Planning Bill

My Lords, this group of amendments deals with the issues relating to the examination of applications. Amendment No. 85A in the name of my noble friend Lord Berkeley seeks assurances that there will be a sufficient gap between the deadline for the submission of the local authority’s local impact report and the end of the examination process to give the applicant and other interested parties a reasonable opportunity to comment on its contents. He has raised a serious question and I am glad that he has done so. Before I deal with the amendment, noble Lords might find it useful if I set out why the Bill provides for the commission to invite the relevant local authority or local authorities to produce a local impact report in the first place. We are absolutely clear that local authorities—the democratically elected representatives of the local community—should have a clear and important role in the new process, particularly ensuring that national decision-makers, including the proposed Infrastructure Planning Commission, take proper account of relevant local and regional factors and considerations. The Bill provides local authorities with an important role, representing their communities in the new process and ensuring that the local community is adequately consulted. Local authorities will be consulted by the promoter of a project before they submit an application under the provisions of Part 5. The IPC will have to have regard to any report on the adequacy of the promoter’s consultation—a very important point—received from a local authority consultee when deciding whether to accept an application. Local authorities will be interested parties to the examination of an application. In addition, Clause 59 requires the IPC, on accepting an application for development consent, to invite the relevant local authority or local authorities to produce a report of the likely impact on their area of the proposed development being applied for. Clause 102 then requires that the commission must have regard to the local impact report when making its decision. Clause 103 requires the Secretary of State to do just the same in cases that she decides—for example, where she exercises the power of intervention. In drawing up this notion of the local impact report, we saw it as a serious undertaking. We wanted to give local authorities the longest time possible, as these will be detailed documents. They will reflect the impact of the development on the local development plans. They will reflect the comments of the communities themselves, which is why the deadline is the same as that for the completion of the examination of the application by the commission. I understand my noble friend’s concerns that the applicant and certain other interested parties must not be excluded from commenting on the content of the local impact report. They should at least have the opportunity to comment on the local authority’s provisional views. I accept that the provisions of Clause 59(6) may inadvertently suggest that the applicant may be kept in the dark about the views of the local authority, so I am happy to give my noble friend Lord Berkeley the assurance that I will consider this further, ahead of Third Reading. Amendment No. 88, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would require the examining authority to publish all written representations. Noble Lords will know, because we have rehearsed this many times in our consideration of the Bill, that access to written representations is central to our aim of making the examination process more open to the public. The Government believe that many issues that need to be examined and decided by the IPC can, in principle, be settled through exchanges of written evidence, particularly technical issues. Those exchanges will speed up the process, reducing the need for often lengthy and, frankly, repetitious oral evidence-giving. That will also improve the analysis of evidence, by allowing technical questions to be tested in greater depth, and make the process much more accessible to members of the public, as it would be easier to understand the issues without having to attend or, indeed, to be represented at an often lengthy public inquiry. We therefore expect that interested parties would be given reasonable opportunities to comment on written representations, including those made by local authorities. The Government are clear that the procedural rules made by the Lord Chancellor under Clause 96 will cover the disclosure of written representations and correspondence to interested parties. I hope that that will take care of the concerns of the noble Baroness. I do not think it appropriate to specify those sorts of matters in the Bill, for obvious reasons. However, I can certainly assure the House that we intend that written representations should be made available to interested parties: that, after all, is the key to the process. I am not sure that we should necessarily publish all the material or circulate it to all parties. There could be a huge amount of material, which might come in different formats and so on.