HC Deb 24 March 1959 vol 602 cc1239-52
Mr. Arthur Skeffington (Hayes and Harlington)

I beg to move, in page 45, line 15, at the end to insert: (d) the local planning authority may decline to deal with the application if it is of opinion that the applicant has no legal or equitable interest in the whole of the land which is the subject of the application or does not produce the written consent of a person who has such an interest to the application being made. We had a long argument in Committee on a rather similar Amendment. Very shortly, the point is that local authorities are perturbed about the extent to which individuals who have no legal interest or rights in a piece of land can nevertheless, submit a planning application. Such applications have to go through the normal machinery and the Departments, and every one has to be separately considered in relation not only to the site for which permission is required but in connection with all the relevant matters on adjacent sites. This may involve quite a number of visits to the place of prospective development, and yet everyone knows, including those dealing with the application, that there is not the slightest possibility that it will be followed by any real development.

I do not know whether London attracts more cranks than other places, but I know that, over the years, the London County Council has received a number of propositions which never had a chance of being turned into real developments. A planning application was submitted to create a market garden on top of Covent Garden. One has only to think of what this would involve to realise how absurd such a proposition would be. This application was put in without any reference to the lessees, the owners of Covent Garden, or anybody else. The proposer had no legal right in Covent Garden, or, indeed, in any adjacent land. Yet, it was necessary for that application to be considered in the normal way, because appeal could be made to the Minister and it would be necessary for the planning authority to be able to give concisely and conclusively its reasons for dealing with the application.

Local authorities therefore think that there should be a limit to this right and that they should have some discretion in regard to planning applications which, on the face of it, are either farcical or so remote from any possible development that they ought not to waste the time of planning authorities, who will be heavily occupied.

9.0 p.m.

It is thought that the most practical way would be for the local authority to have the right not to proceed further with an application if the applicant has no interest in a site or if he cannot produce the written consent of the person who has an interest in it. This would give all legitimate protection to anybody who might have an interest. At the same time, it would prevent a great deal of unnecessary work which can never lead to development by the hard-pressed planning authorities. I hope that the Minister will indicate that he acknowledges the point of the Amendment and will either accept it or have a provision inserted in another place to prevent this abuse of planning powers.

Mr. J. A. Sparks (Acton)

I beg to second the Amendment.

I support my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington). The Amendment deals with a commonsense point which should be accepted if we are to have some sort of order in the procedure for the giving of planning approvals. As my hon. Friend said, anybody can make an application to a local planning authority for permission to develop a piece of land for a certain purpose when he is not the owner of it, and has no real interest in it, and when it may well be known that the owner of the land would not be prepared to sell it at any price for any purpose. Nor is the number of applications limited to one. Local planning authorities may well have in their files concerning a site a number of applications of this kind for planning permission to develop the piece of land for a number of different uses. Eash application may be different from the one which preceded it.

When a local planning authority gives a planning permission, it cannot revoke that permission without incurring the liability for compensation. I should like the Parliamentary Secretary, when he replies to the Amendment, to say whether there is any limit in time to the validity of planning permission being given to persons who are not the owners of the land and who have no chance whatever of acquiring it.

To take an extreme case, if for one site there are, say, five or six applications—or there might be as many as ten, fifteen or twenty applications—it would be possible in course of time for a variety of uses to be applied for. When these planning permissions are given, how long will they remain valid? Will it be for five years, ten years, fifteen years or twenty years? Once the planning permission is given, it cannot be revoked by the local planning authority without incurring the liability for compensation.

I know that the only person who can claim compensation is the owner of the land and not the person making the application. Nevertheless, a large number of local authorities are placed in considerable difficulties where these planning permissions are given to people who do not own the land, who have no interest in it and who have no prospect whatever of acquiring it.

There is another factor. As we all know, the designation of the uses of land may well vary with the passing of time. A development plan is valid for five years, after which it is revised. Although no great or substantial variations might be made in the revised plan as compared with the previous plan, nevertheless adjustments from time to time are made. In a revised development plan it might well be that a piece of land which previously was planned for residential purposes is shown as having a use for open space. It might be shown for industrial use. It might be shown for some other use. It might be an industrial piece of land which, in the revised development plan, may be designated for open space or residential. There are a number of connotations which could be considered in connection with the designated use of the land over a period.

It makes the question of sensible planning complicated to follow, because if a series of planning permissions have been given to a person who is not the owner of the land, and is never likely to have it, and then the use of that land is changed in the revised development plan, what is the situation of the local planning authority which has planning permission outstanding for a piece of land over which, in the revised development plan, those uses would no longer apply? It is not clearly understood whether the previous planning permissions have ceased to have any effect when the revised development plan comes into operation.

These are all important points which the hon. Gentleman should explain when he answers this debate. Whether he accepts the Amendment or not, I feel sure that the time is drawing near when some sensible procedure must be adopted about planning permissions. They are being stacked by the thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, in the offices of local planning authorities, and in the case of many of them there is no hope of carrying them out because the owner of the land does not want to sell it and may, indeed, want it for a purpose of his own.

Therefore, I feel that when applications for planning permission are submitted to a local planning authority they ought to be accompanied either by an indication from the owner of the land that he himself is interested in the form of development or that he is prepared to dispose of the land. Or perhaps we could insist that application for planning permission should come only from the owner of the land. That would be far the better way of laying down this procedure.

In Standing Committee the right hon. Gentleman inferred that if this were done new development would be retarded, but he did not advance any reasons in advance of that contention. As a matter of fact, I do not think anything of the kind would happen. I cannot see how development would be retarded because, in the first place, if the man who owns the land is not prepared to sell it no development takes place—that is, privately if, of course, the local authority wants to acquire the land it is a different matter.

So I feel that there are good and substantial reasons why the right hon. Gentleman should accept this Amendment. If he is not satisfied with its form, then he should suggest some amended form of words which will restrict planning applications to realistic applications which, if granted, can be carried out or developed on the land concerned. I do not think anyone who has no interest in the land ought to be entitled to put forward application for planning permission for the land of some other person. It is not necessary even to see the owner of the land and ask, "Do you mind if I make application?"

There are cases in which the first knowledge which the owner of the land has about this is from the local paper. He sees it reported that somebody he has never heard of before,—it may be an individual from Timbuctoo or somewhere else—has made an application to the local planning authority to put a garden above Covent Garden or something ridiculous like that, or it may be an application for a reasonable form of use about which, nevertheless, he knows nothing whatsoever. I am sure there are lots of planning permissions registered in the files of local planning authorities for the use of certain pieces of land which are unknown to the owners. That seems to be an absurd and ridiculous situation.

I hope the hon. Gentleman will be able to throw a little light on this matter and will agree to make some change in this procedure in order to cut out these superfluous and fictitious applications which are cluttering up the files of the local planning authorities and limit applications to genuine projects which have a reasonable chance of being carried out if and when approval is given by the local planning authority.

Mr. Skeffington

Before the Parliamentary Secretary replies, may I put another point about this Amendment? We arrived at this Clause more speedily than I had anticipated.

The Parliamentary Secretary has said that there is the safeguard of the certificate under Clause 3 but a number of instances have come to light in which the information on the certificate was either misleading or false. In one particular case of which I know there was an application to build a helidrome—a place where helicopters can land—at one of the railway stations—I think it was Charing Cross. The information given on the certificate was quite valueless and in this particular case there was an objection. British Railways were strongly opposed to the proposition but nevertheless it had to go through all the planning machinery. I should therefore be grateful if the hon. Gentleman could deal with this certification process which is not really a safeguard at all.

Mr. Bevies

I think that perhaps the House might be well advised before we come to a decision on the terms of this Amendment to have regard to the fact that Clause 31, as it is now in the Bill, was put into the Bill to meet a recommendation of the Franks Committee. The recommendation of that Committee was simply that owners and others directly interested in land should be informed of third party planning applications, and should be allowed to state their views.

The object of the hon. Gentleman's Amendment, as I understand it, is to enable planning authorities to avoid dissipating their time and energies in dealing with schemes that are put forward either frivolously, or, as the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said in Committee, by "naked speculators", and, generally speaking, putting forward applications which are never likely to lead to schemes which materialise.

What the hon. Gentleman is trying to do in the Amendment is to give planning authorities the discretion to refuse to deal with applications for planning permission if, in the opinion of the planning authority, the applicant holds no interest in the whole of the land, and does not produce the written consent of the owner of such an interest, that is to say, of the whole of the land.

9.15 p.m.

A number of hon. Members will remember that a not dissimilar Amendment was debated and rejected in Committee. It is equally true that this differs from the earlier Amendment in the sense that this refers to "the whole of the land" instead of to "the land". Those words are probably used to meet the point made by my right hon. Friend in Committee, that the applicants could satisfy the conditions by getting the consent of the owner of only a minor interest.

The new version goes from one extreme to the other and the owner who gives written consent under the terms of the present Amendment must hold an interest in the whole of the land. The House will see that in many cases, especially with big schemes, there might not be a single owner with an interest in the whole of the land. In such a case, the planning authority would enjoy a very wide discretion on whether to deal with the application.

That might be a criticism of the drafting rather than the principle which the hon. Gentleman has in mind. It is perfectly true that a similar proposition has been considered by my right hon. Friend, as he promised earlier. However, it is still the feeling of my right hon. Friend that the objections to attempting to do something on these lines are far greater than the advantages which would flow from it.

What is proposed would go a good deal beyond the Franks recommendations, but the most important and cogent reason against attempting to do anything of this kind is that to require developers not only to notify owners, but also to get their consent will be a brake on development.

There is, no doubt, the odd case of the chap who wants to build a forest on Covent Garden, but let us keep a sense of perspective. There has been a considerable amount of worth-while development, certainly in my time, in the last ten or twenty years, by people who, when they made their planning applications, were not the owners of the land, but who succeeded in their planning applications and subsequently were able to negotiate the ownership of the land.

I am not gainsaying for a moment that some of these applications may have been made by speculators of a not very good type, but there are plenty of people in the building trade and a great variety of other trades who do a worthwhile job. It would be quite wrong to frustrate their work by saying that they would not only have to notify the owner of the land, but get his consent before making an application for planning permission.

Mr. Sparks

Why not?

Mr. Bevins

If they succeed in getting planning permission for, say, building, they will have to negotiate the ownership of the land as well.

Mr. Sparks

Is there something in the application which a prospective applicant would not want the owner of the land to know about? Is he trying to get permission to do something with the land which he wants to withhold from the owner? It seems a fair proposition that the owner should be advised that an application is to be made and that he should be asked to give consent, whether he agrees to sell or not. That seems to be the sensible and moral thing to do.

Mr. Bevins

As the hon. Gentleman knows, under the Bill a certificate has to be produced stating that the applicant has given the requisite notice of the application to the owner. The owner is in no way prejudiced because a planning application is made by a third party. The owner is a perfectly free agent, whether planning permission is granted or refused—

Mr. Sparks

But he may object.

Mr. Bevins

—to sell or not to sell the land to a particular person for a particular use. If the owner objects, he is under no compulsion whatever to sell the land to A, to B or to C.

Mr. Sparks

But he cannot stop the application being made, which is probably what he would want to do.

Mr. Bevins

There is no reason in equity or common sense why he should be free to do so—

Mr. Sparks

Oh, yes, there is.

Mr. Bevins

—and moreover, my right hon. Friend takes the view that this Amendment is objectionable because under its terms everything would rest on the opinion of the planning authority. The authority would have unfettered discretion to decide that an applicant had no interest in the land and thereupon decline to deal with the application. Of course, there would be no right of appeal.

It is conceivable that the Amendment could result in embarrassment to a local authority such as the London County Council, if the L.C.C. wished to develop land in the area of another local planning authority. If its proposals happened to be unpopular, under the terms of the Amendment they could be frustrated. Or it is conceivable that a nationalised industry might wish to develop land and be unable to get the consent of the owner. A local planning authority might dislike the proposal and refuse to entertain the application.

I make no attempt to conceal the fact that this is a difficult matter and there are many facets to it. But we should be most unwise to accept the proposal which is inherent in the Amendment. I feel it would act as a brake to what very often is perfectly fair and legitimate development of one kind or another. My right hon. Friend has given a lot of thought to what has been said in our earlier deliberations, and he cannot advise the House to accept the Amendment.

Mr. Sparks

The hon. Gentleman has not answered my point about what happens upon the revision of a development plan which may provide for a change of use of a piece of land for which planning permission has already been given under the original plan. When planning permission has once been given, it cannot be revoked by the planning authority without the payment of compensation. What happens in a situation where the development plan is revised and no development has been carried out on a piece of land, but the proposed use is changed? What is the position of a local authority regarding compensation?

Mr. Bevins

I cannot see what possible relevance that can have to this subject.

Mr. Sparks

It has great relevance.

Mr. Mitchison

I think that the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend have been a little hard on my hon. Friend and on the local authorities for whom he is speaking. I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that if the London County Council met the sort of difficulty he described, nothing would be simpler than for the authority to come to the Minister and ask him to call in the applications, which I am sure he would do in the circumstances. May I warn the hon. Gentleman of the dangers which may come upon him? I have been examining the planning legislation and I find that there is no reason why planning applications should not be made by outside persons in respect of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.

Plots are in the air and they should not be confined only to Colonial Office ones. As a matter of fact my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) and I have a plot. I can give it away to the hon. Gentleman now because that will not prevent us from concocting another on a larger scale. That is something that happens with plots. My hon. Friend proposes to get a planning application to put a café bar on top of the Ministry, but I am going to do something far more sinister. I am going to provide for the erection of a home on top of the Ministry to house tenants evicted under the Rent Act, and that will prove very awkward for the Minister.

These are, of course, absurd instances, but so were the instances given by my hon. Friend. It is a little rough if steps cannot be taken to prevent busy local authorities having to deal with what are quite obviously frivolous projects. If, in fact, a local authority cannot be trusted to exercise a certain amount of common sense and discretion in a case of this sort, it ought not to be there.

As to the naked speculator whose only resemblance to the bare trustee is that neither of them has a beneficial interest in the property in question, does one want to encourage this nude gentleman? What is the point of doing so? He can upset all the previous provisions of the Bill about compulsory compensation on compulsory acquisition. He may get a whole lot of planning permissions which would confuse the issue beyond words and all of which would have to be taken into account when it came to assessing compensation if the property was going to be acquired, and he might do it having no interest whatever in the property, as the Bill stands at present.

We are told that planning permissions may make a lot of difference, sometimes one way and sometimes the other. Be that as it may. We have been talking about them for hours on the assumption that they had, at any rate, some importance in the question of compensation to be paid. What is the position if this naked speculator comes in and gets a whole collection of planning permissions and thereby upsets, in one way or another, the amount of compensation payable to the person who actually owns the land? There ought to be a little more application to this problem. I can see that the Amendment put forward might or might not fully meet the case, but the Parliamentary Secretary tells us that he and his right hon. Friend have given deep and constant thought to it, or whatever the standard expression for this kind of light meditation is, and at the end of it produces precisely nothing. He recognises the difficulty, does nothing to help the local authorities, and he runs the risk of planning permission for a stable of elephants being obtained in respect of his own Ministry. Ought he not to think better of it?

Amendment negatived.

Mr. N. Macpherson

I beg to move, in page 46, line 19, to leave out "three" and to insert "ten".

This Amendment fulfils a promise given in Committee to amend the definition of owner in its Scottish application for the purposes of this Clause which deals with the duty of applicants to certify they have notified owners and the right of owners as defined by the Clause to have their representations heard by the planning authority. It includes in the definition only lessees with an unexpired tenancy of not less than ten years in place of lessees with tenancies with not less than three years to run. In Committee a similar Amendment was accepted for England and I gave an undertaking that it would be applied to Scotland.

Mr. Willis

We cannot allow the Amendment to go by quite so easily without drawing attention to the fact that this is, once again, an example of how we have been dragged along at the heels of England in this matter. That does not make it any the better. The plain fact is that the Scottish draftsman and officials, considering this in the first place, thought that three was quite sufficient to meet Scottish conditions. We have never had, neither in Committee nor in the House up to the present, an explanation of why it must be altered for Scotland. The hon. Gentleman gave us no reason at all in Committee. All he said was that he was going to do it. He gave no reason why he was making a change and he has given no reason tonight.

9.30 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) raised a number of questions in the Committee about the Clause, and referred to the Long Leases (Scotland) Act and other Acts. He asked what effect the Bill would have on tenants holding tenancies under those Acts. There was no reply to that. The Joint Under-Secretary of State ought to give us something better than we have had. Otherwise, we are bound to feel that we are being trailed along at the heels of England and that we are not legislating in the interests of Scotland but in the interests of uniformity.

Mr. Macpherson

I can give a further explanation. If we are being trailed along at the heels of England I can only say that the original Amendment was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley). It can hardly be said, in view of that fact, that we are being trailed at the heels of England.

Mr. Willis

He did not quote Scotland.

Mr. Macpherson

We had time to consider the Amendment before it was accepted and then we considered it for Scotland, although we did not actually move the Amendment for Scotland in Committee. That is what we are doing now. The reason why we accepted the Amendment is that this is not a question of vital importance to the owner. The mere fact that an owner is not notified under the Clause does not diminish his right to refuse to pant with his land for the development permitted by the planning permission.

The rights conferred on owners are fairly limited under subsection (1, b). They may receive notification, which is equal to conveying notification by publication in the local newspaper. On the other hand, it gives the owner, as defined in the Clause, a right to be heard by the local planning authority. That does not mean either that it will only be the owner as defined in the Clause who will be heard by the local planning authority. The difference is simply that it is only the owner as defined in the Clause that is given the right to be heard by the local planning authority.

This is a question of degree, of how far we are to extend the burden on the prospective developer in the way of notification, and of how far we are to extend the burden on the planning authority in the way of obliging it to consider representations. We consider that my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns made the case for ten years. He said, if I remember aright, that it was difficult to reach an exact figure and that it might be seven, ten or twelve; at any rate, it was certain that three years would be too small a period. We accepted that view, and we took ten years.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) now asks about the other Acts that were mentioned in the Committee. The Long Leases (Temporary Provisions) (Scotland) Act, 1951, was mentioned, but that was a stopgap Measure and it was overtaken by the Long Leases (Scotland) Act, 1954. The position might arise a little later that it will be a very tight race whether that Act expires before this Bill actually comes into force. The period between the two is so small that, for the purposes of the Clause, it is utterly negligible.

Year to year leases, as I explained in Committee, would not come in, in any case. Whether for houses, shops or any sort of property, they would be excluded in any case. We think that fixing the time at ten years is about right. One cannot talk with any certainty in this matter, but there is no reason why there should be any difference between Scotland and England on this point. There is no difference in conditions of law or anything else—

Mr. Willis

Yes, there is.

Mr. Macpherson

Not on this particular point. This is a question of administration, the principles of which would apply equally in Scotland as in England.

Mr. Ross

Will the Joint Under-Secretary apply his mind once again to the question I put to him about people who are presently holders of leases in particular parts of Scotland but who are covered by the terms of the Long Leases (Scotland) Act, 1954? That Act gave the right to holders of particular leases if they made application within five years—and the five years will not be up until about July this year—to have their leases even with one year or two years to run. They are denied the right of ownership under this interpretation. They were given the right to become owners if they so wanted merely on application. It is the leasehold reform which many English and Welsh people would like to have applied to England and Wales.

I do not think it good enough for the Joint Under-Secretary to say that the race will be so tight and the number of people concerned utterly negligible. We should consider the Clauses affecting Scotland that are being put into the Bill and remember that the Solicitor-General for Scotland could not trace an actual case. We are told that this is purely academic for Scotland, yet the Government insist on legislating for something which is purely academic. Here is something which we know is to happen. These people may be denied the right of ownership even though their lease is less than ten years and probably before the end of five or six months the number probably will be extended. They will be owners.

It is not good enough for the Joint Under-Secretary to ride off the argument in this way. When the matter was raised in Standing Committee, the Solicitor-General and he were taken quite by surprise. They had forgotten the existence of these people. I do not think there are any in Ayrshire, but I know there are some in Lanarkshire, and there there is a marginal constituency. In Stonehouse, of all places, we have a position which might well sway the Lanark seat. The hon. Member for Lanark (Mr. Patrick Maitland) is not present to defend the interests of these people. I think that a scandal, but I think it more of a scandal that the Joint Under-Secretary, after the Government had promised to look at the matter, and having recognised the difficulty, should now say "There will be this difficulty and injustice, but it will not affect so many people." I hope that he will have another look at the matter before the Bill passes through another place.

Amendment agreed to.