Planning Bill

The one thing on which a large number of people are agreed regarding this part of the Bill is that it is a good deal better than the planning gain supplement; but that is about the only thing on which people agree. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on this occasion and on Second Reading, made much of all the bodies that have said that CIL is the right way forward. I find that difficult to understand, because some important bodies have severe reservations about CIL and those reservations are being exposed. The speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, indicated several of the issues which need to be resolved. Some of the opposition goes to the heart of the matter. The original complaints about this skeleton Bill were wholly justified, which is why I originally proposed to leave out all the important clauses in this part of the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, then tabled, rather belatedly, a string of 25 amendments that attempted to put some flesh on the bones. That led me to withdraw the notices that I had given about the clauses. At one point during Second Reading there was some suggestion that this part of the Bill might be withdrawn and returned after more thought had been given to its structure. Clearly that was not going to happen and, therefore, there seemed to be no point in trying to take out all the clauses one by one. I withdrew my notices, but a lot of major issues remained, one of which was viability, which was touched on in an earlier debate. It is hugely important that when local authorities set their rates and draw up their schedules on the sort of flat-rate basis that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, described on the previous amendment, they must have very close regard to whether the developments that will be liable to those flat rates of CIL will actually go ahead. We have the horrid examples of previous attempts to tax increases in land value due to planning permission, all of which succeeded in doing nothing more than choking off development, as my noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith made clear in his speech on the previous amendment. I find the absence of this requirement very worrying. Another aspect arises on government Amendment No. 438Q, which is in this group. It is about appeals. They will be allowed based on fact in relation to the application of methods for calculating CIL. Charging authorities can appoint a valuation officer or a district valuer to oversee such appeals, but the amendment does not allow appeals on grounds of viability. Why not? Surely, there should be some point at which a developer can say, before it happens, that if the authority is going to charge a certain amount, it will go somewhere else or not do the development and the authority will not get any investment. There seems to be no formal procedure for that and no right of appeal on viability. The amendment does not address the concerns of some of the bodies that represent major developers. The clause is indicative of the attitude of the Government on this. We will return to this, not least in the present economic climate. There must be some way in which a developer can bring concerns and say that if the authority charges a certain amount, it will go away. Then the developer and the authority can discuss what else the authority can do to help. Otherwise, this will follow the pattern of the Land Commission, development land tax and everything that has gone before. I am sure that the Minister and her colleagues in her department would be dismayed if that were to be the result of this. This is an important issue that the Bill does not address, but it must or Part 11 will be one more piece in the string of failures that we have had over the past 20 or 30 years.