London Squares Preservation (Amendment) (Hansard, 24 October 1989)

§ Mr. Dudley Fishburn (Kensington)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to revise and amend the London Squares Preservation Act 1931. My Bill modestly builds on the wisdom of our grandfathers and great grandfathers and adds another thin layer to the lacquer of legislation that protects London's heritage.

When London exploded into the world's largest city our predecessors saw the need to infuse a few patches of green into the urban sprawl before anyone had heard of people being environmentally conscious. It is interesting that it was the Victorian developers who bequeathed London its squares, voluntarily giving up building land to improve the urban landscape. Parliament took the lead then, as it should now.

There was the Kensington Improvement Act 1851, the Town Gardens Protection Act 1863 and, in 1927, when London's population was near its height and the city was choking in pea-soup smogs, there was nothing less than a Royal Commission into the protection of garden squares. That led to the London Squares Preservation Act 1931. It was a fine Act for Parliament to have passed in the dark days of depression to make London's green corners safe from overdevelopment. The Act specified some 460 enclosures that were to be permanently preserved as open spaces.

The London Squares Preservation Act 1931 is now more than half a century old and showing its age. That is why I should like to update it and to bring in adequate protection for the half century ahead.

The 1931 Act forbids development on protected garden squares, but, because it was unthinkable at the time, the Act gave no thought to development under or over squares. Today, many squares are threatened with underground car parks, and the new possibilities of cantilevered architecture make development over an open space a commercial prospect.

The 1931 Act, if contravened, carries the "heavy" penalty of £20. I propose to update that to a maximum daily penalty rate of £1,000.

The 1931 Act is particularly inadequate because there were only 460 squares listed at that time—and that number cannot now be added to. The list is closed. New squares are being created all the time in the capital and elsewhere. Such spaces are protected only by the leaky planning laws and not by Acts of Parliament. My Bill would open a new register, to which any enclosure could be added at the behest of its owner. These owners are the successors of the Victorian builders. Sometimes they are local authorities or trusts, or ownership may be divided equally between the residents of the 100 or so dwellings that surround a square. 684 Some squares are still owned by a single individual. Good—I have no complaint about such diversity. Owners who wish to set down their squares in the new register would have them protected from any development, on, under or over.

My Bill, if I can get support for it, would try to take the process a stage further. Why should it be only squares relating to London that are given the protection I have described? Does not the great cities of Bristol, Norwich Birmingham and Manchester have "enclosures" too? There should be a national register that extends a national umbrella of protection to the urban garden landscape throughout England and Wales.

The new squares that could be entered are manifold. Some of the better new council housing estates, for example, are built around a garden square. Should not those spaces be protected as their Victorian predecessors were? The Government, however, are not altogether sympathetic to these proposals. One of their objections is that a ban on car parks under garden squares would rob the owners of their property rights. My scheme of a voluntary register would get round that problem. There is indeed a place for underground car parks: it is in new building developments, not under green long-established residential squares.

The Government have yet to work out their community charge provisions on London's semi-private squares. Since the middle of the previous century those squares have, for the most part, been kept up by a special rate levied on the houses around or near them. The residents of those houses then hold the right to use the squares. No such provision has been made under the community charge. Clearly, if everyone in a local authority area pays equally for the upkeep of every garden square, then everybody, in fairness, must have access. That, of course, would mean the end of the squares. Their fragile environments would soon be broken down. Their upkeep, if it came from the general community charge, would soon fall into disrepair—victims of local government politics. Those garden squares would then become the refuge not of the many residents, but of a few strangers: the drug dealer, the vagrant and the mugger.

The Government cannot intend such a thing, so they must do some fresh thinking. I hope that my Bill will help that process and, more importantly, will help the hundreds of London garden squares.