House Of Lords Demands Change To Localism Bill In Second Reading Debate

This is entry number 248, published on 8 June 2011, of a blog on the Planning Act 2008 infrastructure planning and authorisation regime. Click here for a link to the whole blog. If you would like to be notified when the blog is updated, with links sent by email, click here.

Today's entry reports on the second reading of the Localism Bill in the House of Lords.

Yesterday, the Localism Bill received its second reading in the House of Lords (a debate on the general principles of the Bill). The debate lasted for nearly seven hours and 51 peers spoke. Although a link to the Hansard report of the debate can be found here, here are some of the points that were made, reordered by subject-matter rather than chronologically for ease of reading.

In a nutshell, the main issues of contention were:

the protection of community assets, neighbourhood planning, the creation of shadow mayors before elections are held, the declaration that financial incentives can affect the grant of planning permission, sustainable development and the replacement of regional planning with a duty to co-operate, the 5% referendum threshold, the passing on of EU fines to local authorities, and the community right to challenge the provision of local authority services So many peers declared interests that one Baroness declared that she unusually did not have an interest.

General principles

Lord Beecham for Labour said that with all the local democracy in the Bill, Eric Pickles was like the Athenian Pericles, who nearly had the same name. He said it was ironic that clause 28 of the Bill repealed the duty to promote democracy. Lord Shipley said that the Bill had not been drafted in a spirit of localism. Lord True said that the Bill should be permissive, not prescriptive.

Lord Patel said that the 'people power' parts of the Bill could be accused of replacing highly developed and expert services with an underdeveloped and poorly resourced altarnative. Lord Adebowale noted that communities often knew what they wanted but were denied the resources to bring this about.

The Bishop of Derby said that the Bill's powers would be used by the wealthy and articulate and not by the disadvantaged.

Some, often with local authority backgrounds, said that localism already existed, but needed proper funding to be realised rather than legislation. Baroness Bakewell (i.e. Joan Bakewell) said that in Camden they had managed to prevent library cuts and scare off Starbucks with local action that did...