Clause 67 - Designation of selective licensing areas
Housing Bill
10:30 am
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
No, clearly a local authority does not have only one go; separate areas may need to be licensed. If there are distinct areas, however, various conditions and circumstances may apply. They may need to be justified in different ways.
It is possible for general approvals to be given under clause 69(6), so it may be appropriate for the national authority to confirm a series of areas or several areas specified by the local authority that meet particular conditions, rather than the local authority having to make identical repeat applications for them all. The power of general approval could be used, but if a local authority proposes to designate different parts of an area for different reasons, it is appropriate that each should be justified separately and on their
own terms. Appropriate consultation processes should be gone through in each of those areas, and they should be individually justified.
The Bill allows us to treat separate parts of local authority areas separately when appropriate, but gives the power in clause 69 for general approval when appropriate. As I said earlier, we might want to be cautious on the early application of that power, and it may take some time to get in place. On that basis, I ask the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton to withdraw the amendment.