Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-05-21
Topic: Housing
Dale Norman Campbell-Savours (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am supportive of these amendments but in saying that I was quite taken by the compromise proposal made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. That was not the subject of an amendment but I hope that Ministers will seriously consider what she said when she proposed the withdrawal of part of the Bill What interests me is what will happen in the event that the Government decide to drive through the Bill in its current form with the possibility that at some stage in the future, when we are all pushing up daisies, someone might come along and say, "We are going to develop more of this site". As I understand it, apart from the protections which the Minister has referred to, along with the tight planning arrangements and highly restrictive covenants that might exist in terms of the land, there is the possibility that it might be decided to raise money by selling land for development. We may not be here, but we are making provision now for what is to happen over the next 150 years The questions I am about to ask might sound a little hysterical, but they are not beyond the bounds of possibility. In the event that a developer was brought in, would the land be tendered for? Could the land possibly go out to public auction? As long the conditions of the covenants and the restrictions and the protections are in place, the land could still go to public auction. Alternatively, could this be decided by the board under private treaty arrangements? Is there the possibility of a clawback on profits made by developers in the form of some kind of betterment levy? How would the ground rents be set? If the board or the department had control of the ground rents, that might well be the way of influencing to some extent what might happen in the event that the land was used for residential development in the future Another question that has to be asked if housing development takes place at some point in the future is whether there would be a social housing component. I understand that the local authority is subject to the provisions that apply elsewhere in London. What about subleasing? Would the state in some way be in a position to approve the subleasing of the land? I did not altogether understand what third-party partnerships were when they were addressed by the Minister at Second Reading given that I was not able to be here. Is there an as-yet-unpublished internal development options document written on the basis of maximising the revenue within the planning constraints I have already referred to I have never visited the site, although I will. I only really learned about it last night at midnight when I sat up in bed to read the documents and looked it up on Google Earth. It is a vast site, and it was only when I saw the size of it that I realised that on its fringes there may well be the potential for development, which people in the future may grasp at because they need the money, because other budget arrangements are somehow contracting. If the Minister cannot answer my remarks today, I would be grateful if he would write to me.