Clause 23. (Hansard, 22 May 1968)

§ Mr. Oscar Murton (Poole)
I beg to move Amendment No. 44, in page 20, line 7, leave out 'and' and insert: 'in an area for which a local plan shall have been adopted and at the same time in such an area'.

§ Mr. Speaker
With this Amendment we are discussing Amendment No. 45, in page 20, leave out lines 32 to 35 and insert: (d) that it is necessary that the land should be acquired immediately for the purpose of securing its use in a manner not inconsistent with the use proposed for it by the local plan for the area in which it is situate.

§ Mr. Murton
I would like to deal with the related Amendment, No. 45. There was considerable discussion in Committee about 24(1){b) as it appeared in the 704 original Bill, and the main point of the discussion was the word "expedient". We felt that this gave the Government too great a power in how this matter should be applied. We were most anxious that we should ensure that it must be shown in the local plan. For that reason, we have put down this Amendment to replace "expedient" by "necessary". If this land is to be acquired, it is important that it should be related to the local plan, and that wider powers should not be given.

§ Mr. MacDermot
I hope there is no misunderstanding, but I find it difficult to relate the hon. Gentleman's arguments to the Amendment called. As I understand it, the effect of Amendment No. 44 would be to provide that Sections 67 and 68 of the 1962 Act and Section 47 of the Post Office Act, 1963, should cease to have effect only in an area, for which a local plan has been adopted.

§ Mr. Murton
If I might interrupt, I was speaking to Amendment No. 45.

§ Mr. MacDermot
I take it that the Opposition are not pressing Amendment No. 44.
Amendment No. 45 replaces the word "expedient" by the word "necessary", but it also makes another quite substantial change; namely, to bring back the link between the power to acquire under this paragraph and the development plan—inded, the development plan at the local plan stage.
One of the purposes of Clauses 23 and 24 is to break the link which previously existed by the designation procedure. I agree that the Amendment does not seek to restore such a tight link as that and to tie the compulsory acquisition powers directly to the plan, but it still links the acquisition closely to the terms of a local plan.
I remind the House that this provision, and the introduction of this power in Clause 24(1)(d), is the result of a recommendation of the Planning Advisory Group when it was considering its predecessor, Section 68(l)(b) of the 1962 Act. The Planning Advisory Group considered that it would be possible to relate the power to the provisions of local plans, but this would tend to introduce controversial issues of acquisition into the discussion of local plans, including action area plans, which we are anxious to avoid "— which we are, too.
It went on: The right time to contest acquisition is when the land needs to be acquired and the compulsory purchase order is made. We therefore recommend that in place of this power of acquisition, the provisions of Section 38(2)(a) of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, should be reintroduced. This was originally designed to meet the needs of the period before development plans became operative. It enabled authorities to acquire any land which the Minister was satisfied should be acquired for a purpose which appeared to him to be immediately necessary in the interests of the proper planning of the area. The acquiring authority would have to make the case for acquisition on the basis of specific proposals. A residual power of this kind will certainly be needed if authorities are to be encouraged to adopt a more positive and constructive approach to environmental planning and to make full use of the action area concept, particularly in areas requiring comprehensive improvement rather than redevelopment. 706 That is rather a lengthy quotation, but it fully sets out the argument and the thinking which underlies Clause 24(1)(d) and shows the reasons why we are anxious not to link it in this way to the local plan. There may be occasions when it is important to make acquisitions under this power and where there may, as yet, not have been prepared a local plan for the locality. Clearly in such a case the planning authority would have to make very plain, and argue fully, the planning merits of the proposed acquisition, because the Minister would have to be satisfied that the acquisition was necessary in the interests of the proper planning of the area. I am advised that the sort of case in which acquisitions are made now under the paragraph which this replaces, namely, Section 68(1)(b) of the 1962 Act, include such matters as the acquisition of land for the purposes of an industrial estate. I concede that in most cases if an acquisition was to be made for those purposes, a local plan would have been prepared. But we know that there will be a period, particularly in the introduction of the new system, when authorities will be preparing their structure plans, proceeding to their action area plans as the first local plans, and then to other local plans. But it may sometimes be necessary for them to make acquisitions of this kind without an approved local plan and for these reasons we must advise the House not to restore this direct link with the development plan but to leave it to the planning authority to be required to make out its case on planning grounds at the time of the compulsory purchase order.

§ Mr. Speaker
We are debating Amendments Nos. 44 and 45 together, but representations have been made to me that I should allow a Division on Amendment No. 45 instead of No. 44. I am happy to accede to that request.

§ Mr. Graham Page
I am obliged, Mr. Speaker.
What the Minister of State has just said has made matters worse. Now, the designations on the development plan will become meaningless as soon as the Bill becomes law. Therefore, there will be no development plan designation for a property owner to refer to or a local plan showing the intentions over his property and area. I had hoped that Amendment 707 No. 44, which called attention to this, was merely declaratory of what was intended.
At present, before property can be compulsorily acquired by the local authority, it has to be designated in the development plan as subject to compulsory acquisition for some specific purpose, and this is the basis of our law of compulsory acquisition. The public is given that warning, and the owner of property knows that, at some time in the future he may suffer a compulsory purchase order.
I had hoped that it was the intention, under Clauses 23 and 24, that that procedure would remain until there was a local plan, so that the owners of property in the area would know the purpose of the planning authority. That was the purpose of Amendment No. 44. If that is not to happen. Amendment No. 45 becomes all the more important. There will be a gap between the abolition of designation on a development plan and the production of a local plan, and in that gap the local authority will have extensive powers of compulsory purchase, if paragraph (d) remains, since it provides that the local authority merely has to say that it is expedient to acquire the land immediately for a purpose which it is necessary to acheve in the interests of the proper planning of an area in which the land is situated. There could hardly be a wider power, and the Amendment seeks to restrict it to purposes within the meaning of a local plan, and we would provide for the land to be acquired immediately … for the purpose of securing its use in a manner not inconsistent with the use proposed for it by the local plan". in requiring the local authority to designate it in the local plan as subject to compulsory purchase.
To that extent, we are getting away from the existing procedure, which may have been rather, in disregarding some sort of designation altogether, at least to give the public warning by means of the uses proposed in the local plan.
We on this side of the House think, this is one of the most important points in the Bill. We are, in Clause 24, extending very considerably the powers of a local authority to acquire property compulsorily, and to acquire it without giving warning of the specific purpose for which 708 it acquires it. We would wish to restrict the power so that the public and the owners of property do have some sort of warning, and are able to plan ahead, and know when they may expect in their area a development which may produce compulsory purchase orders on their property. Therefore we ask the Minister to consider again whether our draft—in Amendment No. 45—of paragraph (d) is not far better and far more protective of the individual, and not necessarily too restrictive of the local authority, and that he will accept our Amendment.

§ Sir J. Foster
I want to add one word. There is a class of persons it is very necessary to protect—the new owners, the persons thinking of settling down, who are about to retire and who invest their life savings in their new home. At the moment such a person can look at the local plans and get some idea whether he will be liable to having his property compulsorily acquired. If there is this general power, after making the fullest inquiry he can, he cannot see that the property is likely to be compulsorily acquired, and he puts his life savings into it—and then his property is compulsorily acquired, the compensation is not enough, and he is disturbed. I think this small safeguard for which we ask is necessary for him.

§ Mr. MacDermot
I do not think that the point, in practice, works out quite the way the hon. and learned Gentleman is suggesting. It would be so if in fact the designation procedure had worked the way it was intended to, but, as we all know, it has not. There is the development plan; the prospective purchaser may look at it and say, "I am all right" and he buys; and then the local authority wants to acquire. What happens now is that we have a double-barrelled application of c.p.o. and amendment of the development plan; we get designation being contemporaneous, and not in advance with the sort of warning which is required. We believe that as we go over to the new system of the structure plan and with the local plans within that, a very much better and more certain picture will emerge for the future. Probably most of the problems we are dealing with are transitional problems; for some years ahead we shall be in a transitional phase from the old to the new system.
709 It is not as though there will be a complete gap, because existing development plans—for what they are worth: I have pointed out their limitations—will continue, but in fact, if we get a departure from the existing development plans, and a new local plan is drawn up for the area, the citizen will certainly be no worse off than he is at present.

§ Mr. Murton
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.