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Parish Councils (Planning)

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, to which further weight is added by the fact that there are inconsistencies between councils. The performance targets that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister sets for the handling of planning applications have no bearing on the legal requirement that local planning authorities consult parishes and await their representations. Local planning authorities reach their decisions on planning applications in accordance with their local development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. They should give due weight to any other relevant factors. In a particular case, the view expressed by the parish council could be one such factor. The law says that a local planning authority is not allowed to determine an application within 21 days of notifying a parish council. In other words, once it has notified the parish council, it has to allow at least 21 days before it can determine an application so as to allow it time to comment on those applications that it has asked to be told about. Let me deal with the question of the law and parish councils. A parish council indicates to a local planning authority which type or category of applications it wishes to be notified about. It is then a statutory duty on the planning authority to notify the parish and wait 21 days for any representations by it. The Government are convinced of the value of involving parish councils in this way by inviting their comments on any relevant planning application. A parish council’s representations are not binding on the local planning authority. That would, in effect, pass the responsibility for determining planning applications to parish councils in all cases in which they were consulted. In the first instance, the decision maker remains the district or borough council or unitary authority. Those authorities have to act in what they deem to be the broader public interest, as well as having regard to planning law, when determining an application. The broader public interest may involve education and other important services. The hon. Members for Somerton and Frome and for St. Ives argued for a devolution of those broader public interest powers to a parish level. The Government question whether that is appropriate, but in doing so we encourage, through policy and the levers that are available, greater consultation with parishes. Furthermore, the planning authority is obliged to act within the law. All of us, as Members of Parliament, have found in our constituencies that the semi-judicial nature of planning committees can often cause frustration to the public. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire, who is no longer here, made the point that devolution of planning powers to parish council level would involve more parish councils in conflicts of interest, or perceived conflicts of interest, which could not only exclude them in some instances, thereby not fulfilling the objective that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome outlined, but further discredit the planning process. It is a question of balance. From time to time, a parish council’s comments on a specific scheme may conflict with other considerations and it is for the local planning authority to decide which of the conflicting views should prevail. In the broad framework of the law, local planning authorities devise their own detailed arrangements for handling responses to consultation. It would be unnecessarily prescriptive to set out in legislation the subject matter and form of consultations between local planning authorities and parish councils. Instead, consultation procedures are established on the basis of voluntary agreements, which are better able to reflect the circumstances of the relevant local councils. When disputes arise, they can and should be resolved locally. I suppose I point to the obvious paradox that, in attempting to get local authorities to devolve to local people, if the Government insist on how that should be done, the policy can hardly be described as decentralised. Nevertheless, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister regards the delegation of suitable decisions to officers as an effective way sometimes of improving timeliness of decision making, which is why the Department encourages all local authorities to adopt a comprehensive system of delegation. Decisions can be delegated to officers only by the elected members, so it is the latter who determine, for example, the terms on which a delegated agreement operates, the level of member involvement and the circumstances in which an officer’s delegated power to make a decision may not be exercised. We now come to the crux of the matter. The Local Government Association and the ODPM have jointly published guidance on schemes of delegation, called ““Delivering Delegation.”” Apart from reaffirming policy on delegation, that looks at the types of decision that can be delegated. There are best practice models of delegation schemes and that guidance has been agreed with local government representatives. There used to be a performance target of 90 per cent. on the extent of delegation. However, as a target, that figure was abolished with effect from 1 April 2004. In South Somerset, I understand that arrangements made by one local authority in particular have given rise to concern by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome. South Somerset district council is known to be seeking to improve its performance in development control. That includes the efficiency of handling individual applications. Consultants from the ODPM have completed an evaluation of the authority’s current performance and are due to visit the planning service there in the next few months. A scheme of delegation for development control in South Somerset was established in 1995. With encouragement and support from ODPM, the Planning Advisory Service and the Government office for the south-west, South Somerset district council introduced various measures to speed up performance and improve the overall quality of decision making. That included reviewing the delegation scheme and the existing arrangements for consultation with parish councils. Last year, the council introduced a ““by exception”” scheme of delegation. Many local planning authorities have operated voluntarily a procedure whereby a significant disagreement between planning staff and the incoming opinions of a parish council would cause the matter to be sent to committee for determination, even if the case is of a type or scale that would normally be delegated to a planning officer for decision. By contrast, the ““by exception”” principle means that all applications are delegated unless specific criteria are met. The effect of the model is that it removes the hitherto automatic referral of planning applications for consideration by the planning committee where a parish council’s comments differ from the view put forward by the council’s planning department. Concerns have been raised that that is, in effect, a reduction in the role and status of parish councils in influencing the decision-making process. Although the ““by exception”” model may have aroused the fear of a loss of influence at parish level, I should emphasise that the model is very much in line with the approach that is endorsed by the LGA/ODPM guidance, which I have already mentioned. In 2004, 85 per cent. of applications in South Somerset district council were dealt with under delegated powers. The council considered that that needed to be increased to 90 per cent. but, as I have said, there is no such performance target from us.