Planning Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:45 pm on 6 October 2008.

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Photo of Baroness Andrews Baroness Andrews Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Communities and Local Government) 6:45, 6 October 2008

That demonstrates exactly what I was trying to say. I talked about project management. It is not so much detailed expertise that one wants; it is the ability to weigh up consequences and understand notions of risk and distribution of risk. That is an extremely important skill.

The third question was about the chair possibly being overloaded if she or he is chair of every council. The impact assessment estimated that the commission would have to have a chair and three deputy chairs. It was felt that that was the necessary resource. There were 45 applications. In relation to the chair of any one council, the chair of the commission may decide to chair it—in later amendments we will talk about what we mean by "council"—and that is provided for in paragraph 8 of Schedule 1, whereby he can delegate the function to a deputy.

That provides sufficient flexibility and, during a period of heavy workload, the chair can spread the chairmanship of the council across a number of commissioners. We hope that we are building into the ability to move between councils and to change the chairmanship maximum flexibility as well as the maximum deployment of expertise. I hope that the noble Baroness is reassured that we are not expecting the chair to chair every council that would be created.