Housing and Planning Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 5:00 pm on 3 December 2015.
This is a minor and technical amendment.
With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
Government new clause 17—Default powers exercisable by Mayor of London or combined authority.
Government new schedule 2—Default powers exercisable by Mayor of London or combined authority.
New clause 17 and new schedule 2 insert a new section into, and amend section 17 of, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. The measures enable the Secretary of State to ask the Mayor of London or a combined authority to prepare a development plan. The Mayor of London will be able to do so where a local planning authority is a London borough, and a combined authority will be able to do so where the local planning authority is a constituent authority or combined authority. The Mayor or combined authority will be responsible for having the document examined and approving it.
Currently, where it is necessary for the Secretary of State to intervene to prepare or revise a development plan, his only option is to take over responsibility for the process of preparing, examining and approving. Our proposals will move more power back to a local level. Mayors and combined authorities provide strong and directly accountable governance, which makes them appropriate bodies to ensure that plans that support the delivery of new homes are in place across their areas. The new clause and new schedule, together with clause 99, enable more targeted and appropriate intervention where a local planning authority has failed to take action to get a plan in place, despite having every opportunity to do so.
I want to take the Minister to what clause 99 actually says:
“(1) This section applies if the Secretary of State thinks that a local planning authority are failing or omitting to do anything it is necessary for them to do in connection with the preparation, revision or adoption of a development plan document.
(2) The Secretary of State may—
(a) prepare or revise (as the case may be) the document, or
(b) give directions to the authority in relation to the preparation or revision of the document.
(3) The Secretary of State must either—
(a) hold an independent examination, or
(b) direct the authority to submit the document for independent examination.”
I am happy to take a correction from the Minister, but that seems to me to be a total and fundamental change to how we do local plan making. In the current system, local authorities prepare a local plan, consult on it and take it to an inspector, who, through a public inquiry, either approves or does not approve it. I may be reading too much into the clause, but it appears to allow the Secretary of State to intervene in the process and say, “Hold on. I do not like what is happening in that plan. I am going to change it.”
Brandon Lewis rose—
If the Minister is rising to clarify that the Secretary of State cannot do so, that would be helpful.
I am rising to say that the Secretary of State has had the power to do that from the very beginning. Clause 99 retains the existing powers and allows for more targeted intervention, so that it will not be quite as heavy-handed as it is at the moment. That should be a welcome change.
I hope that that is what the clause is really designed to do, because the Secretary of State’s intervention powers are rarely used at the moment. It is not custom and practice for the Secretary of State to intervene in the plan-making process, and clause 99 appeared to be an attempt to widen the scope for the Secretary of State to intervene under clause 99(1). If the Minister is reassuring us that this is a narrowing of the circumstances in which the Secretary of State should intervene, we will take him at his word, but the terminology used in the clause does not quite suggest that.
I rise to give some clarity and, hopefully, confidence to the hon. Lady. As I said, the clause retains existing powers, but it also allows for more targeted intervention by enabling the Secretary of State to direct a local planning authority to prepare or revise a document and take other steps necessary for that to become part of the development plan in its area. That will be more targeted than the current heavy-handed approach. The existing requirement on the Secretary of State to give reasons for exercising those powers will be retained. The hon. Lady is quite right that those powers are used rarely—in fact, they have been used twice this year. The requirement in terms of local planning authorities reimbursing the Secretary of State will also be retained. He will have to give reasons.
Should the Secretary of State need to step in, the measures give him options that enable more decisions to be made locally, which is hopefully a beneficial change. For instance, if an authority is not making progress with its local plan, the Secretary of State could direct the authority to take steps to progress it. The authority would remain accountable for the plan and could determine with its community—quite rightly—how it will address the Secretary of State’s concerns most appropriately to get a plan in place.
The clause ensures that the Secretary of State will retain the ability to intervene and prepare or revise the plan in consultation with the local community. Importantly, when that happens, the clause will give the Secretary of State other options. He could, for example, return a plan to a local authority to take through the examination process or to decide whether to adopt a document. I hope that the hon. Lady accepts that that is a big step forward for localisation in the local planning process.