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Planning Bill

My Lords, I want briefly to support and supplement the comments of my noble friend Lady Hamwee in moving the amendment. She rightly laid emphasis on the complexity of the system in terms of London and the metropolitan cities, but I want to consider rural areas. Specifically I refer to those shire counties going through a considerable change as they move over to unitary authority status. As the Minister knows, a number are experiencing considerable change after a long period as two-tier administrations. Frankly, although I understand well the views expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, who says that we should trust the competence of local authorities—I agree that they are quite competent to deal with changes of this sort—those counties changing over to unitary status have had no time to concentrate on the changes. They have been entirely obsessed with the changes in how they will run local services—rightly so; I make no complaint about that. We should make no criticism because these are difficult and complicated changes. In Part 11 we will be throwing at these authorities a very complex set of new requirements to implement over what I presume is to be a relatively short timescale. I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, says about the quinquennial review process, but I do not think that that is what the Government have in mind. I suspect that they are thinking of something a great deal speedier than that. At the very least, I hope that in her response the Minister will give us very clear guidance on expectations in terms of timescale on the implementation of Part 11. Without that, all planning authorities and charging authorities are going to feel that they are being led up the garden path in terms of how this can be introduced. The Government’s assurances of comparative simplicity will be shown to be entirely false.