Examination of witnesses (Questions 225
- 239)
WEDNESDAY 5 APRIL 2000
MR MIKE
HASLAM, MR
SIMON BIRCH,
MR PETER
WILBRAHAM and MR
DAVID ROSE
Chairman
225. Can I welcome the witnesses to the second
session this morning? Could I ask you to identify yourselves for
the record, please?
(Mr Haslam) Good morning, Chairman. My name is Michael
Haslam. I am the Junior Vice-President of the Royal Town Planning
Institute. If I may, I will ask my colleagues to introduce themselves.
(Mr Wilbraham) I am Peter Wilbraham, the Honorary
Secretary and Solicitor to the Institute.
(Mr Birch) I am Simon Birch. I am Convenor of the
Development Control Panel of the Institute.
(Mr Rose) I am David Rose, the Director of Public
Affairs on the Staff of the Institute.
226. Thank you very much. Do you want to say
anything to us by way of introduction or are you happy for us
to go straight into questions?
(Mr Haslam) No, we are very happy, Chairman. Thank
you for the invitation to come and we will be delighted to try
and help you.
Mrs Ellman
227. Is there any way of speeding up planning
appeals without jeopardising the quality of the decisions made?
(Mr Haslam) In the bulk of those cases that are transferred
to the Inspectorate, as you heard a few minutes ago, I think the
timing is probably about right. If it is speeded up, there will
be a problem with quality. There is also an issue that, if decisions
are taken too quickly at appeal, there may well be a propensity
for appellants to appeal so the number of appeals will rise. I
think there is a relationship there. There is a real concern in
Secretary of State cases, where the time factor is very much longer,
as a general rule, than with transferred cases.
228. In those cases, have you any suggestions
for improvement?
(Mr Haslam) I think you touched a few moments ago
on the question of whether or not there should be clear timetables
for the regional offices to process the appeals going through
there. It is something of a black hole at the moment.
Chairman
229. Do you want timetables?
(Mr Haslam) I think it would be helpful and it could
be much more transparent to all concerned. At the moment, the
report goes to the regional office and it emerges at a future
date. It can be six or nine months later.
(Mr Birch) The problem is that they are a small number
of cases but, almost by definition, they are high profile cases.
There is an expectation from the general public and the applicant
that they want a decision quickly and they are not always getting
that at the moment.
(Mr Wilbraham) I am a solicitor. I have been in private
practice for nearly 30 years and I have not heard complaints from
the overwhelming majority of appellants or indeed local authorities
for whom I have been acting. The biggest problem is with Secretary
of State decisions. Certainly by way of example I can give you
two cases in the last 12 months where the inspector delivered
a report to the Government Office within two months of quite a
long inquiry. In one case, it went to the Office in June and the
decision was in February of this year and, in another one, it
went to a different regional office in July and the decision did
not come out until December, very, very much longer than the inspector
took. Whether it is a question of resources in the government
office I really do not know.
Mrs Ellman
230. None of you has any suggestions for any
improvements in how the Inspectorate operates?
(Mr Haslam) Not as far as the Inspectorate is concerned;
only as far as the Secretary of State cases are concerned.
231. Do you think the current system for complaints
is adequate, where complainants can go to judicial review?
(Mr Haslam) I think you need to distinguish the two
areas there, if I may. First of all, there are complaints about
an inspector who may or may not have done something correctly,
and the point made by the inspectors just now, possibly spelling
mistakes, what I would call the minutiae. Then, is the decision
"wrong"? We know from our contact with the Inspectorate
that they do take complaints extremely seriously but they are
not transparent. The public who complain do not really get any
feeling that they have had a clear response. The answer from the
Inspectorate is, "We cannot change the decision." If
the process was more open and more transparent, possibly if there
was an external body doing it, there may well be more public confidence.
There is a danger, if you make it too public, that the integrity
of the inspectors themselves could be undermined, so there is
a balance to be struck.
232. You are saying you think more transparency
might be helpful in giving more confidence in the decisions?
(Mr Haslam) Yes, but you need to be careful not to
be so transparent that the individual inspectors feel that their
confidence is undermined.
Mr Benn
233. Do you accept that the Human Rights Act
is going to lead to the introduction of a third party right of
appeal?
(Mr Wilbraham) I think it is inevitable. The implications
of the Human Rights Act are going to be significant. There are
a number of areas within the system where rights of appeal may
have to be introduced. The whole question of, first of all, third
party rights and, secondly, whether the Inspectorate can remain
as an agency of the DETR is very much an open question.
234. Just pursuing for a moment the extent of
those new rights, do you think third party challenges, in your
interpretation of the Act, would be limited to those approvals
that were contrary to the approved development plan or might it
go further?
(Mr Wilbraham) No. I think the challenges which can
potentially be made will be by anybody who has a civil right that
has been affected. That could be a neighbour. The spectrum of
people who could potentially make a claim is quite wide in any
particular case. The question is then going to be how does one
provide a system which allows for third party rights in appropriate
cases but does not allow a free for all, if I may put it that
way.
235. Do you think a system would be sustainable
and workable if you have the planning authority, the Planning
Inspectorate and then these new rights created by the Human Rights
Act? Is it going to work in that way or do we need a more fundamental
reappraisal of the set-up?
(Mr Wilbraham) I think it needs a fundamental reappraisal.
I do not think it is the case that there are layers. Clearly,
there are the local planning authorities, the councils, and there
is the Inspectorate, but the Human Rights Act, as it were, seeps
through and pervades all of them. Both the Inspectorate and the
local authorities have to abide by the rules of the Human Rights
Act.
236. Although is it not the case that people
are more likely to invoke the new rights that they have when they
think that the existing processes have been exhausted? This is
bringing into play a new right, a new way of trying to, in the
end, get a different decision.
(Mr Wilbraham) Yes. Technically speaking, in many
cases, those rights already exist but they are not well known
amongst lawyers generally. They are certainly not well known amongst
the public, which tends to think of human rights more in a civil
liberties sense than in, for example, the planning system. As
people become more aware, since the government has brought the
rights home, it is inevitable that people will understand and
exploit them.
237. You mentioned, in your view, the likely
need to separate the political process from the planning process.
You said in your evidence there was the potential for civil unrest,
which is quite strong language to use. Is that still your view?
(Mr Haslam) I do not think we said "civil unrest".
238. I am advised it is a 1995 submission.
(Mr Wilbraham) It certainly is not my view.
(Mr Haslam) We have moved on since 1995.
Chairman
239. You do not think it is going to cause any
problems at all?
(Mr Wilbraham) I do not say it is not going to cause
any problems. I do not think it is going to lead to disturbances
on the street.
| 
