Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 339)
THURSDAY 8 JULY 2004
RT HON
KEITH HILL,
MR MIKE
ASH, MRS
VICTORIA THOMSON
AND MR
GREIG CHALMERS
Q320 Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville:
A planning witness from the north west yesterday said that
they had received guidance or encouragement from your Department
that their regional spatial strategies should be ready, at least
in outline, within a year. Even somebody as apolitical as myself
can imagine why the three northern regions should have received
that encouragement. The implication was that other regional spatial
strategies would not be under the same pressure. Given the significance
of competition between the regions in the context of casinos,
do you see any fallacy in the argument which has been developed?
Keith Hill: My Lord, I have no
recollection of your apolitical character in your previous incarnation.
Q321 Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville:
The House of Lords can do a lot for anybody!
Keith Hill: I assure you that
there is no conspiracy here. You ought to bear in mind that regional
planning guidance is prepared at various stages and to different
time schedules. There are particular reasons, not related to the
issue of regional casinos, as to why we are asking the north west
regional planning body to start to review its regional planning
guidance at the end of this year. So it is not about, if I might
interpret your apolitical observation, a Government project to
ensure that the northern regions are first in the line with regard
to applications for regional casinos. It is actually connected,
certainly as far as the northwest is concerned, with quite different
considerations.
Q322 Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville:
The witness did extend it to the other two northern regions
as well.
Keith Hill: I have no knowledge
of the timescale for the review of the RPGs in Yorkshire and Humberside
and the northeast. Mike, can you help us on that?
Mr Ash: Not precisely. We can
let the Committee have details if they want. All regional spatial
strategies in the future are on a rolling programme of review
and some minor changes are being made at the moment and there
are some more wholesale reviews also taking place. The northern
regions are looking very much more as a collective group of regions
at interregional issues and considering the need to revise their
spatial strategies in the light of that consideration. There are
policy developments going on not least in respect of policy set
out in the Sustainable Communities Plan that would mean that regional
spatial strategies need to be updated in any case, with concerns
in the north about the Pathfinder areas and the abandonment of
housing. We have got a lot of difficult housing issues and a lot
of difficult economic issues which need to be addressed in the
updated strategy.
Q323 Lord Mancroft: Minister, you
have already said that it is your expectation that possibly the
first two or three applications will be called in by the Secretary
of State. It seems to me an odd thing to embark on a policy which
is not meant to be national where one expects that the first two
or three applications inevitably are going to end up on the Secretary
of State's desk. That seems to me an admission of failure before
one starts. Is not the danger—and this seems to be the route
we are going down—that the Secretary of State's power to
call in applications becomes by default the sole method of settling
disputes either between regional planning bodies or between local
authorities and their regional planning body?
Keith Hill: I do not think it
is an admission of failure, I think it is normal procedure. The
fact is that certain departure applications are notified directly
to the Secretary of State to enable him to check general compliance
with development plan policies and to consider whether an application
should be called in for his own determination. As I have indicated,
in the short term, in the absence of casino specific RSS policy,
it is more likely that regional casino proposals will be called
in. It will not be automatic, but the Secretary of State's call-in
powers are not a method of conflict resolution in themselves.
Indeed we would hope that agreement would have been reached in
the preparation of policy or in the handling of an application.
Q324 Lord Mancroft: Is that not a
national policy by another name?
Keith Hill: No. I think it is
about the normal criteria that are applied to planning applications,
as have always been embodied in planning legislation and which
are carried forward in the new planning legislation.
Mr Ash: Each application is considered
on its merits and therefore it depends on the particular circumstances.
If one classifies casinos as part of leisure developments, it
is not unusual for regional planning guidance at the moment to
have a policy on leisure developments in those documents and indeed
there may be such policies at the local level as well. It is conceivable
at one end of the spectrum that you could have an up-to-date set
of policies which do provide a framework and within which the
Secretary of State might decide it is inappropriate for him to
intervene in the process and leave it to the local authority to
decide the application. On the other hand, as the Minister has
said, if there is a clear departure from a plan, there are no
up-to-date policies, there are wider issues of regional policy
to be taken into account and it may be appropriate then to call
the application in for his decision, but his policy is to be very
sparing about this and we do not call in very many a year.
Q325 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: Given
how significant this change of policy to encourage the growth
of regional casinos is and the impact that it will have in all
the regions and the towns where these casinos are located, would
it not have made more sense, to follow the point that Richard
Page was suggesting in his question, to have a national policy,
so the Government says, "We think the likely location for
regional casinos should be in the following places," and,
added to that, "We would expect the following benefits particularly
in terms of regeneration to flow from those decisions"?
Keith Hill: The Government has
set out clear guidelines with regard to the regeneration effects
of casinos. It appears in the joint statement that I and Lord
McIntosh issued earlier about the regeneration effects of casinos
and we would expect that to be applied. Secondly, we have a tradition
of fairly decentralized planning in this country which we sustained
in the new planning legislation. There is not much point in many
respects enhancing the status of planning at the local level if
the Government is going to step in. I have to say that planning
is about land use policy, it is not about determining the market.
Q326 Lord Wade of Chorlton: That
seems to contradict what you said earlier. If you are saying that
you would automatically expect the first three or four casinos
to be called in and you have just said that it is your policy
to allow the regional spatial strategy to be the key element and
you want that decision to be made locally, those two statements
do not seem to fit together. On the one hand you want to develop
a local policy and on the other hand you are saying that once
they make a decision you are going to call it in and maybe overrule
it or look at it in a different light. It does not make sense
to me.
Keith Hill: It is entirely consistent,
if I might say so with respect, my Lord. Planning decisions and
planning applications are set firmly in the context of guidance
which relates to issues of local sustainability, to a whole set
of criteria about the compatibility of the planning application
with guidance and therefore it seems quite natural that where
you have a departure from the plan—and at the early stages
such applications and such decisions are likely to be departures
from the plan—we would want to look at them in the context
of the guidelines on planning policy, but I have said that it
will not be an automatic process of call in.
Q327 Chairman: May I just come back
to your comment that you think the first two or three are likely
to be called in. If I understood you correctly, you think the
first two or three regional casino applications are likely to
be called in by the Secretary of State. Let us come back to Blackpool.
Blackpool has been working on the prospect of becoming a regional
casino to accommodate the fact that not all of these very large
casinos will necessarily be in resorts. For four years they have
worked with their regional assembly, which will become the regional
planning body. We have had quite clear evidence both from our
visit to Blackpool in our previous inquiry and again on Tuesday
that the North West Regional Planning Body supports the concept
of Blackpool being redeveloped, so there is no tension there.
The tension will come in respect of other locations within the
north west which we will come on to in a moment. There is no tension
between Blackpool Council and the regional organisations, the
regional bodies, the regional assembly and I suspect your regional
office in the northwest. If they were to say once this Bill becomes
law, "Okay, let's go ahead", they have got the developers
all competing with each other to invest their money, there were
six overseas investors before the Committee two days ago all saying
they find it all extremely attractive. Are you suggesting that
in spite of all of that the Secretary of State might then call
it in anyway? What would be the point of that?
Keith Hill: Let me stress again
that there is no automaticity about the call in. There may be
an issue in relation to policy on town centres and out-of-town
centre developments. In those circumstances if there were an issue
in connection with any development that Blackpool wished to pursue
then it would be natural and proper that the First Secretary should
want to have a look in more detail at the proposition. I am not
saying that that will be the case, but I am giving that as an
example of the sort of aspect of planning policy which might be
affected by a planning application for a so-called regional casino.
My point about the possible intervention of the First Secretary
at the early stage of this process really is an issue about timing.
We began by saying that we do not expect the regional spatial
strategies to be in place instantaneously. There is likely to
be a hiatus period in which there is no regional spatial strategy
policy with regard to the location of regional casinos and in
those circumstances it may be appropriate for the First Secretary
to call in.
Q328 Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville:
Minister, I declare an interest in the question I am asking
because my brother was the counsel to the Sizewell B nuclear power
station which lasted, partly as a result of his questions, for
two and a half years. The industry tolerated that length of delay
on the grounds that it was going to settle a whole series of points
on a long-term basis which might move over into other applications.
I do understand why the Deputy Prime Minister might have the intentions
that you have described in your answer. How long do you think
such an initial inquiry would take?
Keith Hill: Well, that is difficult.
I think this might be one to pass over to Mike Ash. If one of
the issues at the back of your mind is about the speed and efficiency
of the system—
Q329 Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville:
That is behind my question.
Keith Hill: That has been very
much in the Government's mind as we have approached our planning
reform agenda and indeed the whole purpose of the Planning and
Compulsory Purchase Act is to speed up the system while creating
a degree of flexibility, which is important, but also—and
this is not `cod' phraseology—making it fairer. We are determined
to ensure a high level of community involvement in planning decision
making, but the thrust of the reform legislation is to speed up
the process and we could go into the detail of how that is to
be achieved but I do not think that is a matter to detain the
Committee on right now. In operational terms the Government has
been very keen to speed up decision making both at the local level
but also at Government level as well. I have got the figures before
me which it might be helpful to convey very rapidly to the Committee
because we are quite pleased with this. With regard to decisions
made by the First Secretary on planning applications either called
in or recovered we have met our target. In the quarter to March
2004 over 80% of decisions were issued within 16 weeks of the
close of the inquiry. With regard to local planning authorities
where we have been seeking to incentivise performance by our very
large planning delivery grant amounting to £350 million of
allocations over a three-year period, we are seeing an improvement
there. In the first quarter of this year the total of major applications
decided within 13 weeks stands at 53%, and there has been an eight
percentage point improvement in determining both major and minor
applications and a seven percentage point improvement on other
decisions from that in the same quarter a year ago. So we are
really at all levels beginning to see an improvement, but we are
going to be absolutely unremitting on that.
Q330 Chairman: May I just clarify
this? A call in does not automatically lead to a public inquiry
in every case.
Mr Ash: May I start with the reasons
for a call in first of all because I think that is quite important
to the issue of how long it takes. We have a range of national
policies already in place. We have PPG6 on town centres which
covers retail and leisure-type developments and we have PPG13
on transport and other planning policy statements of that sort
that are already there. The criteria that the Secretary of State
uses in terms of whether to call a case in includes things like
whether there is a conflict with national policies on important
matters, whether they give rise to significant effects beyond
their immediate locality, whether they give rise to substantial
regional and national controversy, whether they raise significant
architectural and urban design issues or may involve the interests
of national security of a foreign government. That was a statement
made to the House some years ago, which is the broad statement
of criteria which are used in deciding whether to call an individual
application in. I have had my fingers burned more than once in
terms of trying to predict how long an individual case might take.
It just depends on what the extent of the concern is around the
various issues and in particular often what the level of objection
is from third parties to a particular application that is called
in. There are statutory stages that have to be gone through before
the inquiry happens, as you would expect, for the exchange of
documents and proofs of evidence and that sort of thing. The inquiry
itself may last a longer or a shorter time. The sort of inquiry
that Lord Brooke referred to is very much the exception and we
know about Terminal 5 at Heathrow and other ones like that that
lasted a very long time. In general inquiries into call-in applications
last less than a week, they are fairly short. They may take a
bit longer, they may take two or three weeks, it just depends
on what the issues are and how much cross-examination there is
of the various cases that are put forward. Beyond that our target
that the Minister referred to kicks in. Two years ago it was taking
us 32 weeks to get from the inspector closing the inquiry to the
issuing of the decision and over a two-year period we have halved
that time to the 16 weeks that has been mentioned. That is broadly
the process and the stages that it goes through.
Q331 Mr Page: It seems to me that
you are saying, Minister, that if the RPBs have produced a policy
and the local authorities agree and it does not clash with any
national objectives everything is going to be sweetness and light
and things can proceed quite quickly. I cannot see any need to
pull that and call that in and delay the matter. Is not the difficulty
going to come when you are actually working out the policy representation
right at the start, when you have maybe two major cities disagreeing
with what is happening and then automatically it is going to have
to be called in and you are automatically into a national policy,
so why does not Government do it in the first place?
Keith Hill: This is again on this
issue of conflict resolution. We believe that the new legislation
has put mechanisms in place which will facilitate that kind of
dialogue both between regions and between local authorities and
regional planning bodies. We will expect regions to be commenting
on the evolving regional spatial strategies of adjacent regions
and to that extent our expectation is that there will be a process
and a dialogue which will enable conflicts to be resolved. Let
me make it clear that we are not in the business of determining
the market on these matters that is for the market and ultimately
if regions have so-called regional casinos in reasonably adjacent
localities and that is sustainable in terms of the market that
is the situation that will prevail.
Q332 Mr Meale: Mr Ash, where one
public body objects, the common practice has always been that
if it is a public body, a local authority, then that is a reason
in itself for a call in. Will that be retained or not?
Mr Ash: I do not think that is
an automatic position. It will certainly be a material consideration
in terms of deciding whether to call in, and be weighed in the
balance.
Q333 Mr Meale: Material consideration
or call in practice, will it retain the status which it has at
the present time?
Mr Ash: Due weight will be given
to that, that is right. There is a danger of some confusion here.
Regional planning bodies have been established. Each of the regional
planning bodies or the regional chambers as they exist at the
moment, they may be elected regional assemblies in the future,
are made up predominantly of the local authorities in the region.
There are a proportion of other members involved as well but predominantly
they are members of local authorities. The local authorities collectively
in a region are part of the regional planning body, so they collectively
are coming to a view on what their strategy should be. Coming
to their view on what their strategy should be as regards regional
casinos seems to me to be little different to what is their regional
strategy on where major shopping centres should be or on where
local airports might go or major new inward investment employment
sites. It is not an unusual situation for the regional planning
body to have to grapple with the question of where in the region
these things are. Either they will come to a consensus, which
is an agreement, or they will come to a majority view, in which
case some particular party may have lost out. Even if that is
the case, the document then goes through an "examination
in public" process in which all the parties with an interest
have an opportunity to put their case and that is considered in
front of an inspector, he reports to the Secretary of State, often
it is a panel of inspectors, and the Secretary of State ultimately
puts the regional spatial strategy in place. There is a process
there, both through the preparation of the document and through
its testing at the examination stage, so that all parties can
have their say and a view can be taken.
Chairman: Let us talk about location.
Jeff Ennis?
Q334 Jeff Ennis: Minister, do you
envisage most regional casino developments being located in town
centres? How does this fit with the DCMS's strategy to avoid repetitive
casual use of machines which are more likely to occur if casinos
are located in high street locations to which relatively large
numbers of people have access?
Keith Hill: The short answer to
your question, Mr Ennis, is yes, but let me offer you, as ever,
a somewhat longer answer. It will be up to local authorities to
determine appropriate locations for casino developments having
regard to national and regional policy. When they are developing
their detailed local policy or considering specific applications
they will have to have regard to the principles set out in planning
guidance in relation to town centre and retail developments and
in relation to transport that is PPG6 and PPG13 at present. You
will be aware that these principles direct all development to
the most central and accessible locations and so it is the case
that town centres are indeed the preferred locations. Moreover,
it is likely that regeneration benefits will be appropriate to
such locations. If it were proposed to locate outside town centres
then proposals of that nature would have to satisfy additional
policy tests, but of course within the town centre the authority
will need to think sensibly about the policy it adopts and the
locational criteria it uses. A casino, for example, does not have
to be located on a main shopping street. Our impression is that
in general terms and pragmatically it seems that casino developers
are likely to seek less central locations and that really bring
us back to the issues that we were talking about earlier.
Q335 Jeff Ennis: Obviously we have
received quite a lot of evidence from various sectors within the
industry, Minister. I will quote one to you which I think is relevant
to the question I have asked, it is from the Casino Operators'
Association (UK): "COA(UK) are at a loss to understand the
hostility by Government to existing small casinos in the towns
but makes planning permission arrangements there for regional
ones; both offer the facility for `casual gaming' which is the
quoted reason for restricting existing small casinos, but the
scale differential is enormous". What the existing British
industry is telling us, Minister, is we have not got a level playing
field at the present time. Your current small town centre casinos
which have been operating for decades quite successfully are being
squeezed out of the game for the sake of these big regional international
casinos coming in and taking their business away from them. What
is the planning process going to do to protect the existing industry?
Keith Hill: The issue of the casinos
themselves and where you have regional casinos and whether they
are permitted is very much a matter for the licensing authorities
under the proposed gambling legislation. There is, as you will
be aware, a needs scrutiny with regard to proposed developments
and applications, but on the whole the planning policy is pretty
laissez-faire when it comes to the economic success or
failure of specific private undertakings and it is really very
much a matter for the market to decide in these situations.
Mr Ash: One could equally argue
that small local shops have been squeezed out by major retail
developments, it is the same situation. What you are saying is
that there is a level playing field in planning terms but there
is not a level playing field in the market because there will
be competition and the planning system does not seek to regulate
competition.
Jeff Ennis: By and large the small local
shops have been squeezed out by large out-of-town developments
which have sidelined the local town centres. In many respects
we are not talking about a like for like analogy here.
Q336 Chairman: The key issue is,
Minister, there is a very real tension because of your Department's
preference for major leisure developments to be in town centres.
Whether they are small, large or regional casinos, your preference
is for them to be in town centres. All the evidence about the
problem of social responsibility, what leads to problem gambling
is very much a locational issue, easy access to machine gambling.
We will have to reflect on that tension in what we say in our
report, but I really would urge you to be aware of that in your
own policy formulation in respect of locations for some of these
developments.
Keith Hill: I absolutely take
the point, Chairman. Let me say that planning policy is not amoral
and let me remind the Committee that indeed built into new planning
legislation is the principle of sustainability. The new and revised
basic statement on planning policy, PPS1, does advise that communities
should be promoted which are inclusive, healthy, safe and crime
free. So there are social considerations built in to planning
guidance which we would expect the planning authorities at regional
and local level to take on board.
Chairman: We will come on to guidance
in a minute.
Q337 Mr Meale: Accepting the preferred
option of town centres and city centres for the siting of these
new endeavours, does that not fly in the face of guidance on spatial
planning which the Government have done? For instance Lord Rogers'
report on urban renaissance and other work which is being done
for town and city centres by the Government which is seeking to
re-populate all these city centres. Does it not fly in the face
of all that planning guidance which has gone before?
Keith Hill: I do not think it
does fly in the face of that guidance to which we are passionately
committed by the way. Such developments in urban centres are actually
likely to generate jobs. It is perfectly possible that where you
have significant developments there are then ancillary developments
which occur in a locality. We see these so-called regional casinos
as contributing very strongly to regeneration. You know as well
as I do that it is precisely in the centres of our great cities
that the primary regeneration requirements are located and I suppose
this will be a response to them.
Q338 Mr Meale: Do you not accept
that if a development like a casino actually is built within the
town centre area, a largely unpopulated area, which the Government
is already trying to encourage people to move into and owners
to let or to sell, you will price those people out of these communities
by virtue of the fact that they will not be able to buy the space?
Keith Hill: I really do not think
that our experience would vindicate that observation. Our experience
is that you can have large developments on sites which are already
brownfield sites, which have stood empty for long periods of time
and which are in a state of dereliction. Once you have a development
of a vibrant economic character then it actually does serve to
enliven and revitalise the entire locality. To that extent there
really is not very much difference between the development of
one of these regional casinos and a major supermarket or a sports
facility. All of them serve to generate local jobs and all of
them add certain vibrancy to the city centre area. One of the
great successes, quite frankly, of the recent period has been
the revitalisation at least of our big cities. We think that there
is a further problem. The next stage is actually dealing with
towns and cities on a somewhat smaller scale than your Leeds and
your Manchesters, your Newcastles, your Liverpools to some extent
and certainly Birmingham and that is where we are beginning to
try and focus and encourage development. That is not a comment
on any policy statement with regard to these regional casinos
by the way. Big scale development in this fashion we believe will
certainly have very powerful regenerative effects. Let me give
you a very practical and short example with which I have been
directly associated because amongst my many responsibilities the
one that I have been most coy about until very recently is that
I am the Minister for the Dome. You will know that we have now
disposed of the Dome.
Q339 Chairman: There was a time when
no Minister would admit it.
Keith Hill: I have now disposed
of the Dome and the taxpayer will find a benefit of £4 of
private investment at least for every £1 of taxpayers' investment
in the site and there is absolutely no doubt that the extraordinary
entertainments future that we now foresee for the Dome will have
an enormous regenerative effect on that part of Greenwich.
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