National Parks and Countryside Commission

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:07 pm on 11 December 1981.

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Photo of Mr Mark Lennox-Boyd Mr Mark Lennox-Boyd , Morecambe and Lonsdale 12:07, 11 December 1981

The hon. Gentleman merely reiterates the problem. I accept that there is a problem. If he listens a little longer, he will realise that it is not enough to say that those people should buy houses elsewhere. The injustice may fall not on them but on their successors in title if they have been granted the permission. If he will bear with me a little longer, he may appreciate that, although there is a fundamental problem, the solution is not so easy as may be imagined.

I have given two examples of local employment. I now take a slightly fanciful and more extreme example, but it is based upon fact. I know of a man who lives near Lancaster although not in the Lake District. He is very much a local man and his family live there. He drives to Manchester every Monday and flies to Brussels, where he is employed. That case illustrates the absurdity of the situation.

My fundamental criticism of the policy is that people who are clearly local are often employed not locally but elsewhere. The difficulty does not end there, as the provisions in the agreements apply for ever more. The man who runs the business in Barrow will not live in his house in Coniston for that long. If the business man dies, his family may wish to sell the house to the surgeon in Lindale, whose job is in Lancaster but who wishes to move to Coniston for his retirement years. The restrictions on the house in Coniston do not include Lancaster, so what will happen? Will the parties get the board's agreement to change the restrictions? Probably not, yet the surgeon has as much right to be a local in Coniston as he does in Lindale. We are therefore drawn to the conclusion that the supposed definition of "local" in these formal, legally binding agreements is not a definition, however widely or carefully it is drawn. It is merely an administrative guideline, which it is left to the benign discretion of the board officials to interpret. We are thus faced with the reality that the capacity of an owner to build or sell is limited by the administrative discretion of the board.

I have no evidence, nor indeed the remotest belief, of any impropriety. However, the existence of such a giant discretion required to interpret a legally binding document that has been agreed by solicitors of the consenting party, and ultimately might be determined by a High Court judge—binding not only on the consenting party but on his successors in title from here to eternity—is unacceptable. The idea, especially in its most extreme example in a handful of parishes, is based on the fallacy that small village communities are composed of farmers, blacksmiths and stonemasons as they were 100 years ago—people who never moved from the area. That is not the case.

The difficulties of the policy do not end merely with the definition. It is an obvious fact that houses subjected to such agreements are diminished in value. That must happen in the fullness of time. There are great difficulties, when one lives in such a house, if one changes jobs more than once and moves out of the restricted areas. Am I then considered to be a local, or will I be turned out of my house? I do not wish to elaborate, but those are the implications for the future that cause concern to many people now.

Injustice is caused not only to those who consent to the conditions but to those who do not believe that they would be wise to consent to such terrible conditions and therefore fail to get planning permission. As my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Kitson) said, we wish to have guidelines. It is almost impossible to have guidelines published on a policy that is to be interpreted on an ad hoc basis.

Another great difficulty is that the agreements are of very little benefit, when they work, but cause much public anguish. There have been only 100 in the Lake District so far. I do not know the total number of houses in the Lake District, but it is about 16,000, so it is a fleabite compared with the total housing stock. Therefore, the policy does not remotely meet the problem.