SECURITY FOR PRIVATE ROAD WORKS RELATING TO HOUSING (Hansard, 20 June 1984)

§ Mr. Maxton
The clause is an important one, and I have some concerns about it. The clause should stop what some of my hon. Friends, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson), have described. If an estate is built with roads, and the contractor does not bring those roads up to the correct standard but walks away from the building site, having sold all the houses, the owners of the houses are left with the roads not properly maintained. Where a contractor proposes to build, the clause allows, but does not make it mandatory upon, the Secretary of State to introduce regulations stating that what is commonly called a road bond must be put down, by which certain moneys are given to the local authority before planning permission is agreed. Such a measure means that, if a contractor fails to build a proper road, the local authority will use the money to do the job itself. If the contractor does the job himself, the local authority will presumably reimburse the sum of money that he has paid.
In view of the cases that have been cited, and the points that have been made by my hon. Friends and by other Members, will the Minister consider making this mandatory? It is obvious that it cannot be done in every 347 case. Indeed, I noticed an earlier example of alteration to an existing building which is not a private dwellinghouse for use as a private dwellinghouse. If an old barn were standing in a field, and somebody bought it and made it into a house, I do not think that one could insist upon a bond being put down to make the road to that barn into a public road. However, where a number of houses are being built by a recognised building contractor for commercial purposes, it should be mandatory upon him to put down a bond to ensure that the road can be built if he fails to do the job. The solution that springs to mind is that in clause 16(2) the word "may" should be deleted and the word "shall" inserted, but that may be too harsh. We must ensure that the kind of circumstances that have been described do not arise again.

§ Mr. Allan Stewart
The Committee will have a great deal of sympathy with the points that the hon. Gentleman has made. The purpose of the clause is to avoid the problems to which he has referred, and to which a number of hon. Members referred on Second Reading.
The provision to permit the Secretary of State to make regulations to require what are called road bonds has been widely welcomed. We are now undertaking consultations with the local authorities, the building developers and others involved on the precise content of the regulations. When the regulations come before the House, I hope that they will meet the various points of concern about the present situation that have been expressed by a number of hon. Members.

§ Mr. Craigen
I did not want to re-invent the wheel in this matter, which is why I did not intervene earlier. The intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Maxton) is helpful. I made the point on Second Reading that we welcome the introduction of these road bonds. Indeed in Strathclyde this has already been operating on a voluntary basis. I hope that the Minister can assure the Committee that he will bring in the regulations after consultation, and that this is merely a matter of time.

§ Mr. Allan Stewart
I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance.