Planning Bill

Amendments Nos. 98, 99 and 105 concern the 12-week notice for judicial review. On the one side this Bill is about speeding up the processes, while on the other side it is about the normal civil procedure for filing for judicial review, which provides a maximum time limit of 12 weeks—although the Civil Procedure Rules state that that can be shortened by specific enactments, which is what we have here. We need to think afresh and work out what is reasonable in the circumstances. I speak reluctantly on these amendments because I have added my name to others that seek to stretch deadlines. An applicant serving a notice on a landowner or a local authority and expecting them to provide a full and considered response in 28 days seems unreasonable, as is the provision in Clause 50, with a farmer having only 14 days in which to respond; he might well be on his holidays. However, parties trying to establish a judicial review will have been following the debate for several months. They will almost certainly have been involved in consultation and will have followed the parliamentary debate—eventually, it is to be hoped, in both Houses—and the shape of the national policy statement will be obvious to them long before it is published. The difference between this and the other time limit changes, which I support, lies in the fact that the claim form to be filed, as I understand it—lawyers may correct me—merely has to set out the grounds for the review; it does not have to state the whole case in writing. The supplicant can also add to it at a later date and can, in special circumstances, even ask the court for an extension to the time limit. While I can see both sides of the argument, I share with the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, a distaste for the currently overused judicial review process and the uncertainty that it might create in this instance. I fear that I am not able to support the extension of time limits from six weeks to 12.