Planning Blight (Hansard, 17 December 1997)

§ Mr. Caborn

I have today placed copies of the final report of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Blight in the Library. The report is accompanied by a draft Code of Practice on the dissemination of information during the various stages of major infrastructure developments. I have also deposited copies of the report of the research conducted by the City University Business School into the operation of compulsory purchase orders which is published today by the Stationery Office.

The Interdepartmental Working Group on Blight was set up to review the scope, cause and effects of blight arising during the various stages of major infrastructure projects and to consider whether any practical changes can be made to the existing arrangements for property purchase and compensation throughout Great Britain.

The Group has identified a number of options. One relates to the desirability of improving information flows at all stages of major infrastructure developments, and this provided the impetus for the Code of Practice. A further tranche of recommendations relates to relatively small-scale amendments to existing legislation. However, one recommendation (that a new property purchase guarantee and compensation scheme should be devised) would, if it were accepted, involve major changes to legislation. I should emphasise that this recommendation, which is born of a desire to reduce or eliminate generalised blight, does not undermine the fundamentals of the existing blight and compensation arrangements.

The Group points out that although the focus of the review was generalised blight consequent upon proposals for major infrastructure projects, responses to the discussion paper issued in June last year suggested that the most effective remedy might lie in changes to the arrangements for addressing statutory blight. However, the Group, in seeking to ameliorate the worst effects of generalised blight in this way, has not sought to reassess compulsory purchase and compensation law in its entirety, nor has it considered it consistent with its terms of reference to recommend changes to the law which are not germane to the issue of generalised blight.

The Group has delivered a detailed report on a subject of some complexity. None of the issues is clear-cut, nor are any of the options it has identified free from wider consequences. For this reason I am anxious that the report should be made widely available for discussion and comment before together with my ministerial colleagues 202W in Scotland and elsewhere, give further consideration to its findings. I am therefore publishing the report of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Blight, the draft Code of Practice and the draft Property Purchase Guarantee and Compensation Scheme. Comments from all those with an interest are invited by 31 March.