CLAUSE 40.—(Preservation of buildings of special architectural or historic interest.) (Hansard, 18 October 1944)

§ The Solicitor-General
I beg to move, in page 47, line 5, at end, insert: (3) No person shall execute, or cause or permit to be executed, any work for the purpose of demolishing a building to which this Sub-section applies, that is to say, a building included in a list compiled or approved under the provisions of the Section (Designation of buildings of special architectural or historical interest) of this Act, not being a building as respects which an order under the said Section seventeen is for the time being in force or a building falling within Sub-section (3) of that Section (which relates to ancient monuments and certain other buildings), or for the purpose of altering or extending a building to which this Sub-section applies in any way which would seriously affect the character thereof, unless at least one month before the work is executed notice has been given to the local planning authority of the proposed demolition, alteration or extension: Provided that nothing in this Sub-section shall sender unlawful the execution of any such work as aforesaid which is urgently necessary in the interests of safety or otherwise to deal with an unforeseen emergency, so long as notice is given as aforesaid as soon as may be after the necessity for the work arises. The object of this Amendment is the protection of listed buildings against demolition or alteration or extension which would seriously affect their character, unless a month's notice has been given to the local planning authority. The Amendment avoids the danger, to which attention was drawn in Committee, of an owner despoiling a listed building before the local authority could take statutory action to safeguard it. With the object of this Amendment I am sure everyone will be in general agreement. As you have pointed out by your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, there are certain other matters which might be taken into special account in Amendments which might be moved if you so called them.

§ Mr. John Dugdale
I welcome this Amendment because I think it is vital to the preservation of our finest buildings. Earlier, the House agreed to certain lists being prepared, but those will be of no value whatever unless the Government and local authorities can have some information in advance as to whether a 2465 building is likely to be destroyed. I would like to ask three questions. First, the Amendment says that information shall be given to the local planning authority. Would it not be wiser if that information was spread further, because there might be organisations, desirous of preserving good buildings, which might never hear about them? The local authority might keep the information to itself, although I do not say that that is likely. I am glad that the Solicitor-General—a great legal authority—has moved this Amendment, because I would like to ask him what is the legal interpretation of "seriously affect." I hope he will narrow it down so that we may know what it means. Thirdly, I would like to suggest that one month's notice is not enough. It seems very unfortunate that the procedure followed under the Ancient Monuments Act, 1931, when three months was the period required, has not been followed in this case. I suggest that it might be as well to alter the period from one month to three months, so as to bring it into conformity with the Ancient Monuments Act and give a local authority time to take action.

§ Mr. Keeling
I also welcome this Amendment, and I would like to support what has been said by the hon. Member for West Bromwich (Mr. Dugdale). I think it is essential that there should be publicity in this matter. As I said on a previous Amendment, publicity is part of our democratic process, and it is quite insufficient that the notice should be given to the local authority alone. I think provision should be made for publication in such manner as the Minister shall direct. I also support what my hon. Friend said about one month's notice. That is quite inadequate and I ask the Minister whether it is not a mistake, because the Ancient Monuments Act of 1931, which provided for three months, itself corrected a previous Act, that of 1913, which provided for one month. One month was found insufficient, and I wonder whether the Government did not overlook the amending Act. With regard to the notice, its form ought to be prescribed and it ought to be accompanied by scale plans. Such plans are essential, otherwise the owner may conceal his intentions from the local planning authority by a lot of words and the purpose he has in mind may be far from clear. I hope 2466 all these points will be considered before the Bill is introduced in another place.

§ Mr. Woodburn
I welcome the Amendment but I should like to ask a question. Though the Bill does not apply to Scotland, perhaps I may take an example from there as an illustration. A city like Edinburgh is a historical monument in many ways, as a whole, and its lay-out has been one of the examples to the world of town planning. Lothian Road was a great wide street with a beautiful vista. Some one has erected a cinema which blocks the view from one end to the other. The town council of that time seemed incapable of safeguarding the beauties of its own city. In a case like that, in any part of the country where a historical monument exists, does this Clause give the Minister power to prevent the erection of a building which will destroy the view of another historical building? Take St. Paul's for example. That will come under planning but, if it did not, would it be possible for the Minister to safeguard St. Paul's from being shut out from view by the erection of buildings if the local authority had not paid attention to its duties?

§ Lieut.-Colonel Dower
The Act of 1932, before a list of orders is made, gives the owners a chance of making representations against an order. Why has not that provision been made with regard to the formulation of this list? If a farmer, for instance, does not want his home to be on the list, he should have a chance to say the reason why.

§ Mr. Dugdale
On a point of Order. Have we not already considered this list and has it not been decided that it should be re-compiled?

§ Mr. Speaker
I thought the hon. and gallant Gentleman was speaking to his own Amendment.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Dower
I will not pursue the matter.

§ The Solicitor-General
With regard to the first point put by the hon. Member opposite, we are concerned here with the notice to the local planning authority by a person who is intending to make alterations. I find a little difficulty in appreciating the hon. Member's desire for further notice at that stage. I should have thought that in the vast majority of cases the local planning authority 2467 would consult with a suitable body as to whether they approved or whether the alterations were in accordance with the class of buildings and the design that is generally found in that class. I will consider the point but I should like him to consider the other point of view whether that is not a function which we should all like to see local planning authorities wide awake and ready to perform. With regard to his second point, "seriously affecting" is a term which has no special legal connotation. It is a matter of fact which has to be judged in the circumstances of a particular case, but it rules out trivialities, and action would not have to be taken unless there was really something worth considering in the matter. I will certainly look into the question of one month or three months before the Bill is introduced in another place. The point raised by the hon. Member for Clackmannan and Eastern (Mr. Woodburn) is rather outside the scope of the present Clause, which simply deals with buildings. It will destroy a great many high hopes which we all have in planning if the situation that he envisages is not corrected and properly dealt with in future. I can only express my great sympathy and say that in my view it does not quite come under the Amendment.
Amendment agreed to.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Dower
I beg to move, in page 47, line 5, after the words inserted, insert: (3) No order shall be made under Section seventeen of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1932, as amended by this Section with respect to any building unless the local authority shall not less than two months before making application to the Minister for the order have given to the owner lessee and occupier of the building notice of their intention to make the application. The object of this is to give notice of what the planning authority intends to do. We are dealing in this Bill with the homes of large numbers of people. We are preventing them from altering them and extending them, and we are also compulsorily acquiring them. It is, therefore, only reasonable that they should be given notice of what the planning authority intends to do. Before an order is made reasonable notice should be given to those people whose homes are being dealt with.

§ Sir J. Mellor
I beg to second the Amendment.

§ Sir E. Grigg
I cannot help feeling a certain sympathy with this Amendment and some of those that have preceded it, because the assumption seems to have been made in the Bill that the only vandals are private owners. In my experience local authorities are often even more guilty of vandalism, and it seems to me that buildings require protection not merely against private individuals, but very often against public corporations. I do not see anything in the Bill to protect a historic building which will be menaced by some kind of action of a public authority. Notice of the intention of a public authority, with the publicity which will attach to it, will be a safeguard in itself, but, as I said on an earlier Amendment, I wish there were some power of appeal to some tribunal or to the Minister when the future of valuable and historic buildings and monuments is possibly jeopardised.

§ The Solicitor-General
It would be convenient, I think, if the House appreciated the present position and compared it with the position which my hon. and gallant Friend suggests. Under the Regulations now in force, the local authority must give notice by advertisement of the submission to the Minister for his approval of a preservation order under Section 17 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1932, and, in addition, must serve a copy of the order on the owner and occupier of the building giving them 14 days in which to make any objections or representations to the Minister. That seems, in our view, a reasonable method of doing it. My hon. and gallant Friend suggests that before the local authority makes its submission it ought to give two months' notice to the owner. That would mean, in the case of either a deliberate vandal or a person who says, "I am going to do what I like with my own, whatever be the general opinion," that if he gets two months before the application is made to the Minister, he will be given full time to do all the harm he likes and in that way undo all the good which our proposals bring about. I appreciate the anxiety of my hon. Friends and the care they have given to these provisions, but I ask them to regard the matter from that point of view. I advise the House that it is wrong to press for a notice before submission is made to the Minister. 2469 We have had no complaints of the 14 days after submission not being sufficient.
Amendment negatived.
Amendment made: In page 47, line 9, leave out "he," and insert: or if any person contravenes the provisions of the last preceding Sub-section, the said owner or person as the case may be".—[Mr. W. S. Morrison.]

§ Lieut.-Colonel Dower
I beg to move, in page 47, line 29, leave out paragraph (b).
The point in this Amendment is of some substance. I may be a lone voice crying in the wilderness, but I shall continue to cry. Under the 1932 Act powers were taken to prevent buildings of historic or architectural interest being destroyed. The powers which are being taken here will enable the planning authority compulsorily to acquire other people's homes. That is a large increase of power and there should be proper safeguards to make sure that it will be exercised with care. To say that if a local planning authority considers that a home is not being maintained properly it can purchase it is to give wide and sweeping powers which should not be given. I can imagine many instances where grave injustice could be done. At the present moment an owner can spend only £10 on a building, and, therefore, under this Bill, every home could be acquired because it cannot be maintained. The powers under this Bill will enable the planning authority to say to an owner, "You are unable to maintain your home, in our opinion, and, therefore, we are going compulsorily to acquire it." I could give a good many instances. I am not one of those who has inherited a home which may have been in the family for hundreds of years, nor am I a yeoman or a member of one of the old families of England. I can imagine grave injustice being done if a local authority were able to say that if the owner is unable to maintain his ancestral home it will be compulsorily acquired. I want to see the homes maintained, but this is not the right way to go about it. If we want a home maintained somebody has to live in it. All the rules and regulations in the world will not equal the pride which a person has in his own home. I suggest that these powers should be considerably amended to cover the cases I have mentioned.

§ Sir J. Mellor
I beg to second the Amendment.

§ Sir E. Grigg
I rise simply in order to ask my right hon. Friend a question. I would not go so far as to support the Amendment, but I think it is important to protect private owners and individuals against arbitrary use of executive power. It is a point which has arisen again and again in recent legislation. I would ask my right hon. Friend to say whether, anywhere in the Bill, there is a right of appeal against arbitrary executive action in the case of owners or other private individuals who consider themselves to have been unfairly treated. His answer will govern very much my attitude towards the Amendment.

§ Mr. Tinker (Leigh)
The mover of the Amendment did not put up as good a case as I was expecting. We have known of many cases of houses not being properly used and nobody has had the power to deal with those cases. Surely a local authority which has to come before the electorate should have some idea of what is good for the community, and the Minister is answerable to the House of Commons for whatever he does. I think the Clause is admirable and should have been law long ago. As to old families with historic dwellings being able to do what they like, that is outside this question. As to those old families, who have passed the period of their usefulness and have got historic dwellings—perhaps built upon what their ancestors did in the Wars of the Roses, and who have to keep them going because of that old tradition—it is about time they were cleared out. I say, Clear them out, and make the buildings of some use to the public.

§ Mr. Woodburn
I fail to see anything about ancestral homes in these proposals. The mover of the Amendment had great difficulty, I thought, in finding illustrations to back up his argument and he seemed to get stuck on the point of the ancestral home.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Dower
I did not find any shortage of illustrations but I said that nearly all the homes in England would come under these proposals, because, under the £10 rule, you cannot maintain them.

§ Mr. Woodburn
Buildings may be something other than homes. There is a double check here. The local authority and the Minister are a check on each other. During the war county agricultural committees have been given authority to take over farms and put farmers out where they thought farms were not being properly used, and on the whole there have been remarkably few complaints of that application of the principle of public welfare over personal welfare. In the provision that the hon. and gallant Member wishes to leave out there is power to deal with the building which may be in the midst of a planning area and may be a disadvantage to all the other buildings in the vicinity. For the protection of all the rest of the community it should be necessary to have power to deal with such a building as that. So far as I can see, the safeguards are far greater than those of the farmers under the agricultural committee regulations, and in the long run the Minister is responsible to this House.

§ The Solicitor-General
It will be doing no injustice to the mover of the Amendment to say that he is completely opposed to compulsory acquisition in this field altogether. That is how I understood it.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Dower
No, Sir, but I say there are occasions which are an exception.

§ The Solicitor-General
I am very grateful to him, and I am sorry if I misunderstood him. On the question of compulsory acquisition we are only going as far as to say that it should be the last resort and where there is no other means by which the preservation of a building of architectural or historic interest can be obtained. There cannot logically be any difference between my hon. and gallant Friend and myself on the general position. His special point concerned people who are prevented by the limit of expenditure allowed by the Government or by temporary financial embarrassment of their own. I think that summarises his point. We are meeting it as far as we can, on the premise that you must have power in the last resort, by an Amendment which will be moved, and which substitutes the future for the actual capability at the present.
I come to the point which the hon. Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) 2472 made. I sympathise very much with the scrutiny which he always gives to these provisions. Here we have the safeguard that the Minister's approval of compulsory purchase is necessary, and it would not be given unless the circumstances warranted it. There is then the local authority, and then again you have the Minister. I know that that is not quite enough for my hon. Friend. He and I have been engaged in discussions on similar subject matter in other connections. I would like to point out to him that with regard, say, to interim development, we have had the procedure of appeal from the planning authority to the Minister working for a long period of years. I have taken part for private interests in many of those appeals and I have not found that the method, of which my hon. Friend is rightly critical because it is an administrative method, resulted either in injustice or, which is more important, in it being the subject of general attack on the ground of injustice. I can only say that while I have great sympathy, and will always be prepared to consider my hon. Friend's attitude that Ministerial authority must be tempered to the individual, we are entitled on experience to rely on the Ministerial check in this case.

§ Sir E. Grigg
I can only say one word with the permission of the House. I do not wish it to appear that my anxiety in this matter of appeal is based purely on the proprietor's interest or financial interest. It may very well be an attempt to protect valuable historical buildings against an act of vandalism by an authority just as much as by a private individual. I do not trust—and I am sure many hon. Members agree with me—local authorities or Ministers on these matters. Ministers have been guilty of great vandalism in the course of the history of this Parliament. Therefore I hope that the point will not escape the attention of the Miniser.
Amendment negatived.

§ The Solicitor-General
I beg to move, in page 47, line 31, leave out "it is not being properly maintained," and insert: reasonable steps required for properly maintaining the building will not be taken unless the powers of this paragraph are exercised. I have already mentioned in my speech on the previous Amendment the purpose 2473 of this one. Therefore, I will not detain the House now.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Dower
Will the hon. and learned Gentleman be good enough to say whether this means that the owner of the house will be given a reasonable time in which to maintain it?

§ Mr. H. Strauss
I think what is reasonable must depend a little on what is the condition of the house. The overriding condition must be its preservation. I cannot take the matter further than this. If the condition of the house is such that the owner can have time, well and good, but the test is, Will the reasonable and proper steps be taken in sufficient time to save the house if this Clause is not put into operation?
Amendment agreed to.