Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-23
Topic: Public Lands
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): I applaud my noble friend Lord Skelmersdale’s efforts to help those who face problems with a public right of way that passes through their farm or garden. He will know through his contact with Ministers in Defra that the Government have considerable sympathy for those people who face these issues and who may feel that the system has let them down. Where these cases occur, people may experience acute problems: my noble friend has cited some examples, and I can think of others. Although the numbers are comparatively few, and we should ensure that any changes we make to legislation are proportionate to the extent of the problem, nevertheless, the Government are determined to help by putting in place a remedy Noble Lords may recall the passage of a suite of measures in the Deregulation Act 2015 which aimed to reform the system of recording and diverting public rights of way, to which my noble friend referred. The Government are now in the process of implementing these measures, which will come into effect later this year. We believe that the combined effect of these measures, which received cross-party support in both Houses, will make a significant difference, and that we should not legislate further before seeing how they work out in practice. A package of measures such as that, which is being implemented through agreement among stakeholders, is far more likely to prove successful in practice There is clear agreement among the stakeholders on the working group that developed the package of reform that the major difficulty for landowners is in getting local authorities to make a diversion or extinguishment order in the first place. Our plans to implement the right to apply for such orders will overcome this. The right to apply will enable a landowner to make a formal application for the diversion or extinguishment of a public right of way. With that will come the right to appeal to the Secretary of State if the authority rejects the application or fails to act on it. Therefore, local authorities will no longer be able to ignore requests or dismiss them out of hand. They will be obliged either to make an order or to be prepared to justify their reasons for not doing so on appeal to the Secretary of State The provisions in the Deregulation Act allow the right to apply to be extended to land-use types other than agriculture, forestry and the keeping of horses— for example, private residential gardens. The right to apply will be supplemented by guidance that will effectively act as a presumption to divert or extinguish public rights of way that pass through the gardens of family homes, working farmyards or commercial premises where privacy, safety or security are a problem. The noble Lord references guidance and I will come back to that in a moment. A further hurdle is to get an order confirmed. However, according to the Ramblers, which keeps accurate records of these matters, of the 1,257 diversion orders which have reached a conclusion in the past three years, 94% did not attract any objections. Of the 6% that did, less than 1% were not confirmed following submission to the Secretary of State. The guidance will give authorities more scope to confirm orders made in the interests of the landowner in circumstances where a right of way may cause hardship because it goes through the garden of a family home, a working farmyard or other commercial premises There is no intention to water down the guidance, which was deposited in the House Library during the passage of the Deregulation Act. Defra officials continue to work with the stakeholder working group and the Intrusive Footpaths Campaign to finalise the drafting. We believe that the combined effect of the right to apply and the guidance will have the desired effect and we should not rush to legislate further before seeing how these measures work in practice. Moreover, under the right-to-apply provisions, the Defra Secretary of State will be the confirming authority for all disputed orders I am happy to reaffirm the commitment made by the previous Government that we will review, within two years of implementation of the reforms package, how effective the right-to-apply provisions and the accompanying guidance have proved to be. The review will send a message to authorities that the Government are determined that the new policy should work and that if guidance does not bring about sufficient changes, we will consider the introduction of further measures The amendment, which was also spoken to by my noble friend Lady Byford, is also concerned with public rights of way. However, she refers to urban routes in current use which are not recorded on the legal record of public rights of way, the definitive map and statement. The amendment would reduce the work of local authorities by removing a whole class of routes from the work to update the record I referred earlier to the package of measures in the Deregulation Act 2015 concerned with improving the processes for diverting, extinguishing and recording public rights of way. I also mentioned that the Government are working closely with the stakeholder working group which developed the original package of measures The secondary legislation will include regulations made under Section 54(1) of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie—which allows the Secretary of State to specify descriptions of unrecorded routes which will not be extinguished in 2026. The working group and the Government are mindful of the need to consider urban as well as rural. We think that no further primary provisions are required to achieve the outcome sought by my noble friend. With these assurances, I hope that my noble friend will be persuaded to withdraw the amendment.