Clause 7 - Appeal against remedial notice or decision of relevant authority
High Hedges Bill
11:00 am
Mr John Taylor (Solihull, Conservative)
I am always glad to be informed about planning matters by my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet. As a distinguished architect, he is something of an expert on such matters. He might share my satisfaction that the proposed treatment of hedges contains a parallel to the treatment of a fence. One can erect a fence of up to two metres in height on the boundary of one's property without planning permission. The Bill makes consistent the permissible heights of a hedge and of a fence. That is sensible, if not necessarily elegant.
The planning inspectorate's role in dealing with appeals is important. It must be said that people who own high hedges, too, have rights under law and should be entitled to go to appeal if they so wish. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Sir David Madel), I have always supported the concept and role of the local ombudsman. One of my constituents once asked me what the difference was between maladministration, for which one would go to the ombudsman, and perversity, for which one would go to a judicial review. My frank answer was that the difference is the cost: one goes to the ombudsman for nothing, whereas one goes to judicial review at enormous expense.
My hon. Friend's remarks were well placed. I assure him that I believe the local government ombudsman to be the proper recourse for a complainant to the local authority who feels that the authority has not adequately attended to the complaint.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.