Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment. He referred to the fact that he is, in another life, the leader of Richmond Council. For many years, I was the leader of the council in the London Borough of Sutton and, indeed, am still a councillor there. For all those years there has been a usually friendly rivalry and some competition between the two authorities. Certainly within my party, Richmond seems to alternate every election between who is going to run the council; I am pleased to say that the electors of Sutton have remained more consistently true, at least for the past 27 years, as to who would run the council. That competition continued back in the summer, when the Government made their announcement, as to which of our authorities would be the first to condemn it. I think on that occasion the noble Lord, Lord True, won the competition but probably only by hours rather than by days.

We are at one in finding the Government’s proposals incomprehensible and in condemning them roundly. What are they for and what are they seeking to achieve? That condemnation is obviously not confined to two London borough councils but is, as far as I am aware, universal throughout local government, regardless of which party happens to be in control of the council. This is a unified view, across local government, which is very strongly against the Government’s proposals.

That is due first to incomprehension. This is being put forward in the context of growth, but does anyone seriously imagine, as the noble Lord has explained very well, that allowing extensions into back gardens will make a significant difference to the growth of the nation? Of course it will not; it is laughable. What it will bring about a considerable growth in is neighbour disputes. I can think of no single measure more likely—indeed, one might say more designed—to set neighbour against neighbour, particularly when they find that there is actually no court of arbitration. They would expect the local planning authority to be able to hear both sides of the case and to make a judgment, as with the normal planning process. When neighbours find themselves in this position and discover that that power has been taken away from the local planning authority, and with it therefore their right to make representations to anyone, I can think of little better designed to cause neighbour upset and to damage community cohesion, for no purpose whatever. I am very keen to support the noble Lord, Lord True, on this.

The noble Lord made reference to the Government’s explanation that Article 4 directions can deal with this. As he has rightly said, that is a slow, expensive, bureaucratic and cumbersome route, which is unlikely, frankly, to make very much difference at all. He is quite right and I support him wholeheartedly. We had felt until recently that the Government were at least starting to listen—commendably so, and we have said much of that today—to move and to be willing to search for compromise. Therefore, I am very disappointed to learn from the noble Lord, Lord True, as he said when introducing this amendment, that his attempts at compromise—that is what this amendment is; I do not think he or I would pretend it is what we want—have been “spurned”. That was his word. We are very disappointed with that. I hope that when the Minister replies, we can get at least some comfort from him that spurned is too strong a word, the debate and argument are still open and it is not going to be as bad as it presently seems.

However, I certainly have no hesitation in supporting my noble friend and the leader of Richmond Council, knowing that both London borough councils will, for once, be united between the two parties in agreeing with both of us.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I support the thrust of this amendment because my professional work puts me at the sharp end of the fall-out from precisely this type of policy. As the noble Lord, Lord True, has said, we risk in effect a flip-flop from avoiding the regulation of the colour of front doors and replacement windows to no control at all. If ever there was an example of parliamentary process being a blunt instrument, I suspect this is one.

I have problems with this area of government policy in its cumulative effects. We seem almost to have a good cop Government wishing to deregulate, which I can understand and sympathise with, and conferring additional free development rights on householders. However, I am bound to say that I do not see the noble Lord, Lord True, and the LGA in the opposite camp of bad cop either. One of the great virtues of planning policy, among all the things that I, we and clients regularly curse about the intrusiveness of it, is that it has actually protected the built and the semi-natural environment of the urban and rural landscape. It has done so in such a way that our European neighbours come over here to see how we have managed to do it all the years since the post-war era when the first planning Acts came in.

The real possibility here is the increasing urbanisation of domestic back gardens and the materially increased density of that whole built environment. That is not without consequences, as the noble Lord has consistently pointed out on this and previous occasions. I recently attended a number of meetings at the Minister’s old stamping ground, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which has a basements working group. Your Lordships might wonder what basements have to do with all this, but I can tell you that a lot of basements are constructed in back gardens, so the thing is not entirely without its relevance.

A number of things came through there which I think were very interesting and that have to some extent informed my views. First, there is a risk that open space between buildings for light, air and privacy might be compromised, and the only thing that stands between the general rights of permitted development and getting a fair balance between neighbours is some intervention by the local planning authority. It is a matter of scale and proportion, but of course it has visual and amenity consequences. Beyond that, in valuation terms, the mercantile gain for one person who happens to construct their particular scheme might lead to the erosion of the visual appeal and consequential value of neighbours’ property, unless, as I say, they are carefully regulated and kept in fair proportion.

Technically—this is where I pick up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, made—it brings additional pressures on the limits of property ownership, particularly in relation to boundaries. We already have a substantial amount of that in the more expensive parts of inner London boroughs. Property values as an impetus already cause serious friction between neighbours. I know this because a good deal of my professional work relates to neighbour disputes.

That might not matter if we had a land registry title plan that was a precise guide to ownership. Unfortunately, such plans do not provide that. Even in an urban area of 1:1,250 mapping scale, there is an error factor, as set out by the land registry own guidance, of plus or minus 1 metre on the ground either way. On a plan of that scale, that represents 0.8 millimetres thick, plus or minus. It is no idle suggestion, therefore, that this might increase neighbour disputes, because the process of establishing precise ownership is sometimes clear but sometimes very far from clear, and the registered title does not help.