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1.43 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Steve Norris): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) for raising the issue and for giving us a further opportunity to debate a subject, which, as he said, he raised on17 May. I should like to express my personal appreciation of my right hon. Friend who, sadly, is due to retire at the end of this Parliament. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley), who no doubt has an interest in these matters, is in his place. My right hon. Friend has been a distinguished Member for a number of years and has shown his customary assiduity, application and interest in the affairs of his constituents as vigorously as ever on this important issue. I pay genuine tribute to him. I hope that he will allow me to deal in very specific and rather legalistic terms with a number of the issues that he has raised.
Since the previous debate, there has been a review of the trunk road programme in England, as a result of which 77 schemes, of which the environmental impact was no longer considered to be acceptable in relation to the benefits, were removed from the programme. In those schemes, the route protection is being withdrawn and owners of property on or near the routes will no longer be affected by the prospect of road improvements.
Other important bypass and relief road proposals remain in the programme, including the proposal to improve the A27 between Worthing and Lancing. As my right hon. Friend said, the scheme has a long history, which I shall not go into again. The review of the programme confirmed its importance as a much-needed improvement to the only east-west trunk road route south of the M25.
Following consultation on four route options, a public inquiry, to which my right hon. Friend referred, ended, as he knows, on 24 August 1994. I can inform him that the inspector's report following that inquiry has been received by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Transport. It is inevitably a lengthy document. We will give it very careful consideration and make an announcement as soon as possible.
I know that my right hon. Friend will appreciate that I cannot comment on any of the issues involved in the report, whether they relate to the route or to the
desirability of one or other option, while my righthon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport is taking a quasi-judicial decision on the matter. Nor of course can I make any prediction about the outcome. I note my right hon. Friend's concern that, whatever the outcome, there should be an early decision and I shall of course draw that to the attention of the officials involved in considering the report.
Sir Terence Higgins:
What is the position on publication of the inspector's report?
Mr. Norris:
I will have to write to my right hon. Friend about the report's content and the timing of its publication. I have no reason to believe that the report will eventually be treated in anything other than the normal way. Subject to whatever view my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Transport may take of the report, it will find its way into the public domain.
The announcement that I made on 19 July of new guidelines for use by the Highways Agency in considering applications for discretionary purchase of property seriously affected by trunk road schemes require, as my right hon. Friend said, the Court of Appeal judgment in what is now known as the Owen case of 30 June 1994 to be taken into account. The guidelines require the agency to consider diminution in value of a property as well as the predicted effects of noise and other physical factors when forming an opinion, as is required by the relevant legislation on whether enjoyment of the property will be affected by the construction or use of the road.
It is important to remind ourselves of the purpose of the discretionary purchase scheme. It is not the only opportunity for an individual to sell an affected property. The discretionary purchase scheme enables the Department to act as a buyer of last resort where the enjoyment of a property is or will be seriously affected by trunk road proposals, where the owner has a pressing need to move that is not connected to the road scheme and where hardship can result if the property cannot be sold except at a heavily discounted price.
Under the new guidelines, I shall also consider cases where the owner or another person who normally resides at the property has a medical condition that would be severely aggravated by the physical effects of construction work or use of the new road. My right hon. Friend referred to those three conditions, about which I wrote to him just the other day.
I must make it clear that the point of our treatment of medical conditions as my right hon. Friend described is that the effect of the scheme on the medical condition of the individuals concerned will not manifest itself until work starts. I hope that it is not inappropriate for me to endorse the comment made by my right hon. Friend, a former distinguished Treasury Minister himself, that that does indeed help Treasury cash flow. It would be an inappropriate use of public funds to acquire properties many years--in this case two years--before the likelihood of work commencing, where the rationale for a purchase under discretionary purchase rules is medical effect. That is why, in cases relating to medical condition, an offer to purchase is deferred, or owners are invited to reapply nearer the appropriate time.
I noted that my right hon. Friend said that that does--I shall not say might--cause further uncertainty in the minds of those who have been asked to re-apply. I shall
certainly reflect on that. I can confirm that it is not the purpose of the new guidelines to add to the perfectly understandable concern in such a situation; rather it is to recognise that, where the key to the request to purchase is a medical condition related to the onset of the scheme, the actual purchase should be broadly proximate to the start of works on the scheme.
The House may also be interested to know that, when revising the guidelines which are used for discretionary purchase in advance of construction work and which relate to the powers of section 246(2A) of the Highways Act 1980, we also considered the criteria for discretionary purchase during the course of construction or immediately after the new road is opened relating to other parts of section 246. Those criteria were relaxed and made more consistent with the guidelines applicable for discretionary purchase in advance of works and a number of owners whose properties are seriously affected by construction work or a newly opened road have benefited.
My hon. Friend the Minister for Railways and Roads promised in the debate on 17 May that all applications made for discretionary purchase under the relevant powers and rejected since the 1994 Court of Appeal judgment in the Owen case would be reconsidered. The majority of those cases have now been reconsidered under the new guidelines and owners informed of the result. Owners were given an opportunity to submit any relevant new information in support of their applications and new assessments have been made of predicted noise levels and physical effects. Information from professional valuers on diminution of value caused by scheme proposals has been obtained.
All that information has been taken into account in reaching new decisions on cases in accordance with the new guidelines. That has involved a great deal of work by the Highways Agency. I have, as my right hon. Friend was generous enough to say, taken a close personal interest in the many cases where the decision reached was borderline and where my right hon. Friend or otherhon. Members may have made specific representations on behalf of their constituents.
I acknowledge the fact that, as my right hon. Friend said, some of the determinations will have been made by officials. That is where, ostensibly at least, the cases are not borderline and are relatively straightforward to determine, but I reiterate my outstanding offer that if I am asked to look again at any such decision by an hon. Member on behalf of a constituent, I shall most certainly undertake to do so. I appreciate that the thrust of my right hon. Friend's remarks is that these are important matters for people who are affected on whichever side of the guidelines they may eventually fall.
I should say that other owners, whose applications for discretionary purchase were rejected before June 1994, have also been given an opportunity, through advertisements in local newspapers, to apply to make fresh applications for consideration under the new guidelines. More than 50 cases are still being reconsidered and they will be dealt with as quickly as possible.
In connection with the A27 scheme, 48 applications have been considered or reconsidered under the new guidelines. In six cases, an offer to purchase has been made with immediate effect. A further five cases, in
which owners or occupiers have a medical condition, have been accepted in principle under the provisions of the guidelines for purchase at a later date to which I have just referred. Thirty applications have been rejected and seven are still under consideration.
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