Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill

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Mr. Clifton-Brown: For the first time the Minister is getting us into real politics. We know very well that the increased resources that the Government provide for planning go straight to the regions, not to local planning authorities. If local authorities had sufficient resources, there would not be a problem with enforcement. It is not a question of the resources being ring-fenced; councils do not have sufficient resources for planning, full stop. My authority does not have enough, and I am sure that other hon. Members could say the same. Councils cannot undertake enforcement on a discretionary basis. We want to legislate with a light touch, and we are in favour of discretion; if that were enshrined in the Bill, the Government would have to provide the resources. If they were to stop giving resources to the regions and put them back into the local authorities, we would take the new clause away like a shot.

The Chairman: Order. Let us not go too wide; we must keep to new clause 31.

Yvette Cooper: Let me conclude, then, Mr. Pike, by pointing out again to the hon. Member for Cotswold the contradictions in his position. He asks for the statutory duty to be imposed to force the Government to provide more resources. I ask him again: where does he want the additional resources to come from?

Mr. Clifton-Brown: Take them away from the regions.

Yvette Cooper: We are already providing substantially more resources to local authorities than were provided by previous Governments, and the hon. Gentleman's party wants to reduce the resources provided for public services across the board. I do not see how he manages to make his sums add up.

Mr. Clifton-Brown rose—

Yvette Cooper: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman one last time.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: The Minister is grossly misrepresenting my position. A large percentage of the additional resources that the Government are putting into planning is for setting up the new regional planning boards and bodies, regional spatial strategies and so on. I want to see that money redirected to local people who know what should be going on in their areas, not given to regions 200 miles away.

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Yvette Cooper: The hon. Gentleman's point is not right. We are providing substantial increases in resources for local authorities across the board, for them to use in whatever way they see fit. This is not simply about planning, it is about the resources going to local authorities so that they can choose their most important priorities, as local democratically elected councils should be able to. We should not continually try to pre-empt the decisions of local councillors; they should have discretion. We recognise that there are concerns about enforcement, and that the question of resources has been raised, and it is our intention to publish a response to the enforcement review before the end of the year. It is easy, whichever individual issue comes up, for hon. Members to try to encroach on the decision-making powers of local authorities. We should respect those authorities and give them the discretion to make decisions on such matters.

Matthew Green: I shall try to avoid going down a similar, political, route. It is dangerous for the Minister to point out that the Conservative position may be full of contradictions. Probably all our positions are full of contradictions, but there are plenty of contradictions where she is coming from. People in glass houses should not throw stones. For instance, the Minister would not expect a local council to decide that enforcement was more important than getting its planning applications in within the statutory time limit laid down by the Government. A local authority that decided that enforcement was more of a problem in its area than the speed at which it dealt with planning applications, and diverted resources from one to the other, would, as a consequence, fail to meet its statutory obligations. The Government accept that there should be statutory rules on speed but not on enforcement, so there is a contradiction in their position, just as there are contradictions in all our positions. We need to be careful about that.

Now I want to talk about the scale of the problem, especially in small rural districts. I have probably bored the Committee about this before, but my constituency is the size of greater London, yet contains only 63,000 adults. Two thirds of the constituency—two thirds the size of London—contains only 32,000 adults, and is covered by South Shropshire district council, which receives planning applications at a rate four times the national average. For a population of 32,000, the council has a tiny planning budget, out of a total budget of, I believe, £2 million. Its resources are tiny. I believe that there should be a unitary Shropshire, as the present council has reached the point of unsustainability, but it still exists, because Ministers will not allow us a unitary Shropshire.

If the council receives four times the national average rate of planning applications, I am fairly certain that its enforcement should run at a similar rate. A few years ago it was such a small authority that it had no enforcement capability at all, but the councillors forced a review of their planning area and installed two enforcement officers, so the council now has an enforcement capability. One of the officers is especially zealous—I am tempted to say over-zealous at times. To give Members an idea of the scale, £20,000 is a 1 per cent. rise in council tax in South Shropshire. A few years ago, the district council introduced a council tax rise of several per cent. just to pay for the enforcement officers.

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only a few years ago, just to raise £20,000 to pay for the enforcement officers, South Shropshire district council introduced a 1 per cent. rise in council tax. Having enforcement officers is not a statutory duty; the council chose to have them.

As the Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire said, council tax has reached the limits of acceptability—I believe that that was his phrase. It is beyond small rural councils to say, ''Well, it's our choice. Let's stick the council tax up a bit more,'' to ensure that they can carry out the enforcement. The problem is purely about resources. In fact, South Shropshire district council is diligent about pursuing enforcement; the other authority in my constituency, Bridgnorth, probably does not pursue enforcement as well as South Shropshire does. That gives the Committee some idea of the scale of the financial problems that small rural councils face.

Mr. Francois: The Minister mentioned a set of statistics that purport that the results of retrospective planning applications are broadly on a par with those of other planning applications. Surely, however, retrospective applications are overwhelmingly concentrated in the relatively small number of rural district areas, in which case, in net terms, the bulk of them are concentrated in the areas with the least financial resources to deal with them?

Matthew Green: The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Indeed, I caution the Minister against quoting those figures, because of the high percentage of planning applications that are withdrawn before they reach the committee because they have been recommended for refusal. Many applications that would otherwise have been submitted are pulled. Clearly, that will not happen with a retrospective application, as applicants have no choice about obtaining planning permission, so the positions are the same.

Unfortunately, the Minister has failed to convince the Opposition that the Government are sufficiently abreast of the problem, probably as it is particular to a relatively small number of local authorities, and is a much greater problem to them than it is for many other authorities. That may be why the problem does not appear to be as significant to the Government as it does to other hon. Members. I am therefore minded to press the matter to a vote. Until council tax is scrapped and we have a fairer system—I am sure that the Government will reach that position eventually—local government will not have the flexibility to decide to choose to perform non-statutory duties. As we have already heard, most of those non-statutory duties are being wound back because councils can no longer bear to ask pensioners for extra money through the council tax. I shall therefore press the new clause to a Division.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 8.

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Division No. 3]

AYES
Chapman, Sir Sydney
Clifton-Brown, Mr. Geoffrey
Francois, Mr. Mark
Green, Matthew

NOES
Betts, Mr. Clive
Clark, Paul
Cooper, Yvette
Follett, Barbara
Hill, Keith
McDonagh, Siobhain
Rooney, Mr. Terry
Whitehead, Dr. Alan

Question accordingly negatived.

New Clause 32

Regulations to control light pollution

'—After section 225 of the principal Act there is inserted—

''(1A) Regulations under this Act shall make provision for restricting or regulating the use of external lighting so far as appears to the Secretary of State to be expedient in the interests of amenity or public safety.''.'—[Matthew Green.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

3.15 pm

Matthew Green: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Committee will be pleased to know that this is the last time that I shall start a debate—

Mr. Terry Rooney (Bradford, North): That is the first time that he has been right all day.

Matthew Green: I am grateful for the information provided by the Campaign to Protect Rural England. The new clause aims to make lighting subject to planning control by providing for enabling regulations to be made.

The CPRE offered a long new clause that would have gone into great detail. I decided that that would give Ministers too much opportunity to tell us that it would not work. The clause therefore simply gives Ministers the ability to make regulations to

''make provision for restricting or regulating the use of external lighting so far as appears to the Secretary of State to be expedient in the interests of amenity or public safety.''

The matter is now in Ministers' hands. How could they possibly refuse another power? They normally like accruing power, and I would be surprised if they did not accept this one.

The problem is that light cannot be classed as development, and is therefore not subject to planning controls. In some cases, however, it can be a problem. When excessive light is beamed upwards it can cause light pollution, which has a damaging effect on the environment, particularly if it is on all night. It is not physically damaging, but it affects our view of the sky. When we drive at night in rural areas, we realise that we can see an orange glow in the sky from nearby urban areas. It spoils the view of the stars and the sky. In a sense, it pushes the urban area out into the countryside.

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Other problems that affect neighbours and surrounding areas are lights that are too powerful, floodlights that light too big an area, lights that stay on for an excessive time, and floodlights that light buildings excessively. There are clearly issues of public safety, and we do not want unlit areas to be dangerous and perhaps encourage crime. However, I am sure that all hon. Members can think of areas in their constituencies where there is too much light, or the light is inappropriate.

As I said, I leave it entirely to Ministers to decide whether they want a light or a heavy touch—or indeed, whether they want to make regulations at all. The new clause would not mean that they had to do so. It is an enabling new clause, which would allow them to deal with the problem later, should they wish to do so, and as such, I struggle to see how Ministers can refuse it.

 

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Prepared 21 October 2003