HL Deb 26 November 1991 vol 532 cc1299-304

4.35 pm.

Viscount Astor rose to move, That the draft regulations, laid before the House on 14th October, be approved [1st Report from the Joint Committee].

The noble Viscount said: My Lords, these regulations were laid before the House on 14th October. I understand that it will be convenient to consider at the same time the equivalent Scottish regulations which were laid before the House on 16th October. Accordingly, I shall speak to both sets of regulations.

The regulations, which have been considered in another place, introduce a number of changes—which have al been subject to public consultation—to the parent regulations for England and Wales approved by Parliament in 1989 and for Scotland in 1990. The first change is an across-the-board increase of about 20 per cent. in the level of fees for planning applications. It follows a similar increase which took effect from 2nd January this year. The Government are committed to increasing the proportion of relevant local authority costs met from fees to 100 per cent. Relevant costs include all aspects of the consideration of planning applications and any ensuing appeals. I am sure that your Lordships will agree that the additional revenue which this increase will generate will be very welcome to local authorities yet will represent a very modest proportion of the overall cost of the projects to which the planning applications relate.

The second and third changes both arise from discussion during the passage earlier this year of the Planning and Compensation Act 1991. The second change—and here I must give credit where it is due to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, whose suggestion we have taken, albeit in a slightly modified way—involves doubling the deemed planning application fee payable in the context of an appeal against an enforcement notice. The Government consider that it is reasonable for a fee, to be paid to both public bodies involved in the administrative service that the appellant obtains. Accordingly, one half of the fee will be paid to the local planning authority and the other half will go to the Department of the Environment, or to the Welsh or Scottish Office as appropriate. In future the planning merits of any development enforced against will be considered only on an appeal against the enforcement notice after payment of this higher fee. The increased charge is not intended as a penalty or a charge for making an appeal.

The third change eliminates the 75 per cent. concession which currently applies to duplicate or twin-tracked planning applications. That practice enables an applicant to negotiate with the authority on one application while appealing in respect of the non-determination of the other. It has potential for wasting local authority resources; yet it can be an applicant's only effective lever for encouraging some authorities to process applications with reasonable speed. Although the Government have concluded that it would be unreasonable to deny applicants the option of submitting duplicate applications, we can see no justification for the regulations to include a concession to encourage applicants to twin-track.

The final change is confined at present to England and Wales. It introduces a £20 fee to be paid when an application is made to a local planning authority for a determination whether its prior approval of some details of the development is required before the start of certain agricultural or forestry development permitted by the Town and Country Planning General Development Order 1988. No further fee will be payable in those cases where authorities decide that they need to give formal approval for the relevant aspects of the development. The introduction of a parallel amendment to the Scottish fees regulations must await an appropriate amendment to the Scottish GDO. The Secretary of State for Scotland intends to bring forward such changes as soon as is practicable. I commend the regulations to the House. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft regulations, laid before the House on 14th October, be approved [1st Report from the Joint Committee]—(Viscount Astor.)

Baroness Hollis of Heigham

My Lords, we on this side of the House welcome the increased fees; and behind us, the local authorities welcome them, particularly in the light of the Statement made in another place earlier today on rate capping and the RSG. That will ensure that local authorities will doubly welcome any increased income.

We support the move to more realistic charging. We welcome not just the increased fee for appeals, which the Minister was gracious enough to acknowledge was the result of amendments moved on this side of the House, but the increased fee, and therefore loss of subsidy, for twin-tracking. Much of the debate during the Planning and Compensation Bill involved the problem of twin-tracking and the way local authorities simultaneously were forced to negotiate an appeal while at the same time trying to respond to the original application. Twin-tracking was encouraged by the fact that there was a reduced fee for the second application. We are happy to see that that fee has now been brought into line. I should have liked to have seen it go even further, but I accept that this is not the appropriate forum in which to pursue that argument.

There are a few questions that I should like to ask the Minister. I have given him brief notice of them. I [BARONESS HOLLIS OF HEIGHAM] therefore accept that he may not yet have all the answers. The questions are meant to help local government. I take it that the fees are designed to make development control self-financing, as the Minister said. When will he expect to see that process completed by? Are we talking about annual tranches or biannual tranches of increases in fees or what?

Secondly, if the control is meant to be selffinancing, does the Minister assume that within the fee will be included the cost of an application refusal? In other words, does it relate to that dimension of development control? Will the fee also include the full cost of publicity and advertising? That is a pertinent point, because within the Local Government Bill that is about to go into Committee there is pressure to go for full and proper consultation. That involves extensive costs to the local authority. Will the Minister tell us whether local authorities will in the future be expected to recover those increased costs for publicity and notification through increased fees?

Thirdly, will the fee include the cost of advice given at inquiries? Again, that is associated with the appeals procedure. Further, will it also reflect the additional costs involved in handling developments associated with listed buildings? I am sure that the Minister and everyone in the Chamber will accept that the officer and staff input associated with a listed property is a more sensitive and demanding a job than that involved with straightforward new build on a council or private estate. Can we hope to see that factor also reflected?

My final point, of which I informed the Minister, is that, rightly, the fees are graduated according to the number of dwelling houses or the number of hectares involved in the development. Clearly at a certain point a qualitative distinction has to be made in relation to proposals for a major shopping mall of perhaps 500,000 square feet in which the maximum costs of £2,500, or £5,000, as the case may be, in no way begin to reflect the months and months of officer and member time involved in handling superstore developments. Are the fees meant to be realistic in the future? In other words, behind the raft of questions I have put to the Minister, I should like to know whether individual fees are meant to fund the costs of individual development inquiries or are they meant to be self-financing across the authority as a whole. If that is the case, I fear that the smaller developer will be cross-subsidising the larger developer. Will the Minister reassure us on that point?

Having said that, the general thrust of our response is to welcome the increase in fees. As the Minister rightly said, they are a small proportion only of the total cost of schemes. It will be a helpful and useful addition to local authority incomes at a time when they are hard pressed.

Lord Boyd-Carpenter

My Lords, as I understood my noble friend the Minister, these proposals, on the whole, increase the charges by 20 per cent. in addition to an increase of 20 per cent. at the beginning of this year; in other words, a 40 per cent. increase in the year. I should be glad to hear from him what is the argument in favour of so substantial an increase, and whether, having set the precedent of an increase of 40 per cent. a year, the Government have it in mind to make even further increases in the near future.

It would also be helpful to know what sums of money are involved. In particular, what will be the additional revenue derived from this increase, and what was the additional revenue derived from the January increase?

Finally, I must express some hesitation and doubt as to whether swingeing increases of this kind in charges made in respect of the grant of planning permission are sensible in the present situation. Your Lordships are only too well aware that the building industry is going through a difficult time. If there ever were a time when increasing the charge for planning permission was inappropriate, I should have thought that it was now. I can well understand, as the noble Baroness said, that the increase is welcomed by the local authorities. Local authorities are always thankful for any money upon which they can lay their hands; but the Government have to consider not just the degree of avaricious excitement which the proposals generate among local authorities, but the impact on the building industry.

I do not wish to exaggerate the amount involved as compared with the cost of building, which I concede is marginal; but psychologically to be increasing the charges at this moment would seem to be flying in the face of what are the necessities of the moment. I say that in particular, because I had the privilege of hearing the Secretary of State for the Environment at lunchtime today indicate his anxiety for the building industry, and his hope that house building would be encouraged and revive. I should be most grateful if my noble friend would answer those questions as well as those which the noble Baroness put to him.

Viscount Astor

My Lords, I shall deal first with the questions asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham. She asked what the fees are meant to cover. They cover a range of tasks performed by local planning authorities under the umbrella of development control. They include considering and determining planning applications for schemes, both large and small; dealing with any subsequent appeals; discussions with developers and statutory consultees; and dealing with inquiries from the public about proposed developments.

The regulations apply to applications for planning permission, not applications for listed building consent. However, some planning applications will involve considerations which are relevant to listed building consent.

The noble Baroness also asked me about the cross-subsidy of small developers by large developers.

Baroness Hollis of Heigham

Large developers by small developers.

Viscount Astor

My Lords, vice versa. We recognise that a small proportion of applications will cost local authorities considerably more than the present maximum level. We shall examine this when considering simplification and further reform of the fees scale next year. We have said, and I repeat, that we appreciate the anxiety mentioned by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter that the increase in the level of fees proposed by this is above the current level of inflation. Nevertheless, the Government are committed to progressive increases in fee levels until they generate enough income to recover 100 per cent. of the local authorities' development control costs. An application fee is still a small component cost of a development, and 80 per cent. of applications are granted.

Finally, my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter asked me whether the current initiative should provide a more reliable basis for estimated local authority costs in future. The report of the Audit Commission's study on development control is due in January 1992. Research is to be commissioned by the Department of the Environment into the cost incurred by local authorities determining planning applications and performing other tasks under the heading of local control.

I hope that I have managed to answer most of the questions raised by your Lordships. If I have missed any, I shall consider them and write to noble Lords.

Lord Boyd-Carpenter

My Lords, my noble friend was good enough to say that he was prepared to answer the questions already put to him. However, he has not so far answered two that I put to him. One is as to the amount of money in cash terms which these regulations will extract from developers, the cash flow, and whether it is the same amount—and if not, what the difference is—as that under the January increase. Those are the two figures of increased payments that will have to be made. Secondly, he rather conspicuously did not answer my question whether there was an intention to introduce further increases in the near future.

Viscount Astor

My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend. I forgot to answer the last point. There is an intention to increase it in the future. As I said before, it is our intention progressively to raise fee levels until they generate enough income to recover 100 per cent. of the local authority's development control costs.

On the second point, I cannot tell the noble Lord what the level of income will be. It totally depends on the number of applications that come in. Therefore one cannot foresee exactly what the level will be. We can look at the numbers of applications as they come in. Local authorities will examine their costs and we shall consider all those matters closely when we come to decide the increase of fees. As I have said before, it is our intention to try to generate enough income to recover 100 per cent. of the local authority development control costs.

Lord Boyd-Carpenter

My Lords, with respect, surely my noble friend can answer the question as to the amount of money that will be brought in, on the basis of the amount brought in under the previous dispensation and applying a 20 per cent. increase to it. That may not be 100 per cent. accurate, but it would give your Lordships some idea of the scale. It is no use my no ale friend saying, "Oh, this is so small that it is marginal", unless he is prepared to tell us what it is.

Viscount Astor

My Lords, I said that as regards any developer undertaking a development, the fee is a comparatively small component part within the total amount of money spent on that development. I do not have the figures for the number of applications that were received last year. We discussed them under the previous Bill. My noble friend knows as well as I do that it was a substantial amount and that it changed from month to month.

I have certain figures that could be of some help. Provisional figures for the April to June quarter 1991, based on 85 per cent. of the returns indicate that 59 per cent. of applications were determined within eight weeks. Application numbers continue to fall. The figures I have are: 682,000 in 1988–89; 628,000 in 1989–90; 532,000 in 1990–91. That is quite a large drop. I take my noble friend's point but it is almost impossible for me to tell him what amount of money will come in.

On Question, Motion agreed to.