My Lords, I have four amendments in this group that pursue the question of what should be in permission in principle and what in technical details. These are absolutely crucial issues, which need a great deal more thought between now and Report.
People will not understand that permission in principle can be given, as I suggested in Amendment 96ZC, for a piece of land where there are clearly drainage problems and there needs to be drainage assessment, unless that drainage assessment has taken place. If it is a brownfield site, is the local authority supposed to carry out that assessment to see whether a sustainable drainage scheme is needed for the site, to set out any details of measures that can mitigate the problem, or perhaps improve the problem by taking water off land that is liable to flood but that, if dealt with properly, would not? I suggest that that kind of thing ought to be part of the assessment of permission in principle, and it ought to be the responsibility of the developer to assess it and to produce a scheme that is acceptable. Otherwise, it will be put in the local plan as suitable for development, it will be allocated for housing and it will automatically get permission in principle because of that, yet the problems will not have been looked at and sorted out, and the certainty that the Government want for the developer will not exist. It will simply be transferred to the technical details stage.
Amendment 96ZD picks up another similar issue, which is highways and access appraisal. On any substantial development it is almost impossible to get outline planning permission nowadays unless you have the access sorted out. That is absolutely crucial. The access may be the direct access into the site, off the road or down the road, or works may be necessary on the local highways network to make the development of that site acceptable. Again, if that is not done by the permission in principle stage, if people think they have permission in principle and everything is okay, all the problems, all the expense of doing this will inevitably go to the technical details stage.
On the proposed timescale for dealing with consultations of three weeks, which I read out during the debate on the last amendment, if the local planning authority is consulting the local highways authority and it has to do a technical appraisal, go on site, measure junctions and all the rest of it, the whole thing is impossible. Unless it is sorted out at the permission in principle stage, there will be no certainty, permission in principle will be nothing, and technical details will turn into a full planning application type of process.
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The third survey I have mentioned is for contamination and remediation. That clearly requires work done in advance. If it is a complicated site—if there have been mills, foundries, railway yards or whatever on it—it will require specialist technical people to do it. The applicants will have to get that work done, spend money on it and find out whether development is
possible. The idea that they will then not have to pay for this and simply get permission in principle and the whole world will suddenly be wonderful is frankly a dream. Nothing is going to change. All this work will still have to be done. There are lots of other surveys that I could have put down as well—ecological surveys, landscape surveys, heritage surveys and all the rest of it; my noble friend Lady Parminter will speak to an amendment on those issues in due course.
The final amendment refers to the CIL. I have tabled it simply to have confirmation from the Government that developments under permission in principle will be liable for CIL charges. I also ask that it be possible to put Section 106 charges on the application at the technical detail stage. Again, I say that it is far better for such discussions and negotiations to take place at the earlier stage, so that you can filter out applications that are not going to go anywhere and actually cost developers less. If you just give permission in principle and then say that developers have to do it all for the technical detail stage, they will lose more money than under the present system when the application is turned down. This is a fundamental issue of the relationship between planning in principle and the technical details and how the interaction between developers, planners and everybody else is going to work. I honestly do not think that the Government have thought it out properly yet.