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New clause 22
Revocation of planning permission
'.In the principal Act there shall be inserted—
''Revocation of planning permission
75A. Where planning permission is granted for any development and—
(a) there has been a material inaccuracy in the information provided in the application for that permission; or
(b) there is evidence that the applicant has sought deliberately to mislead the planning authority;
the planning authority may revoke the grant of planning permission.''.'.—[Mr. Andrew Turner.]
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr. Turner: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to take the following: New clause 34—Compensation for revocation of planning permission etc.—
'(1) Section 107 of the principal Act (Compensation where planning permission revoked or modified) is amended as follows.
(2) After section 107(3)(b) of that Act there is inserted—
''(c) any decision where planning permission is revoked or modified where it can also be demonstrated that information provided as part of or by the applicant in support of the application for the planning permission which is the subject of revoction or modification was materially inaccurate.''.'.
Mr. Turner: I am grateful to you, Mr. Hurst, for grouping the two new clauses together. They were tabled with the same point in mind: if material inaccuracy is found in the information provided to obtain planning permission, planning permission may be revoked. I discovered after tabling the first new clause that it would not exclude the local authority from the requirement to pay compensation for the revocation of planning permission, so I tabled the second new clause. I hope that the second new clause excludes the local authority from the requirement to pay compensation.
There is always a debate about the accuracy of information put before planning committees. My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet, who has great experience of such matters, agrees with that. For as long as I have been involved in politics, which is almost as long as him, I have had to represent either local residents or constituents in planning matters. Although I have tried to avoid as many planning matters as possible—that advice is given to us all once we are elected here—I regularly find myself drawn back in.
My greatest objection is when the process does not appear to have been handled fairly. In particular, people complain that there is nothing to stop someone putting forward inaccurate drawings or statements to the planning committee or, indeed, to a public inquiry. It can be argued that they are gaining pecuniary advantage by deception and have therefore committed a criminal act, but one must demonstrate that they did so knowingly, and even that does not revoke the planning permission.
I want to illustrate that point by referring to a house in Yarmouth in my constituency, which is situated on
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a road of Victorian semi-detached villas. The developer proposed to build a matching but detached villa—if that is possible—on a site, which had been previously occupied by a bungalow, between the northernmost house and a scout hut. The developer submitted a picture of the villa with dimensions and a streetscape without dimensions.
The proposed development was marked as being of the same height as all the other villas in the road on the second drawing, so the neighbours were happy. Had the second drawing been to scale—the planning department at the Isle of Wight council also failed to produce a scale drawing—it would have been discovered that the new development was 9 ft higher than the existing villas. A careful examination of a scale drawing would also have revealed that the new house was set back significantly further than the existing villas.
The result was that people lost light and complained. However, there were no objections when the application was granted. When the development took place, the residents and Yarmouth town council were greatly upset at how the house stood out in the street, dominated the streetscape, overlooked other houses and was generally out of place. They said, ''We would have objected had we not been shown this misleading plan.'' I asked the local authority what it could do about it, and all it could have done about it—had it not been for the fact that the developer went on to build it even higher than specified in his scaled drawing—was write to the Royal Institute of British Architects, of which the architect was a member, and criticised him for putting in a misleading plan. Of course, not all architects are members of RIBA, or at least not all those who design houses are.
That is a perfect example—minor but important—of a misleading statement knowingly or negligently made to the planning committee. There are similar records of statements made before inquiries where promises are made and expressions are given of how a building is going to be used or has been used, as a consequence of which planning permission is granted. That is clearly wrong. There is no remedy; I believe there should be a remedy, and my proposals are the remedy.
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): I intend to make something slightly more extensive than an intervention, but that is essentially what it is. Does the hon. Member for Isle of Wight consider the following to be an example of misleading information? Activities have been carried out on a site over a period of time such that the owner of a site who has obtained planning permission has started to develop that site, has laid foundations on it, but then appears to have no intention of completing the site. He could then have a completion notice served upon him after a long period of time. He makes a rather disingenuous protestation that he could go and build what was supposed to be put on the site in the first place, but after a long period of time that may not be relevant.
I have in mind a case that my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Peter Bradley) raised on
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Second Reading. He referred planning permission given for the building of a new pub in his constituency a long time ago. The nature of the land around it did not turn out as originally intended, but the people who had permission to build the pub put the foundations down and let the ground go derelict for a long period of time. When the local authority eventually got round to asking them to put in a completion notice, they said they would build the original 1960s pub along the lines of the original design, when there were not houses or other things around the plot. That was clearly disingenuous due to the effluxion of time. The discovery of great-crested newts on the site eventually persuaded the owner of the land not to go ahead with that plan, but that is another story.
The matter in hand is whether there are more complex issues relating to the misleading of a planning authority than the case outlined by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight. He may consider that his proposals cover the broader issues, which I suggest cause planning authorities some difficulties in the way that I have described.
Matthew Green: Again, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight has highlighted a problem. The new clauses are not the way to deal with the problem, partly because new clause 22 does not set out any procedure by which someone might set out to seek revocation of planning permission.
I want to add yet another scenario in which misleading information might play a part in planning applications. In rural areas such as my own constituency, people often have to seek retrospective planning approval for activities that they claim to have carried out on a site for years—for example, the storage of heavy goods vehicles. If they can show evidence that they have been doing that for 10 years, they can obtain planning permission for it. Such situations come up more regularly than one might imagine. Those activities, which take place in farm yards but are something other than agricultural activities, are, in many cases, entirely genuine. In order to prove the case, statements are sought from other local residents, friends and so on, who say, ''We've seen Mr. Smith park his lorry there for the past 15 years.'' In effect, planning permission is granted on the back of statements.
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It is not that I want to stop that approach. In many cases, those people have genuine rights to planning permission. However, I understand that in a minority of cases people write deliberately misleading statements on behalf of applicants. It is very difficult to prove in the long run, but we can surmise that there must be at least a few such cases. Nevertheless, planning permission may have been granted. If someone proves at a later date that the statements were entirely wrong, nothing can be done to revoke the permission. I can envisage other situations in which that may happen. I would like to see included in the Bill something to prevent people from making misleading statements that are then used in planning applications. I believe that it is not even against the law to write a statement saying, ''Mr. Smith has parked five lorries there for the past 20 years,'' and use
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it to gain planning permission. The person would be committing no offence, as far as I can tell, even though the statement may result in serious financial gain for someone else.
I urge the Minister to consider the issue. I do not believe that it arises that often, but it clearly does arise. We have now heard of three different cases in which misleading information might be provided for planning applications.
Sir Sydney Chapman: I have served on many Committees, but never have I served on one in which an hon. Friend—in this case, my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight—has introduced a quartet of issues that resonate with the public to such a great extent. I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising the four issues that we have discussed: high hedges, despoiling the landscape, road signs and furniture, and deliberately misleading drawings or failure to develop in the way for which permission has been given. The last is a very real issue that causes a great deal of anger among people who suffer as a result.
My hon. Friend was right to say that not all architects are members of RIBA. If they are, they can call themselves chartered architects. However, they may belong to other organisations. Indeed, one can be a registered architect without paying a subscription to, and joining, RIBA. I take this opportunity to say that I forgot to declare two more inverted interests. I am an honorary fellow of the Institute of Architects and Surveyors and an honorary fellow and past president of the Faculty of Building.
The hon. Member for Ludlow is on to a good point. I believe that I am right in saying that, generally, in town planning law, one can establish existing use after four years. Anyway, the hon. Gentleman made his point very well.
I wish to ask my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight one question. It touches on the root of the difficulty of enacting his new clause. What is a material inaccuracy? He gave us an example of a building 9 ft higher than it should have been. Without doubt, that is a material inaccuracy, but in other cases, there will often be a problem deciding what is one. In different situations, the amounts will be relative or the measurements different.
I want to remind the Committee of what I believe to be the four most frequent causes of anger, as I have discovered in my constituency—which I have now had the privilege of representing for a 25th year. The first is what I call the parapet, where contrary to what the plans suggest the eaves or ridge of a building are 15 in higher than indicated. That can cut out the right to light. We talked about the importance of that earlier. The second, which is probably the most frequent because the most difficult to detect, is where the ground levels shown on the plans are inaccurate. I ask the Minister to consider whether it would be good if ground levels, when given on a plan, had to be related to a fixed point on a neighbouring building. That would ensure the greater likelihood of accuracy and provide a focus point if the original plans were not carried out during the development. One could then go back and say that the builder had not built according
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to the plans. Quite often, plans are indistinct rather than exact. I am sorry if that point is rather technical, but it is important.
The third cause of anger that I have found relates to inaccuracy in the building that has been proposed and is being built, where the wrong height is given in relation to the next building. Again, that returns to my previous point. It might be thought that the eaves would be no higher than those of the next-door building, but then the building turns out to be a foot or so higher. The final cause of anger is where the drawings show that the proposed building is a certain distance from the boundary or curtilage of the property when it is in fact much nearer. The next-door neighbour thinks that because their gable is 4 ft from the boundary wall, the other building will be 4 ft from the other side but it turns out that the builders propose to put it 2 ft 6 in away. I am sorry not to talk in metric terms. Those are the real problems.
Although I have now retired as a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, I should like to assure my hon. Friend that whenever someone writes to that prestigious institute complaining about the architect who has drawn up the papers, if it is an architect—it does not have to be, architects have no monopoly—RIBA takes the complaint very seriously indeed.
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