Clause 70 - Notification requirements relating to designations
Housing Bill
2:45 pm
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
My right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning had intended to speak on clause 71. I will briefly answer on the basis of the principle of clause 70. Perhaps the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton will be happy with my answer. If not, my right hon. Friend can supply further details of the implications of amendment No. 294.
The basic principle is that information about the designation's purpose would have to be set out as part of the consultation process. It is right that people should know why their local area is being designated—
is it because of antisocial behaviour, or because of low demand? The local authority would have to set that out in some detail when going through the consultation process in the first instance. If local authorities chose, they could also add information when they set out the final details of the designation. We simply felt that that would be a bureaucratic duplication; the most appropriate time to mention such information is at consultation, when people can debate and appeal against it. We needed to flag up the purpose of the designation at that point, rather than at the conclusion of the process.