Lord Fuller (Con)

My Lords, I will make two brief points. This debate has shown us that we need to charge fees for planning permission, and one has to understand the purpose. It is common ground that there is a lack of planners in this country, which is one of the reasons why the fee arrangement has to change. One reason why we have insufficient planners in this country is not that we cannot charge enough. My authority, South Norfolk, has an advanced programme of upskilling planning technicians to become fully qualified planning officers, on a work release scheme, by using the apprenticeship levy that all councils and large employers put into the system. However, this Government have stopped that, because those sorts of people, who have made their way for a few years and have shown expertise and enterprise, are no longer able to be upgraded by using the apprenticeship levy. That has been cast away and it is an omission. I ask the Minister whether she might consider revisiting that rather short-sighted decision to stop upgrading these planners, which would start to address this. I have huge sympathy with the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, about proportionality in planning fees, but I need to explain that, although the planning fee is important, it is just a single sliver of the total cost that developers, particularly small developers, have to pay. For example, there is the complexity of Section 106. As a council leader, I had to review a Section 106 agreement of which 15 banks were cosignatories. Can your Lordships imagine the cost not just of the applicants’ but of everybody else’s fees? The bespoke nature of many Section 106 agreements is really onerous. Some planning authorities require the use of only their particular lawyers, at a full rack rate. I will not go into nutrient neutrality, although that has an additional level of fees, or building control and so forth. I know that we are in Committee, and I sympathise with what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, but, if she is minded to bring this matter back on Report, we might have a full idea of all the layering so that proportionality can be taken into account in the round.