Mr. Paul Hogan:

The provision seeks to address an interim situation that arises. Up until 3 April of this year what is envisaged is a power that the Minister has always had. Up until now the Department, on behalf of the Minister, has been fully engaged in all three regional spatial strategy processes. All three processes are well advanced. In fact, the east and midlands regional strategy is due to be published on Friday. The process is that well advanced and is almost complete.

The problem is that the legislation that we now have has made the involvement of the Minister in the process at this stage subject to the involvement of the Office of the Planning Regulator, OPR, from the outset in the process, which can never be achieved because we cannot turn the clock back. This arises because this legislation was published in 2016 and enacted last year. It was always envisaged that the OPR would be in place before the RSESs kicked off but the office was not in place and it did not happen like that. They have travelled down the road and the regulator has come in pretty much three quarters of the way through all of the processes. As I said, the legislation envisages the regulator being given notice, making submissions and being very clear about what the issues are and what his or her office wants to see done all the way through and then, on foot of that either happening or not happening, making a recommendation to the Minister at the very end for the Minister to act. The Department, on behalf of the Minister, has been involved to date in line with legislation that was there until 3 April. This amendment simply seeks to put a once-off interim arrangement in place for the current round of RSESs, all of which are at a slightly different stage, and simply enable the process, as it was prior to 3 April, to be concluded as it would have been. However, there is one new addition, which enables the Minister to invite the regulator to issue an advisory report to him or her. That is seen as something that would enable at least the advice of the regulator's office to be brought in to the current process. It is a new provision but it gets us over the problem of the regulator not having been involved all of the way through and having things on the record that he said. There is an issue about legal consistency where one cannot have someone coming in at the 11th hour raising new issues or whatever. The ability to involve the regulator is the only new element, otherwise it is just putting the clock back to prior to 3 April. The regulator's office is only recruiting staff now so the reality is there will not be a significant capacity there to undertake what was envisaged even if we could set the clock back.