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Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
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[Amendment No. 211 not moved.]
Clause 53 [Acceptance of applications]:
Lord Dixon-Smith moved Amendment No. 212:
The noble Lord said: I was prompted to table the amendment because it struck me that the wording of Clause 53(1) was peculiar. It says:
“The following provisions of this section apply where the Commission receives an application that purports to be an application for an order granting development consent”.
If the commission receives something that only purports to be an application, it probably is not an application, and therefore it should be referred back to the sender. It either is an application or it is not. That was the reason for Amendment No. 212; it is quite simple. If there is some frightful legalistic explanation of why we need those words in the Bill, I may be obliged to accept that they should remain there, but on the whole, for the sake of clarity, it would be much better if those words were removed.
Amendment No. 220 cross-references this question of interested parties back to those who have been consulted under Clause 41. They ought to be notified if a planning application, as a result of that consultation, is notified to the commission, so that it knows that there is a planning process in play.
Amendment No. 222 deals with how an application should be publicised using the local press and so on. Amendment No. 223 stipulates that that should be done within 28 days of the making of the application. Again, that is perfectly proper. It is an obligation on the commission, but I would have thought that it is not an obligation that is impossible for it to meet.
Amendment No. 226 includes the people who made representations at an earlier stage as the people who should be informed that an application has been accepted. There are other amendments in the group, which are all aimed at making the process transparent and obvious. I very much look forward to hearing what the noble Baroness says in response. I beg to move.
Lord Jenkin of Roding: Amendment No. 221 is in my name. Again, it is directed to the disabled and the need to have the application notified to them in the right form. The noble Baroness has been extremely generous in her references to the disabled. There have been a number of related amendments, and I am sure that she will be sympathetic to this one.
Baroness Hamwee: We have a few amendments in this group. Amendments Nos. 215 and 218—Amendment No. 217 is consequential on Amendment No. 215—are directed to the same end as the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith; namely, that it is not only local authority consultees who are relevant in this situation and that the definition of “adequacy-of-consultation representation”—I am sure that someone can find an acronym for that soon—should extend to the duty to take account of responses.
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I shall not speak to Amendment No. 219 and there is no need for the noble Baroness to say anything about it. She has already answered on Amendment No. 225, when she confirmed that there would be a duty to make a diligent inquiry at an earlier stage and she does not need to repeat that.
4.45 pm
Lord Cameron of Dillington: I shall speak to two amendments in this group. On Amendment No. 216, I am probably fighting a managed retreat, but I think that I have a good defensive position. The Minister has already ably stated why she rejected my earlier amendment that attempted to direct the applicant during the consultation process. I am happy to accept those arguments, but she did say—probably pre-empting my weekend reading, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred—that the IPC has to be satisfied that this was a properly managed consultation process.
It occurred to me that, if the Bill stated that the IPC had to have regard to the response of the applicant to the consultee, that would be enough to force the hand of the applicant in how it handled the consultation process or, more important, how it was seen to have handled it. As I said earlier, the applicant has a huge financial interest, which will get in the way of a fair, unbiased—or even a seen-to-be-unbiased—consultation process. I cannot see how an amendment—either mine or something similar from the Government—could possibly interfere with the Government’s purposes. Indeed, if we took the Minister at her word, my amendment would fulfil the Government’s purposes and spell them out in the Bill. I hope that she can accommodate my point. It is a small amendment that directly confirms the Government’s stated wishes.
Amendment No. 221A reverts to the time limit of 56 days, not 28 days. I am not going to cover that ground again, but this amendment represents the last chance that an individual or a local authority might have to make their input. One could argue that the authority would have known about an application for a long time and that 28 days would be quite enough. However, although the authority will know about an application, it will not know the final details until that application has been submitted. It is a bit like the CIL clauses in the Bill. We knew that they would be there, but we did not know how they would work out until the Government recently tabled all their amendments and we could start thinking about them and making our case.
The Minister seemed to recognise the points that I and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made on the number of professionals and consultants involved in submitting a considered opinion. She said that 28 days was just a minimum but, as has been said on the 14 days, minimum time limits are what usually stick in practice. I think that I heard her say that she would consider our arguments on this point. I take this opportunity to urge her to consider this matter positively.
Baroness Andrews: I am grateful to noble Lords for addressing their amendments succinctly. Some of this reiterates our earlier discussions. It is rather a large group of amendments and I shall follow them in the logical sequence of the Bill.
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I shall deal first with the handling by the commission of an application and then the notification and publicising of accepted applications. We are concerned with probing questions about the nature of consultation and the need for noble Lords to be secure in what the Bill will deliver. We talked on previous amendments about the safeguards set out in Clause 53—the series of conditions that must be met before the IPC can accept an application. The commission must be satisfied that the application is in the correct form and that the applicant has complied with the pre-application procedure, set out in Chapter 4. In deciding whether that is the case, the IPC is required to have regard to any representations from local authorities about the adequacy of consultation. I am sure that local authorities will not be slow in coming forward there. That consultation will be carried out under Clauses 41, 46 and 47, which relate to the promoter’s duty to consult statutory consultees and local communities and the duty to publicise the proposed application. Most of the amendments to Clause 53 therefore propose to extend the requirements placed on the commission when deciding whether to accept an application.
I want to address the central misunderstanding in Amendments Nos. 215 and 216. I reassure noble Lords that the reference to “local-authority consultee” in Clause 53(4) would not prevent either party from submitting representations about the adequacy of the consultation, nor would it mean that the commission could ignore them. The references to Clauses 41, 46 and 47 in Clause 53(5) would not prevent the other parties from making representations saying that the promoter had not had due regard to the responses to consultation, nor would it mean that the commission could ignore them. I thought that that was the noble Baroness’s concern when she spoke to her amendment.
Baroness Hamwee: Before the Minister moves on, the point is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, has just made. In real life, people do the minimum. It is not a matter of ill will but, if they are directed to have regard to certain matters, even though they can have regard to other matters, it is not so likely that they will have regard to the matters that are not specified. That was my concern. I do not dispute with the Minister that of course they can have regard to other matters.
Baroness Andrews: I think that I understand that but I hope that I may be forgiven if I have to read Hansard tomorrow to pick up the subtlety of the argument. I do not have to rehearse the excellent arguments that I have, as clearly they address the wrong point. The final line of my briefing reads, “I hope that that is reassuring”. However, it would be the opposite of reassuring, as we have missed the point of the amendment.
Amendments Nos. 216 and 218 probe how far a promoter would have to explain how he had accommodated responses to consultation. Amendment No. 216 would require the consultation report to include details of the extent to which the application was affected by any relevant responses. Amendment No. 218 would require that, under the duty in Clause 48,
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I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, but the guidance has to address the question of adequacy. Perhaps he will let me think about the nature of the guidance, and we can have a conversation about the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, concerning its scope. If that happens between now and Report, we can ensure that we are all on the same page with regard to what we understand by that. I should be very happy for that to happen and I hope that it will help.
Clauses 54 and 55 deal with the applicant’s duty to notify and publicise the acceptance of applications. The key word here is “notify”. Clause 54 sets out that when the commission accepts an application for an order granting development consent, the applicant must notify a range of persons, including the local authority, persons to be prescribed by the Secretary of State and anyone who has an interest in the land covered by the application identified in Clause 55. The clause specifies that the applicant must notify people in such a manner as prescribed and make available copies of the application and any other information, and that it must do that in the manner prescribed by the Secretary of State.
The people who are notified of an application would have at least 28 days in which to make representations. The clause also requires the applicant to publicise the application in a manner prescribed by the Secretary of State, provided that the person so informed is also informed of the deadline for receipt by the commission of representations giving the person’s interest in or objection to the application.
It is important to consider that Clause 54 draws a clear distinction between the category of persons to whom information must be made available and the wider group of people to whom information is required to be made through publicity. Notification under Clause 54 is a specific requirement and applies only to those people or bodies most likely to be directly affected by the application. I fully understand why noble Lords have tabled the amendments and I believe that the process laid out in the Bill satisfies the need for this part of the process to be as open and inclusive as possible. A small group of amendments generally attempts to create a list of people who should or should not be notified by the applicant of the acceptance of the application.
I am grateful to my noble friend for not speaking to Amendment No. 219, as we addressed the issue in a previous amendment. On the other amendments—
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Clause 54 already set outs that the applicant must notify an affected local authority, persons with an interest in the land, anyone who might be entitled to claim compensation and other statutory consultees. It is pretty comprehensive. Local people and any other directly affected parties are covered. We should not forget that the applicant is also under a duty to publicise the application in a manner to be prescribed by the Secretary of State. That will be sufficient to reach the wider group of persons whom the amendments would include.
It is also crucial that Clause 56 requires the applicant to certify to the commission that he has complied with the requirements to notify and publicise in such a manner as may be prescribed. That is an important safeguard, which takes care of the concerns expressed by the Committee.
I fully sympathise with the purpose of Amendment No. 221. Again, we intend to issue guidance from the Secretary of State. Clause 46(5)(b) on consulting local communities will ensure that consideration is given to the need for consultation to address the needs of disabled people. I give that assurance again, as this must be an inclusive process.
The other amendments—Amendments Nos. 221A, 222 and 223—would extend the time following notification or publicity for persons to make representations to the IPC that they have an interest in or objection to the application. They would also set minimum standards for publicising the acceptance of the application. Amendment No. 225, which I will need to address, refers to diligent inquiries.
Amendment No. 222 would prescribe in the Bill some of the minimum standards for publicising an application. The Bill already allows the Secretary of State to make much more detailed regulations on how publicity should be carried out. Subsection (7) gives the Secretary of State powers to prescribe minimum standards for publicity and notification. We will ensure that these standards are robust and that applications are given an appropriate level of publicity.
Amendments Nos. 221A and 223 refer to the minimum length of time. They are slightly different. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, would increase the minimum time from 28 to 56 days. I agree that people who might be affected by an application should have a suitable time to formulate representations. I believe that it is an appropriate minimum time. I am exhausting my armoury of arguments but I have not said that by the time an interested party is formally notified of an application he is likely to know of other proposals. It will be at the end of a rather long process.
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Lord Cameron of Dillington: I know that the process is long, but he will not know the details of the application until he gets the notice. I hope that a proposal will be changed throughout the process as a result of the consultation, but the person will not know the details and will be holding fire. He will not be in a position to submit his case.
Baroness Andrews: The noble Lord makes a strong point. I go back to my original argument that this is the minimum time and the applicant can give a longer period.
The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, would impose a deadline of at least 28 days by which representations relating to an application must be submitted to the IPC. That would apply to those who are not notified directly by the applicant but respond to publicity.
Lord Greaves: The Minister said that the applicant can give a longer time. Once the application is in, is it not the IPC that determines the time, not the applicant?
Baroness Andrews: As I understand it, the applicant has to satisfy the IPC that he has consulted properly. The IPC can disagree that the applicant has allowed sufficient time for that to happen. I shall double-check that point, but that is my understanding.
The regulations will deal with this issue in a more detailed way. We have allowed for flexibility in regulations so that the deadlines can account for different circumstances. We have no intention of setting a deadline in respect of receipt of representations of less than 28 days. I shall read what noble Lords have said about these arguments.
I return to Amendment No. 212, which is where we started, in a gallant attempt to try to make sense of it. I appreciate the noble Lord’s efforts to improve counsel’s drafting. I am assured by lawyers that the amendment does not change the effect. The two phrases are identical and mean the same thing. I confess that I think that the noble Lord’s option is clearer. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Dixon-Smith: I am completely fascinated, not to say hypnotised, that the Minister agrees with our Amendment No. 212, but I am not sure that that was an acceptance that, when we get to a new draft of the Bill—
Baroness Andrews: I shall think about it, as it is clearly an issue of major importance.
Lord Dixon-Smith: I beg the Minister’s pardon. I was perhaps trying to read too much into her remarks. I am fascinated by the approach to publicity. We are prepared to give a great deal of detailed guidance to the commission about how publicity should be handled but in the previous group of amendments we were not prepared to have the Secretary of State give advice to the commission on the advice that it should give to potential applicants. There is inconsistency here. The
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Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 213 to 218 not moved.]
Clause 54 [Notifying persons of accepted application]:
[Amendments Nos. 219 to 223 not moved.]
Clause 55 [Categories for purposes of section 54(2)(d)]:
Baroness Andrews moved Amendment No. 224:
224: Clause 55, page 32, line 33, after “the” insert “applicant, after making diligent inquiry, knows that the”
On Question, amendment agreed to.
[Amendments Nos. 225 to 226 not moved.]
Baroness Andrews moved Amendments Nos. 227 and 228:
227: Clause 55, page 33, line 7, at end insert—
“This is subject to subsection (4A).
(4A) A person is within Category 3 only if the person is known to the applicant after making diligent inquiry.”
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Clause 55, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 58 [Local impact reports]:
Lord Greaves moved Amendment No. 229:
229: Clause 58, page 34, line 25, after “section 99(5),” insert—
“( ) in an area where there is both a county council and a district council, both councils,”
The noble Lord said: The amendment is grouped with Amendments Nos. 230 and 231, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, which are nothing to do with Amendment No. 229; I am not sure why they are grouped together. I will probably not comment on those amendments until after the noble Lord has spoken to them, when I reply to the debate on Amendment No. 229. I think that that is the polite thing to do.
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