Planning Bill

Noble Lords have put a number of hurdles in my way. A number of complex issues arise on this group of amendments. Many of the issues have evolved around the definition of viability, the way in which it will be interpreted and made to work. I am very grateful for the contribution of my noble friend Lady Ford. She made it clear that we are not inventing a process of huge complexity and universality. Over the past five years at least, we have watched and observed with some pride the way in which local areas have developed local tariffs. But it has been very hard work. They have been extremely local and they have given us a very good clue about how we should approach CIL and what it is capable of doing delivering for us. Before I address the amendments, it might be sensible to say something, in the context of the questions which have been raised, about viability in different areas and how CIL mediates and helps to express that. We dealt with this in detail in the August document and CIL will be framed, as I keep saying, by the local development framework. If local authorities are to proceed with CIL, they will need to set charges which reflect the economic circumstances of the area and they will need to subject those to consultation with developers and the local community. On the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for example, developers will be able to make representations to the charging authority about the draft charging schedule on the grounds that it would affect the viability of their development. Of course, the negotiation on the right level of CIL will have to be conditioned by what will be deliverable. We have made that very clear. At that point developers will also be able to put their case in person to the independent examiner if they do not think it is the right level of CIL to facilitate what they are there to do. Subsection (9) of Amendment No. 438M contains a right to be heard. So a process is built in whereby the developer, from the beginning, is alongside the local authority saying, ““These are the development plans for the area, this is the infrastructure that we will have to provide and this is how we think your charge, as you are assessing it, will relate to our capacity to pay””, and so on. This is very much a local issue. In relation to the rural issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and to pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, assuming it is a voluntary tool, local authorities in rural areas do not have to take it up. If there is little change or development, a local authority might judge that there is a low infrastructure need or insufficient development, but it can make that choice. The point is that it is for local authorities to decide. Currently, we are considering Matthew Taylor’s report on rural planning issues and he focuses on that. We will be bearing in mind his conclusions on developing CIL in relation to rural areas. Whether it is a rural area or the social areas mentioned by my noble friend Lady Ford, the point is that local economic circumstances will determine the shape and the nature of CIL. My noble friend asked about revision. We certainly expect that the charges will need to be kept under review and revised; for example, if changes in land values lead to the charges becoming unviable. I shall come back to that later in the context of an amendment. We are considering what the procedures for revision might look like and how they can provide for flexibility as well as certainty. In terms of differential rates, regulations will be able to allow charging authorities to set differential rates, taking into account viability in terms of development situations and so on. I hope I am getting across to noble Lords the local nature, the pragmatic nature and the flexible nature of what we are attempting to do through CIL. That will be relevant when I talk about some of the amendments. To return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, about appeal, even where charging authorities take sensible precautions to ensure that schedules set out viable charges, there may still be a very small number of cases where the level of charge set may not be affordable on a particular development. Obviously, that will be less true if the local authority sets differential rates. Essentially, we want charging schedules accurately to reflect the circumstances of different parts in a local authority’s area and we will seek views as we continue our discussion on how that may be achieved. My noble friend Lord Woolmer asked me what proportion of infrastructure funding we expect to be funded by CIL. That question goes to the heart of it. Frankly, we do not have a view on that. It will depend very much on how much infrastructure need a local area has and what is the viability of development locally. It will be for charging authorities to synthesise those issues in their charging schedules. We cannot second-guess that; it would be wrong for us to do so.