Localism Bill

My Lords, I am most concerned with the planning aspects of this Bill and I declare an interest as a landowner. Does the title of the Bill and the rhetoric used to support it conform to the reality of what the Bill will bring about? I have doubts. It does so in the case of the abolition of the regional tier, of which I heartily approve. It tries to do so in other aspects, including local referendums, but with adverse consequences, which other noble Lords have well described, in costs to local authorities and possible abuse, which mean that we need to look at it very carefully in Committee. In other instances the Government seem to have shied away. Take the community right of appeal. Before the election, both coalition parties believed in it. They evidently recognised then that our planning system in one way is most unfairly balanced in favour of the developer. A developer will take the matter to public inquiry when a planning decision goes against him. When the decision goes against the local community or parish council, where true localism resides, they can make no appeal. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and my noble friend Lord Marlesford, I would welcome a limited community right of appeal. In addition, public inquiries are hugely expensive. The local community against the developer, when it comes to raising the funds to fight an appeal, is David against Goliath. Moreover, today’s cash-strapped local authorities are very likely to be intimidated by the prospective costs of a public inquiry and, to avoid them, grant planning permission when they would prefer not to. At Report stage in the other place the Minister recognised this problem and said it was something that should be looked at. Can my noble friend the Minister say what the Government now intend to do about that? The situation becomes completely outrageous in the case of wind farm planning applications where the developer is funded entirely by public subsidy, paid for by the electricity consumer. Yesterday I attended a meeting of the Lancaster district council planning committee when, for the second time, it turned down unanimously a planning application for a wind farm six kilometers within an area of outstanding natural beauty. I may say that that was a unanimous decision by the planning committee of a Labour- Green-controlled council. In fact, anticipating defeat because of the planning officer’s strong recommendation to reject the application, and not waiting for the committee’s decision, the developers had already applied to take the matter to public inquiry, betting their money—or rather betting the money they would receive from the poor electricity consumers—on the hope that the planning inspector allocated to them might decide to give priority to the Government’s renewable energy targets, over a consideration for local feelings and the preservation of landscape. I ask the Minister: is that localism ? Is that an example of matters being decided by the community and not by planning inspectors? Or is it an example of the Government trying to drive their own policy—in this case, their renewable energy policy, which I believe is misguided—through the planning system? In any case, daily practice is making a mockery of the Government’s flagship localism policy. I think that there is a strong case for developers to be required to pay the appeal costs of the local authority, and also those of the local protest group, when such a group has notified the Secretary of State of its intention to appear at the inquiry as a so-called rule 6 party, and most certainly in cases when the developer is enjoying public subsidies. Something else which concerns me is the new Clause 124, introduced at a late stage in the other place by the Government. Several noble Lords opposite have expressed concern about that. This puts into statute the ability of councils to take financial benefits into account as a material consideration when dealing with planning applications. Currently, Section 106 agreements, if I understand the position correctly, must relate to the nature of the application in some way—for example, provide necessary related infrastructure —and may be concluded only after planning consent has been granted. Clause 124 would bring financial payments far more to the fore and would make it much less convincing for the Government to claim, as they like to claim and should be able to claim, that planning permissions are not for sale. With government withdrawing funding from local authorities, the suspicion might even gain ground that developers were expected to take their place as a provider of finance to local authorities. Lastly, I want to express my concern about the obligation placed on local authorities in Chapter 4 to maintain a list of assets of community value. That was dealt with very well by my noble friend Lord Cathcart and the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. I thought also that this was meant to deal with the threatened loss of use of a pub, shop or other facility which has been communally enjoyed. That is how Ministers talk about it, but in fact it is framed so widely, as far as I can see, that any piece of private property, field, park, house or other building, which it could be imagined the community might ever like to have the use of, whether or not it ever has had the use of it, might be listed. Any sale of such listed assets must be held up while the community decides whether to bid or not. Whether I am right or not about that, this is a new interference with private property rights. It could reduce the value of listed property and disincentivise owners from making property available for public use in case that should stimulate an appetite for listing it as a community asset. I look forward to the Committee stage and to combining with other noble Lords, I hope across party, to help try and amend the Bill.