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Local Government and Planning (Parkland and Windfall Development) Bill

I have an advantage over the hon. Member for Solihull: I have a decent, well-meaning local authority, which takes the views of the public seriously. For example, there was a series of planning applications for the masonic hall in Whitby—in Ellesmere Port, not in Yorkshire—but the local authority turned them down, not because the existing building has any particular architectural merit but because the plans included things that the hon. Lady suffers from in her constituency, such as the destruction of mature trees. We need to tread cautiously. I am not a great fan of the existing system, because the developer has the right to appeal but an objector has little power in that regard. A David and Goliath situation can arise: communities v. large building companies. There is an argument for looking at how the appeals process works and for bringing equality into it, but, for the very reasons given by the hon. Lady, we need a mechanism whereby decisions can be removed from the local authority when it is acting against the public interest in a community; for example, the destruction of the 350-year-old tree. It is a great pity that there could be no further process of consideration to prevent that and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister is contemplating how to achieve such a system. However, it will not be achieved simply by stripping out the planning appeals process. My only remaining concern about trees is that the hon. Lady refers to"““the protection of large or mature trees in urban or suburban areas””." I think there is a gap in the provision, so I urge her to delete the end of the sentence; it should end at ““trees””. There is no merit in trying to create artificial boundaries between town and country. Many of us live in small rural communities but commute into large cities, such as London, so we are stakeholders in both town and country. The boundaries suggested by the clause are artificial and reflect the functions of earlier planning developments.