types of council are included in the Bill.
On my question regarding the accountable body, perhaps the Minister could respond in writing. I have recently set up a town development board that is working on a billion-pound town centre regeneration project; that is not quite the same as a development corporation, but similar. The council has had to be the accountable body: the town development board has a mixture of elected and appointed people, and the decision-making on the finance has to go back to the council every time. I wanted to be sure about the role of this oversight authority. The Minister said that that might be subject to further information, to come at a later stage. Given the vast sums of public money that is likely to go through these bodies, it is important that we understand who will be accountable for that money and how, and who will monitor it and how.
The point the Minister made about these being locally led development corporations is really important. Those of us who experienced them in the 1950s will remember that the approach was very top-down. I know that that is not in anybody’s mind these days, as doing it that way does not work any more. We do not want to go back: it is very important that they are locally led and there is local input all the way through the development of the proposals. It was reassuring and helpful to hear that planning proposals by development corporations will go through the planning system in the same way, so there will be public inquiries, presumably, and publicly held meetings about the plans and proposals.
I heard the Minister say that the Local Government, Planning and Land Act requires financial reporting from development corporations to the Secretary of State, and a report to then be laid before Parliament. I look forward to reading the annual report for Teesside’s mayoral development corporation when it is made public; it will be very interesting to see what it says.
The Minister mentioned the garden communities. I will not step on any corns regarding East Herts District Council, which has just completed a garden village proposal—and where the Conservatives lost 17 seats a couple of weeks ago. In general, the garden
communities are a very good thing; they are well-planned communities with the infrastructure needed to support them.
The Minister referred to the Secretary of State approving the governance and deliverability plans before designating a development corporation. Finance should be included as well. I do not know whether that is what he intended, but it is very important.
There are some issues still to be clarified, but we are all generally supportive of locally led development corporations. We may come back to these issues on Report, when we have further information, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.