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Baroness Hamwee moved Amendment No. 108:
- Page 20, line 28, at end insert—
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this amendment is grouped with Amendments No. 110 and with Amendment No. 110A, which is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. It takes us back to London. In Committee I moved a similar amendment to the effect that although the Mayor's spatial development strategy—called the London Plan—will become the regional spatial strategy, it should not do so yet.
The amendment provides that the unitary development plans prepared by the boroughs will remain the development plans for each borough until the Mayor publishes or adopts an alteration to the London Plan; in other words, not the London Plan that has just been published. It is a good read but it is also a big read. Talking of glossy documents, I noticed that it costs £50 to buy. One would have to be jolly interested in it. If one tried to download it using e- government, I suspect that one would crash quite a lot of computers in the process. I do not dispute that it has got some good stuff in it but it does not contain the policies that the London boroughs had during the process of the creation of the London Plan or treat what was happening within the context of the Bill.
The Minister's response to the amendment on the previous occasion was that the plan would be published before the Bill commenced. It has now been published, but that is not the point I seek to deal with today. There is no opportunity for the local authorities to be re-consulted on the London Plan now that the Bill makes its status clear, unlike every other region in the country which will have an opportunity to be consulted on the new regional spatial strategy. Noble Lords may wonder whether that is fair—although, in
The Minister also said that making regional plans a part of the development plan is,
The Minister told the House that the strategy under the Bill would not replace Part 1—that is the boroughs' strategic policies in unitary development plans—and that the Bill does not affect the scope and content of the strategy. There is an overlap between the Part 1 policies of many boroughs' unitary development plans and the Mayor's strategic policies. While the London Plan is the most recently adopted document, I assume that it will have greater weight than the boroughs' unitary development plans. I am fearful that this will lead to more complexity and confusion in the process. Many of the London boroughs raised objections to the plan at the time but they were not aware of the status being proposed by the Bill and did not consider the level of detail included in the draft London Plan or the possible conflict that might occur.
I am aware of the different approaches taken by the London boroughs. Some have gone ahead with modifications to their current unitary development plans; others decided to hold back until the Mayor's London Plan was published; and some went ahead with modifications on the basis that the new legislation would be in effect, or certainly anticipating the new structure of local development frameworks and so on.
So what is emerging from the boroughs is very varied indeed. I have seen a number of such examples in my role as a member of the Greater London Assembly.
Perhaps I may give one example of an area of difficulty—that of car parking standards. Noble Lords who have been involved in local government will know that the area of car parking standards can be very contentious. The London Plan policy states that UDP policies and transport local implementation plans should adopt the maximum parking standards set out in the annex, where appropriate, taking account of local circumstances and allowing for reduced car parking provision in areas of good transport accessibility. The parking standards in the annex are in many cases different from those of the London Borough of Camden, which prepared this note for me, and for other London boroughs as well.
The policy refers to local circumstances and reduced levels of car parking provision but this is open to interpretation and is therefore a source of potential conflict. The London Plan specifically identifies what is called the central activities zone, which includes part
The Minister argued that the Government are not fundamentally altering the existing relationship and that currently the spatial development strategy can still be a material consideration. He also referred to the Mayor's powers of refusal. To me, this can be turned around and amount to an argument that the amendment I am proposing is not the problem for the Government that has been suggested.
I understand that the Mayor has been advised that now that the London Plan is published, borough unitary development plans and local development documents should conform with it. That is exactly the problem we are seeking to avoid. It does not seem to be truly consistent with what we have heard before but it certainly spells out in words of one syllable the position we fear will lead to confusion. I beg to move.
Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I rise to support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and to speak to our Amendment No. 110A. I should briefly like to explain the rationale behind our withdrawal of Amendments Nos. 109 and 111 and the substitution of Amendment No. 110A instead. We believe it to be more sensible to follow the current structure of the Bill by considering the issues for London under subsection (2) and then the issues for the rest of the country under subsection (3). Our earlier plans would have knocked out subsection (2) and then removed "other" from subsection (3) so as to take the issues of London and the remainder of the country together.
The Bill proposes to change the status of the Mayor of London's special development strategy—known as the London Plan—so the situation in London will be consistent with the Government's proposals for the rest of England. The London Plan will now have to be a formal part of each borough's unitary development plan when previously the UDP would only have to be in general conformity with the London Plan. This is despite the announcement in the planning Green Paper of 2001 that the Government do not propose any change to the Mayor's role in the arrangements for planning in London.
It is wrong for the Government to argue that the change in London is necessary for the sake of consistency. The situation in London is unique and this makes it unsuited for the planning system the Government are establishing for the rest of England. There will be no regional spatial strategy in London, which will instead have a very much more detailed draft London Plan prepared by the Mayor. It is a highly prescriptive document that will inevitably conflict at times with unitary development plans. I can
We are told that when a conflict does arise between a borough's plan and the London Plan, the more recent document; that is, the London Plan, will have the greater weight. That would mean that the carefully considered unitary development plan, which is a result of months of consultation with local communities, can be overridden by the London Plan. Indeed, the unitary development plans in London were adopted only some five years ago. What is more, there is every chance that the planning application process will become more complicated and take more time. That is the very reverse of what we understood the whole of the Bill to be about. Each planning application will have to be considered in relation to both the local development plan and the relevant policies in the London Plan. Any appeal procedure that results from the refusal of a planning application will consequently also be far more complex.
The amendment would retain the present relationship between the spatial development strategy and the unitary development plan in London boroughs. Under the present arrangements, the unitary development plans have to be in general conformity, but we now know that general conformity with the regional spatial strategy is actually conformity with the Mayor's spatial strategy. Section 304 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 amends the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to reflect the setting up of the revised administrative arrangements for Greater London. Section 344(2) states that Part 1 of the unitary development plans should be in general conformity with the spatial development strategy for the time being in force; and that Part 2 of the unitary development plans should be in general conformity with Part 1 and, in the case of a London borough council, with the spatial development strategy.
All of that means that London boroughs will now not merely have to pay attention to but be governed by the London development plan. That was never foreseen and it was an eventuality for which unitary development plans were never developed. Under the current London Plan, they simply cannot be maintained.
"( ) For the purposes of any area in Greater London, the development plan prior to the publication by the Mayor of London of a new spatial development strategy in accordance with section 341(1)(b) of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 (c. 29) (alteration or replacement) is the unitary development plan adopted in accordance with the principal Act."
"an important part of strengthening the strategic planning role. It is just as applicable to the Mayor's strategy as it is to a regional strategy".—[Official Report, 27/1/04; col. 187.]
He further said that the Government were not fundamentally altering the existing relationship between the spatial development strategy and unitary development plans. Since then I have seen certainly one letter which confirms this. He said in that letter that the Government were making the position clearer.
4.45 p.m.
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