Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-23
Topic: Housing
James Younger (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I turn to the detail of the compensation amendments, Amendments 102CK and 103BB, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, but spoken to today by the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset I will outline briefly the principles of compensation for land taken by compulsion. These points have arisen in an earlier amendment in Committee. The compensation code is underpinned by the principle of equivalence. This means that the owner should be paid neither less nor more than his loss. The code provides that land shall be purchased at its open-market value, disregarding the effect of the scheme underlying the compulsory purchase The land is valued in a construct called the no-scheme world, whereby any increase or decrease in value that is due to the scheme is disregarded. Land will always have its existing-use value but market value also takes into account the effect of any planning permissions that have already been granted and of the prospect of future planning permissions. This is generally known as hope value, as the noble Duke eloquently pointed out. In the context of compensation for compulsory purchase, this is assessed according to the planning assumptions in the Land Compensation Act 1961, which require the valuer to assume that the scheme underlying the acquisition is cancelled. I remind the House that these were extensively revised and debated in the Localism Act 2011 In some situations, there will be no hope value, because the individual claimant could not have obtained planning permission for some more valuable use. For instance, the land might be in an isolated rural location where permission for development would have been unlikely to be granted in the absence of a comprehensive scheme requiring compulsory purchase powers. In other situations, perhaps where land is acquired near an existing settlement, there will be pre-existing prospects for development on the land. In lay man’s language, that is development potential that existed prior to the scheme. The strength of those prospects will be reflected in the market value of the land On Amendment 102CK, it has been said that land acquired for housing by means of a development consent order should always attract development value. If the land had development potential in the absence of the scheme underlying the development consent order, that hope value would be reflected in the market value and the compensation to be paid. But an increase in the value of the land that is solely attributable to the scheme would be disregarded under the compensation code I turn to Amendment 103BB. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, have suggested that there is something unique about the land taken for new towns that requires the Secretary of State to provide a formula for compensation. New towns may well fall into the class of case 1 mentioned earlier, where there is no pre-existing hope value, as there is no reasonable prospect of development in the absence of a comprehensive scheme requiring compulsory purchase powers. In this situation, compensation in the no-scheme world is likely to be at or close to agricultural values. Schedule 1 to the Land Compensation Act 1961 makes it very clear that for new towns any increase in value that is attributable to the development of other land in the new town must be disregarded, where that development would not have been likely to be carried out had the area not been designated as a new town I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for the amendments spoken to by the noble Duke, the Duke of Somerset. I suspect that your Lordships will not be very keen to be further enlightened this afternoon by a technical debate on these particular matters. However, we shall look carefully at what the noble Duke said, and I shall write further to him and the noble Earl before Report about these matters.