Localism Bill

My Lords, I remind the House of the interest that I declared at the beginning of the Committee stage. I am vice-president of the Open Spaces Society, which is the expert voluntary organisation on village and town greens and spends a lot of its time advising people who wish to register greens. It strongly advises people not to do so purely to resist development and not to proceed if the evidence appears to be poor. Not everyone takes that advice, unfortunately. The amendments attempt to tackle this perceived problem—it is indeed a problem in some areas—by amending this legislation and thereby amending the Commons Act 2006. I suggest that this is probably the wrong time and the wrong legislation to do that. Town and village green legislation, as noble Lords who took part in the discussions of the Commons Act in 2006 will know, is extremely complex and somewhat difficult. Section 15 of that Act laid down a new system for the registration of greens, but that was based upon much older commons legislation, going back to the past, describing what is and is not a green. I have some questions. Is there an identified problem? Yes. Is it hugely widespread? No, but it is serious where people are abusing the system. Some instances of that have been identified here today and I could provide some more. Does it need sorting out? Yes. Does it need new primary legislation and is this the right Bill to do it? No. As the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, has identified, what is required is an overhaul of the Commons Registration (England) Regulations 2008, which result in a system of greens registration that, in my view and that of the Open Spaces Society, is overly bureaucratic, takes far too long and can be far too costly. I was involved on the other side, as it were, in an application for a green in Lancashire where Lancashire County Council wanted to build a new secondary school, which I was in support of, and a group of people tried to suggest that the land on which it was being built was a green. I met them, advised them and told them that it was not, but fortunately Lancashire County Council, perhaps because it was a project of its own that was potentially being blocked, was very expeditious in sorting it out. Quite correctly, it rejected the application. We have a 10-point programme that would greatly improve the green registration system. It could be done simply by secondary legislation by amending the 2008 regulations. I am not suggesting that that is the whole answer and I am not going to tell your Lordships today what all the 10 points are, but we are happy to discuss this with Ministers. They will be Defra Ministers, though, as this is not a CLG matter. Defra is already looking into the problem; it has commissioned research, it is having discussions and it is considering its responses. I hope that on that basis we can let the department get on with it. There is an understanding on all sides that this is urgent. It is important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and not destroy the system of registration of town and village greens, which is a very useful process, but to stop people abusing it.