Mr. Robin Mandal:

We do not have enough time for me to go through all of them. They are in the submission. I am utterly mystified by some of them. An example is the change to what is currently section 5 that will be section 8 in the new Bill. The right of a third party to seek a declaration has disappeared, in my view without any evidence that there is any problem with that. Included in our paper is a reference number for one of the cases I came across in practice where a neighbour sought a declaration, the local authority made a decision and the neighbour appealed it to the board. The board made a decision that was the opposite of that of the local authority, so these things matter. I do not know why that has been taken out. As far as I was aware, in my practice it was something we did not use very often but it never seemed to create any problems. I would like to hear from the board because presumably it is the board issue that is taking away the third party on the local authorities.

Another issue that mystifies me is the removal of the process we used to know as outline planning permission. I accept that in practice, this had effectively gone because planning got more and more complicated, which should not have happened. Outline planning permission can now only be obtained for developments of fewer than four houses. Why have it at all? There is no explanation.

We came to this Bill with huge hope that it would do what it said on the tin. We were devastated on reading section 1A, which should not be part of the Bill. There is no explanatory memorandum and no description of why these changes are happening. Obviously, the most shocking one to us is Part 9, which is the assault on judicial review. We understand that and where that is coming from but there are no data and no thinking behind what will happen. The reason I referred to section 1A as one of the bits that mystifies me is that each of those items will contradict other elements of the Bill and they will lead to continual flows of legal actions. You could not make it up.

Another issue concerns section 4 of the current Act. It is section 7 so now all the power for exempted development is through ministerial order. It is through regulation. Section 4 of the current Act has a list of things that are exempted development, including the famous section 4(1)(h), which allowed for a lot of reduction of workload in the planning authorities. That is gone so we are giving all of the power to the Minister for something as simple as exempted development. That ticks the one of the boxes of where I see centralisation.

Regarding section 22 versus specific planning policy requirements, SPPRs, the committee knows my view that SPPRs are a disaster. I hear from previous sessions that mandatory guidelines are staying. I do not read that in the Bill. As far as I can see, the Bill does not say that these will be mandatory. It says that due regard shall be taken. That is not mandatory so either something strange is happening or somebody does not understand what they are saying. The definition of a national planning policy guidance is referred to as the definition in section 22. It is not defined. You are referred to another section. When you go to that section, you find that the definition is not there. That is ill thought-out.