Planning Bill

London councils anticipate that they are going to have to collect CIL for their own purposes and for the Greater London Authority. They will incur expenses in doing that. My noble friend’s Amendments Nos. 442ZB, 442ZC and 442ZD remove the ability of local councils and borough councils to cover the costs out of the proceeds. I suggest that it is not appropriate for them to be accepted. My Amendment No. 442A is in this group. It was tabled before we saw the new clause on compensation introduced by government Amendment No. 442C. The Law Society’s anxiety was that it appeared that part of the penalty for failure to pay CIL would be the removal of the planning permission, apparently without compensation. Amendment No. 442A therefore removed Clause 204(3)(d). Since then, the Government have tabled their amendment on compensation, which provides that, "““‘enforcement action’ means action taken by a charging authority under regulations … including … the suspension or cancellation of a decision relating to planning permission””." I am not clear how these two measures add up. On the one hand, one of the penalties for failure to pay CIL could be the cancellation of planning permission, but under the compensation clause, the local authority that does that will then have to compensate the developer who failed to pay CIL. I cannot believe that that is right. It may well be that I have totally misunderstood how these two clauses are going to work together. I understand this might be a complicated question. It might be wise if the noble Lord, Lord Patel, were to write me a letter about this. It may well be that I should have given him notice. We have not seen the compensation clause for very long. If the Minister could write to me about the combined effect of the ability to remove planning permission as a penalty and having to pay compensation for it, I would be extremely grateful.