§ Motion made, and Question proposedThat this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]
§ 10.1 p.m.
§ Sir Cyril Black (Wimbledon)I am glad to have the opportunity of raising the question of town planning and the building of churches and places of worship. It will probably be within the knowledge of the House that I am interested in and connected with a number of religious organisations in the country, particularly those associated with the Free Church denominations. I can assure my hon. Friend that there is great and general apprehension among the Church authorities at the difficulties which for some time past have been experienced in obtaining sites for which town planning consent can be obtained for the erection of churches or chapels or places of worship, and this is particularly true in the case of built-up areas.
I doubt whether the Ministry have full information as to the extent of such difficulties, because it very often happens that when a church body desiring to use a site for the erection of a church is told by the local authority that it is unlikely that consent will be forthcoming, though disappointed it does not, in many cases, pursue the matter further.
There is, I think, a natural reluctance on the part of the church authorities to come into conflict with the local planning authorities and it is only in a minority of cases that appeals are taken to the Minister. I think I am correct in saying that in the developed areas sites are not specifically allocated for places of worship, and this makes it very difficult to know and to understand what the Minister's policy is towards the provision of churches and chapels in these areas.
I notice that in previous guidance and rulings by the Minister that he has decided—and I refer to one of his circulars—that a social club was not inappropriate in a residential area provided that it was reasonably conducted. In another ruling he laid it down that a school or residential nursery, although it may create some noise, is still in place in a residential area. But apparently, 459 for some reason that is difficult to understand, the Minister differentiates between churches on the one hand and schools or residential nurseries or social clubs on the other and appears to apply entirely different tests in the case of applications for developments for church purposes.
The Minister has recently given a decision in a particular case which has, quite frankly, shocked many of the church authorities. It has occasioned widespread concern among them, and provides, I think, a suitable and specific case on which to endeavour to elicit from my hon. Friend what is the attitude and policy of the Minister in regard to the erection of places of worship.
The case to which I refer is an application made for the erection of a Baptist church in Shepperton, Middlesex. This application was made by the London Baptist Association, which is the appropriate Baptist body in the Greater London area. Perhaps at this stage it is right that I should declare an interest in the matter, although not of a financial character, as I am both a member and an officer of the London Baptist Association.
The local planning authority turned down this application in Shepperton and, an appeal having been made to him and an inquiry conducted by his inspector, the Minister upheld the refusal.
The reasons given for this refusal appear to the church authorities to be quite extraordinary. There are certain facts about this matter which are not in dispute, because they are embodied in the report of the inspector. These agreed facts, among others, are as follows. First, it is agreed by both the local planning authority and the inspector that it is very unlikely that there is any other site anywhere near the centre of Shepperton which may be obtained for the erection of a church. Secondly, although one of the grounds of refusal is that the erection of the proposed church would be a source of objection to other residents in the neighbourhood, at the hearing of the appeal only one objector was sufficiently concerned with the matter to appear and tender evidence against the application.
Thirdly, the case for the erection of the church was supported by the Methodist 460 superintendent minister for the area, who, in a very brotherly manner, came to support the Baptists and to express the view that there was a great need for a Free Church in this area. Fourthly, it is agreed that there is a community of some 30 to 50 Baptists in the area who are at present worshipping in a very unsatisfactory hired hall in which they have only a precarious tenancy, and, of course, they have children for whom they wish to have Sunday school provision.
The reasons given by the inspector for his recommendation to the Minister—and those reasons are apparently upheld by the Minister—are three, and I will mention them now and briefly refer to each. The first is that the proposed buildings would constitute overdevelopment on a limited site in a low density residential area. My comment is that it is admitted that there is unlikely to be any other site for the erection of a Baptist chapel, and where would one expect to find a place of worship other than in a residential area? After all, places of worship exist for the use of people who live in the neighbourhood, and the fact of the church being in a residential area would appear to be a wise and appropriate arrangement rather than it should be somewhere else.
It is mentioned that the site is limited. I take that to refer to the size of the site, but even for the limited site the price which the Church was having to pay was no less than £4,000, which illustrates the difficulty which would arise in the case of an unreasonable requirement by the Ministry as to the size of the site that is needed for the purpose. We have the position that apparently a school, a residential nursery, or a social club could be operated in such an area, notwithstanding the fact that a certain amount of noise might be created as a result of their occupation, but not a church.
The second reason was that, owing to the very close proximity of adjoining houses, the use of the proposed buildings for social and recreational activities and the use of car parks would be likely to create disturbances by noise and detract from the quiet enjoyment of surrounding houses at present enjoyed by their occupiers. This seems to be an exact analogy to the old case of Morton's Fork—that if one is not 461 impaled on one of the prongs one is impaled on the other. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary knows perfectly well that if the church authorities had made an application to develop the site without the provision of a car park, they would have been turned down as a matter of routine because the scheme did not provide any facilities for off-street parking. But because the scheme does include provision for a car park, it is turned down notwithstanding, because noise will be created by cars entering the car park and leaving the car park at the end of services.
We get the completely negative position that if there is no car park in the plans they are turned down for lack of a car park, and if there is a car park in the plans they are turned down notwithstanding because the noise of cars using the car park would be a source of nuisance to the neighbours. If that rule be applied, it is impossible to develop at all, because either the existence or the absence of a car park will be used as a reason for the refusal of the scheme.
The third reason is quite the most extraordinary and quite the most objectionable of all. It is that there was no evidence of need for the proposed development sufficient to outweight the planning objections. This means that the Minister is making evidence of need a requirement for a town planning permission for the erection of a place of worship. The need is evidenced by the existence of 30 to 50 people who are already worshippers, according to the Baptist faith, in the neighbourhood. In his report, the inspector comments that there is another Baptist place of worship two miles away. That, of course, is over the bridge on the other side of the river, in the adjoining County of Surrey.
It seems to the church authorities that the town planning powers are being exercised to impose something that is not very far removed from the old Five Mile Act by which the authorities, not by the exercise of town planning powers, but by other powers, sought to deal with the ecclesiastical affiliations of members of the public who wished to worship.
Let me just examine for a moment the irresistible corollary of this test of evidence of need in the case of the establishment of a place of worship. Presum- 462 ably, in the case of this site, if it is disallowed for this reason, there must be some need which would be sufficient to justify the Minister allowing the site to be used for a place of worship. So, to take an example, if Jehovah's Witnesses next month made a precisely similar application to use this site for the erection of a place of worship, and if instead of being able to produce a community of 50 worshippers they could produce a community of 500 worshippers in Shepperton, then the Minister, on his own logic, would be compelled to grant their town planning application although he had already refused a precisely similar application in the case of the Baptists.
What the Minister is doing is to make himself a judge not of town planning matters but of ecclesiastical demand, because he says in this case that the evidence of the demand is not enough, but presumably there must be some evidence of some demand which would be sufficient to cause him to give a favourable decision, and he is therefore setting himself up as a selector between one religious community and another, purely on the evidence of need of people wishing to worship according to the particular tenet of the church it is desired to build.
Let me make this further point. The Minister adopts, of course, a completely different attitude in regard to betting shops. All over the country there are complaints at the present time that although one may have four betting shops in one street, and there is an application for a fifth, and the local authority says that there is no evidence of demand for a fifth betting shop, the Minister automatically overrides the local authority's objection and gives consent for the establishment of unlimited numbers of betting shops without any evidence of need at all. But when he comes to consider a town planning application in respect of a place of worship, he says, "I will turn this application down because there is not sufficient evidence of need by worshippers in the district".
I am bound to say that this really does very greatly concern the church authorities, and not only them. Of course, I do not suggest that the Minister has personally considered this matter and has decided that betting shops are more 463 socially desirable than places of worship. Of course he has not done anything of the kind, but the practice that is going on in the Ministry in these matters could force anyone who really considered what the Minister is doing, and what is the effect of his decisions, to think that the attitude of the Minister is to make it as easy as possible for the establishment of unlimited numbers of betting shops, while at the same time applying a very strict test as to evidence of need in the case of places of worship.
I do not want to take up more of the time available, but I want to assure my hon. Friend that this case has caused great concern, and that we have here a genera] problem regarding places of worship about which the church authorities feel very strongly, and I hope that he can perhaps throw some light on the question of what are the considerations of the Ministry.
§ 10.19 p.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. F. V. Corfield)First, I should like to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Sir C. Black) that neither in planning matters nor in any other aspect or sphere do the Government underestimate the importance of providing for the religious needs of the people. Nor do the Government underestimate the importance of the work undertaken by the churches, whatever their denomination.
I assure my hon. Friend that there is no dispute between us on this score, either in my personal or my official capacity, but he has suggested that it is not considered appropriate for a church to be in a residential area. Of course, this is quite untrue. Of course a church is considered appropriate to a residential area. There is no discrimination whatever on this score between churches on the one hand and the clubs, nurseries and other types of development which my hon. Friend mentioned on the other, but we do not happen to have complete statistics of the number of churches, church halls and similar types of building which have been erected since the passing of the 1947 Act and the introduction of the present system of planning control. However, there is no doubt from one's own personal observation and 464 in the light of the very large number of new housing estates, new towns, town development schemes and so on, that the number of church buildings that have been erected over this period is a very substantial one. Our records do show the number of applications for developments of this nature which come before my Minister on appeal. These figures show that in the six years 1956–61, inclusive, the total was only 57 appeals. Of these, 27 appeals were allowed and 30 were dismissed. These figures cannot conceivably be interpreted as indicating any substantial conflict between the planning authority on the one hand and the churches on the other. They certainly disclose no evidence, as I am sure my hon Friend will agree, of bias one way or the other.
It may foe of interest to add that, taking all planning appeals that came before my Minister, in those six years, the percentage of planning appeals which were successful was 30 per cent. overall, falling as low as 25 per cent. in 1961, whereas in the case of churches the figure was 47 per cent. successful. That indicates that there is certainly no bias whatever against the churches.
Having said that, however, it is important, in view of what my hon. Friend has said, to remind ourselves of the basic problems and issues with which planning legislation is designed to deal. It is basically a matter of land use, and it is a question of deciding, in a country which, unfortunately, has a very limited area and a very considerable concentration of population, what is the proper use of a particular plot of land in the light of the intense and extremely varied demand. My hon. Friend has very wide experience and a very large number of contacts, both in industry and in local government, and he knows, probably as well as anyone else, that this demand for land includes a vast conglomeration of uses which are fundamental, and, indeed, vital, to the prosperity of the people. In planning our housing projects, which we have been discussing today, this question of the shortage of land affects everybody, and it is something which is certainly not affecting the churches to any greater degree than it affects applicants for planning permission for other types of vital and fundamental development.
I should be the last person to suggest, and no one would believe me if I did, 465 that planning is in any way an exact science. It involves 'the formulation of policy partly on a national basis and partly on a local basis and the application of that policy, which can often only be set forth in fairly broad terms, to individual cases. Quite clearly, in many of these cases there could be no very definite right or wrong in any absolute sense. Sometimes, we can say, "This development is clearly inappropriate for this site", whereas in another case we can say, "It is clearly right", but, by and large, the occasions on which we can say it is right, in the sense that no other development would be appropriate, are fairly rare. There is bound, therefore, to be an element of opinion, but the basic problem remains to suit the development to the site in the light of all the other conflicting claims. From this it must follow that the nature of the development is the matter with which we are concerned, and not the nature of the applicant. This, in my view, is absolutely fundamental. This is what we have studied in this case.
As my hon. Friend knows, the procedure is for one of my Minister's inspectors to hold an inquiry. It is not the inspector's function to decide the appeal, but it is his function to acquaint himself with the policy affecting the application and to hear evidence and make recommendations in the light both of the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence and his knowledge of the appropriate policy. Of course, these recommendations are not final. They do not bind my right hon. Friend in any way; on the contrary, he overrules them from time to time. As a matter of interest, in 1959 he overruled the recommendations of his inspectors in 5 per cent. of cases, and in 1960 in 7 per cent. of cases. But he cannot, and most assuredly does not, overrule capriciously. He overrules only when there are very good reasons—either because the inspector has not given due weight to some important aspect of policy, or because he may have ignored or given too little weight to some clearly relevant and weighty bit of evidence, or for some other reason of this nature.
In this case the application was for permission to build a Baptist church to seat a congregation of 250, together with a Sunday School hall with its ancillary premises, and car parking for about 25 466 cars. He has given the grounds on which this permission was refused, and there is no need for me to repeat them. But I want to say a few words on each of them in turn.
With regard to the first, it is important to bear in mind that this is a fairly small site. It has frontage of about 80 feet, narrowing to 70 feet, at the rear, and a depth of about 150 feet—and off that is to come a 12 foot strip for road widening purposes. It is an area rather short of a quarter of an acre.
It is of some interest that when the local planning authority first received this application they referred it to a panel of advisory architects, whose immediate reaction was very similar to my own. The panel said "This is rather a lot to get on this site, between residential development". The point is that this development involves the use of every square inch of the site. It seems that the boundary runs very close to, and, indeed, abuts in one case, the neighbouring property, and the use of the car park would involve cars passing within a matter of a foot or two of the windows of a doctor's surgery next door.
All these matters were heard by the inspector. He is the person who heard the evidence. Quite clearly, from his conclusions, he was not satisfied that there would be no noise and inconvenience—and he is the person who is inevitably in a better position to judge. It would be wrong to overrule him unless there were good reasons to believe that he had reached the wrong conclusion, for one reason or another. I have looked into the case most carefully and I can find no suggestion whatsoever that the inspector at any stage misdirected his mind as to the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence.
I know that my hon. Friend feels particularly upset about the question of need, but it was the appellants themselves who raised that question. The overriding reasons were the first two, and the reference to need was to show that in this case there was not sufficient need to override the very definite planning objection. My hon. Friend's suggestion that if somebody else comes along with more potential worshippers we shall take a different view, is quite 467 unfounded. The question of need came in only because it was raised by the appellants, but there were good planning grounds for refusal. The question of need does not enter into the matter of betting shops, and so on, where there are no planning objections in the first place. If in such a case there were planning objections my right hon. Friend would rarely find the need for a betting shop to be such that it would be right to override them.
I end by once again assuring my hon. Friend that there is no prejudice or bias against the churches—his or any other; on the contrary, we are most anxious that the needs of the churches, and of the people for the churches, should be met. Putting it quite simply, this decision has been taken—as it must be taken—on planning grounds and planning grounds alone. This was on the basis of the question whether this development is suitable to this site.
468 Having gone into the matter carefully, I have no doubt that the right decision has been given in this case. I appreciate that it will disappoint my hon. Friend and his friends, but this is a matter of suiting the development to the site. I hope that his church will persist in its efforts to find a more suitable site, suited to its purposes. In this case the inadequacy of the car parking space was on the basis of the growing proportion of car ownership; and with the growing mobility of the population, two miles to the next Baptist church is perhaps not such a very great distance. When we think of the mass of country churches—
§ The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at twenty-eight minutes to Eleven o'clock.