 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Planning |
Planning Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Alan Sandall,
Committee Clerk
† attended
the
Committee
WitnessesRobert
Upton, Secretary General, Royal Town Planning
Institute
Rynd Smith, Head of
Policy, Royal Town Planning
Institute
Sir Simon Milton, Local
Government Association
Graham Jones,
Local Government Association, Planning Officers
Society
Katrine Sporle, Chief
Executive, Planning
Inspectorate
Leonora Rozee,
Deputy Chief Executive, Planning
Inspectorate
Andrew Whitaker,
Head of Planning, Home Builders
Federation
John Slaughter,
Director of External Affairs, Home Builders
Federation
Stephen Ashworth,
Denton Wilde Sapte, British Property
Federation
John Rhodes, RPS
Planning, British Property Federation
Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 8 January 2008(Afternoon)[Sir John Butterfill in the Chair]Planning Bill4
pm
The
Committee deliberated in
private.
4.6
pm
On
resuming—
The
Chairman:
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Our first
witnesses this afternoon are from the Royal Town Planning Institute,
represented by their secretary-general, Mr. Robert Upton. I
am pleased to see you and thank you for coming Mr. Upton.
Would you introduce your colleague
please?
Robert
Upton:
This is Mr. Rynd Smith, who is the
head of policy at the
Institute.
The
Chairman:
Would you like to make a short statement or
would you sooner take the questions and then, if you feel inclined,
make a statement afterwards? How would you like to play
it?
Robert
Upton:
If it would suit, I would be happy to make a
very short opening
statement.
Robert
Upton:
Our thanks to the Committee for the invitation
to give oral evidence. I should explain that the Royal Town Planning
Institute exists to advance the art and science of planning and that
is, among other things, to promote good practice in planning and to
contribute to the formulation of policy and legislation. We have been
actively involved in discussing proposals for planning reform over
quite a few years now and we are broadly supportive of the proposals in
the Bill, but we have two major concerns, which I would like to flag up
at the beginning.
The
first relates to the national policy statements and their role in the
new procedure that is proposed. As we see it, the whole system proposed
for development consents for major infrastructure projects depends
entirely on the adequacy of those national policy statements. In our
view, there are four tests that must be met there: clarity; consistency
with each other; credibility in terms of the evidence base in the
consultation; and the extent to which they manage to be location
specific, that is, that they give a sufficiently clear indication of
what is required so that impacts can reasonably be assessed. We think
that it is essential that the Infrastructure Planning Commission should
be required to make an annual report to Parliament on the adequacy of
the statements with which it is working, to give a suitable degree of
parliamentary
scrutiny.
Our second
major concern of principle relates to the provision under the Town and
Country Planning Act
1990 for local member review bodies, which we see as a major breach of
the 1947 settlement, which separated the decision-taking from the
appeal
process.
Q
8181
Mr.
David Curry (Skipton and Ripon) (Con): Mr.
Upton, you were a local authority chief executive in a previous
incarnation, were you
not?
Robert
Upton:
Yes I
was.
Mr.
Curry:
So you will be particularly concerned, presumably,
about how the infrastructure levy is going to
work?
Robert
Upton:
Yes. We support the idea of the
CIL.
Q
82
Mr.
Curry:
On a scale of nought to 10, if 10 is you know
absolutely everything about how it is going to be working and nought is
you know nothing about it, where would you place the
Bill?
Robert
Upton:
Of course, what it gives is powers to the
Secretary of State to introduce a scheme and the details have yet to be
seen.
Q
83
Mr.
Curry:
If you were sitting where the Secretary of State or
the Minister are sitting and they were sitting where you are, what are
the three key questions you would want to ask, to shift that zero up to
about five,
say?
Robert
Upton:
I think that I would want to know the
Secretary of State’s intentions in terms of whether the entire
capture from a local plan-based tariff was to be kept locally or
whether there might be provision for some of it to be transferred for
regional or sub-regional infrastructure because I think that that is a
question that attracts a lot of interest. I think I would want to know
how the money was going to be
banked—
Robert
Upton:
Yes.
Robert
Upton:
In other words, the arrangements by which the
money would be disbursed. I think that I would want to know how this
would be seen as affecting the process of approving the plan—the
local development framework—because it becomes a very important
part of the local development framework and the extent to which that is
sound and
robust.
Q
84
Mr.
Curry:
Would you also want to know a little bit more about
the relationship between site-specific gains, through section 106, and
perhaps wider infrastructure gains? With site-specific gains, social
housing would probably be the classic
one.
Robert
Upton:
Yes, that is an important area to work
through. My presumption at this stage, which has to come out of the
detail, is that section 106 requirements will be reduced to very
site-specific
issues.
Q
85
Mr.
Curry:
Finally, because we are rather time limited,
although I may catch the Chairman’s eye again later, you said in
your national policy statements, with happy alliteration, that there
should be “clarity, consistency, credibility”—but
then you could not find a
“c” for the last one—and that you hoped they were
going to be, if I heard you right, very “location
specific”.
Robert
Upton:
As locationally specific as
possible.
Q
86
Mr.
Curry:
But if that is the case, Mr. Upton, then
the national policy statement is a planning permission, is it not? What
is left for this wonderful, great, huge quango to decide, if the
national planning statement says where the location of a development is
going to
be?
Robert
Upton:
I think that the national policy statement
states an intention. We think that that intention should be as specific
as possible, so that there can be the most adequate consultation, but I
do not think that it amounts to a planning consent. There are questions
around what the IPC should be able to consider in seeking to determine
whether a development consent should be given. Should it be restricted
simply to the national policy statement or should it be in general
accordance with the national policy statement? To what extent should
the IPC have regard to all other national policy statements, to
planning policy statements and to local development
frameworks?
Q
87
Mr.
Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC): Mr.
Upton, you will be aware of the fact that in some planning systems
there is a qualified third-party right of appeal. In the paperwork that
you have submitted regarding this Bill, you have expressed concerns
that might arise from third-party communities and whether they would be
heard and so on. Are you satisfied that the conduct of
cross-examinations, as foreseen in the Bill, is going to deliver what
you are concerned about? Or is it going to impede hearing what third
parties have to
say?
Robert
Upton:
There are two elements to that. First, we
broadly support the idea of the IPC taking an inquisitorial approach.
We think that that is right for the management of the process. We think
that it is important that the IPC should be required to hear anybody
and everybody who can demonstrate an
interest.
Although I
said that there were two elements to this, if I can have a third, there
is also an interesting question about the extent to which bodies such
as Planning Aid, for which we are responsible, can help communities to
take effective part in the
process.
Q
88
Mr.
Llwyd:
Are you satisfied that that is so under the Bill as
it stands—that third parties will be allowed to take a
reasonable part in these proceedings, especially if they might be
directly
affected?
Robert
Upton:
We feel that some of the wording might be
tweaked to make it clearer that there is an absolute right to be heard
if you are affected.
Q
89
Mr.
Llwyd:
On the issue of the timetable proposed by the Bill,
are you satisfied that that would allow sufficient time for all
interested parties to have their
say?
Robert
Upton:
In relation to the national policy
statements?
4.15
pm
Robert
Upton:
Well, it is tight, but it is very specific. It
gives a clear indication of how a challenge must be made. It is
probably sufficient for those who know that they are aggrieved to see
whether they can take up that
option.
Q
90
Mr.
Llwyd:
But many people will not be well versed in planning
law, will they? I am concerned that they might be left
behind.
Robert
Upton:
Again, I would hope that if, for example, we
are able to support those who are less well versed through the
operation of planning aid, we would be able to flag up to them their
options and the time scale in which they need to exercise
them.
Q
91
Mrs.
Jacqui Lait (Beckenham) (Con): You began to talk about
consultation quite a bit. You say you prefer the inquisitorial to the
adversarial. Many local communities will want to be able to present
their views, but surely they will also want the opportunity to quiz
developers more closely about their proposals. How do you envisage that
that will work in an inquisitorial rather than adversarial
system?
Robert
Upton:
I accept that it is a matter of judgment, and
I can see the intellectual case for sticking with an adversarial
approach, but the danger is that adversarial approaches become
unmanageable in the end—the process of inquiry loses its focus
and sense of purpose. It is important that developers, when putting
forward proposals, should be required to give as much detail as
possible, and that those who have concerns should be able to express
them
clearly.
Q
92
Mrs.
Lait:
You refer to the developer putting forward detailed
proposals. There is a requirement that they should consult local bodies
before those proposals even come through. Can you outline what scale of
consultation you think a developer should undertake before putting in a
planning
application?
Robert
Upton:
I think that they should give as much detail
as they possibly can. To make a more general point, it is one thing to
look at it in terms of processes, but the real issue as I see it is not
a particular process; it is the requirement to develop much more
transparency and clarity about our purposes in seeking to provide
infrastructure of one sort or another and to enable a proper public
debate about it. That is the real step forward that the Bill seeks to
achieve.
Q
93
Mrs.
Lait:
But I am afraid that when we go into Committee, we
will be looking at the process, so I shall take you back and ask you
again what level of consultation a developer should undertake. Are you
just saying that they should publicise their proposals, or should they
go further and meet the various local authorities or any other body
that wants to meet them or negotiate before the application is
made?
Robert
Upton:
Yes, I think that they should be prepared to
do all those things. Obviously, it depends to some extent on the nature
of the application, but they should meet local authorities and be
prepared to hold public meetings and put out information. When it comes
time for them to put in the final proposal, they should be prepared to
include a statement of the mitigation proposals that have arisen from
their consultations and
discussions.
Q
94
Mr.
Clive Betts (Sheffield, Attercliffe) (Lab): I should like
to pursue two issues with you. The first is that, while generally
supporting most of the Bill, you have come out strongly against local
member review bodies, which have generally been welcomed as part of
devolving responsibilities. Maybe it would do one or two of your
members out of a job to reduce the amount of work going to the planning
inspectorate, but nevertheless, why are members at the local level not
capable of making a final decision on the very smallest of planning
applications where a dispute arises about the initial decision made by
an
officer?
Robert
Upton:
May I first say that it is not the case
that they have been generally welcomed? As I
understand it, that provision is the one in the Bill that has attracted
the most hostility—87 per cent. of consultation responses have
been opposed to it. The first point is one of principle and goes back
to what I called the 1947 settlement, under which it was accepted that
in return for having their rights over land possibly curtailed, people
should have a right of appeal to a body other than the body that took
the original decision. That principle has worked extremely well over
the years, and I cannot see any evidence to show why it should
change now.
There are two main parts to
clause 150, which brings this measure in: the first is the ability of
the Secretary of State to designate what should go to elected member
review bodies, and the second is his or her ability to specify what
decisions might be taken under delegated powers by officers. That is a
good thing, which may well increase the speed and efficiency of the
process in the case of some less efficient local authorities or local
planning authorities, but the concomitant of that is that the public
require the reassurance that their appeal will not be heard—as
Mr. Curry says, I had the honour to be the chief executive
of a very good local authority, but even in very good local
authorities, there are dynamics that would reduce the public perception
of the safety of the system.
Q
95
Mr.
Betts:
I might characterise that statement as saying that
taking a bit of democracy away and giving decisions to officers is a
good thing, while putting a bit of democracy back in and giving more
responsibility to members is a bad thing, but that would perhaps be
unfair. However, let us say that the local member review body comprised
councillors from neighbouring authorities, not the authority for which
the officers who took the original decision worked. Would that not get
around the objection that you have made?
Robert
Upton:
I have seen it suggested that there might be
joint bodies, although I cannot remember where I saw that suggestion.
The answer to that question is, “But why? What are we
achieving?”
Q
96
Mr.
Betts:
If you take decisions at local level, you avoid
involvement by the national planning inspectorate, do you
not?
Robert
Upton:
I do not think that there is an issue of
democracy here; we are talking about a quasi-judicial process. What the
public want in those circumstances is the certainty that their appeal
is being considered by somebody who is very competent, very independent
and very much to be trusted.
Q
97
Mr.
Betts:
The implication that we might draw out of that is
almost that local councillors are not competent and not be
trusted.
Robert
Upton:
You are talking about an appellate process. I
think that local authorities absolutely should be charged as far as
possible with responsibility for local development
decisions.
Q
98
Robert
Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con): Mr.
Upton, if the planning inspectorate is perceived as highly competent
and is very much trusted by the general public as you say—I do
not disagree with you for one moment— why are its inspectors not
the best people to decide on the location-specific element of any
proposal?
Robert
Upton:
You mean in relation to major infrastructure
projects?
Q
99
Robert
Neill:
Yes. Why do you need the separate IPC to do that?
Why not have Parliament take the decision on the national policy and
then let the trusted and competent planning inspectorate decide whether
the application is appropriate for a particular site? Why can we not do
that?
Robert
Upton:
I think that that is perhaps a question that
you might address more fruitfully to Ministers than to me, because I
have very limited influence here. However, as I understand it, the
Government’s concern is to achieve not only a body that is seen
as entirely free standing and which has a range of expertise, some of
which may well come from the ranks of the inspectorate, which has a
great deal of expertise to offer, but a body that is seen as being
focused on all the major infrastructure decisions, as opposed to the
vast generality of cases, which run very effectively through the
planning inspectorate. That is the distinction. However, you should
perhaps put that more firmly to the Secretary of State.
There is one other point that I
would like to make on behalf of the institute. I would like to
emphasise the significance of the national planning statements, rather
than the mechanism by which the development consents are decided
downstream. What gives us the chance to move forward in a big way is
the requirement that there should be clarity and transparency about
what is proposed and that the community, including the business
community, has the chance to be engaged in it. That is potentially very
important.
Q
100
Robert
Neill:
I understand that point. I
suppose that that not only achieves those objectives, as you rightly
say, but prevents re-runs of the terminal 5 situation, in which
national policy considerations are mixed up with the individual site
inquiry. That is why I was interested in your final two points. You say
that the national policy statement must be credible in terms of the
evidence base, but it also must be as location specific as possible. If
it is to be location specific, how will you have robust and credible
testing of the evidence base without allowing the parties interested in
the identified site the right to appear before and be heard by the body
that decides the national policy statement? Shall we grasp that
nettle?
Robert
Upton:
First, I think that national policy statements
will vary quite considerably in kind. When it comes to discussions
about airports, it is quite hard to imagine hypothetical airports. We
by and large know where they are or where they might be. When you are
talking about wind farms, I think that it is unreasonable to expect the
national policy statement to say exactly where 150 wind farms in East
Anglia will or will not go; that just will not happen. There is a big
difference, but to the extent that national policy statements are more
locationally specific and should be more locationally specific, the
consultation on those national policy statements should indeed engage
with the communities
concerned.
Q
101
Robert
Neill:
At whatever level, you envisage the need for robust
testing of the evidence
base?
Robert
Upton:
Yes.
Robert
Upton:
Not by cross-examination; through an
inquisitorial system led by the
commission.
Q
103
Mrs.
Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op): There is
provision in the Bill for existing policy statements to be designated
as national policy statements. Have you any views on
that?
Robert
Upton:
It is fair to say that we are concerned about
some possible implications of that, because it is not clear to us what
national policy statements might then emerge that are perhaps less
robust and less well evidenced than things that we would hope to see
downstream. I suppose that there is always the risk that grandfathering
in some policy statements that are needed, as the Government see it,
urgently might prejudice the operation of the system. That is why at
one stage we considered recommending that all national policy
statements should be subject to some form of parliamentary
scrutiny.
Q
104
Mrs.
Ellman:
Do you think that the criteria for designating
what is a nationally important decision are correct?
Robert
Upton:
You mean in relation to the categories and
thresholds?
Robert
Upton:
I think that others are more expert than we
are. We have heard some doubts expressed about the thresholds being
either too high or too low, but in terms of the basic coverage, it
looks okay and there is the provision to extend them if that is
required.
Q
105
Jeff
Ennis (Barnsley, East and Mexborough) (Lab):
Mr. Upton, in your opening remarks you mentioned that you
thought that the IPC ought to report annually to Parliament, which is a
reasonable suggestion to make. Have you any thoughts as to what
mechanism ought to be pursued to achieve that? Would it be the
appropriate Select Committee or some other
mechanism?
Robert
Upton:
To be honest, I have not developed that
point.
Q
106
Alun
Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op): I am
very interested in the comments that you made about the importance of
and the emphasis that you as a planning body place on consultation and
engagement in advance. Planning officials within the Government have
traditionally taken the view that an application should be considered
without regard to who is the applicant. You referred a moment ago to
wind farms. It seems to many of us that there is a case for engagement
and even ownership of the application by the local
community—wind farm developments are a classic example of
this—being a relevant consideration to be included in the
balance. For instance, if the local community has identified where in
East Anglia there would be community benefit resulting from a location,
that should be a relevant consideration. Would you
agree?
Robert
Upton:
I am sorry. I am slightly deaf and I possibly
have not followed
you.
Q
107
Alun
Michael:
The point is that there has traditionally been an
approach within Government whereby the consideration of an application
should be neutral as to whom the applicant is, whereas the whole point
of consultation and engagement in advance and even community ownership
of an application—which has happened in some locations with wind
energy—is that it changes the view of the application. Do you
see that as a relevant consideration in the planning process, given the
emphasis that you put earlier on advance consultation and
engagement?
4.30
pm
Robert
Upton:
In terms of those who are managing the
application, the issue of ownership should not be relevant, but
obviously in terms of how it affects the communities concerned and
their response to it, it may just be relevant. I do not think that it
should be given any special relevance—or any relevance at all,
really—in terms of the
process.
Q
108
Alun
Michael:
I can illustrate the point with two situations. I
can think of an example at the top ends of two valleys where, in the
one case, the local
community is the applicant and wants that to go ahead. There is a
community benefit—there is an economic benefit to the area. At
the top end of the other valley, something is being done to the
community by an external applicant. Should that not make a
difference?
Robert
Upton:
I wonder whether that is the only distinction
between the two
cases.
Alun
Michael:
It is a consideration to weigh in the balance. I
accept that. It cannot be a totally black-and-white
situation.
Robert
Upton:
Well, in the context of a national policy
statement on wind farms, I would expect that to take no cognisance of
whom the applicant is. I think at that level, this has to be the
case.
Q
109
Alun
Michael:
Then at the subsequent
consideration of individual applications, it would be a relevant
consideration?
Robert
Upton:
My colleague, Rynd Smith, is trying to put me
right here. It is very hard to say whether it would count as a material
consideration, in terms of how it was put
forward.
Q
110
Dan
Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD): You
spoke earlier about local development frameworks in the context of the
community infrastructure levy. As the renewal and introduction of new
local development frameworks is a constant process, and as local
authorities are at different stages in that, do you think that they
ought to be revisited in light of the changes being made by this Bill,
because some communities where the LDF is finalised after the Bill
becomes law may be at an advantage in terms of negotiations
afterwards?
Robert
Upton:
I think that all local
planning authorities should press on with their local development
frameworks as fast as they possibly can and review them as they need
to. The introduction of a community infrastructure levy will
potentially have a very powerful effect on what constitutes a sound
local development framework—in other words, what it is then
within the ability of that local authority or planning authority to
achieve for its community. I would not want them to stop. I think they
should get on with it
now.
Q
111
Paul
Clark (Gillingham) (Lab): Can I tempt you back to the
community infrastructure levy and perhaps take a different approach
from my parliamentary colleague, David Curry, being a listening member
of the Committee? I am sure my ministerial colleagues are also
listening. The opportunity now to feed into the debate about how the
community infrastructure levy should be calculated, and so on, is one
of the options that needs to be taken forward. I would be interested to
know whether you have taken a view as to what might go into that
process, and I was particularly interested in what you said in your
response about whether it was going to be kept entirely local, or how
far it would go regionally and sub-regionally. I am interested in your
views on
this.
Robert
Upton:
Again, without wanting to
duck the question, I think this is something which needs to be
discussed. I am not clear at present where the Department
for Communities and Local Government wants to go on this. If one had the
situation in which, for example, a regional or sub-regional strategy
made development contingent upon certain infrastructure provision, then
it would be almost perverse to rule out of a plan-based tariff the
possibility of some contribution to that. I think the requirement is
still that the vast majority of this money should be used in the area
in which it is generated. I think there also has to be recognition that
some areas will by definition do better than others out of this in
terms of their potential, so it should not be interpreted as the chance
to cut off all other forms of funding for
infrastructure.
Q
112
Paul
Clark:
Let me just follow that through. Can you see an
instance, for example, where a sub-regional contribution would be
relevant, or would be taken forward? For example, if there were a
policy, in a sub-regional major redevelopment area, of environmental
enhancement—in the sense of green area or green
grid—could that mean something as part of a
contribution?
Robert
Upton:
That should be a possibility, but there are
other, more mundane possibilities such as a light rail system, guided
busway or something else that is deemed to produce an environmental
effect across a
sub-region.
Q
113
Mr.
Curry:
May I pursue that issue for a minute,
Mr. Upton? In my neck of the woods, we have the Leeds city
region concept of Leeds. Craven, one of the district councils in my
constituency, has affiliated itself to that city region. The top-left
hand corner of Craven is on the Cumbrian border and must be about 70
miles from Leeds city centre. Would you think that a development in
Bentham or Ingleton should be levied for a project taking place around
Leeds railway
station?
Robert
Upton:
That is exactly the sort of
issue that should be thrashed out by local communities in debating the
proposals in the local development framework and the application of
community infrastructure living.
Q
114
Mr.
Curry:
If I may say so, Mr. Upton, you should
not be allowed to get away with that as an answer. The local
development frameworks for Leeds and Ingleton are separated by some 60
or 70 miles. Let us move closer to Leeds, then, to the edge of Skipton,
which is on the boundary of the Bradford metropolitan area and the
Leeds met. Would it be legitimate to say that a development in Skipton
should be eligible to make some contribution, or vice
versa?
Robert
Upton:
It is an issue of degree and judgment. If the
case can be made to the people of Skipton that they will be
beneficiaries, they might agree to that and want to see it. Otherwise,
they might object to it being part of the local development
framework.
Q
115
Mr.
Curry:
I shall not hazard a guess as to which of those two
options they might decide. I return to the operations of the
commission. I hope I have quoted you correctly as saying that the IPC
should be required to hear everybody and anybody who has an interest.
What do you mean by “to hear” in this
context?
Robert
Upton:
That they should provide in their programme of
hearings the opportunity for that person or community or group to
appear, so that whatever they have to say can be incorporated into the
commission’s processes.
Q
116
Mr.
Curry:
Right; I ask this with very serious intent. In my
constituency, there are none of the big projects that we are talking
about—it is quite difficult to put them in the middle of the
Yorkshire dales. If I wanted to stop something happening, I would do my
best to try to generate at least 10,000 people who wanted to give
evidence to the commission, yet we are told that they have got to
decide it all within a timetable for the procedures, with the whole lot
encapsulated within about nine months, which is an interesting length
of time. The Minister reiterated, in her statement, that everybody
should be heard. I am not clear how one reconciles the pledge that
everybody can be heard with the accelerated timetable, which is, after
all, the reason why the Bill exists in the first place. I know that you
are not responsible for the Bill, and I do not want to give the
impression that I have interrogated you about something of which you
are not the author, but do you share my perplexity on this?
Robert
Upton:
There is certainly an issue there, but the
commission will have to decide such questions as it establishes itself.
It will have to decide whether 9,000 carbon-copy
objections—objections all in the same wording—constitute
9,000 different objections or just one.
Q
117
Mr.
Curry:
It is a difficult issue, is not it? The deputy
director-general of the CBI told us this morning that he hoped that the
procedure would command a consensus, and that people had ownership of
it—to use the jargon—and would feel that it had been
fairly arrived at and that all the usual aggro that we associate with
these sorts of planning decisions might not happen.
Robert
Upton:
There is no magic solution that will produce
consensus around what are inherently controversial and contentious
issues over which reasonable people having different values can
disagree. We should not pretend otherwise. I think that all that one
can reasonably aspire to do is to create a system and process that
recognises that, does not try to sweep it all under the carpet and
allows everyone to have their day—or at least part of a
day—in
court.
Q
118
Mr.
Curry:
When I asked you about site-specific section 106
agreements, you said that you thought that they would be very site
specific. Could you tell me what you think is the role for what might
be called the classic section 106 agreement, and is there a danger that
certain babies might go out with the
bathwater?
Robert
Upton:
I do not feel that I, any more than you, have
been given enough detail about the proposals to be able to answer that
with any strong sense of being
right about it. If we have what I would crudely call a plan-based tariff
that seeks to deal with the bigger district or multi-district-wide
issues of infrastructure and meet the needs and aspirations of
communities, I would hope that that would make it possible for section
106 requirements to come down to very site-specific issues of what is
required to ameliorate the immediate impact of the development or fit
it into the local infrastructure.
Q
119
Mr.
Betts:
I go back to an issue that David Curry raised, but
perhaps with a slightly different bias in my question. Is it not the
fact that, at present, there can be major, significantly sized
developments just outside the boundaries of our large cities that
nevertheless put a considerable demand on their infrastructure, and
there is no way for those developments to make a contribution under the
current arrangements? Is it not therefore reasonable that, in looking
at the community infrastructure levy, we might find a way of allowing
that to happen through that mechanism?
Robert
Upton:
I think that that is something that should be
explored.
Q
120
Mr.
Betts:
I shall come on to an issue that
I raised this morning with the representatives of the CBI, who
commented on it. Essentially, the skills that your planning officers
have relate to looking at the types, nature and appropriateness of
development and the nature of the charge that we are perhaps getting
towards, and the community infrastructure levy would look at those
sorts of issues in determining the charge for particular schemes. One
aspect, however, that is in the Bill and can be considered when
determining the nature or size of the levy is the uplift in valuation
that arises when value on the site is increased. Would you have
concerns about that criterion being used to calculate the levy and
would that cause concerns for planners as it is not a skill they
normally have in their
locker?
Robert
Upton:
With respect, the members of my institution
have many skills covering a wide range of issues and are not limited to
the ones that you set out, and there are certainly some who would be
very competent at looking them. The point, however, is that clause
163(2) refers to the increase in the value due to the permission for
development, and we are not convinced that that is necessary or is an
issue of value. We think that it is theoretically possible that someone
might wish to carry out a form of development that was perceived to
reduce the value of the land, but in doing so might raise an
infrastructure requirement, and we do not see why they should not
contribute to
that.
Q
121
Robert
Neill:
I am interested in your point about how you deal
with the evidence being gathered and that you feel that it should be
dealt with through an inquisitorial process. In the High Court, great
savings have been made, particularly in the commercial division, by
judges being much more proactive in the management of hearings by
insisting that the issues be defined in advance and intervening much
more to pull
up counsel. Is there perhaps something that we should learn from that
about how to manage inquiries, not just by the IPC, but perhaps by
planning inspectors generally, and might not much more robust judicial
management—for want of a better term—of the process save
a lot of time and prevent
duplication?
Robert
Upton:
You will have the privilege of seeing my good
friends Katrine Sporle and Leonora Rozee from the Planning Inspectorate
later, so I will let you put that question to
them.
4.45
pm
Robert
Upton:
In relation to the IPC, there is a very large
task for it to do when it is established, whoever makes it up. These
issues of procedures are not trivial at all. I am sorry, but I keep
coming back to the same point—that process is hugely important
but more important still is clarity and transparency about what we, as
a community, are trying to achieve in terms of infrastructure, because
everything flows from
that.
Q
122
Robert
Neill:
I understand that. Given that that is what we want
to achieve, my final question is how do you satisfy interested parties
that there is clarity and transparency if they are left with a sense
that “I was not able to ask the questions I wanted to in my own
way”?
Robert
Upton:
I accept that that is very
difficult. I also accept that there is no planning issue of any
significance in the world which ends up with all parties being
satisfied. As I think I said in answer to Mrs. Lait, there
is a judgment to be made here, but by and large our view is that the
inquisitorial system is more likely to achieve the necessary outcome
than the adversarial
system.
Q
123
Mrs.
Lait:
Can I assume that the RTPI has membership throughout
all parts of the United
Kingdom?
Robert
Upton:
And in 90 other
countries.
Q
124
Mrs.
Lait:
Right. As some parts of the Bill cover the whole of
the United Kingdom, some England and Wales and some just England, can I
then ask whether your members in devolved parts of the UK have
expressed any views on how effective this Bill will be in delivering
national policy statement
aspirations?
Robert
Upton:
Our perception is that it is a
bigger issue in Wales than it is in Scotland, because there seems to be
a clearer disjunction with the operation of devolution in Scotland. In
Wales it would have significant implications for generating stations,
both onshore and offshore, and in so far as it is tied to the totality
of the development consent and then relates to the infrastructure
onshore, in the worst case it could take quite a bite out of devolved
powers in Wales. I think our colleagues are anxious that there should
be a discussion at some stage between the appropriate parts of
Government about what should be
transferred.
Q
125
Mrs.
Lait:
Thank you very much. That is useful, but I am
fascinated by your saying that there is a greater disjunction between
the UK and Scotland. To me, that means there is a greater difference.
Therefore I would have thought that your members would have been just
as perturbed about the proposals to deal with the Scottish aspects of
energy in this particular case as they are in Wales. Let us not give
one region any greater importance than the other.
Robert
Upton:
I think that the point is that
the process of devolution in relation to planning matters goes further
in Scotland than it does in Wales. That does not make the issues any
less; it just makes them different. In terms of issues such as energy
and other things like that, there will need to be as much agreement as
possible between the Administrations in England and in Wales about what
the future policy is going to be, which means discussion. That cannot
be legislated for; it just has to
happen.
Q
126
Mrs.
Lait:
But is there going to be a battle
between Scotland and the UK? In Scotland we are expecting a national
policy statement which will cover energy throughout the UK and the
Scottish Administration have already ruled out the provision of
nuclear.
Robert
Upton:
I do not think that any
legislative process can resolve that problem; it comes back to the need
for discussion between the Administrations
concerned.
The
Chairman:
We do not have time for
another question. Thank you, Mr. Upton, and your colleague,
Mr. Smith, for giving evidence to us. We are very
grateful.
We now
welcome Sir Simon Milton to the Committee. It is very good of you to
come to see us on behalf of the Local Government Association. Could you
introduce your
colleague?
Sir
Simon Milton:
Certainly. I am accompanied by Graham
Jones, who represents the Planning Officers
Society.
The
Chairman:
Thank you very much. Is there a brief opening
statement that you would like to make for the record before answering
questions?
Sir
Simon Milton:
A very brief one, Sir John.
Local
government view planning as a key strategic function.
It is the thing that enables us to help to develop prosperous mixed and
well-planned communities and to do so with community consent. Therefore
anything that takes away that operation should be done very carefully
and on a very limited basis. We are persuaded that there is a case for
handling very large projects through a different procedure, but with
two safeguards. First, the definition of such projects should be drawn
very tightly. Secondly, there should be a clear method for local views
to be heard and paid attention to through the new process, given that
the normal mechanisms of lobbying the local planning authority will not
be
available.
Q
127
Mr.
Curry:
Sir Simon, the infrastructure levy is going to be
quite a complicated business. Do local authorities have the
administrative capacity to deliver
this? What measures do you envisage your organisation
taking to try to establish some sort of common
approach across local authorities, or would you be happy if we had a
competition between local authorities in the levy they charged so that
planning became part of a competitive agenda and there was competition
between local authorities to get developments, for
example?
Sir
Simon Milton:
The whole process starts with having a
valid local development framework. There have been a number of
difficulties for councils getting their LDFs through. One of the things
we have lobbied the Government about is simplifying the process. Part
of the Bill seeks to tackle that. Through that process you should as a
local area be able to come up with an agreed vision of the community
infrastructure needs. That will vary from area to area. We are keen
that there should be maximum flexibility for councils
and communities to define their infrastructure needs. It might be
crèches, cycle paths or combined heat and power plants. We
should not be prescriptive in the Bill or in guidance as to what that
should be. That requirement should then be partly funded through this
levy. That is how it should work. Yes, I believe that councils have the
capacity to come up with an agreed statement of needs for their local
community. That is at the heart of what councils can and should be able
to do.
On the second
point of your question and whether we see some kind of competition
between authorities, the development decision to invest in an area and
to seek to develop to build is subject to a whole range of economic and
market factors. It could be that in time the demands of a community
levy would become a material factor, but I doubt whether it would
become such a factor as to outweigh all of the other things such as
land values, complexity of development and the reputation of the
planning authority as to have a significant and material
impact.
Q
128
Mr.
Curry:
Would you envisage that across the country
developments broadly similar in character might attract levies of
significantly different
values?
Sir
Simon Milton:
That certainly would
follow logically from communities being able to define their needs. If
their proposed tariff were set too high, it could discourage
development, but that is the case with any planning policy that you put
in place. If you make it too onerous to comply with, you will deter
development after a certain
point.
“the Bill should be
amended to provide councils with ... the power to define local
infrastructure
requirements”.
You have
just alluded to that. They should also
have
“discretion over how
and when CIL funds are
used”
and
“the
ability to drive decisions about funding for sub-regional
projects”.
What do you
mean by
that?
Sir
Simon Milton:
I heard the tail end of the last
sitting, so I heard your Craven example. Councils are coming together
now in sub-regional partnerships. They are coming together in
multi-area agreements and through those are defining what kind of
infrastructure
is needed for their areas, particularly to do with transport, but also
on skills development, economic development and housing. I think that
it is entirely reasonable that councils that have come together in that
way can agree among themselves to devote a small portion of the levy
towards meeting those wider sub-regional
needs.
Q
130
Mr.
Curry:
That presupposes a more formal structure of
decision taking within city regions, for
example.
Sir
Simon Milton:
It does, but that is the direction that
we are going in. The Government are talking about devolving significant
decision making and budgets to those clusters of councils that
voluntarily come together to promote prosperity in their sub-region,
and we hope that they will do
so.
Q
131
Mrs.
Lait:
Can I move on to the national policy statements and
the IPC? One of the things that concerns me greatly is the degree of
consultation that is needed with the national policy statements and the
IPC. I wonder whether the Local Government Association has a view on
how consultation should be carried out on the development of the
national policy statement. A slightly different issue—I am
running the two together—is how the planning commission should
hear the views of local
people.
Sir
Simon Milton:
This goes to the point that I made in
my introductory statement about ensuring that there are safeguards to
ensure that local views are heard in the new process. The LGA believes
that there are one or two mechanisms that would help that could be
introduced by amending the Bill. First, on the national policy
statement, the Secretary of State should be required to commission and
pay for a statement of local community impact, particularly when it
comes to allocating a project to a different part of the country. That
would be one safeguard. Secondly, when you have a scheme that is going
through the commission, the commission should be required to pay for a
statement of local views and impact. That would allow the local
authority to pull together local opinion and local consultation and
present it to the commission. There should be a requirement for those
views to be taken into account through the probing and questioning that
the commission undertakes on the specific
application.
Q
132
Mrs.
Lait:
Should the Government accept such an amendment,
would you see the hearings by the commission as being on an
inquisitorial or an adversarial
basis?
Sir
Simon Milton:
We know that the Government wish to get
away from the sort of cross-examination that goes on where everyone has
their QC. That is where all of the costs come in and I think that the
direction is to get away from that. Nevertheless, it is important and
necessary that the views that are expressed are tested properly in the
hearing. I am sure that a commission, if it was adequately resourced
and had the capacity, could undertake that role. We would be very keen
to ensure that the issues thrown up by the statement of community
impact were tested in that forum. That is extremely
important.
Q
133
Paul
Clark:
Briefly, just to pick up on the point about the
community infrastructure levy, I was interested in what you said about
issues, such as skills or transport, and so on, that require a wider
view, perhaps, than that of the immediate local planning authority. I
have seen that need in my neck of the woods. You say that the Bill
should be amended to provide councils with that ability to drive
decisions. How far should the Bill go in laying that out? How detailed
should it
be?
5
pm
Sir
Simon Milton:
I do not believe that
it should be detailed, because then you create a straitjacket that is
too prescriptive. I think these things are best handled by negotiation.
Yes, that sometimes takes slightly longer, but it is likely to lead to
a better outcome. The LGA would be opposed to having percentage
thresholds, with so much going to the sub-region and so much staying
locally. I think it has got to be done through negotiation with the
affected councils and through their LDF process, which is necessarily
consultative.
Q
134
Paul
Clark:
Thank you for that. On another tack, you are very
supportive of the mechanism in terms of local member review bodies in
the Bill. I do not know whether you heard Mr. Upton,
secretary-general of the Royal Town Planning Institute, who is clearly
against such a mechanism, saying that it is an issue of principle that
there should be a separation between decision taking and the appeal
process. May I ask you to explain your reasons for supporting that
mechanism and particularly for your supporting joint authority local
member review
bodies?
Sir
Simon Milton:
I did not hear the RTPI evidence, but I
know that it is hostile to politicians getting involved in planning
matters. Local member review boards are the right mechanism. It is
ridiculous to assume that councillors are qualified to take decisions
on very complex major developments but not competent to take decisions
on minor planning matters that had been delegated to officers on which
there is an appeal. So there is no issue there about the skills or
capacity of elected councillors to do the
job.
I do not accept
that councils would automatically rubber-stamp the decisions that had
been taken by officers. That is not the experience of how planning
committees work. Councillors operate pretty independently. I think that
they would be quite capable of assessing the evidence that was put
before them by the appellant and of taking a de novo decision on
whether the right initial decision had been taken. That has more
legitimacy than having a planning inspector from Bristol come in and
seek to take a decision without any real knowledge of local
context.
Q
135
James
Duddridge (Rochford and Southend, East) (Con): The
LGA’s support for the Bill seems to be conditional on there
being, from the words on your brief, “a very small
number” of nationally significant infrastructure projects. I
shall not be ridiculous and try to pin you down and ask for an exact
number, but could you indicate what the range might
be?
Sir
Simon Milton:
In a year, it would be single figures.
At the moment, the schedule that I have seen suggests that there could
be as many as 40-plus, which seems to me to fail the test that I
mentioned at the
beginning: we must be strict in departing from the principle of locally
determined planning matters. There are things in the schedule that, to
my mind, fail to meet that
test.
Q
136
James
Duddridge:
So the Bill as it stands does not have the
support of the LGA, because far too many projects would be captured
under the
Bill.
Sir
Simon Milton:
If I can be more precise, the
definition of “nationally significant infrastructure
projects” does not have our support at the moment. That is
different from saying that we do not support the
Bill.
Q
137
James
Duddridge:
And it would need to be reduced to single
figures. Has the LGA a view on particular
definitions?
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes, I think that we do. We believe
that it should be confined to matters of national
economic or security importance. For example, the largest category that
would come before the commission is Highways Act trunk road schemes. If
you were building a trunk road to link a new port, it would clearly be
part of that application, but trunk roads per se are not matters of
national economic importance; they are quite suitable for being
determined by local planning authorities. It is a nonsense, in our
view, that they should fall within the remit of the new national
commission.
Q
138
James
Duddridge:
It is possible, even if we think that we have
got the definition right and it fits the criterion of single figures,
that actually the numbers can start to creep up. Would the LGA like to
see a specific amendment to limit the number going through each year,
so that, effectively, there has to be a prioritisation
process?
Sir
Simon Milton:
We would not necessarily favour that
mechanism, but a mechanism is needed to prevent mission creep. There
should be a requirement to come back to Parliament to change the
definition in
future.
Q
139
Dan
Rogerson:
You referred to enforcement in your submission.
Would you like to say a little more about the sort of things that you
are worried about
there?
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes. By their nature, we are talking
about very large complex projects, which are likely to carry with them
all sorts of specific conditions for permission being granted. There
then comes the question of who will police those
conditions.
The
Government do not want there to be a residual involvement by the
commission in monitoring every single application that goes through,
and I think that they are right; so it will fall to local authorities
to monitor the implementation of the new schemes. That carries with it
a burden for investigation and, where necessary, taking enforcement
action. It will have a significant cost requirement and we are saying
that local government should be covered for those
costs.
Q
140
Dan
Rogerson:
To return to the issue of local member review
bodies, do you foresee the need for second opinion advice to be
available to members? Usually, when things go to committee, the device
is
there for officers, perhaps to reject, but at least to consider, so do
you see the need for advice from other sources for members when
considering such
matters?
Sir
Simon Milton:
If planning authorities are very small
then it might be difficult to have a fresh pair of eyes to look at it
professionally, in which case authorities could work together in
clusters so that you could draw on the professional expertise of other
authorities, but it would need to be managed in an equitable way in
terms of cost
burdens.
Q
141
Mrs.
Ellman:
There is a provision in the Bill that states that
existing policy statements could be designated as national policy
statements. Do you have concerns about
that?
Sir
Simon Milton:
No, provided that the same safeguards
that we seek for national policy statements were carried out; namely,
that there should be community impact statements, where you designate a
particular
location.
Q
142
Mrs.
Ellman:
On the role of the
commissioners, are you uncomfortable with the concept of experts
deciding things instead of elected
people?
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes, of course, as a matter of
principle we are, but we accept that there are a small, limited number
of schemes where a national mechanism could be
useful.
I would urge
you to consider whether the commission should include either elected
member or officer representation from local government, in addition to
the other experts who will be on the
commission.
Q
143
Mrs.
Ellman:
Could you say a little more about that? Are you
saying that they should be among the
commissioners?
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes.
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes.
Q
145
Mr.
Llwyd:
You called in your memorandum for a clear
definition of major infrastructure projects. I happen to believe that
you are right in calling for that. Do you share my concern that,
looking at clause 13(1)(a) to (m), the vast majority of those examples
are potential bad neighbours in terms of
planning?
Sir
Simon Milton:
I do not have the schedule in front of
me.
“extension
of a generating station...electric line above
ground...underground storage of
gas...airport...reservoir...waste water
treatment...hazardous waste
facility.”
They are a
concern.
Sir
Simon Milton:
They
are for many people undesirable developments to be living next
to.
Q
147
Mr.
Llwyd:
Bearing that in mind, should not the process
leading up to such a development be more
sympathetic to potential neighbours rather than less, and not be
truncated in the way in which the Bill appears to suggest.
Sir Simon
Milton:
If we want to go back to basics, why is this
Bill here in the first place? It is because Government have deemed it
necessary to expedite the way in which we handle applications for
schemes and projects of this type. We believe that it is justifiable
where it is clearly in the national economic or national security
interest to have a process that allows that to be expedited and where
there are clear limits and clear guidelines.
If you accept that that is the
case then you accept that you are going to ultimately disappoint some
people who will not like the decisions that are made because they will
not like living next to something which is a bad-neighbour use.
However, that is the case in any planning system. There is nothing like
a controversial planning application to get people turning up to a
meeting at the town hall. We know that people can become very
exercised. The best that you can offer as a planning authority, whether
you are a council or the national commission, is that people have the
opportunity to make their points and that they will be taken into
account in making the final decision, whether you like that final
decision or not.
Q
148
Mr.
Llwyd:
You made the point earlier in your evidence about
the need for councils to be enabled to undertake full assessments of
the impacts of these developments. It is crucial, is it not, that they
should be properly financed for that
work?
Sir
Simon Milton:
Absolutely. I think it would be a
mistake if this was viewed as a cost-saving measure. If this is done
properly, there will be costs that will need to be borne by the
applicant.
5.15
pm
Q
149
Robert
Neill:
Sir Simon, you made the point about the legitimate
desire to avoid costs. It is perhaps not appropriate for people in my
position to say that if you want to avoid the costs of a Queen’s
counsel you instruct an experienced junior—that might be taken
in the wrong way. Your Mr. Jones might be able to help, but
is it your experience that one of the real problems, and the reason
that the legal fees become expensive, is that some inquiries of this
large kind drag on because all too often they get sidetracked into the
issues that are intended to be part of the national policy
statement—the desirability or otherwise of more air travel,
nuclear power or whatever.
One of the important things
that one would want to see to cut things down—silks or no
silks—is the removal of that element from the discussion as to
whether the particular application is appropriate in that particular
site.
Graham
Jones:
I would agree with that and I would go
further. One of the fundamentally important aspects of this legislation
and the procedures attached to it is that it is an opportunity to limit
or rather to define the areas for consideration at the outset, before
the process starts. Going back to what we were discussing earlier, the
opportunity to have a similar sort of process to that which we have in
appeals, where the local authority and the applicant can agree on what
they agree on and therefore decide what they disagree on, before the
commission undertakes its process, is one which should not be missed.
That is one way in which the time scales and the areas of concern can
be strictly limited. That is in everybody’s favour, if one puts
it alongside an inquisitorial rather than an adversarial
process.
Q
150
Robert
Neill:
The interesting point, Mr. Jones, is
that although you speak about an inquisitorial process, and you say in
your submission that local councils should have a special status for
the reasons that you have advanced, you then say at paragraph 4.11 that
effective councils must have an opportunity to conduct a
cross-examination of evidence from other parties or to require the
commission to take that into account in its own cross-examination. It
is the specific use of “cross-examination” that interests
me. In some cases, that is the best and most robust means of testing
the evidence, provided that it is kept within bounds in the way that we
have discussed, and limited to the issues that are really
germane.
Graham
Jones:
I think that that is the point—it must
be kept within bounds and it must be germane; those areas of evidence
must be clearly defined and set before the process
starts.
Sir
Simon Milton:
May I add to that, Sir John? Clearly,
looking at the genesis of this, we are trying to get away from people
misusing and abusing the process by prolonging it through quite
ridiculous cross-examination in order to frustrate the
development.
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes.
Q
152
Mr.
Betts:
Looking back to the community
infrastructure levy and paragraph 5.2 in your submission, to which
David Curry referred earlier, my understanding is that you are
generally supportive of the proposals. I am trying to get my head
around why you say that the Bill should be amended to provide councils
with the power to define local infrastructure requirements, with
discretion over how and when CIL funds are used. I thought that that
was essentially what the Bill did, and I wondered whether I was missing
something if you thought that it needed amending.
If it does need to be amended,
do you think that the role of passenger transport authorities should be
referred to in the Bill, as they are clearly a key to transport
developments in the
community?
Sir
Simon Milton:
The references to
community infrastructure levy in the Bill are pretty sketchy because
they are to be expanded through secondary legislation, guidance and
various other things. It is therefore not very clear at the moment, and
we are seeking to put down markers as the Bill progresses. The
intention always was that it should be developed as the Bill
progresses, so that we can ensure that those things happen—in
other words, that councils are at the centre of determining what the
needs are, and that there is flexibility and so on.
The scenario that I favour is
one where the councils, through their LDFs, come up with a statement of
need. A range of other interested parties will feed into that
process to ensure that the LDF takes account of their needs, and
passenger transport authorities would be one of those. I see them
feeding in through the LDF.
Q
153
Mr.
Betts:
May I ask you about the proposals, for want of a
better word, to “streamline” the local development
framework? Some people are concerned that taking away some of the
requirements that local authorities currently have to pursue would
weaken the requirements on sustainability. Others would argue that the
measures are necessary because, to date, LDFs have not gone as quickly
through the process as was envisaged. Indeed, many authorities still do
not have them in place—and some of those probably did not have a
unitary development plan in place beforehand.
Sir Simon
Milton:
The reason why LDFs have become so log-jammed
is interesting. Depending on who you speak to, you could apportion
blame in various ways. However, I think that everyone agrees that the
process is far too complex at the moment. One of the things that it
completely fails to do, in my view, is to engage the public, yet that
is so critical to communities. However, it is a very technical subject.
I looked at the consultation being put out by my authority for our LDF,
and the truth of the matter is that nobody other than highly trained
experts would be capable of responding to it. It is not because we are
particularly jargon-prone—no more so than any other council. It
is because the requirements set out in the legislation are so demanding
and complicated. By simplifying that, we will start to make
progress.
I had a
meeting, on behalf of the LGA, with the housing and planning Minister
at which we agreed to conduct a no-blame review as to why it was that
of 40-odd LDFs that had been presented, only nine got through the
process. The others had been either rejected or withdrawn. There is a
variety of reasons, but it is clear that unless we get that process
working smoothly, the whole of the rest of the planning system will
fall, because everything is founded on
that.
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes, we
are.
Q
155
Mr.
Curry:
Sir Simon, as you know, probably more than 50 per
cent. of social houses in Britain are built through planning gain. Are
you absolutely satisfied that nothing in the Bill will make it more
difficult or threaten the construction of social housing through the
planning gain 106
procedure?
Sir
Simon Milton:
There is nothing specific in the Bill
that would do that. It is, however, the case that the more onerous you
make development, the less development occurs. I have a—I keep
saying “I”; I hope that I am speaking for the LGA when I
say that we are looking to the planning system to deliver more and more
social benefits, and quite properly, possibly, social benefits from
affordable housing to sustainability. The latest iteration is national
security. The more you require the planning system to deliver, the more
complex you make it and the slower development then becomes. You also
risk choking off some development. There is nothing specific in the
Bill that would threaten the ability to deliver affordable
housing, other than if we end up making the whole planning system too
complex, too costly and too
onerous.
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes. As with all these things, you have
to pitch it in a way that optimises the amount of development you get.
At the moment we debate endlessly what is the right target for
affordable housing to have in your planning policy—what
percentage figure. You can take different views on that, but you need a
clear understanding of the point at which it becomes uneconomic for a
developer. That is about not just the percentage, but the thresholds
for when the affordable housing requirement kicks
in.
Graham
Jones:
It is vital that there is local flexibility as
far as the CIL is concerned. Otherwise, it could easily become a
straitjacket; it could become a disincentive in certain areas. It must
be right that the local authority has the flexibility to determine its
priorities. If its priority is affordable housing, it should be able to
prioritise that against other requirements on a case-by-case basis but
within an overall LDF
framework.
Q
157
Mr.
Curry:
You give interesting examples of councils that are
developing or planning a tariff. I think I am right in saying that
quite a lot of the Thames Gateway area is already applying a sort of
roof
tax.
Graham
Jones:
And quite a few of the housing
growth areas
are.
Q
158
Mr.
Curry:
So do we need legislation to do this? Is there
anything that prevents local authorities from applying what is
envisaged in the Bill
already?
Sir
Simon Milton:
No, and some pioneering authorities
have done that, but the LGA would say that having statutory
underpinning for that would be extremely
helpful.
Q
159
Mr.
Curry:
Would you look to the Government to have some sort
of statutory capping? To what extent would you look to the Government
to try to create a level playing field or some sort
of—
Sir
Simon Milton:
I think that is undesirable, for the
reasons that Graham has just given. You have to have local flexibility
to make this work. The moment you start trying to devise national
tariffs, you end up pinching the shoe somewhere in the
country.
Q
160
Mr.
Curry:
Would you have a mechanism in place? Would you
envisage monitoring what is happening just to ensure that any concerns
about social housing were not being realised and to be able to make
representations rapidly and seek changes in the event that you felt
that there was a problem? After all, housing is less accessible now
than it has been
for—
Sir
Simon Milton:
Housing is a national priority. Because
it is a national priority, there are all sorts of ways in which local
authorities are now being monitored to see how they perform against
that national priority. I do not think there is a need for an
additional form of monitoring.
Q
161
Mrs.
Lait:
You referred earlier to wishing to see in front of
the planning commission a number of cases in single figures, and in
your document, at paragraphs 4.2 and 4.3, you are trying to reduce, or
ensure that there is no, mission creep, as you put it, and ensure that
trunk roads are excluded. But we have something like 50-odd wind farms
waiting for planning permission. I just wonder how you envisage getting
the numbers down to between five and 10 just by implementing those two
points that you have
made.
Sir
Simon Milton:
I believe that wind farms per se are
not a matter of national economic significance, but it is a matter of
scale. There are quite a few smaller wind farm developments that local
authorities should be able to, and should be given the ability to,
determine. I accept that very large schemes would tip into the national
category, and so I think it is a matter of agreeing a threshold for
wind farms, but I do not think that all wind farms, as a matter of
course, ought to come under the new national
arrangements.
Q
162
Mrs.
Lait:
I was using wind farms as a “for
instance”, as just one of the things that would take the numbers
over 10—there is a wide range of areas that come under this. As
the Government themselves, I think, are saying that there would
certainly be 30 and possibly up to 45 a year, I am wondering how you
think you can get it down to fewer than
10.
Sir
Simon Milton:
Most of those schemes should be
determined by the local
authority.
Q
163
Mrs.
Lait:
How would you amend the Bill to get it down to fewer
than 10, other than trunk
roads?
Sir
Simon Milton:
It is about a definition, which would
include a scale
definition.
Sir
Simon Milton:
Yes.
Sir
Simon Milton:
Perhaps we could write to you with some
further thoughts on that and make a further
suggestion?
Q
166
Mrs.
Lait:
That would be very helpful because we have concerns
that the sheer number of these major applications will in fact clog up
the whole system and nothing will
happen.
Can I go on to
a very different, slightly tetchy area—the single consent
regime? Many planning applications—if we think back to Heathrow
terminal 5—are bedevilled by the sheer number of consents that
are required, both under national legislation and under town and
country planning. I wonder whether you think that bringing them all
under a single consent regime will help, and whether, in that case, we
should be looking to repeal the legislation that stands by itself at
the
moment.
Graham
Jones:
I think this comes back in a way to the
criteria for the development that will be going through the commission.
If we are looking at a handful of national schemes per year, for those
particular schemes it is quite feasible that we could devise a unified
consent regime.
It also comes back to the issue
we were talking about: how you discharge conditions and enforce them,
and make sure that all those things can be dealt with properly at a
local level, rather than having to go through another layer of
consents, which would be locally based rather than nationally based. I
think that if we are looking at a much larger number of developments,
involving a different scale of development as well, then the issue of
unified consent becomes more difficult, because it is affecting a much
broader array of schemes, some of which will, by their very nature, be
of much more local interest where those other consents would normally
kick in, rather than being of national interest. It comes back to the
issue of criteria. If the criteria are right, the unified consent
regime could work.
The
Chairman:
I am afraid that time is now up; we have
exhausted the time available. Thank you, Sir Simon, and you,
Mr. Jones, for appearing before us today. It is most helpful
to us in our consideration of the Bill. We are very
grateful.
5.31
pm
Sitting
suspended.
5.37
pm
On
resuming—
The
Chairman:
Ladies, we are very grateful to you for
your indulgence in the need for a brief break for members of the
Committee. I take the opportunity to welcome you, Katrine Sporle, and
your colleague, Leonora Rozee. If you would like to make a statement
before answering questions, now is the opportunity. You could also do
so at the end if you think that anything has been missed and has not
been teased out of you by the questions. Is there anything that you
would like to say first by way of a brief
statement?
Katrine
Sporle:
I will just introduce my colleague in a
little more detail and tell you that Leonora is deputy chief inspector
of the Planning Inspectorate. She is head of profession and has 18
years experience as an inspector. I felt that that might be useful to
the Committee as you proceed. I am here specifically to cover work
load, resource, and those kind of issues. Leonora is the expert on
matters relating to professional
issues.
I also want to
assist the Committee in clarifying that the Planning Inspectorate is an
arm’s length Executive Agency. Our sponsors are the Department
for Communities and Local Government and the National Assembly for
Wales, and we do work for other Departments. I should be very clear
that we are not an independent body. We are there to take decisions on
behalf of the appropriate Secretary of State of whichever Department,
or in order to recommend to the Secretary of State. So we do all our
work on case work within existing policy frameworks. I felt that it
might be helpful to set that
out.
Mr.
Curry:
You will have dealt with many cases that affect
section 106 agreements. Section 106 agreements
were challenged originally by the idea of the planning gain tax—a
daft idea that mercifully has been dropped. However, there is still
concern about to what extent one can depend upon those to deliver some
of the social goods that come from planning. How confident are you that
the new legislation will ensure that we can still deliver through what
appears to be a section 106 agreement that is somewhat narrowed in
scope?
Katrine
Sporle:
I need to start by saying again that we are
not here to determine policy; we are here to deliver established policy
and to look at the evidence that is put before inspectors before coming
to a decision, independent of the parties. Everything depends on the
quality of the evidence put in front of the
inspectors.
Q
167
Mr.
Curry:
Sorry, but we are examining a Bill that represents
Government policy. What do you think you are here to
do?
Katrine
Sporle:
We are here to ensure that we can deliver
Government
policy.
Q
168
Mr.
Curry:
What do you expect to have to do under the Bill?
What roles will you play under the Bill that you are not playing
already? Will half of your team be seconded to this super-duper college
of cardinals that will make these
decisions?
Katrine
Sporle:
I suspect not. We are very clear that we have
worked right the way through the passage of the White Paper and the
Bill in partnership with the Department for Communities and Local
Government to ensure that we can improve the process of appeals and
ensure that it is proportionate, cost effective and customer focused.
We are not in competition with local authorities or the new IPC. We
expect to be able to deliver an improved service at the end of this
process.
Q
169
Mr.
Curry:
Let me ask you another question. A lot of us are
concerned about how the twin objectives of this new process can be
reconciled. One objective is to get things done quicker. After all, we
have most of the industrial support for this Bill because we faff
around for too long getting planning permission in Britain compared
with other countries and it damages national competitiveness. At the
same time, the Government have said very clearly that everybody who
wants a say has got to have a say. You have just heard the Local
Government Association saying that the new planning process should be
more, not less, responsive to the views of local
people.
You are the
ones who go out there and sit and listen to various representations. If
you were writing the guidance for this body, how would you ensure that
those two things were reconciled? What do you mean by the voice of the
public and that everybody who wants to be heard should be
heard?
Katrine
Sporle:
I am going to hand over to my colleague. The
thing that we need to be clear about is that the experience of the
Planning Inspectorate and the inspectors to date is that we have been
able to significantly improve on the processes and that we are able to
more proactively manage inquiries. We are able to hear evidence in
different ways at different times, as appropriate for the appeal that
is being looked at. We have speeded up quite considerably the
examinations in
public when it comes to core strategies under the local development
framework proposals. The Bill is building on the experiences of
inspectors being able to proactively manage in the way that has been
discussed.
Q
170
Mr.
Curry:
Who is going to be doing the listening under the
new body? To whom are locals going to make their representations? If
they want their voice to be heard, who do they tell? Who do they go and
talk to? How do they do
it?
Leonora
Rozee:
The important thing is to start from first
principles. The proposals for the IPC include a wide range of both
pre-application and post-application processes. One should not simply
restrict oneself to looking at the inquiry. The expertise of the
Planning Inspectorate has been in managing major inquiries, which is
part of that decision-making process. The IPC proposals are a much
wider process because they involve some proposals particularly around
the application and pre-application process. For example, in response
to comments made by Jacqui Lait, if I may refer to that, there is a
clause that requires the applicant, under a duty to consult, to carry
out consultation processes. One of the things that the commission can
do is to give guidance on the extent of the consultation that is
required to ensure that you start off by flushing out the issues that
will be of concern to local people. This is not an assumption that by
consulting you get consensus, but that on the basis of consulting it is
clear to the community exactly what is being
proposed.
5.45
pm
Once the
application has been brought to the commission, it has a range of
different mechanisms by which that application can then be considered.
Early procedural meetings and early discussions with parties to try to
flush out what the issues are that need to be tested and explored are
very much part of an inquisitorial process. The inquisitorial process
does not simply mean the commissioners sitting in a room like this and
asking questions of people sitting around the table. It is a much more
involved process. It is about how you get to the point of the
application and the identification of what the issues may be once it is
being examined—flushing them out early and allowing people to
exchange views through the early exchange of written representations to
draw out the issues. Then the commissioners with their expertise test
and explore and, as the Bill allows, offer the opportunity for
cross-examination as and when it is necessary and appropriate. All of
this is allowed for in the
Bill.
Q
171
Mr.
Curry:
But this is the key. My constituents will want to
talk to the judge. They do not want to talk to the accused, if you see
what I mean. I am still not clear whether the procedures you have set
out are there in order to stand between the final decider and my
constituents or to provide a pathway to the final decider for my
constituents. Which is
it?
Leonora
Rozee:
They are certainly not there to provide a
barrier between the decision maker and the constituent. They are
designed to avoid the constituent getting to the inquiry process with
inadequate knowledge and understanding of what the commission is
seeking to do. I had a good example of this in an
inquiry that I held some years ago where there was a great deal of
opposition. I held an open-floor session, much as is proposed here, and
as a result the local community had a much better understanding of what
the proposal was. Had that been done before the application was
submitted, many of the fears of that local community would have been
addressed through their ability to discuss with the promoters exactly
what was proposed. Clearly there still needs to be an opportunity for
people to see the decision maker as and when that is necessary, which
is provided for through the open-floor
session.
In response to your point about
the 10,000 people, again our experience is that with careful management
you can often narrow that number down to spokespeople who are prepared
to come together and agree that out of your 10,000 a smaller number of
spokespeople will be putting the
points.
Q
172
Mrs.
Lait:
I have listened closely to all the points that you
have been making. The impact that they have had on me is that I now
feel that with a bit of tweaking there would be nothing to stop the
planning inspectorate doing this job and so we do not need to set up
this new commission. I have been a civil servant and I know the
position you are in. However, you might like to comment on how
effective your current powers are such as the open-floor system and the
speeded-up procedures that have been used under the 2004 Act. Why
cannot the planning inspectorate do this
job?
Katrine
Sporle:
There are two points that we should be clear
about. The first is that lovely phrase used by Sir Simon Milton:
“statutory underpinning”. There is a need to ensure that
everyone understands the process from the start. While there is
discretion to do much of what Leonora has described at the moment, the
new Bill provides that statutory underpinning. The other issue is that,
as I said at the beginning, the planning inspectorate is there to work
on behalf of—and, for transferred appeals, to stand in the shoes
of—the Secretary of State. We are not independent decision
takers, and the IPC is about decision making independent of
Government.
Q
173
Mrs.
Lait:
That is probably one of the points
of contention on which I will not ask you to comment, because
democratic accountability is quite important. How effective do you
think the currently trained planning inspectors would be if they became
commissioners?
Katrine
Sporle:
The planning inspectorate
has evolved procedures over time, and a number of the procedures that
we use are more akin to an inquisitorial process, for example, the
hearings that we hold. About 19 per cent. of our cases are done by
hearing. The examination processes that have been evolved for the
development plan—both regional special strategies and
development plan documents—are based on an inquisitorial
process. The 2005 legislation on town and country planning, which only
relates to planning proposals and not to most of the proposals covered
by the Bill, is still based primarily on an adversarial process.
Stansted G1 was done within the spirit of the 2005 rules, and involved
more inquisitorial-type procedures. Planning inspectors certainly have
the expertise to operate within an adversarial and, indeed, a more
inquisitorial type of process.
Q
174
Mr.
Betts:
You were answering the question about whether you
could take on the work of dealing with this handful of major
infrastructure projects. You said, essentially, that your role was
different in that you have the Secretary of State above you. You are
effectively making recommendations, and ultimately it is the Secretary
of State’s decision on the matters that you deal with. Do you
ever suggest to Ministers or to senior civil servants that you could
have a specialist wing of your inspectorate which would take on this
responsibility with no Secretary of State standing above
you?
Katrine
Sporle:
We have obviously had very wide-ranging
discussions. I should correct myself slightly so as to not give the
impression that the only distinction is the independence of decision
making. The Bill provides also for the development of the planning
application in its early stages, which we currently do not do. With
DCLG, we have looked at the model that is currently in force at An Bord
Pleanala, the Irish equivalent of the planning inspectorate. An Bord
Pleanala, however, is already an independent body, and therefore had an
extra wing put on to it to deal with this kind of major infrastructure
proposal. It was, I suggest, an easier step than putting a wing on to
the planning
inspectorate.
Q
175
Mr.
Betts:
One of the suggestions we will come to tomorrow,
which some groups have put forward, is that we ought to give time for
the 2005 rules for major infrastructure project inquiry procedures to
be validated. We have had one or two inquiries and they put Stansted
forward as a model of how things might work quite well under existing
procedures as now adopted. Have you any comments on whether that is all
we really need to
do?
Katrine
Sporle:
In factual terms, the 2005 rules have not yet
been used in full. They will be used for Stansted G2, for which the
planning application is currently under development. Stansted G1 was,
however, done under the spirit of those rules. It is important to
remember that those rules only apply to proposals under town and
country planning legislation. They do not apply to the bulk of the
proposals in the Bill, because they come under different types of
legislation for which such rules do not
exist.
Q
176
Mr.
Betts:
So, in order to get that sort of procedure, it will
be necessary to have new legislation for those sorts of
issues?
Leonora
Rozee:
I am not a lawyer, but I assume
so.
Mr.
Betts:
Finally, I want to ask you about the consumer
infrastructure levy. Concerns have been expressed about the problems
that might occur if the levy is levied at too high a level by the
developer. It could stop a developer full-stop, and there is no
effective right of appeal in the proposals, as they stand, if the
development scheme comes to a stop because of that. The British
Property Federation, which we will come to later with the Home
Builders Federation, will propose some sort of right appeal against the
level of the levy. Have you given any consideration to that and how it
might operate as far as the inspector is
concerned?
Leonora
Rozee:
In relation to a right of appeal, one would
need to go back to the process by which the levy was initially
produced, or defined. I am aware that the
precise details of that process and the precise consultation
arrangements for identifying what the levy should be are still under
discussion.
If you
get the right sort of consultation arrangements for the definition of
the levy in the first place, the issue of whether that levy is too high
should not arise. It may well be much like current policy—for
example, with affordable housing—in which one issue can be the
viability of the development at a certain level of provision.
Sometimes, there is a negotiation between the parties, whether it be
the local authority and the developer or, ultimately, through an appeal
process, to decide whether there may be an exception to a policy to
allow a development to proceed because that development should proceed
in the public interest, without necessarily making the contribution
that is expected by the policy. I shall put that in simple terms, as it
sounded unbelievably complicated. If you have a CIL, the viability of
which was prejudiced in a particular development, but there were other
public interest reasons why that development should go ahead, one
could, conceivably, allow that development as an exception to that
policy.
Leonora
Rozee:
Either on appeal or, hopefully, at the local
authority level.
Q
177
Mr.
Llwyd:
A few minutes ago, Ms Sporle mentioned that it was
very important that people come to understand the new processes. Part
of that process will involve a potential developer/promoter having to
take on board the views of those who oppose his or her application. How
confident are we that that developer will act in good faith and pass on
the views properly articulated in the process? It seems to me that
there is a basic conflict of interest between a developer and/or
third-party and/or person affected who might object to a development.
How confident are we that that developer will relay those feelings
adequately? Let me short-circuit my question with these comments. I am
sure that other Members present have had a similar experience: as a
group, the mobile phone industry is not exactly clean in this regard,
and I wonder whether commercial interests will outweigh the need to be
perfectly honest and straightforward in the process.
Leonora
Rozee:
I think that the best way to answer that is to
say that where there are disputes—it is necessary to hear
disputes such as those we hear currently on appeal, which may well
affect telecommunications or wind farms—the process must be
robust and the evidence that is being examined must be robustly tested.
The way to do that is to be inquisitorial if you do not think that all
the issues have come to the table, and/or to allow cross-examination
and/or to ensure that people can be heard. Whichever is appropriate, it
is the process that must allow for robust testing, so that in the event
that any party has been economical with the truth or whatever, it can
be exposed. That is the purpose of a robust testing of evidence at
cross-examination, whether at a hearing, an inquiry or an independent
examination.
6
pm
Q
178
Mr.
Llwyd:
I agree. We have all seen situations in which 200
similar letters arrive saying effectively the same thing and they
should be properly filtered out fairly quickly. However, my concern is
about the new process in the Bill. Let us suppose that the promoter is
less than honest in how he or she might put forward the objections to
the development, that it goes further and that the commissioner says,
“I am not allowing any cross-examination here.” My
concern is that it could undermine the whole process for the person out
there who might be affected.
Leonora
Rozee:
First, I want to refer to the Bill and to the
various duties that have been placed on promoters. Under clause 42,
headed “Duty to consult local community”, the proponent
would first have to identify how it is going to be done, and then do
it. Secondly, the commission would have the power to reject an
application if it did not consider that the promoter had carried out
proper consultation. A further safeguard is the role of the local
authority, because it is one of the parties that has to be consulted.
The local authority would have a role in representing the views of its
community and should draw the commission’s attention to any
inadequacies that it became aware in the consultation
processes.
There are
a number of safeguards built into the Bill that do not currently exist;
there are no similar provisions in the planning legislation that
relates to duties on the proponents of schemes. There are all sorts of
duties on local authorities but those duties are expressly about making
sure that the proponents of a scheme do the work that they should do
before it ever comes to the commission. There are a lot of safeguards
built in there.
Q
179
James
Duddridge:
Change is never easy. It is uncomfortable for
an individual if a new boss is put in over your head. If a new
organisation is put over your head or alongside you, I would imagine
that that is uncomfortable, too. What is morale like at an individual
level? Are you already losing
employees?
Katrine
Sporle:
The very straightforward answer to that last
question is no. We are experiencing no inspectors getting on their
bikes at all. I repeat what I said to you earlier: we are not in
competition with local authorities and we would not be in competition
with an independent planning commission. Each of us has different jobs
to do. In working in partnership with the Department for Communities
and Local Government we have always said that we see ourselves as
having a role to play in being able to work with the IPC, particularly
on the training and skilling of inspectors, either to provide an
inquiry service or to go on to become commissioners in the future.
There is no competition between the two
bodies.
Q
180
James
Duddridge:
Will there be a necessity for an anti-poaching
agreement in the early days so as not to decimate some of your key
departments or are you confident that the numbers involved in the IPC
are so small that you can work hand in hand?
Katrine
Sporle:
It is certainly the case that we deal with
such a wide range of casework, from household extensions right the way
through to major inquiries,
that we would be talking about a very small number of existing
inspectors who would have the skills, the capacity and the capability
and who would desire to become commissioners. But we would be very
happy indeed to be the breeding ground for such skills and expertise in
the future, as we are now.
Q
181
James
Duddridge:
In terms of the salary for the IPC, do you
think that it is about right? From memory, there were three deputy
chairmen all being paid £135,000 each. Does that seem in the
marketplace for someone with the skills required, or does it seem an
outrageously large sum of
money?
Katrine
Sporle:
I am not sure we should comment on that. I
think it depends on the size, scale and nature of the schemes that will
go to the IPC. That is down to whatever thresholds are
determined.
Q
182
Robert
Neill:
To summarise where we have got to, I think that we
could say that, factually, there is nothing in the current situation to
prevent an inspector sitting as part of a panel or on their
own.
Leonora
Rozee:
I think that there may well be because
inspectors are salaried civil servants and the proposed commissioners
are not intended to be civil
servants.
Q
183
Robert
Neill:
Yes, but I was thinking about examinations in
public, which are very often carried out by more than one
inspector.
Katrine
Sporle:
It is perfectly possible for inspectors to
sit as a panel. That is currently done for examinations in public, for
example, on a regional spatial strategy and, indeed, we will use teams
of inspectors for major case
work.
Q
184
Robert
Neill:
We all know that inspectors—my experience is
the same as the evidence that you have given us—have become much
more alert to the opportunities to, if you like, for want of a better
word, judicially control the inquiry through getting involved at an
earlier stage, being more proactive, limiting the issues to try and
avoiding the delays as far as one
can.
You referred,
Mrs. Sporle, to the number of the safeguards, which I agree
are in the Bill but are not in place at the moment. Those can certainly
be adapted to the system proposed in the Bill. Is there anything that,
purely practically, prevents them being adapted to the current system,
with an
inspector?
Leonora
Rozee:
Which particular provisions are you referring
to?
Q
185
Robert
Neill:
Those ones that Mrs. Sporle just
referred to—those safeguards that are in the Bill, but are not
in place at the moment. They can work under the proposed system, but
they could work under the current system as well, if that had been the
decision.
Leonora
Rozee:
The issue is the fundamental distinction
between the independent role of the IPC and the non-independent role of
the Planning Inspectorate. For the Planning Inspectorate to take on
what is proposed in the Bill seems to me to require the Planning
Inspectorate to be a different body from that which it is at the
moment.
Leonora
Rozee:
It would need to be an independent body, which
it is not at the
moment.
Katrine
Sporle:
And it would need to have the additional
capacity and skills that the Irish system has brought in, in order to
deal with the pre-application side of major
projects.
My final
point is that you have emphasised on a number of occasions the
importance of striking a balance in the way that you conduct
hearings—Ms Rozee, in particular—to ensure that there is
fairness as well as efficiency. What would you say is the key thing?
Does that sometimes involve allowing cross-examination, where
appropriate, and I suppose sometimes limiting the cross-examination
when it is going to get out of
hand?
Leonora
Rozee:
Absolutely. Certainly the 2005 rules under the
Town and Country Planning Act make it clear that there should be
appropriate controls exercised over cross-examination. My own view is
that the principle of a process that is primarily inquisitorial is the
right principle with the appropriate safeguards that are built into the
Bill and where, if necessary, questioning by opposing parties is an
appropriate
process.
It may be
useful for the Committee to know that we have now been having
discussions for three years or so with the planning Bar about how to
make the procedures in both inquiries and examinations in public much
more effective without going back into the adversarial processes. Those
can be built upon for the IPC, so that you do provide these
safeguards.
Q
189
Jim
Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire, North) (Lab): Excuse
my ignorance, but we did not have a brief for your remit and the areas
that you cover. I am reliably informed by my good friend, who has now
left the building, that you only cover England and Wales. Is there a
comparative body to yours in Scotland, and is there any interaction
between you and that body, particularly on issues such as the delivery
of energy provision, which may impact on the whole
UK?
Katrine
Sporle:
There is a body in Scotland that deals with
planning appeals; it is set up slightly differently from the way that
we are set up. There is a body in Northern Ireland and An Bord
Pleanála in the rest of Ireland. We have a great deal of
interaction, we exchange good practice and we discuss policy issues and
how they are going to be delivered. But we do not discuss the side of
work that does not relate to us: the promotional schemes to fulfil
Government policy. We discuss how we deal with
appeals.
Q
190
Jim
Sheridan:
But in discussions with your counterparts in
Scotland do you make it clear to them that, for instance, the Scottish
Administration’s opposition to nuclear power could impact on the
whole of the UK’s energy
policy?
Katrine
Sporle:
No, because that is not our
remit.
Q
191
Mrs.
Lait:
I should like to ask three questions, which seem
unrelated but are related. There is a provision in the Bill under which
the Secretary of State could overrule or call in an inquiry under the
national infrastructure planning process. Would you envisage the
Planning Inspectorate advising the Secretary of State in those
circumstances?
Katrine
Sporle:
No.
Katrine
Sporle:
Policy
advisers.
Q
193
Mrs.
Lait:
This is where the unrelated bit comes in. Roughly
what percentage of work will the local member review bodies, in effect,
be taking from the Planning
Inspectorate?
Katrine
Sporle:
I had not worked out the percentage. We can
do that quickly. About 6,000 planning appeals a year are household
appeals. We deal with about 23,000 appeals a
year.
Q
194
Mrs.
Lait:
So you will be losing about a quarter of your cases.
And you will be losing whatever percentage of your cases that are, in
effect, national infrastructure
cases.
Katrine
Sporle:
A very small
proportion.
Katrine
Sporle:
That is an interesting question, because we
have a small number of specially skilled inspectors who deal with the
major projects and that probably does not impact on the resource and
the work load issues of the Planning Inspectorate as a whole. The
23,000 appeals that we deal with annually are, by and large, town and
country planning appeals, as opposed to those major cases that come
mainly through other Government Departments, including those dealing
with energy and roads. So I do not see there being a big issue in terms
of loss of work to the Planning
Inspectorate.
We need
to be clear that the inspectorate’s workload has risen by nearly
50 per cent. over a five-year period, so there is an issue about
whether it is appropriate for inspectors to be dealing at national
level with something that is obviously a very local issue of local
importance. In the meantime, we have made a clear case for what we have
called fast-tracking householder appeals. So, for the first time, we
are seeking to be clear that different types of appeal should have a
slightly different process that is more proportionate, more
cost-effective and much more
customer-oriented.
We
are clear that we have a lot of work to do on householder appeals to
give better customer service to householders and that, if there are
local member review bodies in future, that streamlined process should
be the one passed on to those
bodies.
The
Chairman:
I am afraid that we are now overtaken by time.
We have less than a minute left. It is my pleasant duty to thank you,
ladies, very much for your evidence. It has been most helpful and your
specialised knowledge of the subject has been amply
revealed.
6.15
pm
Gentlemen,
welcome. I am not quite sure who is leading your delegation, but think
that it is probably Andrew
Whitaker.
John
Slaughter:
It is
not.
The
Chairman:
I apologise, Mr. Slaughter; you were
second on our list. It is good of you to come and give evidence to us
today, and perhaps you would begin by introducing your
colleagues.
John
Slaughter:
On my right is Andrew Whitaker, who is the
Home Builders Federation’s head of planning, and our other two
colleagues are Stephen Ashworth and John Rhodes, who represent the
British Property
Federation.
Stephen
Ashworth:
My name is Stephen Ashworth and I am a
partner in the law firm, Denton Wilde Sapte, and specialise in planning
and public
law.
John
Rhodes:
I am John Rhodes, a planning consultant from
a firm called
RPS.
John
Slaughter:
If we could, we might briefly split this
as I want to make a few remarks and then Stephen might want to follow
on.
John
Slaughter:
On behalf of the Home Builders Federation,
we want at a high level to welcome the Bill, which we think is helpful
in a broad sense for the major housing issues that we face as a
country, to both increase supply and, from our perspective, meet the
extremely challenging objective of building to a zero-carbon standard
from 2016 onwards. The general objectives of the Bill are helpful in
that respect, and we support the objective of improving the speed,
efficiency and effectiveness of decision making on national
infrastructure because that will be broadly helpful with regard to
spatial planning in achieving housing objectives as well.
We particularly welcome the
fact that we are going to have a process for developing legitimate,
properly consulted-on national policy statements. However, from our
perspective there are two main areas on which we want to focus today.
First, it is perhaps useful to say for the benefit of the Committee
that the community infrastructure levy in many ways reflects comments
that we made to the Government in the run up to the preparation of the
Bill about the best approach to be taken to achieve a suitable
contribution from development towards infrastructure requirements to
support that development.
We are particularly keen on the
fact that this is based on a localised approach that we believe will
help to produce a positive climate for development and a sense of
discussion among the partners. There are, however, a number of material
points that we would like to raise about it, so I shall hand over to
Stephen in a second. Briefly, we would like to say that the aspects of
the Bill that relate to the town and country planning system are
also very important from our point of view, and there are a number of
issues there that we would like to go into if we have time.
Stephen
Ashworth:
The British Property Federation welcomes
the Planning Bill as a whole and the efforts that it is making to speed
up the planning system. We particularly welcome the proposals on
national policy statements and hope that that will achieve the swifter
delivery of major infrastructure schemes and assist the development of
major infrastructure projects that are necessary to support
development, which is the life blood of the British Property
Federation’s membership. We have concentrated in our memorandum
and in our comments to the Committee on the community infrastructure
levy. We support it in general terms, but with four key points. First,
we believe that it must be locally based. Secondly, it can be locally
based by ensuring that it comes through the local development framework
system, and we would look for clarity in the Bill to be sure that that
is the case. Thirdly, we would ensure that it was dealt with alongside
and as part of a planning application process. That is a well-tried,
tested and trusted mechanism, so that appeal mechanisms of the sort
that you discussed with the Planning Inspectorate can be used to
resolve final issues about the incidence of the levy. Finally, some
clauses in the Bill refer to the infrastructure levy being dealt with
on the basis of increases in value. We think that those are slightly
misleading in the way that they approach the infrastructure levy, and
we would look for those provisions to be
removed.
John
Slaughter:
The short answer is that it will not put
anything on the price because the housing market is driven by what the
market price is at any particular time. The issue is very much about
what contribution can viably be made from any given housing
development.
Q
197
Mr.
Curry:
Let me clear about this. It is going to be a roof
tax—it has been christened a roof tax—and the developers
will pay it as a contribution to the infrastructure that, according to
your memo, you might wish to deliver. Are you saying that it will have
no impact at all on the price that you will charge for
properties?
John
Slaughter:
I will have to justify my answer and give
you a slightly longer explanation. The sale of new houses is a maximum
of 10 per cent. of the residential property market at any given time.
In selling our homes, we are not in a position to influence that
general price level. You have to sell your product
competitively.
Q
198
Mr.
Curry:
I realise at the moment that we are virtually into
a “buy one, get one free” situation from some
developers—or so I see from the adverts in the Financial
Times and local newspapers.
John
Slaughter:
Sure, but whatever the market situation
is, the validity of the point that I am making still applies. You have
to work within the parameters of
the price that prevails in the market at any given time. The key issue
for us is what is a viable level of infrastructure levy, taking into
account—
Q
199
Mr.
Curry:
That was my next question. Perhaps you might
proceed to answer it. What is an acceptable levy rate on a
three-bedroomed house?
John
Slaughter:
I would have to echo the answer of some of
the other witnesses this afternoon. It will vary from case to case, and
it will depend upon what we hope will be a robust process of assessing
what a reasonable charge would be under the local development
framework.
Q
200
Mr.
Curry:
Your members must be saying to you what they would
regard as being an acceptable rate of levy. Nobody is suggesting that
the levy should fund the whole of the infrastructure. It is discrete
part of it, however, and you are anxious that it should be
ring-fenced—and, if I understand you correctly, you do not
anyone to come back for a second
helping.
John
Slaughter:
That is
correct.
John
Slaughter:
Perhaps we could ask Andrew to comment on
that, because he probably has more detailed knowledge. One makes an
analogy with some of the current situations where we have roof taxes.
One could give a broad estimate of what may be acceptable, but the
important point is that those cases will vary, so we cannot say that
there would be a single level of charge across the
country.
Andrew
Whitaker:
I think John’s answer is correct.
The Milton Keynes roof tax, as it is called, is £18,000 per
roof, but it is applied in a particular way with a particular formula
that suits the infrastructure being provided for the level of
development taking place at Milton Keynes. I am not suggesting that you
could pick up that calculation and put it in Ripon. Ripon will need to
undertake its own calculation, based on its land values, the level of
development and its own infrastructure needs. It will have to discuss
that with the development industry.
Q
202
Mr.
Curry:
Mr. Whittaker, you are not telling me
that in Ripon—or anywhere else for that matter—it is just
a question of the local authority working out what infrastructure it
wants and coming along to you and saying to the builders, “Oh,
by the way, this works out at £18,000, £28,000 or even
£120,000 per roof”? You do not buy that, do you? It is
not demand-led in that
sense.
Andrew
Whitaker:
In simplistic terms, that is how you would
work out the levy.
Andrew
Whitaker:
Under that system, you would produce an
infrastructure plan, which local authorities are obliged to do in any
event. They would then cost that infrastructure plan and find out where
else they
were going to get contributions from. As you rightly say, the CIL is not
there as a substitute for funding from other sources, but in addition
to them. Therefore, they would take that away from the amount of
infrastructure that they require. That gives them a residual amount.
They would then need to make an assessment of whether that residual
amount is affordable within the local market. If it is not, something
has got to give. We have to prioritise; otherwise you will get no
development because no one will be able to afford to
develop.
Q
204
Mr.
Curry:
Could you explain a bit further for me how that
process will take place? We have already heard that in a sense it is
going to be a competitive market. You have said that it depends on the
housing situation locally. You have just said, very obviously I think,
that if they try to squeeze the pips too much, they will not get any
buildings. What process do you envisage? Do you look for some sort of
agreed code, as it were, with a tolerance threshold of development? Do
you look for some sort of arms race between local authorities? Do you
expect to shop
around?
Stephen
Ashworth:
Perhaps I can assist by giving two
practical examples. The first is in connection with the emerging Kent
Thameside town where there is a charge for transport infrastructure of
about £5,000 per house. That has quite a long history and
pedigree behind it because a need has been identified for a transport
infrastructure to serve Kent Thameside, with a bill of about
£160 million. That has gone to the DCLG and the Highways Agency,
saying that they have to make a significant contribution, leaving a
balance that is being looked for from the development community and
other sources, including existing sources of public
funding.
After
consultation with the development community, landowners in the area and
other public agencies, a view is being taken about what is generally
affordable. That is a relatively subjective exercise and there is a lot
of debate about whether it should be £3,000, £4,000,
£5,000 or £6,000. That debate is now playing out in a
supplementary planning document that is being promoted by each of the
local authorities in the area. They are listening to the consultation
and I suspect that over the next two or three months they will reach a
conclusion about the level of the charge. In the meantime—this
is quite an important transitionary point for the Bill as a
whole—a number of developers have already started paying at the
level of £5,000 per house. Land Securities has signed an
agreement that will make a £40 million contribution to that
infrastructure.
Q
205
Mr.
Betts:
It is fair to say that the proposal for a planning
charge that you put forward as organisations was borne out of your
resistance to the planning gains supplement, which was resisted on the
grounds of complications over trying to assess increases in value. Is
that why you are now getting alarmed at the use of the word
“value” in clause 166 as one of the possible methods of
calculating what the infrastructure levy might be? Is this a
fundamental stumbling block for you in terms of your support for what
the Government are putting
forward?
John
Rhodes:
I am not sure that we think
it a fundamental stumbling block. We just think that it is a mistake.
It is clear that the Government have abandoned
the planning gains supplement, which as you say was based on two
calculations of value for every development in the country.
Calculations of value are complex and subject to a lot of disagreement.
We thought that that process was fundamentally flawed in its
application.
The
process that the Government have announced is similar to the one that
we promoted. Instead of being based on value, it is based on an
assessment of infrastructure needs and their affordability across a
local authority area. We were therefore surprised to see reference to
value in the Bill. Affordability and viability are important. We have
just had a short debate about that, but that is very different from
saying that the CIL is based on securing a certain proportion of value;
it is not. It is based on assessing the requirements for infrastructure
in an area, seeing what element of that needs to be raised from the
development that is planned and sharing that cost against development.
There are references to value in the Bill that we think are unhelpful.
Among our members and others in the property industry, that has caused
concern that the planning gains supplement is not
dead.
6.30
pm
John
Slaughter:
Maybe I can add to that.
The key question is workability and the concern about references to
changes in land value in relation to planning gain supplement—it
was, as much as anything, that a lot of experts looked at it and found
that it would be very hard to operate in practice. The issues about PGS
were much wider than
that.
One of the other
key aspects that we were collectively concerned about, as developers,
was the weakening of the link between development and the local
provision of infrastructure. We particularly want to stress today the
value of the levy from the point of view of hopefully strengthening
that local connection, having a proper assessment and buy-in to what is
needed to support development in an area, and, as a result of that,
making more things happen rather than less. But it is critical
technically that the basis on which the levy is assessed stems, as we
have said, initially from the identification of needs according to a
legitimate process, and then one works towards viability. We are
concerned that the references in the Bill to value may, at best, be
confusing and, at worst, could introduce complications into the
process. We would like a clearer understanding of how the mechanism of
setting the community infrastructure levy would work in practice. It is
important, from our point of view, that we get that emphasis right in
the enabling provisions of the
Bill.
Mr.
Betts:
May I just lead on to some references you have made
to the relationship between the levy and section 10, which will still
be around? You referred, in paragraph 2.11 of your submission, to the
fact that we ought to be able to define one set of infrastructure
demands, which will be done under section 106, and another that would
be done under the levy, and that there should not be a
“creep” between the two. Is that not realistically
impossible? There will be the odd bit of road linking a development to
a major highway, which might well be pertinent to section 106, as being
very specifically part of that scheme, but there will be a
need for a wider contribution from a number of
developments to other more significant transport improvements that are
necessary because of the general development of an
area.
Also, you go on
in paragraph 2.13 to state that developers might elect to have elements
of the infrastructure provided through section 106 and that that should
be offset against the CIL, then in paragraph 2.19 you discuss the fact
that the CIL might simplify arrangements because it would mean that
there would be less need for agreements under section 106. Is there not
some confusion in what you are saying
there?
John
Slaughter:
Perhaps I can ask Stephen to comment on
those
questions.
Stephen
Ashworth:
The question comes in
three separate parts. There is a question about whether a bright,
shining line can be drawn between infrastructure that will be subject
to the CIL and infrastructure that will be dealt with under
site-specific agreement. You are right if you are treating it as an
absolute question. There will always be a blurred boundary. We think
that that can be dealt with in a number of ways. If the nature of
infrastructure that can be subject to CIL is identified in the Act, as
it goes forward, that makes very clear what a subsequent section 106
agreement cannot comprise, so you start to get a demarcation between
the two which is able to be
policed.
You then move
on to the question of offsetting. Offsetting works in practice; that is
the simple response to that. In Milton Keynes, with each of the
agreements that has gone forward on a site-specific basis, the
developers have said, “We will deliver that piece of
infrastructure. This is the cost of delivering it and we will set it
off against our future payments of tariff.” Identical
arrangements are working in the London Thames Gateway, for example. So
offsetting for identified pieces of infrastructure that have been
costed does work in
practice.
In relation
to simplifying it: yes, absolutely you can simplify it, because if
there is a CIL requirement, a condition imposed from planning consent
that says, “Pay x before you build” is very easy and
simple to police and it will avoid a lot of the issues that arise in
negotiations at the moment. It does, I accept, get more complex if the
developer is delivering some pieces of infrastructure, but I promise
you that it will be far simpler to deal with that, and has been far
easier to do so in Milton Keynes in the context of the simple offset
provisions, when you compare it with the sort of approach that is
adopted in the normal negotiated planning
agreement.
Mr.
Betts:
This is not Milton Keynes. We are talking about
something here in the CIL, which, by its very nature will be more
complicated than a flat-rate levy on a
road.
Stephen
Ashworth:
That is why I mentioned the London Thames
Gateway Development Corporation, which is, I suspect, at the other end
of the range that people will be looking at. It is largely a deprived
urban area with significant elements of brownfield land, where it has
gone through the exercise that was discussed earlier of looking at the
infrastructure costs. Those costs were between £25,000 and
£30,000. It recognised that that amount could not be charged for
each of the areas within it, and said that it would have to discount it
to £6,000 and £10,000. Even with that sort of mechanism,
there are still provisions for offset that it is willing to
accept.
Q
206
Mrs.
Lait:
Concerns have been raised with us from a variety of
different organisations about which industries or businesses will be
levied. Can you give me some idea of the organisations or areas of the
economy that you think will be paying this
levy?
John
Slaughter:
Ourselves—that is the starting
point.
John
Slaughter:
Housing, commercial,
retail,
development—
John
Slaughter:
Commercial, retail—both
sectors—and, I guess, some industrial development beyond that.
We have focused primarily on our own sphere of interest, and that would
broadly cover our own sphere of interest. We are aware that there is
potentially a debate about where to draw the line. One way of looking
at it might be to work back—we have discussed the desirability,
if we can do it, and there are challenges in doing it—and
identify a sensible list of what would be financed by a community
infrastructure levy. On the whole, one might reasonably expect that
entities or developments that feature that kind of infrastructure
provision would not necessarily contribute to the levy. The honest
answer is that discussion about this process is still in play. We
clearly see the levy as applying to our members, but we do not
necessarily have a clear-cut view on where one draws the line beyond
that.
Q
209
Mrs.
Lait:
Who do you think should pay the levy—the
owner of the land, the developer or a
mixture?
John
Rhodes:
I expect that the levy, in practice, is
likely to be paid by the developer. It is associated with the grant of
planning permission being secured through a condition or a standard
section 106 agreement. One advantage of developing the levy through the
LDF process, and one advantage relative to PGS, is that it would be
relatively straightforward to work out your likely liability to CIL
before you go through the planning process, or even before you buy the
land if you are the developer. On that basis, while the cheque might be
written by the developer, the cost is likely to be passed through to
the land with a reduced land acquisition
cost.
John
Rhodes:
No.
John
Rhodes:
The developer may be the owner of the land
already, in which case, clearly, the liability falls on the developer
as the owner. The prospect of having to pay CIL is something that the
developer would have to take into account when promoting a
development.
Q
212
Mrs.
Lait:
What I am getting at is that it is perfectly
possible for a development to be done on land that is owned by somebody
else—freehold or
leasehold.
John
Rhodes:
Not easily without the consent of the
landowner.
Q
213
Mrs.
Lait:
That is why I am asking who you expect to pay the
levy—the developer or the landowner—if you are in a
freehold or leasehold situation.
John
Rhodes:
I would expect the developer to pay the levy
but reach an agreement with the landowner that allows the development
to proceed and, on that basis, for a sensible commercial decision to be
reached, relative to the circumstances of that site, as to how the CIL
and other costs associated with the development are apportioned between
them.
Andrew
Whitaker:
I would not have thought so. I do not
understand quite where you are going with that. I think that
Mr. Rhodes’s answer deals adequately with the point.
If it does not, you need to expand slightly on what it is that you are
getting at. I do not see that it makes any difference whether one
builds leasehold or freehold properties. A development that has
planning consent is liable for a CIL payment, just as it would be at
the moment if a section 106 contribution had been agreed. How it is
paid for—where the value comes from or where it is derived
from—is up to the developer, who will have to come to some deal
with the landowner about where it will come from. There are only two
ways that we make money in land development. One is land value, and the
other is development profit. We will continue to make development
profit. Otherwise, we will not
develop.
Q
215
Tom
Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): Following that
through, if the ultimate impact is that land values are reduced and
landowners do not get as much money for their land, do you foresee a
reduction in land availability? Will landowners simply sit on their
land because it is not as profitable for them to sell
it?
Andrew
Whitaker:
It is a concern for us that that could be
the case. That is why we require pragmatism in the process of setting
the levy. If you set it too high, you will stifle development. Do not
forget that we are already paying large amounts of money under section
106. The whole point of CIL is to take away some of that obligation
under section 106, although we think that overall CIL will be able to
raise more money than we currently get under section 106 because it
will apply to more schemes, not because it will raise more on each
individual scheme. We see that as an offset. Do not forget that we are
not starting from a blank sheet of paper. Most development
schemes—certainly those of any size—pay money under
section 106 and make contributions under section
106.
Q
216
Tom
Brake:
I understand that you are already paying—or
the landowner, in some respects, is already paying—through
section 106, but given that you accept that the overall amount raised
will be greater than under the current arrangements, do you have a feel
for at what point that overall amount will start to bite in terms of
land availability?
John
Slaughter:
I am tempted to make a slightly
philosophical point, but I hope that it is not unhelpful. If you go
back to what we like about the community infrastructure levy—it
will hopefully create a better climate for development
locally—the danger of these conversations is that we always look
at the situation as a zero-sum game. Half of the approach is really
about getting out of that and incentivising more development by
creating a sensible process whereby local communities can see the value
that will be provided, and one can have a sensible conversation about
how to achieve that.
If we get into that positive
circle, I am not sure that your premise will be the case. If we achieve
that great magic circle trick—a trick in some senses; it is
nevertheless a real objective to aim at—we can achieve more all
around. It would create more development, it would not over-affect land
values and it would make a necessary contribution to local needs. We
must be careful not to look at it too
rigidly.
Q
217
James
Duddridge:
Going back to the Milton Keynes plan for a roof
tax, is the tax a flat tax in the sense that it is the same for a
two-bedroomed apartment, a three-bedroomed house and a four-bedroomed
house, or is it variable in some
way?
Andrew
Whitaker:
We have been discussing with various
groups—both groups in the Home Builders Federation and joint
groups with the British Property Federation—the formula that
might be used. It seems obviously inequitable to charge the same for a
one-bedroomed flat as for a four or five-bedroomed detached house.
Those discussions are going on at the moment, and I am afraid that we
have not got to a conclusion. It seems perfectly obvious to have a
different levy, but we have not worked out how to calculate
it.
Stephen
Ashworth:
Milton Keynes is charged on a per-house
basis. It is a flat £18,500 per house. Exactly that debate went
on in Milton Keynes. There is a desire to encourage larger
accommodation, so there was a balance between some of the inequities,
as Andrew mentioned, and the need to encourage a particular type of
housing provision.
Stephen
Ashworth:
Yes, and it applies to affordable housing
as
well.
6.45
pm
Q
220
James
Duddridge:
So, all other things remaining equal, if we got
stuck into that type of situation it would encourage property
developers to build bigger houses that were less affordable for
hard-working
families.
John
Slaughter:
That takes you back to the process that we
want to see, which involves a proper local discussion and examination
through adopting a proper plan on infrastructure provisions and setting
the levy as part of the local development framework. The answer
is whatever it should be. If the local authority’s objective is
to encourage a particular type of development in terms of what the
local community needs, that may be the right answer, but we certainly
would not support that as the general approach. Again, that is why, in
our memorandum, we were keen to pick up particular points reinforcing a
sensible process to get the levy right. But it needs to vary from area
to area, according to an area’s particular
requirements.
Andrew
Whitaker:
And do not
forget—I keep stressing this—that we are not operating in
a vacuum. The town and country planning system is very complex, as you
all know. There are lots of other policy drivers within that system,
not least the need for affordable housing and its provision through
planning agreement. I was interested in the “buy one, get one
free” comment, because that is what it feels like when providing
housing. Under a 50 per cent. requirement for affordable housing, you
are indeed building one and getting one free. The policy requirement
for affordable housing will remain. Indeed, the industry is currently
being berated for building too many small units and not providing
enough affordable houses or larger-type units. This environment of
strategic housing market assessment, strategic housing land
availability assessment, the local development framework and the
local development documents is still there and still forms the basis of
the policy stance against which we should be assessing all these
things.
We are
trying, via CIL, to provide a much more efficient,
transparent and quick methodology for making the contributions that we
are already making under section 106 agreements, but because that
system is complex it takes a long time and we have to repeat a lot of
work, time after time, and we are trying to simplify that process. It
is not as if we are operating in a
vacuum.
Q
221
Mr.
Curry:
The levy will be part of a
funding stream, will it not? What would be the situation if your levy
were being demanded and there were no reassurance that the other
elements of the funding that would meet a particular capital project
were in
place?
John
Slaughter:
That is a concern. Some of the points that
we made in our memorandum addressed
that.
Stephen
Ashworth:
I am happy to add to that. One of the
clauses that is potentially missing from the Bill is
one dealing with the delivery of infrastructure. There is a useful
provision that makes it quite clear that the levy that is raised must
be applied to certain infrastructure, but there is no mechanism for
ensuring that the multiple bodies that are required to deliver
infrastructure co-operate in delivering the infrastructure for which
payment is being made. Trying to ensure that the health trusts,
education authorities and everybody else delivers the infrastructure in
accordance with the infrastructure plan is a missing element of the
Bill.
To date,
developers have been willing to sign up and make payments on the basis
of promises from the local authorities—from the Milton Keynes
Partnership, for example—that the infrastructure will be
provided. To a large extent, they have taken a leap of faith in
relation to that because all that they are getting back at the moment
are reasonable-endeavours obligations to deliver infrastructure. At the
moment, there is trust that that infrastructure will be delivered. The
next few years are critical to make sure that that trust is
repaid.
Q
222
Mr.
Curry:
Would it be reasonable to have a provision that
said that the levy did not become payable, even though the amount to be
paid had been agreed, until such time as the funding streams were
assembled, or to have a sunset clause whereby the levy will be returned
if a development did not take place within a specified time? Or will it
all go into a local
NatWest?
John
Rhodes:
There are two issues. You have heard us say
that we are keen that this should operate through the LDF process.
Draft PPS 12, which is out to consultation, already goes quite a long
way to explaining that a local authority will have to produce an
infrastructure plan and a delivery plan that goes with that. The LDF
will not be regarded as sound and capable of being adopted unless there
is a delivery plan that persuades the inspector conducting the
examination, whose recommendations are binding on the planning
authority, that if the money is raised through the CIL policies it will
be spent. For that and lots of other reasons, we regard the LDF process
as a protection whereby we will not be paying money that simply sits in
a bank
account.
Q
223
Mr.
Curry:
Would you feel more comfortable if the
Planning-gain Supplement (Preparations) Act 2007 were
repealed?
John
Rhodes:
We are happy that this Bill proceeds as it
is. We are having a very constructive discussion with DCLG
about—
Q
224
Mr.
Curry:
It is not a daft question. We all went through the
hassle a little while ago of having the planning-gain enabling Act. You
yourself expressed concerns, because there appears to be some ambiguity
in the Bill—it opens the possibility of the levy having some
relationship to increase in value. Would these provisions not knock
that on the head, both by addressing the matter in the Bill and by
making sure that the Government were not given this other
instrument?
John
Rhodes:
Yes, that would be an easy way to approach
it. We have not promoted that. What we have promoted are changes to the
clauses that make it clear how the system is intended to work. So, the
deletion of reference to “value” was important, but even
more important to us than that is ensuring that the clauses take the
opportunity, which they do not at the moment, to explain that this is
going to operate through the planning system. There are three specific
clauses—163, 166 and 167—where the option could be taken
to say CIL will be raised through the LDF process. We do not understand
why that is not in the Bill at the moment. It is the only sensible way
in which local communities can engage in this, in which the property
industry can have confidence that the CIL is going to be properly
raised, and in which there is independent
examination.
Through
the LDF process you would create CIL policies. You will then have a
planning system that creates a presumption in favour of any policies in
the plan, and we have an application process and an appeal process
already in place, through the planning system, in which the industry
has confidence. As long as that is the way in which CIL is intended to
be developed, then we are happy to contribute our views to try and make
that work as best we can. In so far as there is any residual concern
that it may be a different system, then we do have concerns. For
instance, there are two references in the clauses to an appeals process
being established for CIL. We would like to see those deleted from the
Bill. We do not understand the need for a separate appeals process.
There is a more than adequate planning appeals process already in
existence.
Q
225
Mr.
Betts:
The last point that you make on this issue in your
submission is about the right of appeal. You are almost proposing a
separate right of appeal, if there is a concern about the viability of
a project because of the amount of the levy that is going to be
charged. I have just asked the people from the Planning Inspectorate
whether they believed that that could be subsumed into the normal
planning process and be a matter for an appeal that could be taken in
the normal course of events. Would you be satisfied with that or do you
still have real concerns over this
issue?
John
Rhodes:
I think that we may not have explained
ourselves properly if you have got an impression that we are seeking a
separate appeals process. We are looking for CIL to be embedded in the
LDFs, so that there is a policy that requires the CIL to be paid.
Planning application is then made, and lots of considerations are taken
into account, but it may be that in certain cases a developer argues
that he cannot afford to pay CIL. The local authority may take the view
that that is then contrary to the LDF. Planning permission is refused
and there is an appeals process to the Planning Inspectorate—the
existing appeals process—which allows an appeal to be considered
on the basis, which, as Leonara Rozee, I think, confirmed, works in
exactly the same way in relation to social housing policies. The
developer makes an argument that he cannot afford to meet the full
requirement for affordable housing. Planning consent could be refused
on that basis, if the planning authority is not convinced. That
decision can then be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate. It is a
simple, straightforward planning appeal. The Planning Inspectorate then
has to ask itself a question: are the merits of this development,
without sufficient affordable housing to meet the policies, sufficient
to outweigh the objection that there is not enough affordable housing
in accordance with the policy, should planning consent be granted? We
think that CIL can operate in exactly the same way. If it becomes a
policy of the development plan, it can be dealt with through the
planning appeals
process.
Q
226
Jim
Sheridan:
You may have partly answered this question. You
will be aware that the Government recently identified the need to build
thousands of houses, particularly affordable houses, throughout various
parts of the UK, especially for first-time buyers. Can I therefore ask
whether there is any tangible evidence that, if this levy is
implemented, it will impact in any way on the ambitious plan that the
Government have for building significant numbers of new
homes?
John
Slaughter:
I probably need to come back to the point
I made a few minutes ago about avoiding the zero-sum game view of this.
It is undoubtedly true that, when you look at this in the round, what
local
authorities will need to do—and they will be in the
driving seat in terms of delivering all this in
practice—is balance the need for affordable housing in the local
area against other requirements. One needs to look at that in a rounded
sense. There is no point in having a discussion about the levy without
looking at its interaction with affordable housing provision. We do not
see any direct trade-off between the two, but you need to have a
sensible overall approach to consider these issues in relation to each
other. If we hold to the thought that this is about achieving more,
rather than less, then I do not see why that should be a concern,
because the end result of this proposal from our point of view is that
it
will play its part in delivering more housing. Our concerns about PGS
were, in part, that it might discourage more housing by discouraging
land supply. With CIL, it is the other way round. This is a positive
incentive if we set it up right, and we should therefore get more of
everything as a
result.
Further
consideration adjourned.—[Mr.
Watts.]
Adjourned
accordingly at
five
minutes to Seven o’clock till
Thursday 10 January at Nine
o’clock.
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