In moving this amendment I will also speak to Amendment 116. Although they are on different subjects, they are very similar in that they are setting right something that is very wrong at the moment. The amendments would give local authorities more control over how they deal with the costs involved in handling planning applications. There is no doubt that handling a very large and expensive operation that may involve hundreds of millions of pounds is rather different in terms of cost to the council than handling a little room or basement extension that someone wants to add on to their house. At the moment, local authorities do not have that choice. It is wrong for people to pay the same amount. The council should be entitled to charge fees according to the work involved and the cost of the development envisaged.
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The other point which I think will appeal to every council is that Amendment 108 provides that councils should have the right to retain the fees. At the moment councils are being burdened with more and more expense, and if something goes to appeal and they have to defend a case, it can be very costly. These discretions would be good.
Amendment 116 concerns retrospective planning permission. It is a different issue but again, the payment of fees arises. I have consulted a number of planning officers who say that the only way to discourage retrospective planning permissions is for people to have to pay more for them than for planning at the right time. They say that the reasoning is that if someone just goes ahead and does something, they may get away with it and not have to pay anything at all because it is not picked up. If it is found, it means that someone has had to go to more trouble to find the problem, so it is right that someone should be charged more. It should not be a question of a standard fee that people pay when they do things the right way; it should be a punitive fee to indicate that it was wrong not to have applied in the first instance.
Recently I have come across various expensive developments in London, sometimes involving historic homes where the problems are even more serious. People have been given planning permission to do a certain number of things, but they have gone right ahead and done everything else. Local residents are up in arms about what has been an attack on a special listed property. Although they could tolerate a modern extension which had been allowed, they think that it is going too far when certain historic parts of a building are attacked. I know that special provision already applies to historic properties.
The amendments are related in that they will both give councils the right to charge according to what they believe is right, with an additional charge in the case of retrospective planning permissions. Equally
important in respect of retrospective planning permission is the question why should someone just go ahead and do something. In the last house I lived in, it was agreed that the houses behind could have a certain angle of light and have an extra floor put on them. That happened with the first development—these were listed buildings—but then I saw the second one was being built straight up. I phoned the council and told them that the development was not being built in accordance with the planning permission. “Nonsense”, they said, “of course it is”. Some 18 months later when people had moved into that house, the chairman of the planning committee called me to apologise. He said that now that people had moved into the property and had gone to so much trouble, the council did not feel that it could do anything about it. That is pretty unsatisfactory for the people who have lost their light—someone just got away with it; that is what it boiled down to. I have had that happen to me several times in my life. It is more that someone feels that they can get away with something, so it is important that local people should be consulted because it is often those who live close to these developments who notice that something has been done that is not in accordance with planning. I beg to move.