My Lords, the problem is that getting permission in principle will not provide certainty. All it will provide is certainty that you can go on to the next stage where the hard work will have to be done and paid for and the application might be turned down. The Minister keeps talking about the fact that conditions can be put on and applications can be amended at the technical details stage. That is absolutely right but they can also be thrown out, and the problem that some of us, including the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, are trying to grasp is that some of the things which will be discussed at technical details stage are regarded as something that should be discussed at outline planning stage. They are matters of principle such as the question of whether you can get proper safe access to the site and the matter of ecology on the site. The proposal that has been put forward is that you can get planning permission in principle for such a site but then these are technical details that have to be dealt with, so it does not stop the cost. It might even cost small builders more because they are being led down the garden path with permission in principle and then they are being stopped when they get to the privy at the bottom, whereas at the moment they would be stopped halfway down the garden path. So this needs to be thought out.
As a ward councillor I am currently engaged peripherally in discussions for a small planning application for about 24 houses. The development has had full planning permission but the developers decided it was not viable as set out so they have come back with a changed application. Discussions are now taking place which are delaying the whole thing, but the purpose is to get it passed in the end. Some of the discussions are taking place because residents in nearby flats, assisted by me and other councillors, are complaining about some of the properties just behind them being too high and too big. Meanwhile the developer is saying that it is still not viable and they want another one. So discussions are taking place at the moment on the minor detail of changing the design of one of the houses, perhaps putting another house in a corner where there is not one.
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All that discussion is taking place at the moment. There is nothing unusual about it. Planning applications do not just come in and then be dealt with and sent out again; they require a lot of pre-application discussion with planning officers, and sometimes with councillors
as well. If they are sensitive in any way, a lot of discussion takes place during the eight weeks of the application process, and then the decision is made at the end. If, half way through, a decision is made to change it, there will be another application. As far as I can see, none of that will change unless the new process is so rigid that it forces councils to make a decision before they want to, in which case they will decide to reject the application. So, more things will get rejected if this kind of constructive negotiation, which is partly political, partly residential and partly planning, does not take place. These proposals do not seem to fit in very nicely the real world, but, having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.