New Clause 35 - Enforcement
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
3:30 pm
Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Committee will be keen to observe that the new clause was to have been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner). He has asked me to apologise to the Committee because he has a long-standing and important constituency engagement and he begs to give apologies for his absence from this sitting. He accepted the invitation not only before it was known when the Bill would be recommitted, but before it was known that it would be recommitted.
The new clause constitutes an obligation to take enforcement action. I need not rehearse all the arguments because they were dealt with tangentially by the Minister in earlier responses. It is one of those smaller new clauses that has a significant meaning. It refers to section 102 of the principal Act, which is headed:
''Orders requiring discontinuance of use or alteration or removal of buildings or works''.
That section states that if it appears to a local planning authority expedient or in the interest of the proper planning of its area to do so, it may order the discontinuance of the use of a particular piece of land, impose conditions on the use to which it is being put and require steps to be taken for the alteration or removal of the buildings or works where the use of the land is to be discontinued, or if conditions are to be imposed on the continuance of the use of that land. It also refers to the alteration or removal of any buildings or works.
Section 102 includes the words ''they may by order''. The purpose of my hon. Friend's new clause is to change the ''may'' to ''must''. In other words, instead of giving the authority the option and simply permitting it to take action, the new clause would oblige the authority to act.
Whenever one puts forward an amendment or new clause, one likes to act as the devil's advocate to ensure that one does not miss a trick. I suspect that a more jaundiced or cynical person than my hon. Friend might ask what is the difference between an authority being able to order a discontinuance notice if it is expedient to do so in the interests of proper planning and making that obligatory. The problem with making it obligatory is that the authority may find that it is not expedient in the interests of proper planning to serve such a notice. That is a possible lacuna, but the new clause deserves sympathetic consideration. I look forward to the Minister's response.