Mr. Philip Jones:

To follow on, part of the reason we suggested that was because a couple of years ago, there was an idea that it would be up to a developer to do a master plan, without it being adopted by the elected members. The institute strongly believes in local government and subsidiarity and, therefore, felt that was not appropriate. It was happening in a couple of local authorities where there was an objective to do a master plan but that plan was effectively the developer's master plan, which then went to the local authority as part of the planning application. The public had five weeks to make submissions and that was all they had. The idea of a UDZ is that a plan would be prepared by a local authority. That was our view because some bad examples of developer-led master plans got through, and that is not the way to do proper planning.

Section 171AQ is worded very carefully. I assume the Attorney General was involved in its wording. It might be best to stick with that wording but extend it to all zoned land. A bit of land might be zoned for ten years but nothing is happening with it. At the same time, it may be close to the existing built envelope so you do not want to down-zone it and have a leapfrog situation. It is about local authorities having the opportunity to do it. If we went much higher, there may be a reluctance on the part of the Attorney General's office to get it through. There might be difficulties in that respect, notwithstanding what I said about Part V.