'(1) A local planning authority's duties under the Local Government Act 1972 with respect to the appointment of officers shall (without prejudice to the generality of the provisions of that Act) include the duty of appointing a fit person to be the chief planning officer of the authority, whether or not that person is described as chief planning officer.

(2) The chief planning officer shall have overall senior management responsibility for the functions set out in section 38.'.—[Mr. Clifton-Brown.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. The new clause concerns the employment and role of chief planning officers, which it will be useful to spend a few minutes discussing. The Town and Country Planning Association has given us a briefing, and I am grateful to it for helping us to draw up the new clause. It tells us:

''Chief Education Officers, Directors of Social Services, Chief Treasurers and Chief Solicitors (described as 'Proper' officers) all benefit from statutory recognition''.

The wording of the new clause is based on the part of the Education Act 1996 that deals with the statutory recognition of chief education officers.

We would all agree that chief planning officers need to be of the highest calibre and sensitivity to deliver the future vision of their authority and local community. The Town and Country Planning Association continues:

''Their delegated authority can also be great; for example the granting or refusing of planning permission can create or remove millions of pounds of land value at the stroke of a pen.''

Agricultural land worth a few thousand pounds an acre can often be turned into development land worth many hundreds of thousands of pounds, so the decisions of planning officers and their recommendations to their committees can be hugely important, not only to the people developing the land but to the community and surrounding area. One big development can shape the whole future of a town or city.

The new clause would give the officer responsible for planning statutory recognition similar to that of other local authority chief officers. It would not prevent local authorities from combining the post with others, nor would it prevent them from using a variety of job titles to suit local wishes. The Town and Country Planning Association comments:

''Unless planners are given the status and ambition they need candidates of calibre will not come forward.''

That is a serious and worrying problem, given the changes that the Government are making. If I were currently a planning officer in a county council, whose strategic role was being diminished by the Bill, and I received an offer from the private sector, I would be very tempted to move, particularly as my future would be so uncertain.

That is a problem at the moment. There are not enough trained planning officers in this country. The competition from the private sector for good ones is huge. Some are paid vast sums. I was with some big developers yesterday, and some of their principal planners are paid a very great deal of money indeed.

This is not only about money, it is about statutory status: status in the council and among councillors, and status with the general public. We need to ensure that planning officers are given that status, that they are paid properly, that we have more trained planning officers, and that there is proper career progression and development. All those are lacking at present. I hope that the Minister will give the matter serious consideration. My concern is not only with chief planning officers, but with the number of planning officers in general. Most authorities are struggling even now to carry out all their planning functions. With all the additional functions that the Bill gives them, I do not see how they will be able to do that unless a large number of extra people are recruited.

I am not entirely sure whether the new clause exactly fits the Bill, but I support the important principle that planning authorities should recognise the status and role of planning officers. Substantial changes have occurred in recent years in how local authorities and planning authorities see their roles. They have removed the silos of professional status within local authorities.

A few years ago there used to be a chief planning officer, a valuer, a chief education officer, an officer with responsibility for social services, a chief legal officer and so on. Even in a district authority, there would be 13 or 14 chief officers sitting round the table with their different professional hats on. As the function of local authorities changed, those chief officers' roles were, quite rightly in my view, often subsumed in super-departments Officers in local authorities were grouped around the table as officers in charge of an area of concern rather than on the basis of their professional qualifications or backgrounds, which led to a great improvement in how they worked.

However, in that development, the sense that there were particular areas that needed a focus of concern within local authorities was lost. At the same time, local authorities changed from taking a reactive role to adopting a proactive role on many planning matters. That is particularly important because clause 38 enjoins planning authorities to concern themselves with sustainable development, which requires a proactive concern for the whole body of activity in a local authority rather than simply ticking off

particular planning applications as they come through. Indeed, the widely welcomed Government communities plan reflects the imperative for proactive planning on the part of local authorities across the country.

The movement towards more proactive planning is happening at the same time as the continuing reorganisation of arrangements for executive authorities—and, possibly, elected mayors—in local government. The role of chief officers has been further thrown into generality. Those two forces are moving in opposite directions.

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because his case is intelligent and cogent. Does he agree that there is consensus in Committee not only on the proactive approach, which is welcome, but on greater community involvement in the planning process? Community involvement is good, but it will inevitably take up the time of planning officers, which will put further pressure on their work loads.

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The proactive planning process involves more than making various connections in the local authority planning process that may not have been made previously. Connections must also be made with a variety of stakeholders in the planning process, who are outside the authority, within the community. That was not the common sense of planning in years gone by.

Planning now plays a number of roles in local government and planning authorities, although there is also a decreased focus on that activity. That is the reason why the principle of recognising the role of chief planning officer—whether or not that person goes by that exact title—is important. As the hon. Member for Cotswold has pointed out, there is such recognition in a number of other areas, where specific posts form the statutory basis on which other officers work.

I ask my right hon. Friend the Minister to consider accepting the new clause, and to take on board the notion that this recognition of status in local authorities is increasingly important, especially given the admirable changes to the planning process made by the Bill and the rolling changes that he has just explained to the Committee. If he does so, that will underline the importance of planning officers in that process and in the wider process of ensuring that planning becomes part of the fabric of local authorities, not the part of the silo, as it was for some people in years past.

I offer general support, although I am worried by the general implications of doing so. I hope that my comments will help the situation, rather than create a dogmatic position. I have great sympathy for the idea of ensuring that there is no decline in the status of planning departments. However, I am concerned about the financial effect on authorities of making it a statutory requirement to have a chief planning officer. I know, for example, that the Government are publishing a children's Green Paper, which means that there will have to be a director for children's services.

The trend is to keep telling councils that they must have one of these and one of those. The danger is that a council's ability to manage its staffing arrangements, especially at the highest paid levels, becomes very difficult. Each of the five borough and district councils in Shropshire, for example, has a different system. Some have a director of planning, while others have a head of development control who works for a director of operational services, because they have needed to group several areas together for financial reasons. My concern is that this may force some councils into having a director of planning again. A few years ago, South Shropshire had to take that step for financial reasons.

The hon. Gentleman makes a cogent point. Obviously, it is best to leave such decisions to local authorities—but does he believe that a local authority would be wiser to share the appointment of a director of planning with an adjoining local authority, to obtain a higher calibre of advice than it might have if it subordinated him to someone with the ghastly title of ''director of operational services''?

I have some sympathy for that idea. South Shropshire was slightly fortunate because when it abolished the post of director of planning, the director of planning applied for the lower, and lower paid, post of head of development control. He is still there, so the council still has in post a very experienced person, who did not want to move from the delights of south Shropshire—for which I do not blame him. However, it could have ended up having to recruit someone with less experience.

The solution lies almost in the other direction. If the Government were to allow us to have local government change in Shropshire so that we could get rid of the districts and boroughs and have a unitary Shropshire, for which there is cross-party support, we could get round the financial constraints. Shropshire would then have one director of planning, who would have very high status. However, I am concerned that the new clause could impose financial constraints on district councils, especially small ones, while we still have them. None the less, I broadly support its aims, because there has been a tendency to downgrade planning in some areas. One could argue that that had happened in South Shropshire.

Fortunately, the director of operational services gives a free-ranging role to the head of development control in South Shropshire, and that works well, but I can see that such an arrangement might not always work. Therefore, although I support the principle, I think that we need to look through the practicalities to see whether it is achievable, or whether other changes to local government are needed to make it achievable. Perhaps when, in the Government's utopian vision of local government, there are unitary authorities throughout the country, the financial constraints will not be there—but in the interim, it might cause some problems.

As usual, we have had a thoughtful exchange. One of the things on which I reflect during Standing Committee proceedings is the fact that one ends up with an almost intimate knowledge of the constituencies of Opposition Members, as they draw on their constituency experiences to illustrate their cases. I feel that I could walk around blindfolded in either the Isle of Wight or Ludlow, not that I would want to do that in either, since both are very beautiful localities with which I am already familiar. We have not heard as much as we might have looked forward to hearing about the Cotswolds—

Give me time.

I pay proper tribute to the hon. Member for Cotswold, who really has focused on the substance of the matters before us.

I particularly welcome the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) and his enthusiastic support for the Bill's provisions. One might say that, as a Government Member, he is duty-bound to express such support, but my hon. Friend is a great expert in these matters and he knows what he is talking about, so his wholehearted backing for our proposals is encouraging. I absolutely agree with him about the need for planners to adopt a proactive role, and I welcome the Opposition's support for that approach. The purpose of planning is to promote sustainable development, not to find elegant and, often, protracted ways of saying no, so we proceed with a degree of consensus.

I have some sympathy with the aims of the new clause, but I cannot agree to the proposal. While a strong, effective and efficient planning function is important to local businesses and local communities, we do not need to give statutory protection to chief planning officers to deal with the problems that Members have identified.

Two separate strands of thinking on the issue have emerged during the debate. First, let me explain our thoughts on the position of planning officers who find their professional advice being disregarded or questioned. Currently, only three posts are covered by the additional statutory protection under the Local Authorities (Standing Orders) (England) Regulations 2001 made under local government legislation. They are the chief executive, the chief finance officer and the monitoring officer, whose role is to keep the council within vires and propriety guidance. Those three officers are seen as particularly vulnerable and potentially exposed to political pressures when carrying out their functions of keeping the authority on the proper and legal course.

There might be circumstances in which chief planning officers are put under pressure to make particular recommendations either on planning applications or in relation to the content of local development documents—from applicants, third parties or members of the authority—but there are already adequate safeguards against that. For example, the new national code of conduct, which tackles questions of ethics throughout local

government, gives the officer in such circumstances the opportunity to make a complaint to the Standards Board for England.

I want to probe what the Minister has said. It seems that the chief planning officer is more likely to be under political pressure than either the chief executive or the standards officer, because of the amount of money involved. That would be the case in a small authority such as mine in particular, where—if there were a major application from a major organisation with a very deep pocket and it decided to fight a planning refusal—the potential cost to the authority, as a percentage of budget, might be huge. Therefore, the recommendations that a chief planning officer makes could have major financial consequences, particularly for a small authority.

That seems to me to be a broad political pressure, not the personal pressures that are being identified and used to justify the new clause. The hon. Gentleman does not imply that there would be pressure of a highly personal or even pecuniary nature brought to bear by elected members of the authority.

The hon. Gentleman's example relates to broader issues in the public domain. A major development, such as he characterises, would be well known to the public and would not be susceptible to the individual pressures from which other local government regulations seek to offer protection. I do not wholly agree with his point.

Our prospectus, ''Training in Planning for Councillors'', which was issued in 1999, included the need for proper training for members on issues relating to propriety as well as the principles and policies of the planning system. Our agenda for culture change considers afresh whether anything else is needed to guide members on planning.

Planning legislation provides for circumstances in which a possibly perverse decision is being, or is about to be, made by a local planning authority. Under part 2, the Secretary of State has the power to direct modification of a local development document and to direct that a development plan document be submitted to him for his approval. He also has powers under the principal Act to call in a planning application at any time before it is determined. Similarly, he has other reserve powers of, for example, modification, revocation and discontinuance action. Finally, an applicant who has an application refused or granted subject to conditions can appeal to the Secretary of State against the refusal or the imposition of the conditions.

I turn to the issue of strengthening the planning profession more generally, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test.

I am sorry to pursue the point. This may seem perverse, but I want to try one more time.

The Minister says that an applicant has a final right of appeal to an independent inspector appointed by the Secretary of State, as enshrined in all planning legislation. That very act of appeal provides an

inherent threat to any authority that turns down an application. An authority knows that if a commercial organisation with a deep pocket appeals and loses, and costs are awarded against it, that will require a significant financial outlay. In those circumstances, a chief planning officer would come under real pressure not only from fellow officers—particularly the finance officer—but from other members of the authority.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. One is tempted to say that, rightly or wrongly, that is the way of the world and the nature of things. One is also tempted to say that the pressure he describes would not be frequently experienced. The pressure is in the public domain and is totally transparent. It seems to me that regulation seeks to protect the three officers, identified as being in statutory positions, from internal pressures.

The case suggested by the hon. Gentleman envisages the possibility of internal pressures, but they will be no more than the pressures of debate that are bound to occur in an authority contemplating a major application that, if rejected, may entail large costs. However, such debates will occur in the public domain and will undoubtedly be the subject of exchanges in full committee and council meetings. I contend that there will be a degree of transparency.

Mr. Clifton-Brown rose—

The hon. Gentleman comes back again.

I partially agree with the Minister. Of course, a lot of it will be in the public domain, but before the planning committee considers a controversial application, planning officers will have to make a recommendation on the development, and that will not be in the public domain. He knows that if a major application goes to appeal, the planning officer's recommendation can come under the minutest scrutiny. That is why the chief planning officer needs protection.

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that inspiration has winged its way to me during our exchanges. Let me try this line: the chief planning officer is more likely to be under political pressure on the ground that an appeal to the Secretary of State can be costly. Based on advice, I can say that the costs of appealing to the Secretary of State are borne by each party, unless one of the parties has acted unreasonably. Therefore, if the actions of the planning authority are reasonable, costs are unlikely to be awarded against it.

That serious and interesting observation goes at least some way to undermining the strength of the hon. Gentleman's argument on the nature of the costs. Does he wish to come back on that?

I was not going to come back, because I do not want to prolong our debate, but, as the Minister has invited me to do so, I shall.

In an ideal world, where everything is black and white, what the Minister said would be 100 per cent. true. The problem is that big commercial cases are not black and white; they are grey. That is the purpose of allowing appeals. When a planning officer makes a recommendation on a controversial application that

may or may not conform entirely to the plan, he cannot be sure on which side an inspector will come down when making his decision. That is why the officer's professionalism and judgment are absolutely on the line in controversial cases, particularly those that go to appeal. That is why chief planning officers need such protection. They undertake important and delicate decisions on behalf of the community.

I am sure that that is correct. I shall come, in due course, to the influence that costs may have on such decisions.

I intervene to help the hon. Member for Cotswold. A planning officer might come under the most severe internal pressure if the local authority has put forward an application. If the plan had been dreamed up by the chief executive and senior executive councillors, the head of development control would be under pressure to write a good report—I said earlier that the matter should not involve one and the same person, as once happened in one of my local authorities—and the pressure, particularly on junior officers, could be strong. Senior officers and councillors would be pushing the policy, and the officers would in effect be going against council policy if they were to give reasons why it should not be approved.

I can foresee situations in which there is greater internal pressure, but I return to my earlier caveat about cost.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that insight. Perhaps I could now turn to the other strand in our debate—the need to strengthen the planning profession more generally. As part of our planning reform agenda, of which the Bill is an integral part, we have made it clear that we need to change the profile of planning, and change its culture, so that it is better suited to our objectives. We have agreed that we want a proactive, transparent and open system.

A key issue for culture change is mainstreaming planning, by which I mean putting planning at the heart of local policy making, in the broadest sense, and of local governance. The Bill, and the new planning policy statement 1, ''Planning Policy and Principles'' will together set out a new vision. The Bill will do that through the links that it will establish between planning and community strategies and sustainable development generally, among other things. We will consult shortly on a draft of the new PPS1.

We are working with key partners in local government—leaders, chief executives, members and officers—to build a consensus around some of the key issues. The issues that we have been talking about are skills, vision and raising the profile. I have already mentioned member training. Sir John Egan is looking at skills more generally and the Royal Town Planning Institute has published its education commission's report. Those things, and a host of other initiatives, are aimed at pulling the profession in the right direction, and into the right shape.

On Tuesday I told the Committee about a little meeting that took place on Monday, when I met representatives of three authorities—Middlesbrough, Wychavon and North Wiltshire—which had all hugely improved their planning performance. If I may say so, that meeting was in its own modest way a little accolade for planners' success. It also sent a message to planners about how important the Government consider them to be, and our wish to reward them with repute and resources.

That brings me to the subject of resources. Another way in which the Government have been playing their part is through the adequate resourcing of the service. By reducing the stresses in the system, and building extra capacity in it to achieve our objectives, we hope to build a stronger profession; we want to attract new and dynamic people into it in the first place, and to bring them back in if they have drifted to work in other related subject areas such as regeneration—or, indeed, to working for big developers, such as those that the hon. Member for Cotswold was with yesterday evening. I was with the Town and Country Planning Association myself—I do not know what that says about our different approaches.

Our main contribution to dealing with this matter has been the planning delivery grant, but I want the Committee to note that we are also looking at charges and fees under the amended provisions introduced by clause 47. The new grant is worth £350 million between 2003 and 2006. Fifty million pounds was allocated to authorities this year on the basis of their development control performance, and we have consulted on the broad terms under which we will release £130 million in 2004–05.

The terms for next year will include the policy-making function as well as the handling of planning applications. In that context I should mention the costs of appeal; we of course accept the need for proper resources. In the light of the £350 million in the planning delivery grant, and the fees review, appeals are by no means the threat that the hon. Member for Cotswold has suggested.

It is early days in the life of the planning delivery grant, but we are already doing some research into its impact. Most of what we have heard informally is encouraging. Although the grant is not ring-fenced for the planning service, we believe that a very high proportion of it is being spent on planning. Authorities think that the grant will improve their performance and assist them in building capacity to deliver quality services in a timely way.

We hear that some educational institutions have found their planning courses heavily subscribed, as planning authorities use their grant to give their staff better skills to do the job. That is seriously good news. Although that is encouraging, our research will have to touch on the key principles on which the grant is founded. We have designed it to produce an incentive for better performance by making it clear that we will only give more grant to authorities if their performance continues to improve.

We do not accept the need for the new clause; there are adequate safeguards for individual planning

officers who may feel that their professional advice is being ignored. We have put in place a wide-ranging culture change initiative supported by extra resources for planning authorities to build a strong profession capable of delivering to the high standards that we expect. In the light of those observations, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree to withdraw the new clause.

This has been an important and useful debate; we have covered a lot of interesting areas. I would have liked the opportunity to probe the Minister further on the planning grant, and whether it is going to the regions or the local authorities, but this is not the place for that. There are a lot of things in the new clause to which we need to return; we shall find ways of returning to them, but now is not the time. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.