'A local planning authority must exercise its powers so as to ensure compliance with planning controls in its area.'—[Matthew Green.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The new clause is backed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England and, I believe, the Conservatives. It aims to improve the effectiveness of, and therefore public confidence in, local planning by placing local authorities under a statutory duty to enforce planning decisions and to remedy breaches of planning control.

Enforcement is the basis of quality control in the planning system, and proper enforcement is crucial to the credibility of planning. Its neglect undermines public confidence in the whole planning system and may result in significant harm to the environment and to people's quality of life, yet enforcement action is in steady decline and is at its lowest level since records began. The explanation for that does not appear to be a reduction in breaches of planning control but, rather, a retreat from action by local authorities.

Possible reasons for that spiral of decline are: the complexity of the system; the perverse incentives that make planning breaches financially worthwhile for offenders; an imbalance in the system that favours those who breach controls and that leaves local authorities vulnerable to compensation claims; a lack of local authority resources, especially in small, rural district councils, which often have a disproportionately high burden of planning enforcement; and the extensive opportunities for offenders to evade and delay enforcement, thus draining local authority resources.

Other possible reasons are the deterrent effect on local authorities of all those problems, particularly those affecting resources, and the fact that local authorities have the discretion not to take action. Local authorities often give more weight to the reasons against taking action, and choose not to do so, because there is no duty to enforce and because they understandably perceive their primary responsibility to be the provision of that which they have a statutory duty to provide.

Enforcement is commonly underfunded and many authorities fail adequately to monitor conditions that have been placed on planning permissions. Even when the most flagrant breaches of planning control are reported, members of the public can neither require that action be taken nor be confident that the breach will be remedied.

One local authority—I wish I knew which—apparently told a complainant that it does not carry out any enforcement. Ministers may be surprised by that, as am I, but local authorities can say that because there is no such statutory duty on them. I could give many examples of when there should have been enforcement but there was none, as I am sure other members of the Committee could. To make progress, however, I shall not list such examples from my constituency.

I hope that the Minister will seriously consider placing a statutory duty on local authorities to enforce. The glory of that would be that another Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister would presumably have to find the money for the planning departments to fund it. Given that we have laws, one expects them to be enforced and that people will be given the funds to do so.

It is nice to see you back in the Chair this afternoon, Mr. Pike.

As the hon. Member for Ludlow said, the Opposition basically support the new clause. We believe that there is a real problem of enforcement and that far too many retrospective planning applications seem to be granted automatically. The problem is that the system favours those who proceed with a development without obtaining the proper planning permission. Once a development has gone ahead, it is very easy to manipulate the system in the developer's favour.

It might be worth citing the seven or so reasons given by the CPRE for such lack of enforcement. It refers to

''the complexity of the system; perverse incentives which make planning breaches financially worthwhile for offenders; a bias in the system which favours abusers and leaves local authorities vulnerable to compensation claims; a lack of local authority resources; extensive opportunities for offenders to evade and delay enforcement, draining local authority resources; the deterrent effect on local authorities of all of the above; and local authorities' discretion not to take enforcement action.''

Ministers and other members of the Committee who have dealt with the planning system will know what happens in practice when a developer, or even someone who does not wilfully want to flout the planning rules, goes ahead with a development. As the hon. Member for Ludlow says, many unauthorised developments never even get as far as incurring an enforcement notice, but even if the local authority does serve an enforcement notice the person having carried out the unauthorised development will appeal against it, which probably adds at least another six months' delay to the process. If the appeal is unsuccessful, the person will seek a judicial review, which probably adds yet another year. Meanwhile, it gets more and more difficult for the local authority to enforce against something that has already been there for a year and a half or for two years. There is a need for a new clause like this. It would place further strain on the planning authorities' already scarce resources, which the Government will have to address, but if a law is being widely flouted something needs to be done about it, otherwise it falls into disrepute.

I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to the new clause, but if they are not I hope that the hon. Member for Ludlow pushes the matter further.

I entirely endorse the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), who systematically listed the reasons why councils find it difficult to do the right thing in taking enforcement action when they know that they should do so. I also endorse the point made by the hon. Member for Ludlow when he said that rural district councils have a particular problem with this. I cite the example of one of my local authorities—Rochford district council in Essex—which, to its credit, attempts to take a robust attitude to enforcement. Like many other rural district councils, however, it is stretched when it tries to do so, as my hon. Friend says. It does not have especially large numbers of planning staff and it is not especially well off. It is trying to do the right thing, but that puts its small planning and enforcement team under particular pressure.

If Ministers want to avoid the situation in which too many councils go down the path of least resistance, the Bill presents a good opportunity to put right a problem in the system that has been there for several years. I urge them not to allow the problem to drift further. I hope that they are minded to accept the new clause today. If, for any reason, they are not so minded, perhaps they might reconsider the issue in the not too distant future.

This has been a problem for a long time. Many councils are attempting to do the right thing, but the system is weighted so heavily against them that it is very difficult for them to do so. If Ministers exist to put right such problems, this is an excellent opportunity for them to do so.

There is a series of problems with new clause 31. I understand the concerns raised by the hon. Gentlemen about enforcement, but the new clause could be interpreted in a way that implied that local planning authorities had a duty to take enforcement action in every case that involved a breach of planning control. That would effectively remove all discretion from local planning authorities, yet discretion is an important part of the enforcement system.

The fact that the enforcement powers of local planning authorities are currently discretionary was considered as part of our review of planning enforcement arrangements. We hope to announce the outcome of that public consultation later in the year. Local authorities have primary responsibility for taking whatever action may be necessary in the public interest. That provides them with the flexibility to tailor their approach to each case so that it fits the nature and circumstances of the alleged breach of planning control. Local authorities have been issued with policy and procedural guidance to assist them to undertake effective enforcement, and they have a range of powers at their disposal.

Minor breaches can often be remedied without the need for formal enforcement action. Such breaches often arise out of a genuine misunderstanding of the planning position, or a mistaken belief that planning permission was not required for a particular development. It is important that a balance can be struck between situations where a development, though unauthorised, is not causing particular harm, and those where enforcement action is essential in order to remedy more serious breaches of control—ones that unacceptably affect public amenity or the use of land, when it is clearly in the public interest for enforcement action to be taken.

If planning permission would have been granted unconditionally had an application been made, the better approach might be to invite the submission of a retrospective application rather than requiring local authorities to enforce every case, even when it would not be appropriate.

The Minister is pointing out some of the problems with the new clause. Does she not agree that we have problems with a lack of enforcement now? If so, how else would she propose solving them?

Many of the concerns expressed about enforcement were discussed as part of the enforcement review that I mentioned earlier.

Local authorities have discretion and are able to make a proportionate response. However, we need also to consider the role of democratically elected councillors. I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Ludlow said about a local authority not doing enforcement. Like him, I would be interested to know which local authority it was, but I would also be interested in the view of local councillors. They are accountable to the local community, and I suspect that many of them would have a lot to say if they thought that the local authority was doing no enforcement. It is appropriate for the community to demand action through their local councillors on appropriate enforcement levels in their area.

Local planning authorities need to consider taking enforcement action to ensure compliance with planning controls in their area. Complaints about alleged breaches of control should be recorded and investigated. If a local authority, having considered the circumstances of an alleged breach, has decided that enforcement action is unnecessary, it should be prepared to explain and justify its decision to the local community and to its elected councillors. Failure to take enforcement action that is plainly necessary could result in a finding of maladministration by the local government ombudsman. It might even be the subject of judicial review. A duty to take action in all cases, as the amendment seems to imply, would remove the freedom of local authorities to exercise judgment, a freedom that is appropriately exercised by the democratically elected local council in this case.

I have listened carefully to the Minister. She is making much of the fact that councillors have discretion and can therefore exercise their judgment. I understand her point. However, it works two ways. When councillors seek to undertake enforcement action, they have to look at the resources that are available to them and at the amount of officer time and the potential cost to the council tax payer that will be involved. As the law stands, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold has clearly laid out, it often takes up to two years to bring a successful enforcement action. The cop-out is to go for retrospective planning approval. Everybody involved in the system knows that. I remind the Minister that discretion works both ways: if she wants local councillors and their officers to do the right thing, they need help.

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is asking us either to impose another statutory duty on local authorities or to provide them with ring-fenced resources. The approach that we have taken has been to give local authorities greater freedoms and flexibilities. It is right for them to be able to take more decisions about how to use their resources. We have also substantially increased the resources available to them, again so that they can decide the priorities in their areas. We are right to do that, rather than continually imposing priorities on them from the centre. What the hon. Gentleman is asking for is not necessarily right—these should be matters for local councillors.

We recognise that there are concerns about enforcement and have been considering them as part of the enforcement review. We held consultation that finished, at the beginning of this year, with 500 responses. A working group that includes people from local authorities with expertise in the field has been considering the matter in detail. Among the issues that have been raised are resources, the role of the courts in the enforcement process, retrospective planning permission and time limits for taking enforcement action. We intend to publish a response to the enforcement review before the end of the year. We shall discuss the issues further under clause 52, so I shall not say anything further at this stage. I do not think that the approach in new clause 31 resolves the problem, so I ask the hon. Member for Ludlow to withdraw the new clause.

With great respect, the Minister is doing a great job but, on this occasion, her reply is unsatisfactory. We all know, particularly those of us who represent smaller, cash-strapped local planning authorities, how difficult it is for them to undertake enforcement. That is much easier in a larger, urban authority where development takes place in a much smaller area. In a constituency such as mine—60 miles long by 45 miles wide, with 120 villages and 11 market towns—it is exceedingly difficult, even if the local planning authority knows that there has been a breach of the planning regulations, for its officers to get round to find out what stage a person has reached in breaking the law and whether it is capable of enforcement.

The Minister is being slightly unrealistic about the issue. She made it clear in her opening remarks that enforcement is a discretionary matter for local authorities. We all know those small cash-strapped local authorities. When anything is discretionary, it almost becomes impossible when they are trying to eke out each penny. They have to deal with the statutory matters first, and discretionary matters come second. That is a weakness in the system. I am all for regulating with a light touch; that is exactly what we ought to be doing. In a perfect world, there would be no need for the new clause, as everybody would obey the law absolutely. However, that is not happening.

The Minister went on to make the point that where planning permission would otherwise be granted as a matter of course, it would be unnecessary to take enforcement action. I would say that it is necessary to take enforcement action, because if action is not taken in one case, others will do exactly the same. Such an attitude encourages a breach of the law.

Another point that the Minister relied on was the issue of retrospective applications. I do not know about her local authority, but in mine nearly all the retrospective applications go through. That is because the officers know very well that if a retrospective application is made and they are using staff to carry out the enforcement procedure, that will, for the very reasons that I have made clear, be expensive and difficult; they are already trying to deal with a host of new applications, let alone retrospective ones. Many of those retrospective applications should not go through and, if someone has broken the law, I would take that line as a matter of course. That would encourage people to make a proper application in the first place.

I can tell the hon. Gentleman the facts about retrospective planning permission across the country. Retrospective applications make up just over 3 per cent. of the total number of applications processed. The success rate for retrospective applications is slightly lower at 85 per cent. than that of 88 per cent. for applications submitted before the development has taken place. For major developments, the success rate drops still further to 76 per cent. for retrospective applications. It is not true that retrospective applications are more likely than prior applications to gain planning permission. It is certainly not true that all retrospective planning permissions are accepted.

Before the hon. Member for Cotswold replies, I inform him that we will be discussing retrospective planning applications under new clause 52, so will he please keep his comments brief and relate them to this particular new clause?

Thank you, Mr. Pike, for that guidance. It is helpful that we will be coming back to the subject. My only reply to the Minister's figures is that an 85 per cent. success rate for something that is otherwise unlawful seems to me to be a very high percentage.

The Minister also relied on an argument about increased resources for the planning authorities to deal with such problems. We have not got on to the issue of resources, and I might be ruled out of order if we do, but I suspect that a vast quantity of increased resources are not going to the local planning authorities but to the regional planning authorities. We will discuss that another day.

I am not surprised that the Minister has received so many replies to her consultation on enforcement. I hope that those will be taken seriously. I would like to have seen, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Ludlow would have too, a little more commitment from the Minister today. If we could have that commitment now, we would not need to press the matter to a vote. I ask the Minister to consider making a commitment that if the responses are such that further action needs to be taken, the Government will not hesitate to do so. I invite the Minister to come back to what I have said.

I endorse everything that my hon. Friend has said. The issue is one of particular interest in my constituency, which is why I have come back for a second bite of the cherry. Small rural district councils face real challenges with regard to such matters. I heard the Minister's comments about the conclusions of the review on enforcement being made available before the end of the year. I am sure that we all welcome that. Given the amount of time that it has already taken for the Bill to be re-committed, it would have been nice if the information had been made available to us in October so that we could have had it at our disposal for the purposes of today's debate.

The people who are under pressure are attempting to do the right thing. They are often up against people who are flouting the law, who understand the law in great detail and know precisely what they are doing. We have a small, thin—blue, red, yellow, or any colour one might want to give it—line of enforcement officers who are doing their best to uphold the law. If any were here now and permitted to speak, I am sure that they would personally appeal to the Minister for action as a result of the review. On their behalf, I encourage Ministers to take concrete action following the review—perhaps even to finding a way of working something into the Bill, if they have an idea of the likely outcome of the review. The issue is very important in parts of the country.

Before the hon. Member for Ludlow winds up, perhaps I may respond. If our conclusion as part of the enforcement review is that we need to take further action, we shall clearly do so. It is worth pointing out that the enforcement review is likely to report before the Bill's ultimate passage through another place, so it will be possible to consider the matters further. At this stage we do not anticipate further legislative measures; otherwise we should have presented them in Committee.

As for whether local planning authorities are attempting to do the right thing, they have the powers to do the right thing. They already have the power to

take enforcement action. Effectively, the Government are being asked to force local councillors to do what they argue they want to do in the first place.

May I try to explain one more time? I should love the Minister to come to talk to the planning officers in my constituency, because about 90 per cent. of my constituency is designated in one way or another; there is no place more affected than the Cotswolds. The officers are working flat out dealing with new applications, and they have time to take retrospective action only on the most flagrant breaches of planning control, which means that there is a whole raft of cases that they cannot enforce.

Those planning officers must make their case to the local democratically elected councillors in the area for the allocation of resources. It is not for me as the Minister to overrule the councillors because their planning officers have asked for something. The decision needs to be taken by the local authorities.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is asking for more ring-fenced resources for the planning authorities in question, but we have substantially increased resources for local authorities. I am resisting making political points and comparing the allocation of resources to local authorities by the present Government and by previous Governments. However, not only have we given local authorities more resources, we are also promoting greater flexibility for them to decide how to allocate them. The decision is for them to take, and it would not be appropriate for the Government to force their hand on the issue if the planning officers cannot make a strong enough case to the councillors who must decide on the budget allocation.

We are not here to debate council tax, and you would rightly call us to order if we began to do that, Mr. Pike. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold has pointed out, in the real world, when councils are under financial pressure, as so many of them are, the statutory responsibilities take priority and often the discretionary services at the margin suffer. Councils must prioritise, like everyone else.

What we are talking about is a classic example of one of the services at the margin that tends to suffer when other, statutory, services come first, including the need to deal with regular planning applications in the time scales of which we are all aware. The people who are attempting to defend the areas in question are very pushed, and need more help. We are being persistent because this is a genuine problem, and the people involved need assistance. I make no apology for the fact that we keep coming back at the Minister on this question, because we know how real the problem is.

I must point out that Opposition Members' stance is not logical or consistent with other things that their party is calling for. They are asking

for further restriction of local authorities' discretion in decision making and in funding allocation. My experience of discussions with Conservative-led councils is that they, like Labour-led ones, often want more discretion over the way in which they use their resources. They would find it rather perverse to hear their Front-Bench spokespeople arguing for local councils to have less discretion in the way in which they allocate funds.

The second aspect implicit in what they are calling for is more ring-fenced resources. I wonder where they think that such resources will come from, given that their party is so keen to cut the resources allocated to many public services.

For the first time the Minister is getting us into real politics. We know very well that the increased resources that the Government provide for planning go straight to the regions, not to local planning authorities. If local authorities had sufficient resources, there would not be a problem with enforcement. It is not a question of the resources being ring-fenced; councils do not have sufficient resources for planning, full stop. My authority does not have enough, and I am sure that other hon. Members could say the same. Councils cannot undertake enforcement on a discretionary basis. We want to legislate with a light touch, and we are in favour of discretion; if that were enshrined in the Bill, the Government would have to provide the resources. If they were to stop giving resources to the regions and put them back into the local authorities, we would take the new clause away like a shot.

Order. Let us not go too wide; we must keep to new clause 31.

Let me conclude, then, Mr. Pike, by pointing out again to the hon. Member for Cotswold the contradictions in his position. He asks for the statutory duty to be imposed to force the Government to provide more resources. I ask him again: where does he want the additional resources to come from?

Take them away from the regions.

We are already providing substantially more resources to local authorities than were provided by previous Governments, and the hon. Gentleman's party wants to reduce the resources provided for public services across the board. I do not see how he manages to make his sums add up.

Mr. Clifton-Brown rose—

I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman one last time.

The Minister is grossly misrepresenting my position. A large percentage of the additional resources that the Government are putting into planning is for setting up the new regional planning boards and bodies, regional spatial strategies and so on. I want to see that money redirected to local people who know what should be going on in their areas, not given to regions 200 miles away.

The hon. Gentleman's point is not right. We are providing substantial increases in resources for local authorities across the board, for them to use in whatever way they see fit. This is not simply about planning, it is about the resources going to local authorities so that they can choose their most important priorities, as local democratically elected councils should be able to. We should not continually try to pre-empt the decisions of local councillors; they should have discretion. We recognise that there are concerns about enforcement, and that the question of resources has been raised, and it is our intention to publish a response to the enforcement review before the end of the year. It is easy, whichever individual issue comes up, for hon. Members to try to encroach on the decision-making powers of local authorities. We should respect those authorities and give them the discretion to make decisions on such matters.

I shall try to avoid going down a similar, political, route. It is dangerous for the Minister to point out that the Conservative position may be full of contradictions. Probably all our positions are full of contradictions, but there are plenty of contradictions where she is coming from. People in glass houses should not throw stones. For instance, the Minister would not expect a local council to decide that enforcement was more important than getting its planning applications in within the statutory time limit laid down by the Government. A local authority that decided that enforcement was more of a problem in its area than the speed at which it dealt with planning applications, and diverted resources from one to the other, would, as a consequence, fail to meet its statutory obligations. The Government accept that there should be statutory rules on speed but not on enforcement, so there is a contradiction in their position, just as there are contradictions in all our positions. We need to be careful about that.

Now I want to talk about the scale of the problem, especially in small rural districts. I have probably bored the Committee about this before, but my constituency is the size of greater London, yet contains only 63,000 adults. Two thirds of the constituency—two thirds the size of London—contains only 32,000 adults, and is covered by South Shropshire district council, which receives planning applications at a rate four times the national average. For a population of 32,000, the council has a tiny planning budget, out of a total budget of, I believe, £2 million. Its resources are tiny. I believe that there should be a unitary Shropshire, as the present council has reached the point of unsustainability, but it still exists, because Ministers will not allow us a unitary Shropshire.

If the council receives four times the national average rate of planning applications, I am fairly certain that its enforcement should run at a similar rate. A few years ago it was such a small authority that it had no enforcement capability at all, but the councillors forced a review of their planning area and installed two enforcement officers, so the council now has an enforcement capability. One of the officers is especially zealous—I am tempted to say over-zealous at times. To give Members an idea of the scale, £20,000 is a 1 per cent. rise in council tax in South Shropshire. A few years ago, the district council introduced a council tax rise of several per cent. just to pay for the enforcement officers.

only a few years ago, just to raise £20,000 to pay for the enforcement officers, South Shropshire district council introduced a 1 per cent. rise in council tax. Having enforcement officers is not a statutory duty; the council chose to have them.

As the Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire said, council tax has reached the limits of acceptability—I believe that that was his phrase. It is beyond small rural councils to say, ''Well, it's our choice. Let's stick the council tax up a bit more,'' to ensure that they can carry out the enforcement. The problem is purely about resources. In fact, South Shropshire district council is diligent about pursuing enforcement; the other authority in my constituency, Bridgnorth, probably does not pursue enforcement as well as South Shropshire does. That gives the Committee some idea of the scale of the financial problems that small rural councils face.

The Minister mentioned a set of statistics that purport that the results of retrospective planning applications are broadly on a par with those of other planning applications. Surely, however, retrospective applications are overwhelmingly concentrated in the relatively small number of rural district areas, in which case, in net terms, the bulk of them are concentrated in the areas with the least financial resources to deal with them?

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Indeed, I caution the Minister against quoting those figures, because of the high percentage of planning applications that are withdrawn before they reach the committee because they have been recommended for refusal. Many applications that would otherwise have been submitted are pulled. Clearly, that will not happen with a retrospective application, as applicants have no choice about obtaining planning permission, so the positions are the same.

Unfortunately, the Minister has failed to convince the Opposition that the Government are sufficiently abreast of the problem, probably as it is particular to a relatively small number of local authorities, and is a much greater problem to them than it is for many other authorities. That may be why the problem does not appear to be as significant to the Government as it does to other hon. Members. I am therefore minded to press the matter to a vote. Until council tax is scrapped and we have a fairer system—I am sure that the Government will reach that position eventually—local government will not have the flexibility to decide to choose to perform non-statutory duties. As we have already heard, most of those non-statutory duties are being wound back because councils can no longer bear to ask pensioners for extra money through the council tax. I shall therefore press the new clause to a Division.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 8.

Question accordingly negatived. New Clause 32Regulations to control light pollution