Baroness Pinnock (LD)

My Lords, Amendments 185K, 185L, 218 and 220 in my name follow on well from the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, which these Benches fully support. The noble Lord is absolutely right to highlight the importance of community benefits coming from development and ensuring that they are delivered. The amendments in my name would add to those that the noble Lord has just introduced. Amendments 185K and 185L would insert new clauses after Clause 52 providing a duty to compel a complete local infrastructure. Amendment 185K seeks to make legally binding agreements associated with development consent orders or SDSs. Community benefits are the elements of a consent order that will be the last stage, almost inevitably, of implementation of a scheme. Without legal enforcement, it is possible for developers to significantly delay that implementation. Amendment 185K would empower local planning authorities to resist such moves and ensure that community benefits are fulfilled. Amendment 185L would provide a further safeguard for local communities where a developer has signed a Section 106 agreement for the provision of a local amenity. If the amenity has not been built, the relevant local authority will have the power under this amendment to take over that responsibility but, crucially, will not be able to use that land for any other purpose, and neither will the developer. Those amendments relate to development consent orders and SDSs. Amendments 218 and 220, although they have identical wording, relate to later parts of the Bill concerning compulsory purchase orders. Amendment 218 seeks to insert a new clause after Clause 106, relating to compulsory development orders. It would require the Secretary of State to conduct a comprehensive review of land value capture. This is a policy concept and a way of raising funds, where public authorities recover the unearned increase in land value, often created by public investment in infrastructure or planning permissions, then reinvest it in public services and projects. This ensures that the benefits of public development—I emphasise that it is public development—are shared with the community, rather than solely accruing to the private landowners. That seems fair to me.