Part of the debate – in the House of Lords am 4:19 pm ar 17 Hydref 2023.
My Lords, I shall speak briefly on the Motion to approve this regulation. I welcome it and support it. I remind the House of my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. A number of people in the development community to whom I have spoken thoroughly endorse the view that local planning authorities are underresourced and that there is a need to secure additional resources for them. They welcome the fact that there is to be a significant increase in planning fees, but also that there is to be an annual indexation. I think that gives some certainty to developers, as well as confidence to local authorities.
My noble friend described the proposals very well and referred to some of the issues. I will pick up on three of those issues, and I would be grateful if she would either respond to them or perhaps even take some of them back to the department for further work.
First is the question of ring-fencing. In government, we have been resistant to the idea that local authorities should be too constrained in how they spend their money but, as my noble friend said, the provision of these fees to local authorities for development management purposes is in statute. However, since there is a significant gap, presently of £225 million, between the cost of planning services and the revenue from planning fees, there is a risk that, as planning fees and the resulting income are increased, local authorities may take the opportunity to reduce the subsidy they presently give to planning services. That is neither in our interests nor what this planning fee increase is intended to secure.
As illustrated in the impact assessment, through monitoring and evaluation of this, the department has an opportunity to see in the data returns from local government whether an increase in income from planning fees is leading to an increase in expenditure on development management. That is what we are looking for. I hope the department would take action if local authorities used the increase in income to reduce their subsidy and we did not see the improvement in service that we are looking for. Through the digitisation in the levelling-up Bill, which is in the other place at the moment, and the efforts being made to require local authorities to undertake their work expeditiously by reducing the planning guarantee, which is very welcome, I hope we see an improvement in those services.
My second point is about the so-called “free go”. I am not sure that many developers understood—certainly, I could not find much evidence for it—the proposition that any significant number of them used the mechanism of a second application, with no fee being charged, to escape the cost or complexity of an original application. I am not sure I understand why it is thought that they would do this to any great extent, but let us say for the sake of argument that, as this goes ahead, we should at least look at the consequences. Arguably, one consequence will be that, where a new fee is to be charged on a new application, if there is a problem—maybe quite a modest one—with the original application, instead of withdrawing the application and making a new one, the developer might seek to persist with the original one and, if necessary, go to appeal. We should check very carefully whether this leads to a reduction in the number of withdrawn and new applications but an increase in the number of appeals, because that does not help developers, the Planning Inspectorate or local planning authorities.
Thirdly, I ask the department to continue working positively with the development community on developing planning performance agreements and service level agreements with other statutory consultees. If we are to move forward on major developments, we need them not only to be resourced, and for developers to understand and accept that, but for developers to feel that they have to respond on a timely basis with a service level that can be relied on. Planning performance agreements can do that. There have been problems— I will continue to correspond with my noble friend the Minister and my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook about these issues and make some suggestions about how we can improve PPAs—but we should not confine PPAs just to local planning authorities.
There should also be service level agreements, for example, with highways authorities and others because they are central to the process. Highways authorities look at this planning fee increase and say, “It’s all very well for local planning authorities, but we don’t get anything out of that”. Service level agreements and planning performance agreements could well encompass some financial compensation for other statutory consultees if they do their job according to a service level agreement, but it needs to be very clear what the statutory bodies are being committed to and that there will be sanctions and, if necessary, the return of fees if it is not complied with, just as the planning guarantee does for local planning authorities.
All told, I am very glad to have the opportunity to welcome these government regulations.