Neighbourhood Planning (Referendums) (Amendment) Regulations 2016

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, and congratulate him on his new appointment and responsibilities. I know that he has been in the job for some time but this is the first time I can formally congratulate him and wish him well in his new position. We will not agree on everything but I assure noble Lords that I will engage constructively with him on all matters in his brief that come before your Lordships’ House. Where we believe that the Government have got it right I will happily say so, and when we offer alternatives from this Dispatch Box it will be because we believe that there are better solutions to the problems being considered. I also declare that I am an elected councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association, and in general refer the House to my declaration of interests.

I am a supporter of neighbourhood planning and allowing maximum community involvement in decisions that affect local communities. As I have told the House before, in the ward I represent on Lewisham Council, Crofton Park, we are developing a neighbourhood plan. We hope to be able to submit it to the council early next year and then proceed quickly to a referendum. It is right that a referendum is held as soon as possible and in most cases 56 days, as the order allows for, gives enough time to undertake and prepare for the vote but also means that it is still a fresh and live issue locally and is not allowed to drift. There are a few alterations to that when situations are a bit more complicated, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, outlined, and allowing a group and the council to agree sensible variations to enable the poll to coincide with a local event or an election that is taking place in three months in the same area is sensible and has my full support.

I agree with the points made by my noble friend Lord Beecham in his contribution to this debate, in particular on the funding proposals that will be made available. I hope that the Minister will respond to those.

That brings me to the assertion, which we heard many times from noble Lords opposite during the passage of the Housing and Planning Act, that somehow all these councils are dragging their feet and holding up all these planning applications and all this development. That assertion was made many times and I remember putting a few Questions down, which showed, as my noble friend highlighted, that literally hundreds of thousands of applications have been passed by local authorities but nothing has happened. I know of one in my own ward: an application went in to put some new shops and houses on a big site, but all that has happened is that a sign has gone up which says, “Full planning permission given”. Nothing else has happened —it just sits there. So local planning authorities are not the problem; there are thousands of sites that we need to deal with and get on with. I hope that the Minister will be able to bring some solutions to the House in the future.

I could go on but I am supportive of what is in the proposals here and I am happy for them to be approved.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated in this debate. I shall try to pick up the various points—there are some interesting ones—in the order in which they were made, so I will first address those made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. He raised questions about how many plans have been abandoned. Communities are beginning the process on a daily basis. Some 450 draft plans have been published and we are supporting communities through this process. I will give the noble Lord some indication of the financial assistance in a minute. He also asked about turnout of voters and kindly said that I probably did not have the precise figures for all areas at my fingertips, which was an accurate summary of the position. However, so far, the average turnout of voters across referendum areas has been 32%, which I think he will acknowledge is in line with local authority elections generally. Obviously there is some variation; I will get a letter to him giving a more detailed breakdown and I will put it in the Library as well, so that noble Lords have access to the information.

The noble Lord quite validly asked about the funding available, I think for neighbourhood planning in general and perhaps for the referendum process in particular. We are funding neighbourhood planning with a £22.5 million support programme from 2015 to 2018. On referendums, money is available for every planning authority—£5,000 for each of the first five neighbourhood areas they designate and £5,000 for each of the first five neighbourhood forums; that is, where there are businesses that they designate. In addition, they will receive £20,000 when they set a date for a referendum following a successful examination of a neighbourhood plan. So money is available for this process because there is a cost associated with it.

The noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong but I think he is supportive of neighbourhood planning. He is indicating that he is so, gladly, we can get that on the record. He made a more general—somewhat off-piste—point about the regulations for planning applications. I hope he will accept that that is perhaps the subject of a debate for another day. I recognise that it is an issue to look at and perhaps we can do so in a QSD or during debate on the forthcoming Bill. I acknowledge that there is an issue there but I do not think it should detract from this very specific matter, which I believe he supports. Certainly the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, indicated support for it from the Front Bench.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for the general support he offered. I know he has a good history on this issue in the Commons. We will be looking at the website in the light of his comments on the general position and the specifics, and we will obviously update it in the light of the new regulations—as I hope they will be at the end of this debate. However, I thank him for his general support for the concept of neighbourhood planning and for these regulations.

My noble friend Lady Oppenheim-Barnes made a point about a possible legal challenge on the costs. There are costs associated with referendums. I suppose it is rather like the cost of democracy in holding elections in general, where there will always be a cost. The planning officer cannot override neighbourhood plans or, under these regulations, hold them up unless there is a valid legal challenge, which will have to go through the courts. I readily acknowledge that hold-ups occur across local authorities under different political control—there is no partisan point here. I could name the authorities in question and am almost tempted to do so. However, the longest hold-up is 400 days, which is too long. Frankly, that is why we are bringing these regulations forward. We want to ensure that neighbourhood planning is given the boost that it needs.

Finally, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his typical graciousness and generosity from the Front Bench. I also thank him very much for the constructive approach that he always brings to bear in looking at government proposals, and I look forward to our exchanges across the Dispatch Box. I am sure his contributions will be well thought-out and helpful, as they always are. I come back to the general point from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, on planning, which he supported. Yes, let us have a look at that, although it is perhaps something to be dealt with on another day because it is a bit off-piste in relation to these regulations.