HC Deb 05 December 1975 vol 901 cc2172-86

3.41 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Baker (St. Marylebone)

I am pleased at this rather late and lonely hour to raise a question that is of great concern to my constituents, namely the changing character of central London and what can be done about it.

I am flattered that the Government should have asked a Cabinet Minister to reply to this Adjournment debate. I hope that it indicates the degree of importance that the Government ascribe to this problem.

The problem that faces those of us who represent central London is that we represent a rapidly changing community. We are faced with problems that are unique. They may be to some extent reflected in other city centres—possibly in Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow or Cardiff—but they reach their peak of intensity in central London.

The particular problem is that in central London we are seeing an erosion of the residential face of the community We are seeing a slow wearing away of all those parts that make a community in other areas of our island. The reasons for this are very complex and complicated.

There are many reasons why people do not want to live in central London. There is the high level of rates. There are the very quixotic results that successive Rent Acts have produced upon the rented market in central London. If I may be allowed just one fleeting political reference, I do not believe that the Rent Act that was introduced in 1974 has done anything other than accelerate the decline of residential accommodation in central London.

I believe that the Government realise that their extension of rent protection to furnished tenancies has probably resulted in fewer furnished tenancies being available in central London. The number of factors acting upon this are many. The result is that there is a flight of population from central London.

In the city of Westminster, which includes Marylebone, Paddington and Westminster itself, it is estimated that by1981 about 30,000 fewer people will be living here than live here now. If other Members of Parliament, representing other cities, were faced with this sort of decline of population, they would be rightly concerned.

I dare say that in the right hon. Gentleman's own constituency there is a decline in population, and that he will therefore appreciate my concern. When a population declines, all the residential amenities and the community amenities evaporate. The watchmaker, the cobbler, the small corner shop, close down and move away. I am not suggesting that the main issue that I am raising is a central cause of this, but it is a contributory cause. I am concerned in trying to retain in central London a living community. If we do not retain living communities in the central parts of our cities, those cities will wither away and die.

What makes London a magnet for so many people in the world is that it is a community made up of people who want to be creative and imaginative, to "do their own thing", to work in their own way and to live as they wish. If it is made more difficult for that community to hang together—if the cohesion of that community is reduced—we should be left with a ghost city. The problem facing those of us who represent central London is that more and more parts of our constituencies are appearing like ghost cities.

Hon. Members will be familiar with the City of London. During the day, it is a great commercial centre. At night, it is a boring place, in which no one lives. The sad fact is that many parts of central London are becoming like that. I do not want to see that trend enforced. I therefore believe that it is incumbent upon those of us who represent central London constituencies to do all that we can to give every atom of support to those nucleii which represent the community. Whether it be a local amateur dramatic group, a school, or a church, they represent crystals in the solution, which can accumulate around themselves a community interest.

One of the factors acting against this is that the availability of residential accommodation in central London is decreasing. I have mentioned the Rent Act. In myopinion—the right hon. Gentleman may not agree—that is reducing the amount of available accommodation. But another factor that clearly is reducing the amount of residential accommodation is that many flats and houses are being turned into offices, quite illegally. That is done on a widespread basis.

The House will recall that hon. Members had two occasions on which to canvass in their constituencies in 1974. When I was canvassing in central London, repeatedly I would appear before a door where, originally, Mr. and Mrs. Smith lived. Before I even raised the knocker or pressed the bell, I heard the sounds of several typewriters and ringing telephones behind the door, and I knew perfectly well that an office use was going on behind the door. When eventually I got a reply I was told, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith have moved away. They are no longer here."

I do not exaggerate the case. There is a small street in my constituency, just off Marylebone Road, called Upper Montagu Street. It is quite a small street of Georgian terraced houses. In the past two years, I have become aware of nine houses in that street that are being deliberately misused for offices—at least, it is alleged that they are being so misused. It means that people are not living in them.

What can we do about this? To some extent, the answer lies in the hands of the people still living in the centres of our cities. I am fortunate, in that I have some very active residents' associations, which keep files containing cases of misuse. They say to Westminster City Council that a flat or house used to be lived in and that it is now the office of a small company. They complain, and I support them in what they do. Two prominent organisations are the Marylebone Village Residents' Association, headed by Mr. Beverley, which makes frequent complaints, and the East Marylebone Association, which is centred on Tottenham Court Road. The local council, in my case the Westminster City Council, has to be triggered into action by complaints. Therefore, I support my local constituents and residents' associations in doing this. They supply evidence of misuse.

Perhaps I may give some examples. In October, I had a letter from a constituent of mine—a Miss Williams, who lives in Devonshire Street. She gave a series of examples of the kind of complaint that I hear almost weekly. I shall not quote the house numbers, because they may be subject to inquiries.

In Nottingham Street, a street just opposite Madame Tussauds, there is a house advertised as "freehold office building". The house next to it is largely used as offices. Formerly, they were both residential.

Then there is the case of some flats in Marylebone High Street. The top two floors were residential. One is now occupied by a book company and the other is being advertised as office accommodation.

Next door in Marylebone High Street, the first floor is used by a company dealing in crafts and art work. Until the death of the late occupant it was entirely residential.

My constituent said in her letter: I have a particular interest in this last named as I occupied this flat myself from 1960 until December 1965. I had kept in touch with the person who lived there afterwards, and only a few weeks before his death he wrote to me saying that he hoped I should be able to return to the flat 'in a month or two'. Unfortunately, on his death the property passed to a relative who, having insisted that he required the flat for his own use, transferred it to a different firm of estate agents and arranged for it to be let as 'office accommodation'—in spite of the presence of a kitchen and bathroom. The owner lives…in Ireland. She goes on to say, rather plaintively and, I think, pathetically: I would be very pleased to return to this flat or to occupy one of the other misused flats in the neighbourhood. I am not exaggerating the problem. Many landlords find that in central London it is much more profitable for them to rent a flat for office accommodation than it is to rent it for residential accommodation. If they can persuade the estate agents that at some stage in the past there was an office use they will do so, because the financial advantage is enormous. This is something about which the Government and the local council should do something. It is not something that the Government can do alone.

Westminster City Council has three enforcement officers dealing with this sort of abuse. Its full complement is four, and I understand that it will soon employ one more person. Even four enforcement officers in the centre of London could not police the area between here and Trafalgar Square—excluding Government offices. The number of officers is inadequate. I hope that Westminster City Council will be able to increase the number of staff to do this work. Four inspectors cannot cover an area stretching from the City of London to Knightsbridge, from the river up to Hampstead, dealing with potential and actual abuse. They must be helped by a change in the procedure that operates in such cases.

What happens at the moment is that if an inspector receives a complaint that a flat in Baker Street, or one off Tottenham Court Road, for example, is being illegally used as an office, he will investigate it. This will involve the solicitor's department. It usually takes a great deal of time to decide whether there is established office use in the flat. If the officers are satisfied that there is not established office use—1963 is the key year in all of this, because if office use was established then, it can continue—and if they can prove that the property has been let as a residential flat, they can issue an enforcement notice instructing the person who is deliberately misusing the flat or house to stop doing so.

That person has four, or perhaps six, weeks in which to object. Such persons usually do object, because by doing so they can play the system. They can have a public inquiry. As you will know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from your constituency experience, public inquiries take a long time. They can go on for months, or years. Then the result has to be referred to the Minister. This means that someone who is deliberately using a house or a flat for office purposes can extend that use for two or three years. If, at the end of the period, he is found to be an unauthorised user, the use must stop immediately. If it does not, the penalty is £50 for each day of misuse and £400 on conviction.

The Minister should consider two things. First, he should consider the doubling of the penalties to £100 a day and £800 upon conviction. Second, these penalties should not operate at the end of this two- or three-year period, when the offending user has had two or three years' use of the premises; they should be retrospective to the time of the enforcement notice being served. It would be a consideration in the mind of the person going through the whole procedure that if he does it, and if he knows he has no leg to stand on, from the day he decides to appeal it will cost him £100 a day.

This is an unusual concept in planning law, but this is an unusual problem, and if the Minister turns his mind against my proposal I hope that he will suggest an alternative. In this particular matter the penalties have to be Draconian. It must be made clear to the rogues and rascals who are doing this thing that they will not benefit from their roguery. If that can be made clear, I believe that a great number of non-conforming users will apply almost immediately. There will be many cases in which the balance of proof is rather obscure, but those people then have the choice of incurring a penalty or applying for an appeal.

My first suggestion, therefore, is that the penalties should be doubled and should be made retrospective. Secondly, I hope that the Minister will consider extending the use of the stop notice to unauthorised use. Local authorities have powers to issue stop notices, for example, in cases where someone is building a house for which he does not have planning permission, where a tree which is subject to a preservation order is being destroyed, and in the case of a graded building of architectural merit which is about to be pulled down. In these cases the local authority issues a stop notice and the offence has to stop as of that moment. That is a principle of planning law. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will consider extending that principle to unauthorised use. That would have a considerable effect upon many of the people who are indulging in these malpractices.

My third suggestion is a long-term solution. When the service of an enforcement notice is considered, a local council may be concerned with the owner as well as the occupier of the property. It is concerned not only with the small book company, or the craft company that occupies the building, but with the owner of the property, who is conniving in this activity. In central London it is often difficult to establish the identity of the owner. It is very often time-consuming. The Minister should consider introducing a requirement by which the purchaser of the property, that is, the person who buys the house or the flat, is required to lodge evidence with the Land Registry as to its various uses or to the use entitlement that is considered to exist, and for that information to be available to the local planning authority.

That would place a responsibility upon the purchaser of a house in, say, Montague Street to say that it was registered for office purposes, and at that point the decision would be crystallised. I would not expect a firm answer to that point this afternoon, but I hope that the Minister's officials will consider it.

That may be a long-term solution. I believe that the problem also requires short-term treatment. This should consist of increasing the penalties, making them retrospective, and increasing the enforcement powers of the local authority—in my case the Westminster City Council. I pay tribute to the work that the council does in this respect, but its powers are inadequate. I know that the Minister is sympathetic to the problems of London, representing as he does a London seat, but he must be aware that if we do not prevent the erosion of the residential base of central London—

It being Four o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pavitt.]

Mr. Baker

If we do not prevent the erosion of the residential base of central London, we shall create in central London a Mecca for those who want to shop and do office work. If we do that, we shall create a dead heart to our city. It is important, therefore, to reinforce all those activities and forces which create a living community. If children cannot be brought up in a city, if people do not want to live in it, or spend the weekend in it, that community will wither away and die.

I believe that the problems of central London are very serious. If we want to prevent this happening to the inner parts of our capital we must act now—otherwise, London will go the way of New York.

4.1 p.m.

The Minister for Planning and Local Government (Mr. John Silkin)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Baker) not only for the way in which he has made his case but for raising what he rightly says is a matter of some importance. It is important for his own constituency and his city council of Westminster, but it also has wider implications.

It struck the late Clement Attlee many years ago that we lived in a curious society where millions of people crossed one another on their way to work in the morning, and then crossed one another on their way back.

To destroy the residential centre of London, or indeed of any city, partly for the reason, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, that it would create a dead heart and because it would simply add to the transport problem, which is difficult enough, would be a ludicrous way to proceed. Therefore, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing this matter again to our attention and for pointing out the importance of keeping residential accommodation in Westminster and in his own constituency, where long ago I was a council member.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I do not pursue his point about the Rent Act. As he rightly said, that is a political matter. I would rather deal with his major points concerning change of use by creeping rather than by overt action from residential to office development. The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned the enforcement of planning law. The decision about where such action is appropriate is for the local planning authorities, and in the hon. Gentleman's case it lies with the Westminster City Council.

It might be helpful if I sketched in the background to the whole question of enforcement so that I can provide the back-cloth for what needs to be done and for the hon. Gentleman's various suggestions. Since the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 it has not been lawful to carry out development without planning permission. Laymen often do not understand that that is rather different from saying that it is actually an offence to carry out a development without planning permission. Our time is limited, so I do not think this is the appropriate moment to explain why this distinction exists, but it certainly does.

If a local planning authority considers that there has been a breach of planning control which should be rectified—this includes a material change of use such as a change from residential use to office use—the authority must first serve an enforcement notice on the owners, occupiers and anyone else with an interest which it considers will be affected.

The notice must specify what breach has taken place and what steps the local planning authority requires to be taken to restore the land to its former condition. Then it must allow at least 28 days before the notice comes into effect and prescribe a further period within which the requirements of the notice must be complied with. Within that first period persons on whom the notice was served, or others with an interest in the land, may appeal to the Secretary of State. The notice does not then become effective until the appeal is decided or withdrawn.

It is necessary for each authority to consider, in the circumstances of particular cases, the extent of any investigations which it should carry out before serving the notice. The hon. Gentleman has drawn our attention to the perhaps rather lengthy period that sometimes elapses in mere investigation. He talked about the three enforcement officers that the Westminster City Council has and told us that it had advertised for a fourth. It is not the most popular or the easiest job in the world. I am sure that Westminster has been trying hard to obtain the right people for this painstaking work. It requires a great deal of time to establish the facts. It is necessary to carry out site investigations and to make full inquiries not only of the occupier but of the owner of the land and anyone else with an interest in it. It does not necessarily follow that information received from other people, from neighbours or whoever it may be, is entirely correct.

I understand that during the current year there have been 26 appeals to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State against enforcement notices served by Westminster City Council. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that shows the large extent of the problem, but it is interesting to note the history of those 26 and to see their relevance. Twenty related to office premises. That bears out the hon. Gentleman's point, but it also bears out that the city council is trying to deal with the matter. Of those 20 appeals which related to offices, 13 have been withdrawn without proceeding to consideration by my right hon. Friend. I do not know why they were withdrawn, but I have been informed that in at least one case the council recognised that the use had become established by the effluxion of time—that is, it started before 1964 and had continued without change. As the hon. Gentleman said, 1963 is a key year in this connection.

There is an equal and opposite danger to that of too much time spent in investigation. I am not passing any strictures on the local authority. I do not think that it deserves them. I am merely suggesting that it is also possible that sometimes too little time is employed in the necessary investigations.

When the notice has been served, either party is entitled to ask the Secretary of State to appoint a person to hear its representations. The courts have held that in general the burden of proof rests on the appellant. That can create some difficulty, because the burden of proof can shift. The appellant may make certain points in connection with the appeal which shift the burden of proof back to the council. That is a time-consuming factor.

The issues may become very complex. The average time currently taken from the receipt of appeal to the decision is about 14 months. Enforcement appeals are currently being made at a record rate, more than 50 per cent. above the rate for the past two years. As a Department we are doing our best to speed up the process of appeals. This is one way in which I think we can help. We are doing our best to reduce the time that is taken by the appeal process.

Mr. Baker

I was interested in the figures to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred. The point has been made to me by Westminster City Council that it investigates many hundreds of cases of potential abuse in the course of the year and that it has to be satisfied, with the burden of proof being so very clear, that there is offending office use before it can issue an enforcement notice. On other occasions I have encouraged the council to be rather less convinced and to issue an enforcement notice and to see what happens. The council would not be incurring a liability by doing that. However, with the responsibility of a public authority behind it, the council is reluctant to take that course. That is one of the reasons for the council issuing a relatively small number of enforcement notices. The whole process is very extended. I am not expecting an answer today, but is it possible to shift the burden of proof to the owner of the property so that the owner has to establish that he has authorisation for office use?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas)

Although we are a small family, for the sake of the record it should be made clear that second speeches are not permissible in Adjournment debates.

Mr. Silkin

I think I can deal with the hon. Gentleman's point here and now. The fact is that in law the burden of proof is already on the appellant, who is usually the owner of the premises concerned. The trouble is that not all the evidence is necessarily available during the course of the investigation, and it may well be that something will occur which shifts the burden of proof. It is a normal court proceeding, but unfortunately one has to take it into account in the opening appeal itself. That tends to cause delay.

The hon. Gentleman raised an interesting point—I must confess that I am by no means unsympathetic towards it—on stop notices. When the power to serve stop notices was taken in the 1968 Act, a particularly strong case was shown to exist in the case of operational development. The reason for this was the continuation of operations while an appeal was under consideration. A tremendous waste of resources could be involved if the building was ultimately to be removed. Since then we have had the report of Mr. George Dobry, who has proposed that the power to serve stop notices should now be extended to changes of use. I am glad to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in his recent statement of 12th November, has set out his conclusions on the recommendations in the Dobry review and has indicated that in general he accepts the Dobry recommendation on the power to serve stop notices being extended, as well as the recommendations relating to enforcement orders.

The difficulty is that we shall have to amend the 1971 Act. The difficulty of finding time for legislative activity of that sort, whether by Government or perhaps by a Private Member, is a factor that must be faced.

The hon. Gentleman has made a large point about penalties. As he pointed out, anyone who does not comply with the requirements of the notice within the time allowed can on summary conviction be fined a maximum of £400. In the event of an offence continuing after conviction there can be a fine of £50 for each day. On indictment there is no limit on the fine which may be imposed, but very few cases go to indictment. The limits on summary conviction are in line with those for other offences.

The hon. Gentleman suggested a double penalty. I should tell him that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department has recently received recommendations on the matters which should be tried in magistrates' courts. In that regard, recommendations have been made on the level of fines which might be imposed by magistrates. My Department will be keeping in touch with the Home Department with a view to ensuring that penalties for planning offences are kept in line with those for other matters. I shall certainly feed the hon. Gentleman's suggestion in, and this can be considered in the broad prospect. I shall also gladly feed in his suggestion of a retrospective penalty.

My first immediate reaction is that there may be much wider implications than either of us is aware of. Certainly it would be new in planning law, but it may be very new indeed in the law in general, and clearly the hon. Member would not want me to make a commitment other than to say that I shall see that the matter is examined.

There is one aspect of the question of penalties in which authorities may be able to help themselves a little more, perhaps, than they usually do. The point is that they may bring someone to court and he may be fined—it may be a relatively small fine, or a larger fine—but very often they think that that is the end of it. If there is a continuing breach, it seems to me that they might be a little more willing to go back to the court. The magistrate would then be aware that this was not the first time that such an offence had been committed, and that it was continuing. That is a matter of constructive self-help which authorities might be prepared to look at.

The hon. Gentleman's other suggestion, as I understood him, was that wherever a disposal of land takes place—presumably, whether by sale or lease—it should be the duty of the vendor to establish to the purchaser what the authorised, established use is, and this would then have to be registered with the local authority. The hon. Gentleman asked me not to give an immediate reply today. I shall, as I have said, consider this matter together with anything else.

My immediate reaction is, perhaps, not as promising or as forthcoming as I have tried to be on other matters. I can foresee great difficulties here. I can foresee cases in which, through no fault of anyone, wrong use has been certified or put up to a local authority, resulting in either purchases being held up or in people buying property for uses for which they perfectly legitimately wanted to buy it, and then finding a great deal of dispute. I do not think that the matter is as easy as all that. However, the hon. Gentleman did not ask me to commit myself now. I shall look at it, but I am not as sanguine about it as about some of the other suggestions.

It is clear from everything that has been said that all concerned are well aware of the problem. For its part, the Westminster City Council is, I know, investigating alleged misuses and taking any necessary enforcement action as quickly as its staff resources will permit. Whether it should enlarge the scope of its activities must be a matter for its own judgment. That is why we have local authorities. They must weigh one priority with another, and in the current climate they must consider staff economies. That is not to say that I am attempting in any way to write down the importance of the problem that the hon. Gentleman has raised; I am merely saying that the city council must see it in relation to all the other problems that it no doubt has. My Department will do everything that it can still further to reduce the time taken on appeals.

Finally, I assure the hon. Gentleman and everyone who shares his concern about this problem that my Department will do everything it can to see that the enforcement procedures are strengthened and that we can deal with what the hon. Gentleman has rightly pointed out is a very difficult and important problem.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes past Four o'clock.