Clause 14 - Local development scheme
Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
8:55 am
Mr Matthew Green (Ludlow, Liberal Democrat)
Amendment No. 228 seeks to ensure that the preparation by a local authority of a local development scheme is not delayed because the authority has to wait for the Secretary of State to decide whether to issue a direction to make appropriate amendments to the scheme. I am sure that the Secretary of State has no intention of ever causing a delay, but we want to include such an assurance.
There are areas in which the Government have imposed time limits on themselves. The Bill introduces a timetable for decisions by the Secretary of State in relation to appeals against decisions on planning applications and the failure of the planning
authorities to take decisions. That is in schedule 2. The idea behind the amendment is that the Government's intention should apply when the Secretary of State is considering whether to direct a planning authority to make changes to its local development scheme. Otherwise, the process will be left in limbo while the authority waits to hear whether it may proceed or whether it must make changes. The amendment is straightforward.
I shall leave the Conservatives to speak to the other two amendments, which are essentially about timing. The purpose of the substantive amendment is to set the Minister a time limit. He might say that eight weeks is not right, and the limit should be 10 or 12 weeks—or even, dare we hope, six weeks. We would welcome an indication [Interruption.]. The Minister is going to disappoint me again, I can see. There was I, thinking that this was a new day, a new dawn—