argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Robert Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support the amendments that the noble Baronesses, Lady Andrews and Lady Greengross, have brought forward. I will also speak briefly on Amendment 102, which the Labour Front Bench has just referred to I agree with the points raised by those who proposed the amendments. It is absolutely the case that the population demographics of this country require housing to be much more adapted, adaptable and enduring in its adaptability. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, made the very good point that once adapted a property should, wherever possible, be put to continuous good use. It should certainly not be made unaccessible by subsequent occupiers I want to pick up a point arising from Amendment 102 about introducing into Building Regulations minimum standards for internal spaces. The standards published last March in fact cover some of the ground that these amendments cover and so I ask the Minister not to put too much weight on the additional cost, and the therefore likely reduction in the number of homes built, as a result of adopting any or all of these amendments. The reality is that, if the building industry is told to do something through regulations or enforceable codes, while it may grumble, it will do it. The additional cost will then rapidly be taken out of the equation because of the number of properties built In that respect, I want to draw the Minister’s attention to some remarks made by the chair of the Berkeley Group reported in the magazine Building a week or two ago—he was referring to affordable housing but I am sure his point is just as relevant for accessible housing. The article says: "Tony Pidgley has said the government needs to impose a fixed level of ‘affordable’ housing on every development if it wants to tackle the housing crisis. Pidgley said if ministers insisted on a … rule developers would just get on with it" That is a critical point for the Government to understand. The industry will always grumble and complain that it does not want to do things and this can be used as an excuse by Ministers and civil servants to reject amendments like those in front of us. I hope that the Minister will steer clear of that argument.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Public Lands
Graham Norman Tope (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is a pleasure to be back in harness with the noble Lord, Lord True, on matters of mutual interest to south and south-west London boroughs. I am grateful to him for his quite lengthy explanation. I will try not to repeat much of what he said but to add to it. I am glad that he started by suggesting that the solution suggested in his amendment might not be what happens in the end. That is probably right and partly why I did not add my name to it I first came to this problem when I became leader of a London borough council, coincidentally at exactly the time that the GLC was abolished. When the regional park was established in 1966, it was funded by the Greater London Council and paid for through the precept on all London boroughs to the GLC, not to the park authority. It was brought to my attention in my first year as leader of a London borough council when suddenly we found that we had a precept to a park authority, the existence of which we were only vaguely aware of—I must confess that at the time I thought that the park was in Essex, although as the noble Lord, Lord True, said, it is not—and that we were going to be paying several hundred thousand pounds to this authority right across London. I inquired how many visitors from Sutton—my borough—went to the park and was told that there were fewer visitors from my borough, which was paying several hundred thousand pounds that year towards it, than there were from Northern Ireland. This has been a thorn in the flesh for the past 30 years, at least, and continues to be so. It gets raised on a number of occasions—the last occasion I remember was during the passage of the Localism Bill—always by ingenious methods such as that which the noble Lord, Lord True, has devised today, for which I am grateful to him This has become a little more important now not only because of the financial pressure on all local authorities, including the London boroughs, but because whereas 50 years ago, when the Lee Valley Regional Park was established, there was only one regional park in or partly in London, now there are three. There is the Colne Valley Regional Park, a relatively small part of which is in London, and the Wandle Valley Regional Park, which is wholly within Greater London and which covers the boroughs of Wandsworth, Croydon, Merton and Sutton. It was established a few years ago, not as a statutory authority but as a trust, and at that time I was one of the trustees. It has no funding stream. It has been funded in recent years, to the extent that it has been funded at all, by voluntary contributions from the four Wandle boroughs, as we call them. Rather than keeping the money that we obtained by Lee Valley’s reduction in precept, we chose to pass on that discount or reduction to help to fund the Wandle Valley Regional Park.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Public Lands
Graham Norman Tope (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I have probably 30 years’ experience of duelling with the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, which is significant because Haringey is just a little bit nearer to the Lee Valley Regional Park than the London Borough of Sutton, yet it pays pretty well exactly the same precept. He suggested that I was trying to undermine the funding to Lee Valley; absolutely not—I am second to none in my praise and admiration for what Lee Valley does and achieves and the excellent facilities there. I said that the reduction in the precept had been used to support the Wandle Valley Regional Park; what I should have added is that Lee Valley Regional Park has been very supportive of the Wandle Valley Regional Park. It has provided tangible support to the best extent it can within its powers, and we are grateful for and appreciative of that. If anything I said has been interpreted as some form of attack on Lee Valley, some form of questioning its value, my 30 years of experience with the noble Lord, Lord Harris, lead me to suggest and put on record that that is quite wrong.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My understanding, having read the technical consultation, is that that is exactly the position. One thing we have to tease out is the exact stage at which the detailed investigations into and the related decisions about particular sites take place under the new system. We all agree that while they should not take place three times, they should take still place. However, there does not seem to be anything in the new system that says they will unless they are carried out and paid for by the local planning authority. That is unacceptable.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Kathryn Pinnock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Following on from what the noble Lord said—although perhaps the Minister will put us right—my understanding is that permission in principle has two routes. One is through the local and neighbourhood plan. Giving permission in principle is really what such plans do. It is the second route that I am concerned about. Through this route, an application can be made directly to the local planning authority for a site that may not have already been allocated for development—if it had been, it would be in the local plan. That is my concern with this proposal. If it just said that sites allocated in a local plan have, by the very nature of their being in a local plan, permission in principle, I could probably live with it. I am concerned about the second area, and I hope that I will get answers and reassurances.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): That is very helpful but I think what is concerning people is not what additional material considerations there may be for planning applications or the new system, it is which of the existing ones the new system will miss out. Will anything that is a material consideration for a planning permission at the moment, whether it is a full permission or reserved matters or whatever, still be a material consideration under the PIP technical details system?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am a bit confused by the Minister’s language. When she said that they should be negotiated before the development starts, does that mean that permission is given by the local planning authority as if it was a reserved matter?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am grateful for the care with which the Minister has answered and taken part in the discussion on these amendments. Inevitably a great deal of what she said was explaining the proposals rather than engaging with some of the arguments put forward, although she engaged with quite a few The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made an interesting point about emerging plans. We will discuss this later, but it is clear that the Government do not intend that permission in principle should be retrospective. However, there are plans at the moment that may not—and if they are very close to adoption, will not—have been put together with an understanding that permission in principle might come from them. There is an interesting debate to be had in a later group about that The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, also mentioned flood plains. In a sense, this underlines the difficulty behind the permission in principle and technical details concept. Is the liability of land to flood on a flood plain or indeed in any other circumstances a matter to be sorted out before permission in principle is given or not? Should it be sorted out at local plan level? If there is an application for permission in principle outside the local plan, direct to the authority, who sorts it out and at what stage? One of the concerns of local planning authorities is that the work on assessing the problem, assessing what needs doing, designing mitigation methods and so on may be transferred from the applicant—the developer—to the local authority. Most of the work involved in putting a local plan together, such as the strategic housing land availability assessment and other such documents, is done by and paid for by the local authority In terms of planning applications, one of the complaints seems to be that developers—applicants—have to spend a lot of money at an early stage when they are not sure if their application is going to get passed. I am not quite sure how you get away from that, but if a local authority says that it cannot give permission in principle on land because it is a flood plain, it will have to have evidence to show that—not least if it goes to appeal. To get that evidence, it will have to do the work and show that mitigation is not possible. There is a real problem. Is this a device for transferring the cost of doing work before an application can be agreed from the developer to the local authority? If it is, there are obvious problems, which I think we can discuss in later groups Otherwise, I am pretty grateful to the Minister for what she has said and I will have a happy time over the Recess reading it all. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the problem is that getting permission in principle will not provide certainty. All it will provide is certainty that you can go on to the next stage where the hard work will have to be done and paid for and the application might be turned down. The Minister keeps talking about the fact that conditions can be put on and applications can be amended at the technical details stage. That is absolutely right but they can also be thrown out, and the problem that some of us, including the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, are trying to grasp is that some of the things which will be discussed at technical details stage are regarded as something that should be discussed at outline planning stage. They are matters of principle such as the question of whether you can get proper safe access to the site and the matter of ecology on the site. The proposal that has been put forward is that you can get planning permission in principle for such a site but then there are technical details that have to be dealt with, so it does not stop the cost. It might even cost small builders more because they are being led down the garden path with permission in principle and then they are being stopped when they get to the privy at the bottom, whereas at the moment they would be stopped halfway down the garden path. So this needs to be thought out As a ward councillor I am currently engaged peripherally in discussions for a small planning application for about 24 houses. The development has had full planning permission but the developers decided it was not viable as set out so they have come back with a changed application. Discussions are now taking place which are delaying the whole thing, but the purpose is to get it passed in the end. Some of the discussions are taking place because residents in nearby flats, assisted by me and other councillors, are complaining about some of the properties just behind them being too high and too big. Meanwhile, the developer is saying that it is still not viable and they want another one. So discussions are taking place at the moment on the minor detail of changing the design of one of the houses, perhaps putting another house in a corner where there is not one.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): On the question of five years, if I remember correctly, the limit for outline planning applications and full applications used to be five years, and the limit for outlines was reduced to three years precisely to encourage people to get on with development and apply for reserved matters. Is it not the case that going back to five years for planning in principle before technical details are required could result in the process slowing down, which is the opposite to what the Government want?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): While we are on this, in principle—I hate to use that word here—there might be no reason why, if the local plan has been put together in a very thorough way with lots of public consultation, it should not apply, once it is adopted, perhaps next year or later this year, to permission in principle. The problem is, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the Minister said, that because of the way in which local plans are put together at present, very often there is not much public involvement about particular site allocations because people always think, "That’s been allocated for housing for ages so it’ll be allocated again, and we can always get involved and object if and when there’s a planning application"—and people hope that there never will be. If a local plan involving site allocations, whether it is the whole local plan or just the site allocations document, is almost or half-way ready to go to inspection, and the sites have more or less been agreed, and then there is the question of whether that plan, once it is adopted, should qualify for PIP, if the Minister is saying, "The local authority might have to go back and review it", and if that then involves having a greater degree of public involvement and neighbour consultation than has taken place so far, that will delay the plan. Can the Government give a guarantee that under those circumstances they would not then penalise the authority for not meeting deadlines in production of the plan?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): It would be very helpful to have a bit more information about some of the Government’s thinking on the secondary legislation to which the noble Baroness referred several times. That is what I was trying to intervene on. It is very difficult to know how the process is going to work and to understand it without knowing at least some of that. I accept that some of it is in the technical consultation, but not all Can the Minister tell us the relationship between pieces of land which have permission in principle and other planning applications that might be made on those pieces of land? Is the existence of the permission in principle a material consideration in the consideration of another planning application for a different use? If that planning application is granted, does the permission in principle on that land lapse, or would there be two permissions of a different sort side by side?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Mixed Topics
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am sorry to pursue the detail, but it is important. There might be a permission in principle on a piece of land that has been there for three or four years, and nothing has happened, and someone comes along and wants to develop it for something different. That is the sort of situation I am thinking of, in which the permission in principle is historic on the land, as it were, and it is a new application. Perhaps the Minister will write to me on that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I have four amendments in this group that pursue the question of what should be in permission in principle and what in technical details. These are absolutely crucial issues, which need a great deal more thought between now and Report People will not understand that permission in principle can be given, as I suggested in Amendment 96ZC, for a piece of land where there are clearly drainage problems and there needs to be drainage assessment, unless that drainage assessment has taken place. If it is a brownfield site, is the local authority supposed to carry out that assessment to see whether a sustainable drainage scheme is needed for the site, to set out any details of measures that can mitigate the problem, or perhaps improve the problem by taking water off land that is liable to flood but that, if dealt with properly, would not? I suggest that that kind of thing ought to be part of the assessment of permission in principle, and it ought to be the responsibility of the developer to assess it and to produce a scheme that is acceptable. Otherwise, it will be put in the local plan as suitable for development, it will be allocated for housing and it will automatically get permission in principle because of that, yet the problems will not have been looked at and sorted out, and the certainty that the Government want for the developer will not exist. It will simply be transferred to the technical details stage Amendment 96ZD picks up another similar issue, which is highways and access appraisal. On any substantial development it is almost impossible to get outline planning permission nowadays unless you have the access sorted out. That is absolutely crucial. The access may be the direct access into the site, off the road or down the road, or works may be necessary on the local highways network to make the development of that site acceptable. Again, if that is not done by the permission in principle stage, if people think they have permission in principle and everything is okay, all the problems, all the expense of doing this will inevitably go to the technical details stage On the proposed timescale for dealing with consultations of three weeks, which I read out during the debate on the last amendment, if the local planning authority is consulting the local highways authority and it has to do a technical appraisal, go on site, measure junctions and all the rest of it, the whole thing is impossible. Unless it is sorted out at the permission in principle stage, there will be no certainty, permission in principle will be nothing, and technical details will turn into a full planning application type of process.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-22
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): That was very interesting and we are making a bit of progress. I will put a particular instance to the Minister. It is based on real life, but I shall not say where it is. There was a big application for 500 houses—that is huge by east Lancashire standards. It has outline planning permission. As part of that, it required details of access. The highways authority—it is a two-tier area, so a county council—was required to approve access off not only an existing main road, but I think the roundabout on to that road. It also required a contribution towards improvements to a roundabout further down the road to increase its capacity on to the motorway. That all happened at the outline planning stage. Where would that happen under PIP and technical details? When will it happen? What is the process by which it would happen? Would that be part of declaring that that piece of land was okay for permission in principle, or would it have to wait for technical details?