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Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough): I respect what the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) is trying to do and he will be relieved to hear that my remarks will be fairly brief, but I want to make one simple point. We may have similar views on many matters but we represent very different constituencies. I am prepared to accept—I am not going to second-guess him—that high hedges are a major problem in the London borough of Ealing, but he should know that I represent a constituency that is 600 square miles. That is about the same size as Greater London. There are about 72 parliamentary constituencies in Greater London. I have one of the smaller electorates in the country. I probably have, let us say, 30,000 council tax payers spread over 600 square miles.
I accept that, in urban areas—it can be sorted out by the local authorities, which know best—there are some extremely careless, unpleasant or perhaps poor people who allow Leylandii to grow around small suburban or urban gardens, which cuts out the light of their neighbours and causes them enormous distress. I personally believe that we need some enabling legislation to help local authorities to deal with that. In total, there may be a large number of disputes—perhaps 10,000 around the country—but compared with the total number of properties in the country that is relatively small.
I am still happy, if we want to make progress today in terms of compromise and accepting amendments, to have a Bill that addressed that problem and allowed local authorities, if they so wished, to deal with the very small number of people who allow Leylandii to grow to 30, 40 or 50 ft, which is absurd.
Let me describe why this provision is important, and why local authorities are best equipped to decide whether they want to get involved in this process. As I have said, my constituency is very different from certain others. I took care to go to the Lincolnshire show, which was held yesterday and was attended by 30,000 mainly rural people. I did a bit of vox pop and asked some local councillors and people whom I happened to meet about the Bill. When I described some of the clauses and what it tries to achieve, everybody whom I talked to was horrified.
There are thousands of miles of hedges in my constituency. The hon. Member for Ealing, North may find this difficult to understand, but in the lane outside my house—along which perhaps one car or tractor an hour passes—there are hedges not just 2 m high, but 3 m or even 4 m high. They have been left there by the farmer for environmental reasons. I realise that the hon. Gentleman wants to restrict the provision to evergreen shrubs, but I can assure him that because of the amount of planting going on and the growth of hedges, we are talking about a completely different environment in the country. It is a great pity, therefore, that we could not reach a compromise on this issue, whereby local authorities have some ability to decide what to do to solve the problem. After all, they know best what is going on in their area.
As I said, my constituency is very different; it is completely rural, with hundreds of miles of hedges. I would venture to suggest that this is much less of a problem in a district such as West Lindsey, in Lincolnshire, than in the London borough of Ealing, even in the villages and suburban areas. In 20 years as a Member of this House, I have had to deal with just one bad problem—when I visited a suburban location in which somebody had grown a hedge. I can recollect receiving no more than one or two letters on this subject in that time.
Mr. Tony Clarke: Does the hon. Gentleman—I speak as somebody who has the largest constituency in mainland Britain, which includes some 92,000 constituents, rural and urban—accept that this is a problem in both an urban and a rural setting? My constituency has three local authorities—a borough council, a district council and a county council—and many parish councils. I have received letters from all parts of that constituency. People recognise that visits to the garden centre are not necessarily decided on the basis of one's postcode. People buy these offensive plants irrespective of where they live, and the plants cause nuisance to their neighbours, irrespective of where they live. Life cannot be easily divided up into rural and urban; this problem affects people throughout the land, irrespective of the nature of the constituency in which they live.
Mr. Leigh: That is a perfectly fair point. I do not want to take an absolutist point of view. Someone who lives near me in the middle of completely rural location has grown huge evergreen cedars—I do not know why—all around his house. That upsets nobody because all that surrounds his house is fields. Of course, such trees could cause a problem in rural areas in certain circumstances. That is why it is best for local authorities, which know the areas concerned best, to make a considered judgment as to whether there is a problem. I accept that many local authorities cover a mixed area, rural and suburban; it is for them to take that decision.
Bob Russell: Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that if no neighbour is complaining about the high trees around the house of the constituent to whom he has just referred, there is no problem? The Bill does not in any way attack the hedgerows of our wonderful countryside; in fact, many of us would like more hedgerows. The hon. Gentleman should address the point: we are talking about inappropriate trees and hedges in inappropriate locations.
Mr. Leigh: As I said, I am not taking an absolutist view—I am simply trying to explain the differences. [Interruption.] I note that the hon. Member for Ealing, North, the Bill's promoter, has returned; unfortunately, through no fault of his own he had to leave the Chamber for a moment. I said a few moments ago that I am genuinely trying to seek a compromise. I accept that safeguards are already built into the Bill, but they do not go far enough. I would refer the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) to a local authority such as my own. It is starved of resources—whichever party is in power—and is trying to make provision for more and more services laid on it by the Government. It has to
deliver those services over an area of 600 square miles with only 30,000 council tax payers. Now we are talking about placing yet another duty on such authorities.12.30 pm
Frankly, 2 m is far too low. In my constituency, it is nothing. It is just a tiny shrub of a hedge. Even in the suburban areas where the gardens are much bigger, hedges regularly grow way above 2 m. If the Bill's sponsor were prepared to accept my amendment, which would increase the height to 4 m; if local authorities could have some input; if we could restrict the measures to conifers, I would happily pass the Bill. The hon. Member for Ealing, North is the Bill's sponsor and he can do what he likes, but if he is unprepared to compromise, I tell him that the Bill will cause problems for relatively cash-strapped rural authorities such as my own. People will make use of the Bill when it becomes law and extra burdens will be placed on my local authority. What will happen then?
We are told in the regulatory impact assessment that local authorities will incur costs for determining complaints and enforcing remedial action. It says that responses to consultation suggested that officers' time would cost an average £35 to £40 per hour, and that it would take around eight hours to investigate a complaint and decide whether to require the owner to carry out remedial works. I am prepared to accept that that may cause no problem in a London borough such as Ealing. Such authorities are much larger and much richer in their rate support base. I have no doubt that the London borough of Ealing could take it all in its stride.
By contrast, when I checked last week, I found that over the whole 600 square miles of West Lindsey, the authority was so strapped for cash that at one stage it did not have even one planning enforcement officer—not one for all of 600 square miles. Let us forget about hedges for a moment. People could be building extensions without permission, flouting existing planning law, yet not a single officer was employed by the local authority to deal with the problem. The regulatory impact assessment says that it will cost only about £35 or £40 an hour, but in some wards in my constituency, the average wage is as low as £10,000 to £12,000 a year. It is a highly rural area with people living on low wages, with a cash-strapped local authority unable to employ—for a time at least—a single planning enforcement officer, and now even more duties are going to be laid on the local authority.
Let me tell the hon. Member for Ealing, North that this is not a wrecking or unreasonable amendment: it is all about town and country. I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the problem of restricting the Bill to certain areas in the country. I accept that in an area such as my own, there may be isolated cases of gardens being much bigger than in London, even in suburban areas, but why not let the local authority decide?
It is estimated that the average cost will be about £280 to £320 per case. That is nothing for London boroughs, but a much greater burden on authorities such as West Lindsey. The regulatory impact assessment states that the consultation respondents agreed that there was backlog of existing problem cases to be dealt with in the short term and that no one could improve on the
estimate that 10,000 such cases would remain to be determined. Fair enough. That just shows that we need some sort of legislation.I support that view. There could be 10,000 cases of the worst kind in the country as a whole. There are about 400 local authorities in the country. Plucking a figure out of the sky, there could be 10, 20 or 30 bad cases in my local district. The local authority might be able to cope with it: I do not know, but we should let it decide. Do we not all believe in local democracy? I do not understand why, if the hon. Member for Ealing, North believes that there is a problem in Lincolnshire, he cannot allow Lincolnshire local authorities the chance to determine what they want to do about it.
The regulatory impact assessment also states that local authorities will also be involved in appeals against their decisions, submitting statements and commenting on representations from the parties. I do not know how many people are employed in a London borough such as Ealing—many hundreds, I suspect. How many are employed in a small district authority? Perhaps 100 in total, but they have to determine all the huge paraphernalia of existing Government laws, regulations and so forth. The regulatory impact assessment says that staff will largely draw on existing material and that they will spend no more than three to four hours on each case. Based on an estimated appeal rate of 2,000 cases every three years, that suggests total costs ranging from £210,000 to £320,000. It also says that local authorities will be able to charge complainants a fee for determining these complaints. That is fair enough, and such burdens can be easily borne by urban and London borough authorities, but it is a different story for rural local authorities.
If a hedge owner does not comply with a local authority's orders, we are told in the regulatory impact assessment that the authority will be able to enforce remedial action by prosecuting the hedge owner. Again, that will be no problem in London boroughs, but I do not know how we will cope with it in West Lindsey, which recently did not have a single enforcement officer. It also says that any unpaid expenses arising from the local authority using its default powers to carry out the work it specified in the remedial notice will be registered as a local land charge.
I have made my point, and I hope that the hon. Member for Ealing, North will be able to accept it in a spirit of compromise. I dearly wish that we could amend the Bill today so that we can attack those awful people who allow their trees to grow to such a height and who do not care about others. However, I know one person in a neighbouring constituency who has a problem with leylandii at the bottom of his garden, but he cannot afford to cut them down. He is not a nasty person and he does not want to cut off anybody's light, but he simply cannot afford to cut the trees down. That is often a problem in rural or semi-rural areas. People are not being unreasonable: they cannot afford to take remedial action. The local authority could take a balanced view and decide to opt in or opt out. I hope that in a spirit of
compromise the Bill's promoter will feel able to accept the new clause. or at least some of the other amendments that we will consider today.
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