Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2013

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Lords Chamber

It is vital that applicants looking to provide homes and jobs have confidence that their planning application will be handled as quickly as possible. These measures are an important part of the package that we are putting forward to ensure that decisions are made swiftly and reliably. I commend the regulations to the House.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for a very clear explanation of these regulations, which concern changes to the charging of fees for planning applications and certain other planning events.

Our objection to the regulations is not so much about changing the scope of charging as the underlying policies that drive this necessity. These are, as we have heard, certain provisions in the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 and the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, the first in particular enabling applications for major developments for designated authorities to bypass the local planning authority and go directly to the Secretary of State. We opposed this during the passage of the primary legislation and continue to do so. It is the ultimate denial of localism, which for planning has been embedded in the system for more than half a century.

However, if applications are to be routed to the Secretary of State—in practice, the Planning Inspectorate—then it is obviously right that there should be a commensurate fee structure, otherwise the incentive would be for major applications always to be made to the Secretary of State. I understand, and I think that the Minister confirmed it, that fees applicable to England were last uprated with effect from November 2012; it is understood that the fees set out in these regulations would apply initially.

As we have heard, the regulations cover other fee issues, and I shall come on to those, but I have some questions for the Minister. What volume of applications is it anticipated will be received and be subject to this charging regime? During the passage of the primary legislation we had various estimates of “vanishingly few” LPAs being designated, although that was revised up to around 20 by the time we finished our deliberations. The criteria for designation were published in June in time for an October start to designation. While I accept that the final data for the initial designation will not be available until September 2013, the department must have some increasingly firm indications of the likely number of planning authorities to be designated. Can we know what that number is?

Where a local planning authority has been designated and major applications are made to the Secretary of State, directions can nevertheless be given to the local planning authority requiring it to undertake certain tasks in relation to the application. We consider it unfair that the authority should receive no part of the fee. Moreover, this is not the only circumstance where the regulations require the local planning authority to undertake activity for no fee. The changed arrangements whereby in future the demolition of unlisted buildings in conservation areas will have to be dealt with by local planning authorities also come without the right to a fee.

These regulations cover circumstances where the Secretary of State, via the Planning Inspectorate, is able to charge a fee for pre-application advice where the application is made to the Secretary of State. That developers should pay for such advice is entirely reasonable, although we would maintain that much of this work will in fact be done by the local planning authority, which will get no part of the fee. Notwithstanding that an application goes to the Secretary of State, will the Minister encourage local planning authorities to engage in the pre-application process, and how should they be remunerated if they do so? The regulations set down that charging should proceed by applying an hourly rate to the time spent by the planning inspector or planning officer. This hourly rate is to be set by the Secretary of State from time to time and must be set by reference to the average cost of providing the services of the individual. It is understood that this reflects the charging position for local planning authorities. Can the Minister remind us of what systems are in place to put this into effect? What is understood by “average cost”? Which overheads are built into the calculation? Is any differentiation made for the different levels of experience of the staff, other than planning inspector or planning officer, or indeed for the overheads of different regional locations? As for fees payable under the general permitted development order, the regulations require a fee of £80 where prior approval for change of use is required. Approval might be required from the local planning authority or the Secretary of State. Does the fee go to the person required to give approval and what is the basis for the £80 figure?

Our overall concern about these regulations is that they erode the opportunity for local planning authorities to generate fee income and therefore to sustain their planning capacity, and this at a time when there has been considerable change in the planning system, where local authority budgets have been squeezed to breaking point with further cuts to come, and when the blame for poor economic performance is all too often laid at the door of the planning system. I conclude by asking the Minister this: what assessment has been made of the capacity of local planning authorities to cope in the current environment?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his response to these regulations which, if I interpret it correctly, is: “We don’t like them but see what you’re trying to do”. I take that to be the spirit in which the noble Lord delivered his response. He asked me a couple of questions, some of which I may be able to answer directly and some of which I may not.

The first was about the increase in planning fees. As I said in my opening remarks, they were increased by 15% across the board in November 2012, so local authorities have had quite an uplift in those fees very recently.

The next question was: what volume of applications do we expect to go to the directorate? We discussed this during the Growth and Infrastructure Bill proceedings. We will know more about that when we see how many local authorities are to be designated in September. Once we see the data about which local authorities and how many are likely to be designated, it will be easier to judge that. As I said before, however, we do not expect this to be a huge number. In fact, we very much hope that there will not be a huge number, because that would mean that we were having to designate more local authorities than we wanted.

On the pre-application fee, if the developer is going to go to the inspectorate, it is very unlikely that they will want the local authority to, or indeed that the local authority would, hold any pre-application discussions. The intention is that the planning inspectorate will do any pre-application discussions and then charge a commensurate fee for them. In fact, perhaps I should rephrase that: the applicant can decide where to go, but we expect that they will probably go to the inspector if they are going to go there in the first place.

The noble Lord also asked me when information will be available about which authorities risk a designation. I think that I have answered that: September. The list will be published so they will know then. Indeed, many of them know now what the situation is because they are kept pretty well up to date with what is being put forward.

The noble Lord asked me about the £80 fee. I am now struggling a bit because I cannot remember what that was for. Would the noble Lord mind rephrasing his question?

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

It was to do with the general permitted development order and the regulations. There are regulations that require prior approval from either the Secretary of State or the local planning authority. My question was: to whom does the £80 go? Is it the person who actually has to give that approval, be it the Secretary of State or the local planning authority?

[Baroness Hanham]

Yes, we would expect that to be more or less the local planning authority in most cases.

I hope that I have covered the questions. I am grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he has addressed the regulations. So long as he is happy that I have more or less covered what he had to say, I beg to move that these regulations be agreed to.