Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Pontefract & Castleford, Labour)

New

clause 50 would require a local planning authority to require an owner to restore a listed building or other structure in a conservation area that has been destroyed or substantially damaged without consent. It would also allow the local planning authority to make arrangements to restore the building or structure at the owner's expense when the owner has failed to do so.

We should recognise that the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 contains enforcement powers for situations in which unauthorised work has been carried out on a listed building. The local planning authority may serve an enforcement notice. Section 42 enables a local authority to undertake the work required by the notice and to recover the expenses incurred from the owner. Section 74(3) of the Act provides the same powers regarding the demolition of unlisted buildings in conservation areas. The new clause would go further than that by imposing a duty on the local planning authority to take action, except in those circumstances defined in the clause. It would remove the local planning authority's discretion.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight raised some important points, but it is undesirable to try to solve such problems by removing local authorities' discretion. Local authorities have the primary responsibility for taking whatever action may be necessary in the public interest. They need to tailor their approach to fit the circumstances of each case, whatever the breach of planning control might be. They are accountable to their local councillors and local communities for their decisions.

Imposing on local authorities a duty always to take restorative action could bring perverse consequences. For example, if the case had been made before the works took place, a local authority might have been prepared to consent to the demolition of a listed building or a building in a conservation area. Restoration may well be a perverse course of action in a case involving a building in a regeneration area where there are important regeneration considerations, or where a building needs to be demolished for health and safety reasons but permission was not sought in advance. In those circumstances, asking people to apply for retrospective planning permission would involve needless bureaucracy.

The hon. Members for Isle of Wight and for Ludlow both spoke about fines, which I had not previously considered. I shall be happy to consider that matter. However, the new clause would not help to achieve the aims of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight because of the potential perverse effects of taking away local authorities' discretion, and of forcing them to perform restoration work that might not be desirable or advisable in the circumstances. I therefore ask him to withdraw his new clause.

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