Member

Turning briefly to the text of the amendment, it inserts a new clause in the Town and Country Planning Act. To an extent, it is modelled on Section 40 of the Planning (Scotland) Act, although this version is broader. It promotes mediation and other ADR techniques, and requires the Secretary of State and the Welsh Ministers to issue formal guidance on the promotion and use of mediation and other methods of resolving planning disputes. The important part, looping back to my earlier remarks, is proposed new subsection (3), which would introduce as an essential requirement that local planning authorities must have regard to the guidance issued under proposed new subsection (1). Before the guidance is issued, there must be wide consultation with the local authorities—planning authorities—and more widely. That would mean meaningful engagement with key players: the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Local Government Association, the Planning Advisory Service, the Planning Officers Society, the Civil Mediation Council, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and the specialist associations within the Bar Council and the Law Society. All of these will have meaningful impacts and are better and suitably informed as to the outworkings of the new provision in the Town and Country Planning Act. In that way, hopefully, the historic experience of low engagement with ADR schemes can be successfully overcome. The technique of alternative dispute resolution—allowing neutral chairing and neutral evaluation—will help parties to limit the issues in a dispute and bring on faster construction projects with less confrontation and less waste in terms of cost and delay.