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Lord Lucas: My Lords, I support what my noble friends have said. I hope that, in replying, the Minister will look across the Dispatch Box at my two noble friends on the Front Bench and notice that my noble friend Lord Hanningfield is worried about his planning department being overburdened and that my noble friend Lady Hanham has no worries at all about her parking control department being overburdened. In fact, travelling her streets, it is easier to get away from flies in Australia than traffic wardens in Chelsea. That is because there is a proper rate of charging for traffic wardens in Chelsea. You pay £3 a minute in the better areas—or, rather, £3 an hour; £3 a minute would be high even for Chelsea. My noble friend stings her customers royally and runs the division at a profit.
The difficulty with planning departments is that the fees have been so low for so long that we cannot pay planners properly nor staff the departments properly. We have to go to Australia to find staff because no one wants to train to be a planner. To reverse this, we need a proper level of fees. Whatever the merits of these statements—the noble Lord knows that I think they are a lovely idea but they will never fly; they are not right—if we are going to have them, let us charge a proper level of fees. If we charge a decent level of fees we will be able to afford the planning departments to deal with them and people will not feel like chucking in applications on the willy-nilly; they will wait and think carefully if they are going to be done for a thousand or two for making one of these applications.
There is a lot to be said for getting fees on a proper level. If we do that, many of the fears we have about overburdening the system will disappear because we will be funding it properly and it will simply be a question of running it well rather than trying to imagine how you will deal with ever increasing burdens inside a shrinking budget.
Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I hesitate to assure my noble friend that if there was any question of these statements of development principles coming into being, there is no doubt that the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea would ensure that proper fees were charged and that we made sufficient money out of the system.
I reinforce what has been said about the outline planning permission. At the moment it looks like the Government are minded to ditch it in favour of the statement of development principles, which is a very poor substitute. Outline planning permission has served not only local authorities but also developers extremely well over the years. It provides the "bankability" of a scheme. The statement of development principles will not do that. There is no way that any bank will put forward money for a developer on the back of a statement of development principles. All it is likely to do is cause confusion within the network of development proposals. We shall end up with endless statements of development principles on innumerable properties where there is no intention of developing them. It will be easy to ask for one and this will cause a need for extra planning officers.
In my borough we shall ensure that we make something from it, but I very much hope that we shall not have to do so.
7.30 p.m.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, this is an important issue. I am conscious of the hour but I must stick to my notes on this. I shall not use everything I have got, but I want to give substantive answers given the fact that discussions are ongoing.
I wish to get two specific issues out of the way first so that I do not forget to raise them. We shall be consulting in the summer of this year on a proposed fee regime for statements of development principles; and, in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, the power to make a development order under new Section 61E(7) is contained in Section 59 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, which is why, I suspect, she could not find it.
Amendments Nos. 124 and 126 together would give the local planning authority discretion on whether or not to decide to issue a statement of development principles. In our previous debate I stated that where an application for a statement of development principles is received, a local planning authority should be required to come to a decision regardless of the level of information provided.
It should not be discretionary to provide this kind of advice. I do not see how that would help the overall process. If a developer asks for advice on a proposed
development through a statement of development principles he should be entitled to receive a response. We have said previously that a minimum amount of information will be necessary to identify where the proposed development will be and the person making the request for a statement of development principles. We do not wish to make it compulsory to provide other details.If the request for a statement of development principles lacks information on some aspects of the development, the statement of development principles issued by the local planning authority will say so. We want statements of development principles to be flexible enough for both simple and complex questions to be asked. It should not be compulsory for a developer to submit as much information with a statement of development principles as he would for a planning application.
As to Amendment No. 125—I have heard a partial apology for it—as I said before, we do not believe the amendment is necessary. The provision mirrors existing requirements—for instance, where local planning authorities are required to have regard to the development plan as far as it is material to the determination of the planning application. There can be no need to have regard to the development plan if it is not material to the application. It will be for the local planning authority to decide whether or not it thinks the development plan is material to the application.
As to Amendment No. 127, we recognise the importance an environmental impact assessment has in the planning system but we do not believe that it is necessary to include specific requirements on environmental impact assessments on the face of the Bill. It is important to remember that a request for a statement of development principles is not an application for planning permission. If a positive statement of development principles is granted, it is not in any form a consent for planning permission. It is simply a way of finding out whether a development might be suitable for a particular site and of identifying the kind of issues that a developer would need to consider before he submits an application for planning permission.
As I have already pointed out, it follows that we do not want to require developers to submit as much detail with a request for a statement of development principles as we would for a planning application. The statement of development principles would take place at an early stage. At that early stage, it is unlikely that there will always be sufficient information available to enable all the likely significant environmental impacts to be identified. In those circumstances, it would be difficult for the local planning authority to make a proper screening opinion on the need for an environmental impact assessment.
Moreover, if the amount of detail required to carry out a screening opinion is available, the developer may be more likely to apply for outline planning permission. Nevertheless, if on the available information, the local planning authority considers
that the nature of the proposed development is one for which an environmental impact assessment might be required under the relevant regulations, the statement of development principles that it issues will indicate that any application for planning permission in respect of development agreed to in principle might be subject to the provision of an environmental statement with any subsequent application. If it is not apparent that an environmental impact assessment is required when the statement of development principles is issued, the local planning authority will still be able to require one when the application for planning permission is submitted if it is then evident that one is required.In respect of Amendment No. 129, Clause 61E(5) would allow a local planning authority to decline to issue a statement of development principles where a valid statement of development principles has already been issued. Its chief aim is to protect the local planning authority from duplicating work that it has already done. The removal of subsection (5) would result in the local planning being required to consider every request it receives for a statement of development principles, whether or not it has already considered an identical one. I cannot see the value of requiring a local planning authority and those consulted about a statement of development principles to go through a process they have already been through.
As I explained in Committee, Clause 61E(5) does not prevent a local planning authority from reconsidering a request for a statement of development principles if it has been revised to address the reasons why a previous statement of development principles, or part of one, had been disagreed with.
Amendments Nos. 147 and 150 would retain outline planning permission in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. We discussed those amendments in Committee. On 29 January, we said that we were considering the retention of outline planning permission as set out in a Written Statement by the planning Minister, Keith Hill, on 15 December 2003. Retention would be on the basis that applications for outline planning permission met our objectives. Those objectives are that outline planning permission provides the opportunity for greater community involvement and a level of information that enables local authorities to assess all the significant environmental impacts from the proposed developments.
The Minister also stated on 15 December that the further information that should accompany applications for outline planning permission would need to cover the key design principles. As I have again confirmed today, we indicated that we would include the word "design" in the Bill. We also said in earlier debates that discussions with representatives of interested parties, including the development industry, were continuing. Those discussions have continued since 29 January in a positive and constructive manner. The concept of a statement of design principles is part of the discussion. The British
Property Federation, the House Builders Federation and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors have welcomed the Written Statement of 15 December.
Some work remains to be done on the nature of the information that would need to be provided with applications for outline planning permission. The Government still need to be satisfied that the information will meet our objectives, including the opportunity for greater community involvement. I hope that we will be able to comment further soon on outline planning permission. I cannot clarify whether "comment further soon" means before or after Third Reading, but it is clear that I will need to take the matter further at Third Reading than has been the case tonight. However, discussions with interested parties are continuing in the way that I have described. That is why we cannot agree to the amendments. I therefore hope that my detailed run-through of our current position on all the amendments—although it has not been as detailed as it could have been—will satisfy all noble Lords this evening. As I have said, we will return to the matter at Third Reading.
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