Contribution
My Lords, my noble friends Lady McIntosh, Lord Parkinson and Lord Banner have made powerful cases for their amendments. I will briefly take survivors of LURB back two years to Amendment 235, which I had proposed in Committee, and which was proposed on Report by my noble friend Lady Pinnock, and which effectively did what is now in Clause 48. Crucially, it enabled or authorised local authorities to recoup the costs of their planning department, but it did not require them so to do. I take the point that my noble friend Lady Scott made in her speech as to why the words “and require” were not in the original request by the local authorities. On Report, the Government resisted the amendment. They were defeated, and I confess that I played a modest role in that defeat. To the Government’s credit, they then accepted it in the other place and it came through.
The crucial question—one touched on by my noble friend Lord Banner—is whether this is going to be enough to solve the crisis in our planning departments. Reforms to the national planning policy introduced by the last Government are still working their way through the system. Earlier this year, only a third of local authorities had adopted a plan in the last five years, while 291 had plans of more than five years old, and they have to get those plans up to date. The moment they have done so, they are then confronted by local government reorganisation, with smaller units turning into larger, unitary ones. The Government have then said that, where reorganisation occurs, new unitary authorities are expected to promptly prepare a local plan covering the whole of their area. So they basically have to start again.
At the same time, the Government want to reduce all the current delays in processing planning applications so that we can get on with infrastructure, and a large majority of applications are not processed within the statutory timescale. Shortly, we will come to Chapter 2 of this part of the Bill, which introduces spatial development strategies. Again, under the Bill, the planners in these new strategic authorities must produce spatial development strategies providing strategic policies for the use of land in their area.
In a masterly understatement, the Government said:
“We are aware that areas undergoing local government reorganisation and devolution will experience a transition period where responsibility for spatial development strategy might transfer between authorities”.
The crucial question that the Government must answer is whether planning departments will, even with these reforms, be able to respond to the Government’s requests. If planning departments were fully staffed with the necessary skills, they might rise to the challenge. However, there is an additional problem in that many planning officers will have to reapply for their jobs. Some may well take redundancy as a consequence of the merger of local authorities. The LGA workforce survey found that 62% of councils have difficulties recruiting planning officers and 45% have difficulties retaining planning officers, many being tempted by higher salaries elsewhere—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Banner.
Finally, we are going to have new town development corporations. They will need planning departments. When the Minister replies, I hope that she can reassure the Committee that there will be the capacity within the planning system to respond to the Government’s ambitious agenda.