Localism Bill

My Lords, I must confess to being a bit disappointed. I clearly did not explain the position adequately. When I asked the people behind these proposals what they expected the Government to do about this, I was told that they thought the Government would be very pleased not necessarily to accept the wording of the amendment but to have a peg to hang something on to handle the transitional problem that faces local authorities. It faces in particular the good guys, who have already prepared their local development frameworks. Just for a partial review of the local development framework, they will have to go through the whole process of hearing evidence in public, getting the planning inspectorate back again and allowing all kinds of people to come and make their case. They may need that partial review just because the framework had referred to a regional spatial strategy that suddenly did not exist and could not be referred to any more, or because it was silent about a particular ingredient because the authority was encouraged by the DCLG not to put in something that the regional spatial strategy already had in it. Those are technical changes that will require a whole bureaucratic process to be restarted, when we could have a quite simple transitional arrangement. I had rather hoped that the Government would say, ““We will fix this, maybe not in the way that you suggested—but we absolutely understand that nobody wants to go through all that bureaucracy just for nothing, since it is a very expensive exercise. We will sort it””. I confess to being rather disappointed at this stage, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 147FG withdrawn. Amendment 147FH not moved. Clause 94 agreed. Schedule 8 agreed.