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Planning Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has raised a number of important issues, and some technical ones. I shall respond first to her Amendment No. 143ZA, which would remove the flexibility for CIL regulations to put in place the more efficient and effective arrangements for collecting CIL. She has mentioned London, where both the mayor and the borough would be charging authorities. It is likely to be simplest and clearest for developers if the borough collects CIL rather than the mayor, because the boroughs deal with the vast majority of planning applications that CIL would relate to. We are discussing the best way forward with London authorities, and the provisions in Clause 209(5) give us the flexibility to put the most appropriate arrangements in place through CIL regulations. Any authority that undertakes work on CIL should be resourced to do so, and we are considering how best to achieve that for those authorities that regulations may require to collect CIL on behalf of others. I assure the House that we will return to that at Third Reading. I hope I have said enough to convince the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment. With regard to the authority needing powers to consult, the provision is to ensure that charging authorities have the power to undertake preparatory work. The law is not clear on this, and it avoids assurance on consultation specifically. It allows for that before the CIL regulations are fully in place. In respect of the comments the noble Baroness made on the government amendments, I will write to her formally with detailed responses if she would be content with that.