Clause 143
Planning Bill
12:45 pm

Bob Neill (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 421, in clause 143, page 66, line 8, at end insert—

‘(za) in subsection (1) delete the words “interested in land in the area of a local planning authority”;’.

The amendment would assist the Government in their objectives and improve the Bill. It may sound technical, but the reason for adding,

“interested in land in the area of a local planning authority”,

is that the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 regime allows a person to enter into a planning obligation only if they hold an interest in land that is subject to development. There are proposed amendments to section 106 of the 1990 Act and we are not unsympathetic to them, but the amendment before us suggests that to make the system work better, it might be sensible to extend matters, because section 106 does not permit every promoter of an infrastructure project to enter into a planning obligation.

It might help if I gave an example. If an application for development consent includes power for the promoter of the infrastructure project to acquire land by compulsory purchase—an example would be the site of a power station—the promoter would enter into the planning obligation only after the compulsory purchase order process had been completed. Only at that point will he hold an interest in land for the purposes of the Act. If the promoter proposes to install overhead power cables or underground pipelines, we are advised that the current wording would mean that he would have no interest in the land at the time that the application for development consent goes in. He will have interest in the land only after the development  consent has been obtained and after the promoter has exercised the compulsory acquisition powers that come with it. That means that he cannot enter into a planning obligation at the time that the development consent is granted. We should have thought that it was probably desirable from the Government’s point of view, as much as anyone else, that he be able to do so.

That is really what we are looking to achieve here. This matter has been raised by a number of practitioners in the field. We are sympathetic to the objectives, but we wonder whether there is an opportunity to improve the Bill’s operation by enabling people to enter into a section 106 agreement at the stage of consent. That would be consistent with the desire to have as much pre-application discussion as possible. No doubt the terms of that agreement would have been worked out and everything could be wrapped up more efficiently if it were not caught on the legal hook of whether, at the time when consent is granted, the promoter has an interest in land.

John Healey (Minister of State (Local Government), Department for Communities and Local Government; Wentworth, Labour)

This is an important clause. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s explanation of his amendment and I recognise that the matter has been raised by a number of practitioners. I will try to deal with the clause as drafted and explain the purpose behind it; I hope that that will help the Committee. It allows the promoter of a nationally significant infrastructure project to enter into agreements with local authorities. Its purpose is to allow them to do so in the same way—I think the hon. Gentleman recognises this—as a developer seeking planning permission under the 1990 Act.

The clause is needed to allow full use of planning obligations to be made under the single consents regime. By allowing planning obligations to be negotiated on a bilateral basis between promoters and local planning authorities, agreement can be reached on many important issues that might otherwise have to be brought to the IPC’s attention for examination. Clearly, if they can be dealt with and agreed in advance, that saves everybody time and hassle. Certainly, it helps to speed up the IPC’s examination process and allows it to concentrate on the matters where agreement cannot otherwise be reached.

I recognise that the hon. Gentleman raises a real concern with his amendment, but it is not workable. In many ways it would wind the clock back a number of decades. At present, under section 106 of the 1990 Act, any person interested in land in the area of a local planning authority may, by agreement or otherwise, enter into an obligation with the local planning authority in question. The obligation is registered as a land charge.