New Clause 31 - Enforcement of planning controls
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Matthew Green (Ludlow, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The new clause is backed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England and, I believe, the Conservatives. It aims to improve the effectiveness of, and therefore public confidence in, local planning by placing local authorities under a statutory duty to enforce planning decisions and to remedy breaches of planning control.
Enforcement is the basis of quality control in the planning system, and proper enforcement is crucial to the credibility of planning. Its neglect undermines public confidence in the whole planning system and may result in significant harm to the environment and to people's quality of life, yet enforcement action is in steady decline and is at its lowest level since records began. The explanation for that does not appear to be a reduction in breaches of planning control but, rather, a retreat from action by local authorities.
Possible reasons for that spiral of decline are: the complexity of the system; the perverse incentives that make planning breaches financially worthwhile for offenders; an imbalance in the system that favours those who breach controls and that leaves local authorities vulnerable to compensation claims; a lack of local authority resources, especially in small, rural district councils, which often have a disproportionately high burden of planning enforcement; and the extensive opportunities for offenders to evade and delay enforcement, thus draining local authority resources.
Other possible reasons are the deterrent effect on local authorities of all those problems, particularly those affecting resources, and the fact that local authorities have the discretion not to take action. Local authorities often give more weight to the reasons against taking action, and choose not to do so, because there is no duty to enforce and because they understandably perceive their primary responsibility to be the provision of that which they have a statutory duty to provide.
Enforcement is commonly underfunded and many authorities fail adequately to monitor conditions that have been placed on planning permissions. Even when the most flagrant breaches of planning control are reported, members of the public can neither require that action be taken nor be confident that the breach will be remedied.
One local authority—I wish I knew which—apparently told a complainant that it does not carry out any enforcement. Ministers may be surprised by that, as am I, but local authorities can say that because there is no such statutory duty on them. I could give many examples of when there should have been enforcement but there was none, as I am sure other members of the Committee could. To make progress, however, I shall not list such examples from my constituency.
I hope that the Minister will seriously consider placing a statutory duty on local authorities to enforce. The glory of that would be that another Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister would presumably have to find the money for the planning departments to fund it. Given that we have laws, one expects them to be enforced and that people will be given the funds to do so.