Funeral Parlours (Planning)(Amendment) (Hansard, 27 July 1999)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law in connection with the change of use of premises intended to be funeral parlours. I cannot claim that the Bill quite ranks with the awesome list of legislation that has just received Royal Assent, and I do not expect that it will have the same success in passing through the various stages that it would need to in the House. Nor, the House will be relieved to know, do I intend to spend more than a minute or two explaining it.

The Bill is a modest measure, which arises from the very same perplexity that was mentioned in the House in an Adjournment debate on 11 June 1999 when the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) said: I have no objection to funeral parlours and funeral directors operating in the high street. I utterly share those sentiments. In the long run, as Keynes said, we are all dead and we need such services.

The hon. Gentleman also said: The vexed issue of planning and funeral parlours is of great concern to my constituents. For many years, one of my constituents lived next to an excellent local newsagent … where sustenance for mind and body was available … To her horror, one day she found that a funeral parlour had appeared almost overnight in the small parade of shops."—[Official Report, 11 June 1999; Vol. 332, c. 961.]

The strange fact is that, in my constituency of West Dorset in the town of Sherbourne,almost identical events transpired, and one of my constituents woke up one fine morning to discover that an entirely innocuous shop was about to be turned into a funeral parlour. As it happens, my constituent passed her days pleasantly sunning herself in her front garden and did not wish—if I may be forgiven the phrase by the House—to see a procession of stiffs passing her front garden. She thought that she had the usual remedies available to her; that she could go to the district council and ask that her case be put. She expected that the funeral parlour proprietor would then be able to put his case and that the matter would be adjudicated in the ordinary way.

Alas, it so happens that, under the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987, that is not the case. Class Al of that order allows the transformation of any 154 item in a long list of kinds of business premises to be achieved without planning permission, as long as that transformation is into another of the classes listed in class A 1.

Class A1(f) is entitled: For the direction of funerals". I am a profound proponent and supporter of the order in general and there is a desperate need to allow businesses to be flexible and change their premises and for different kinds of businesses to emerge on our high streets, but funeral parlours are not quite like all other forms of shop. They bear rather more resemblance to other things, which are not included in that list and which cause concern to constituents. Hence, they have to go through the planning procedure.

This modest Bill is entirely intended to bring to the attention of the officials and Ministers responsible the urgent need to remove paragraph (1) from class A 1. That would hardly make major legislative history, but it would have the beneficial effect that neither my constituents nor those of the hon. Member for Ealing, North would awake on any day to find that such a horrible event had occurred without the slightest redress being available. If there is a purpose for ten-minute Bills and for private Members coming to the House to try to change legislation or to bring such matters to the attention of officials, this is a classic example of that purpose.

My constituents in Sherborne feel extremely strongly about this matter, which has probably attracted more attention from the local press than most of the great matters of state. I suspect that they and the constituents of many other Members around the House would be profoundly grateful if the Government took the appropriate steps, even though I foster no illusion that the Bill is likely to be passed.