Oral evidence - Built Environment

Members present

Baroness O’Cathain (Chairman)

Baroness Andrews

Lord Clement-Jones

Lord Freeman

Lord Inglewood

Earl of Lytton

Baroness Parminter

Baroness Rawlings

Baroness Whitaker

Lord Woolmer of Leeds

Baroness Young of Old Scone

_________________________

Examination of Witnesses

Mr Chris Shepley CBE, former Chief Planning Inspector and Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate (1994-2002), and Ms Katrine Sporle, CBE, former Chief Planning Inspector and Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate (2003-11)

Q276 The Chairman: Good morning and thank you both very much for coming here. Welcome to this evidence session of the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment. You have in front of you a list of the interests that have been declared by members of the Committee. A transcript of the meeting will be taken and published on the Committee website. You will have the opportunity to make corrections to that transcript where necessary. I begin by asking each of you briefly to introduce yourselves to the Committee, please, for the purposes of the transcript.

Mr Shepley: My name is Chris Shepley. I am a former Chief Planning Inspector, between 1994 and 2002. Before that I had a career in local government and since then I have been a private consultant.

Ms Sporle: Good morning; I am Katrine Sporle. I, too, was Chief Planning Inspector and Chief Executive of the Planning Inspectorate, between 2003 and 2011. Prior to that I was Chief Executive of a local authority, Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council. Since then I have been, for the last four years, the Executive Director and Chapter Clerk of Salisbury Cathedral, dealing with the major repair programme, the Magna Carta celebrations for 2015, and the masterplan for Salisbury Cathedral. I have recently been appointed as the Property Ombudsman, and I now deal with alternative dispute resolution for citizens’ redress in the property sector for the retail sector, for lettings and sales, removal companies and other things besides.

The Chairman: Is that national or is it local to the Salisbury area?

Ms Sporle: It covers the United Kingdom, with some international jurisdiction as well.

The Chairman: The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

Ms Sporle: Indeed.

The Chairman: Well, thank you very much for giving up your time to come and see us. The first question is from Lord Freeman.

Q277 Lord Freeman: Good morning. I am going to ask a question based on your distinguished past service in planning. What role should the Planning Inspectorate play in the planning system and how does this contrast with the role it actually plays?

Mr Shepley: The Planning Inspectorate plays a variety of roles in the planning system. Its fundamental role is as a quasi-judicial decision-making body, a dispute resolution body, which sorts out the problems that arise in all parts of the planning process, whether through the development plan or planning appeals or whatever else. When the Planning Inspectorate is dealing with development plans, it operates a kind of quality control mechanism. The Planning Inspectorate ensures that local plans and development plans are properly prepared, that there is proper consultation, compliance with national policy, the duty to co-operate and so on, and no doubt we will talk about all of that later. Only a relatively small number of cases come to appeal but, when it deals with appeals, obviously it is a dispute resolution process which deals with the most difficult cases and which tries to resolve them on the basis of the evidence. When it deals with strategic infrastructure projects, it has a slightly different role.

It seems to me that all of those things are a pillar of the planning system: they are crucial to its operation. They maintain a level of quality, ensure there is proper research, proper background to policy, that things are thought through properly when appeals are dealt with. It brings a discipline to the appeal process. It ensures that local authorities do not make ridiculous decisions, by and large, and that applicants, by and large, do not make ridiculous planning applications because they know there will be a proper examination at the end by a professional planning inspector.

Finally, underpinning all of that, my own view when I was doing the job was that it was the quality of and respect for those decisions that the Planning Inspectorate offered, effectively—it was the thing on which the whole Planning Inspectorate was based. I had many tasks but I saw my main one as being to maintain those standards of professionalism, integrity, openness, fairness, impartiality, timeliness, all of that; so, although there are always going to be disappointed parties at the end of any planning appeal, and disappointed people at the end of local planning inquiries and so on, none the less, they at least respected the decision and understood that it was professionally and properly made.

Lord Freeman: Therefore, in an ideal world, would you like to see any changes in that role—any enhancements or developments in particular aspects of it?

Mr Shepley: No. The second half of that question is interesting: how does the role that it plays contrast with the role that it should play? I think the role it plays is the right role. I do not see any problem with that. It is a changing role, and there is another question about that later. New things come along and the Planning Inspectorate has to adapt, and will continue to adapt. When national strategic infrastructure projects come along, you have to understand and implement new procedures but none of that is a problem. Given the way that the inspectorate has underpinned the planning system for over 100 years now, I do not see any current need significantly to change the way it operates.

Ms Sporle: I have to say I agree with all of that. What I can add, from my own perspective, is that what it is not is a national planning authority and, in my view, it never should be. Those two things are partly about fine lines, although I think it is really important to keep clarity of thought on the matter. I do think there are lots of areas of the Planning Inspectorate where there is real expertise that could be used better on a national basis, but that is different from the Planning Inspectorate being a national planning authority, as I say, which it is not and should never be.

Lord Freeman: Could you give some examples of how it could be used better?

Ms Sporle: I think there is an enormous scope for influence for the Planning Inspectorate but, where there are sensitivities and suspicions, you get an awful lot of interference in allowing that expertise to come forward. I can remember, as Chief Planning Inspector, being watched very closely to make sure that I did not have meetings with a particular part of the development industry. At the time it was particularly the wind farm industry, which wanted to make sure that I could never speak to anybody without them knowing what I spoke about. There was also a lot of: “Surely she doesn’t speak to the Secretary of State about a Secretary of State case. Well!” These are silly things, because there is a need for open dialogue and, of course, some very experienced inspectors have a wealth of expertise that they would share.

The Chairman: But do they?

Ms Sporle: They do not tend to. Inspectors feel they must keep anonymous to a large degree. For whatever reason, there is less emphasis on the learning from the inspectorate that could be shared, and that goes across the piece.

Baroness Whitaker: I would like to ask a more fundamental question, and if you would rather consider it and write in later, that will be perfectly acceptable. I would like to know how the Planning Inspectorate should conceive of the public good. Is it, for instance, the resolution of conflicts of interest or is it better place-making? Could those two concepts militate against each other?

Mr Shepley: How should the Planning Inspectorate take into account the public good?

Baroness Whitaker: No, how should it conceive of it. What is your idea of the public good? You are a public organisation, after all.

Mr Shepley: I step back a little from that. We are in a complex area here, between the policy-making area and the quasi-judicial, decision-making area. The Planning Inspectorate is not a policy-making body. Government and local authorities make policy, and the Planning Inspectorate adjudicates on the issues that arise from those policies, the interpretation of them and the issues surrounding them. It is those policies which are of concern, and I have a lot of views about them and I spent a lot of time in local government place-making, as it were, but in my role as Chief Planning Inspector it was not really my job to do that. That is not to minimise the importance of it. Particularly when an inspector is dealing with a Local Plan, their role is to ensure that there are proper policies across the board covering the kinds of issues that you have talked about and, based on the evidence they have and the views put forward by the public, representative bodies, voluntary associations and so on—and the development industry, for that matter—the Inspector, against the background of understanding what the national policy is, in the NPPF or wherever else it might be, will seek in the public interest the best solution possible. It is not for the Inspector to suggest, “Why don’t you put this in your plan or put that in your plan?” That is the role of the local authority.

Baroness Whitaker: It is basically fair implementation of policy.

Mr Shepley: It is a bit more than implementation. I said at the beginning it is a quasi-judicial body. It is a decision-making body, and it is crucial that there is somebody who does that—that underpins, as I said, the whole system to make sure that the quality of the plan, the planning application or the infrastructure project is as high as it can possibly be, and the decision is properly made and all the evidence is there. But it is not for the inspectorate to determine how the infrastructure project, or the planning appeal or application, should be presented. I hope you understand; it is quite a fine distinction.

Baroness Whitaker: I do. It is helpful, yes, thank you.

Ms Sporle: Taking a slightly different tack, the vast majority of inspectors come up through local authorities. They are local-authority trained. They are public servants. They are there because they are concerned about the public good. I do not think anybody who works in any part of the planning system is not considering the public good and the community aspects of what they are doing. That is what a professional planner is all about, so I would say the public good is inherent to the planning system.

Baroness Whitaker: That was not exactly my question, which was about the “how”. I really do not want to hold things up now, but we ought to pursue this at some point.

The Chairman: Would you be able to give a quick answer, and then we will see if we need any more information?

Ms Sporle: In terms of how the Planning Inspectorate plays that out? I would say exactly as Chris has said. It plays it out through its role, through being clear that it is there to look at what local planning authorities have developed on the ground, and everything goes back to having a good Development Plan or Local Plan—whichever the current terminology is—and in that should be embodied public good.

Q278 Baroness Andrews: I should declare an interest. I had the privilege of working with Katrine as the Minister responsible for PINS for five years. I think it was a very productive relationship, and I got to learn in the process how very important the independence of PINS was, but how subtle the relationship is between PINS and Ministers. Sometimes you have to take the advice of the Chief Planning Inspector, and you have to be able to rely, and you can always rely, on that independent, scrupulous judgment that has been a consistent feature of PINS for over 100 years.

Things have changed since we worked together. There are two big changes which I think may qualify a little of what you have said. One is the National Planning Policy Framework, which has a presumption for development, and the inspectors have never worked under a presumption, to my knowledge, in that way before. What impact do you think that presumption has had on the way inspectors now respond to their need to be impartial and to make balanced judgments? This is all about balance within the planning system. The second thing is about infrastructure. In my time, we constructed the notion of the Infrastructure Planning Commission, in which PINS had a very different role; it was going to have a more proactive role. That has been done away with now. My sense is, however, that when it comes to infrastructure projects, the Planning Inspectorate still has a bit more influence to correct or to inform than it had previously, so I think the role has changed a little.

Ms Sporle: I am sure it has. I am always very careful: things change so quickly you have to be careful not to say, “I am a continuing expert in this field”, so I know it has changed. There are two things, though. I do not think it is for the Planning Inspectorate in any shape or form to criticise the policy of the government of the day. Different governments of different days will have different priorities and, in a sense, the presumption towards development is actually a policy of the Government of today. In my day it was slightly different: it was housing, housing, housing, at all costs housing, and when I was there, there was the beginnings of the five-year housing supply, which has been developed since. Inspectors are perfectly able to treat whatever policy is on the table in the right way and allow it to inform the decisions they make. The decisions they make are still always informed by the Local Plan, which—provided, again, as I always say, it is a good and up to date one—

Baroness Andrews: Or if it exists at all.

Ms Sporle: —or if it exists at all, that is the starting point. That is the responsibility of local planning authorities. It is for local planning authorities to get their act together and to put a proper Local Plan in place, and the arguments that some local planning authorities still put up for not having one I think are unacceptable. If local planning authorities want inspectors to take the right decisions in their areas, then they must have a Local Plan, and it must conform to national policy. I accept there are different things but I do not personally believe—Chris may disagree with me—that it changes the role of the Inspector.

Baroness Andrews: One of the differences, you say, was housing, housing, housing, and I agree with you, but it was never in a national plan. It was policy, and the difference is that in the NPPF we have this presumption for sustainable development, which in fact is translating into housing rather than enterprise, and it has been codified. Do you think that is making a difference to the nature of the decisions that are being made?

Ms Sporle: I am sure it is, because that is what it is designed to do.

Baroness Andrews: Exactly.

The Chairman: It would not be working if it did not.

Ms Sporle: Indeed, but I am really interested in this debate. I still think, though, that it is in the same category as policy; it is policy-driven.

Mr Shepley: I do not disagree with that but I would stress one of the points that Katrine made—that this is a significant change, but there have been significant changes in policy over the years before. There was not a formal presumption in favour of development in the 1980s but there was a pretty strong presumption in favour of development in the late 1980s. Then there were significant changes, limiting, for example, out-of-town retail policy, and there have been significant changes in policy ever since. These things happen all the time. They have happened rather more rapidly recently, and maybe some people have greater difficulty in keeping up currently. None the less, it is not anything particularly new, so planning inspectors are quite capable of coping with that sort of thing. Katrine is quite right to talk about the importance of a Local Plan but, on that basis, the presumption in favour of development is just another of the matters that planning inspectors have to take into account.

Do you want me to say something about the infrastructure side?

Baroness Andrews: Yes, please.

Mr Shepley: Almost the same point, in a way. This was a very new process, particularly the pre-inquiry part of that process, which I think everybody welcomed. I was at the Planning Inspectorate when the Heathrow fifth terminal inquiry was happening, and there were all sorts of problems with that, not all of which are well understood, but the new process got over a great deal of that and I welcomed that. I think it is now with the Planning Inspectorate. I see the inspectorate is having no problem whatsoever in taking on a new process like that, which is done in a very different way. It has the expertise, the staff, and, I hope, the resources—I do not know but I assume it has the resources to do that—and it seems to be working quite well. We still have not had a huge number of cases, but those we have had seem to have worked pretty well. I think the public have some issues with the degree of consultation the new process involves, which some people think is perhaps less comprehensive than before, but I guess that is part of the balance between speed and efficiency on the one hand, and delay on the other.

The Chairman: Do I detect a certain amount of irony in your statement about how it works? Do you really think it works?

Mr Shepley: I do think it works, yes. I apologise—I do think it works. As always, as a planner and former planning inspector, I try to put both sides of the argument. There are those who think that the truncated inquiry, which is very short now—and the opportunity for people to get involved very early in the process—means overall that public engagement, involvement and influence on major infrastructure projects has been reduced. I am not making that argument myself, but that is a view.

The Chairman: You do not mind that I made that qualification?

Mr Shepley: Not at all.

Lord Inglewood: The theme that runs through everything you do is even-handedness and a quasi-judicial approach to the policy and the parameters that are set. Is that right?

Mr Shepley: Absolutely right.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: The point was made that if local authorities do not have plans, it is their own stupid fault. We have heard from local authorities that, in the face of shifting housing targets and the resulting need to recast plans, or challenges to whether the duty to co-operate has been fulfilled, they are constantly sent back to the planning stage to recast their plans and have been unable to get them through. Are you saying they are incompetent?

Ms Sporle: Yes, in a word. I have no sympathy whatsoever with local authorities for not having an up-to-date Local Plan. They have professional people. They are there all year round. Local Plans were introduced—when?

Mr Shepley: The current system, in 2004.

Ms Sporle: But they have been around for many years. Policy is a changing landscape, it always has been and it always will be, and I have no sympathy. I say that as a former Chief Executive of a local authority who found it difficult to produce a Local Plan. There are many reasons why you cannot produce a Local Plan but there are no excuses for it and, in my view, there is no excuse and local authorities should get on with it. That is one of the things we will come on to in the changing world of the Planning Inspectorate, because if local authorities cannot do for themselves what they need to do for the common good, for the right community reasons, they should be helped or coerced, one or the other. I am sorry if that is controversial.

The Chairman: I think you have left us in no doubt. It is absolutely clear and we understand it. Thank you very much.

Q279 Baroness Parminter: What are the reasons for the increase in planning by appeal and what national policy measures could be introduced to counter that?

Ms Sporle: If I can start on this one, it is quite interesting that, again, there are some set answers to this. If there is a higher rate of refusal at local level, you are likely to see a higher rate of appeal. If you have a lot of frustration at the local level with the local authority, you will see a higher propensity to appeal. If the system is very slow, you will see a higher propensity for appeal, but I am not sure, if you really look at all the statistics over a long period, that there is necessarily a sustained higher rate of appeal, because I think the figures go up and down.

What you need to do is look at the trends instead. If you look at the trends and the percentages, it is still the case that only a very small percentage of planning applications go to appeal—from memory, some 3%. It is really very small, much smaller than anybody ever realises, and of that 3%—I will check the figures—consistently over the years only about a third are successful at appeal, and actually, the big developers and planning professionals look at those figures and they know that. They know that they will not go to appeal unless there is a real reason, because it is costly. I am not sure that there is a big drive towards that end of the system, but I know there are peaks and troughs. For example, I know there are actually less in the appeal system now than when I was a planning inspector. We were dealing up in the 23,000 region, and it is now down to about 17,000, so one has to look at these things over time and in context, but it is more important to look at the trends.

Mr Shepley: I agree that the proportion of cases that goes to appeal is very small, and it is very difficult to work out from the trends what it is that influences the trends. Clearly, the state of the national economy will probably be the most important factor, and when there is a recession the number of appeals goes down, and so on, and the number recently has gone up a little bit. I think planning by appeal is a danger. First, if policies are vague and difficult to understand, which sometimes happens, people will appeal, in effect, because they think their chances are better or because they do not understand the policy. They are trying to get the policy defined, and policies tend to be defined through appeal decisions and through the courts. If you have policies that are difficult to understand, you are more likely to have appeals. I think the statistics show that if you have policies that are more generous to development—looser policies—you tend to get more appeals.

I will go back into history here. There was a period in the mid to late 1980s when the proportion of appeals allowed—and Katrine is absolutely right; it has always been around a third, because that is how people calculate their chances of winning and losing—went up to about 40%, in 1987-89. That, I believe, was because there had been a loosening of planning policy and local authorities had not caught up with that, basically, and applicants were wanting to push the boundaries, as happens. There is nothing wrong with it; factually, that is one of the things that happens.

A third reason, I think, is the problem of resources in local government. In the light of recent policy, local authorities are finding it more difficult to carry out the sort of pre-application discussions and consultation with applicants that used to happen as they went through the development management process. Given that they have pretty fierce targets, there are sometimes cases where local authorities will refuse an application which, had they had more time and resources, they might have been able to negotiate, and that becomes an appeal. The fourth reason is the absence of Local Plans, and we have already talked about that. That leads to more appeals.

Baroness Parminter: I have a supplementary question. Developers obviously have a right of appeal. Do you think there is a case for a community right of appeal? I have to declare that in this Chamber, I have moved an amendment to one of the various planning Bills in recent years to secure that.

Ms Sporle: This is a community right of appeal against an approval?

Baroness Parminter: Against something that has been approved but that is contrary to the Local Plan.

Ms Sporle: I have a lot of sympathy with that, because many people who do not understand the planning system find it bewildering if a decision comes out that looks to be contrary to everything they were told was going to happen. The way in which local authorities are required to consult and advertise that they are against the Local Plan is a bit shallow. I think one end or the other needs to be strengthened. My answer would always be to strengthen the front end rather than the back end, so, if it is contrary to the development plan, there should be something in place that allows much more debate than is perhaps currently the case.

Mr Shepley: I was grateful for that qualification about “contrary to the plan”. The only problem I have with that is it is not always easy to determine whether something is contrary to the plan or not; as you well understand, where there are criteria-based policies, there can be differences of opinion as to whether something is in line with a plan. I would just put very briefly the point that the system originated effectively in 1947, when a right was taken away from some people, namely landowners and applicants, and a right was given to other people, namely the local authorities and, through them, the community. Therefore, it was felt that those who had had something taken away should be able to appeal against having it taken away but that the community, having gained something—the right to object and so on through the local authority—did not need to have that given to them.

That is a long time ago, over 60 years, and the world may have moved on and there may be a case for doing it, but an unlimited third party right of appeal would be unworkable. There are other systems in places like Ireland and Jersey which limit it, for example, to people who have previously objected—I am sure you know that—or to people within a certain geographical area, so there are ways of limiting it to something that might be more manageable. The cost would none the less be very considerable.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Some would try to say that the gross reduction in the number of appeals is because local authorities are so hard pushed that they give in more readily at planning application stage. Is there any evidence for or against that?

Ms Sporle: Not in my time.

Mr Shepley: I do not have any evidence. There are also those who say that local authorities, despairing, as it were, of their ability to sort things out, will refuse more applications. I am not aware of any evidence either way.

Q280 Baroness Whitaker: Can I ask you both what are the main reasons for the rejection of Local Plans? I am very happy to accept Ms Sporle’s characterisation of incompetence but, for our purposes, that is a little undifferentiated. Could you amplify these reasons and also say what the role of the Planning Inspectorate is in ensuring that the plan-making process is adequate to the task.

Ms Sporle: Again, I know it has changed over the years. I think I am right in saying in Chris’s day, it was an inquiry, and in my day it was an examination. We certainly, during the time I was there, did a lot of work to speed up the Local Plan process. We made a huge effort to make it more understandable and more inclusive, and I think all those things worked extremely well.

Baroness Whitaker: More inclusive of all the stakeholders?

Ms Sporle: Of the stakeholders. I apologise to all local planning authorities whom I have labelled as incompetent. I really did not mean that, because I am a great fan of local planning authorities, but the point is that nobody ever suggested that a Local Plan was easy and would be anodyne. A Local Plan is always going to be hard and it is always going to involve difficult choices, but what I am really saying is that local planning authorities and local politicians should be up for that task. Clearly, Local Plans are not accepted if the local planning authority has not followed things like the duty to co-operate, or has not put in the right level of housing supply or the right levels of sustainability.

Baroness Whitaker: Would they be the main reasons?

Ms Sporle: I think they are the main reasons. I go back to my time as Chief Executive of Basingstoke and Deane, when we were horrified to find that our Local Plan was turned down—I am going back a few years—on the basis that it was not sustainable because of water supply. We had not done our homework properly. We had to go back to the drawing board. The problem there, as I recall, was that in the time we went back to the drawing board, the political constitution of the council changed, and therefore everything went back to the drawing board. Here, there are not just the professional issues but the democratic issues, which do cause these kinds of difficulties.

Baroness Whitaker: Do they cause delay or change of tack?

Ms Sporle: They often cause a changed approach. In that case, it was a wholesale change from an urban extension in the west to an urban extension in the east.

Baroness Whitaker: How does this affect lack of homework over the water supply? I do not quite follow.

Ms Sporle: The lack of water supply was in the west, so it was changed to the east, and that fitted the political view of the day. I think what this means is that professional planners have to be able to really work hard and well, and have the skills they need to advise their councils about what they need in the Local Plan, and not leave councils exposed to being put back to the drawing board.

Baroness Whitaker: What is the role of the National Inspectorate in that?

Ms Sporle: The Inspector, I believe, does this extremely well. I think there might have been a time when the Inspector was seen as someone rigid and frightening. Currently inspectors do explain what is required at examination.

Baroness Whitaker: Can he or she come in early enough in the process?

Ms Sporle: I think so.

Mr Shepley: Shall I add a few things to that? On your last point, yes, it has been the practice for a long time for the inspectorate—not necessarily the Inspector dealing with the case—to advise local authorities right from the beginning on the process and how best they can go about what they should do and what the obstacles and problems might be. That is a long-established practice, which was happening in my time and probably before, and obviously continues, and it is a very important thing that the inspectorate can do.

Just going back, I agree with what Katrine said but I think housing numbers, the objectively assessed need, the SHMA and all of that, and the allocation of sites, together with the duty to co-operate, are overwhelmingly the main problems that occur in most Local Plans. Sometimes there is another issue, but overwhelmingly this is the big issue that holds things up and causes problems, delay and difficulty. We see this particularly in the south of England; however, there are parts of England where it is not a problem. Then there is the duty to co-operate, which, frankly, is a suboptimal way of trying to assess these things. The abolition of Regional Spatial Strategies might have been justified, and there were reasons for it, but it took away one of the key decisions that had already been made, and it undoubtedly caused its own substantial delay. I know of cases that were delayed by two or three years because a plan which was close to completion and adoption was suddenly withdrawn when the RSS was abolished, and work started again. I really do not envy local authorities. It works quite well in some places but in most areas it really does not work at all, and I am sure other witnesses will have said to you that the absence of effective strategic planning is perhaps the biggest problem in the planning system.

Baroness Whitaker: I understand that very well, but it seems as if lack of capacity in a planning authority might also conduce to an inadequate plan.

Mr Shepley: I think now that is true. I agree with what Katrine said. There are local authorities that have been superb at producing Local Plans. Plymouth—I declare an interest as I once worked there, but some time ago—is held up as the best example in this regard, but there are quite a few others, and it is hard to understand why somewhere like Plymouth can do a really good job and others not, except that perhaps the pressures in Plymouth are rather less than in some parts of south-eastern England.

Baroness Andrews: We could have a long conversation about that, but I think the capacity issues are crucial because, as I recall, Katrine, when you were trying to speed up the plan-making process in the late 1980s, we were trying to simplify the process and strip out some of the extraneous suites of documents which everybody had to provide alongside their plan, and if they did not get on with that, they could not get on with the plan, so a lot of it was about simplification—streamlining.

Mr Shepley: I absolutely agree. I am all in favour of that. Because the system has gradually become more complicated over a long period, things like sustainability appraisal have been introduced, understandably, and I have no problem with that, but that adds an extra dimension. The effort is considerable and the resources are reducing, and I think that will be a continuing problem.

Ms Sporle: All I would say, though, is that you only have to do it once. You have to update it, but the fact is, I have to say, the conservation plan for Salisbury Cathedral, for example, was the same 10 years after it had been done as when it started, because actually very little had changed. It is very easy to say there are problems—there are always problems. It is very easy to say that there is a lack of capacity. I agree; there is always a lack of capacity but you can still get on and make progress. If you really set your mind to doing your sustainability appraisal, and you do it well, it will stand you in good stead for years to come.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: I should declare a past interest, in that I am afraid I was the one that gave the Basingstoke plan a bit of a kicking as Chief Executive of the Environment Agency.

Ms Sporle: Indeed you were.

Baroness Young of Old Scone: Sorry about that!

The Chairman: We will pass over that. Is that all you wanted to say?

Baroness Young of Old Scone: That is all I wanted to say.

Q281 Earl of Lytton: I apologise if I have to slip away to another appointment before we finish discussing this module, but I will be quick. This is about consistency and the comments that have come out in our papers about apparent lack of consistency in planning appeals decisions. I assume it is a given that the Planning Inspectorate seeks consistency in general terms, but how does it actually bring that into being, and what are the challenges and pitfalls in trying to achieve that?

Mr Shepley: First of all, yes, the Planning Inspectorate has a whole range of processes to try to ensure consistency amongst inspectors. One of the problems it has, I suppose, is that planning inspectors all work from home, as you probably know. It is a big homeworking organisation and has been since the 1970s, and that has some massive advantages, particularly in cost terms, but it does mean that quite a bit of time and money has to be spent on making sure they are brought up to date. The recruitment process is fierce. There is usually a big demand to become a planning inspector, a lot of applicants. I think all this is probably still true. There is a two-week residential induction process during which policy and procedures are explained. There is an annual training event which all inspectors attend, and a whole range of other training events in between on specialist topics—conservation or countryside, or whatever.

Inspectors have specialisms and they deal with particular topics as well as general appeal work. When policy changes, notes are sent out or information is provided to inspectors about the policy change. If necessary, training events are held on major changes of policy, and so on. Inspectors are also monitored and observed in planning inquiries, and their reports are read to check for consistency and for the approach they are taking and so on. A massive amount of effort is put into that, and it is the objective.

The only other thing I would say is that this is a problem I faced in local government too: that you can look at two seemingly identical cases and in fact, they can be very different. Certainly, the circumstances surrounding particular cases are always different, and until you get involved in the detail and go to the site and understand it thoroughly, that does not become clear. To give you an example, when I was in local government I can remember very well a committee that dealt with two applications for hot food takeaways, which looked identical, and we recommended approval for one and refusal for the other. The councillor for the ward where we were recommending approval was incandescent but there were significant differences in terms of car parking arrangements. The one where we were recommending refusal was on a main road with no car parking; the other one had some off-street parking, so there were differences like that, although superficially they appeared to be the same. You really have to go into the detail of it.

Finally, there is the question of the evidence which is actually presented. When I give talks about the inspectorate, I always talk about the importance of written evidence being comprehensive and all of the points being put to the inspector, because the inspector is not in a position to go out and search for evidence. The inspector relies on the objectors or the local authority or the applicant putting evidence, and sometimes that is not done very well, so the quality of the evidence can lead to inconsistency on cases that are superficially similar.

Ms Sporle: I would just add to what Chris has said that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, really. Twice when I was at the Planning Inspectorate, we won the TPI award for the quality of our training and the extent to which we made absolutely certain that planning inspectors were up to speed and at the top of their game. The second thing is that, with a change of Government, the inconsistency issue came up and hit me straight in the face, so I randomly picked on a monthly basis 10 appeals and sent them to the Minister so he could see for himself whether there was consistency in decision-making, and I have to say I satisfied him.

The Chairman: The final question is from Lord Inglewood.

Q282 Lord Inglewood: Ms Sporle has slightly covered some of this. There clearly has to be a relationship between the Planning Inspectorate and the Government of the day. How would you define that, and how do you think in the real world they can work together most effectively for the common good?

Mr Shepley: This is quite a complex question actually. Katrine described it earlier as a subtle relationship. The starting point is that governments are elected and planning inspectors are not.

Lord Inglewood: It is rather like the House of Lords and the House of Commons, is it not?

Mr Shepley: I was not going to make that comparison! That is a matter for others to think about. Therefore, there is a phrase in the inspectorate that when an inspector takes a decision, he or she is standing in the shoes of the Secretary of State. You will have heard that phrase, and one is always conscious of that and everyone needs to understand that, because the Secretary of State is elected and makes policy and, as long as the policy is clear, the inspectorate will implement that policy through plans or planning appeal decisions or whatever else.

Having said that, there is an arm’s-length relationship. There was reference earlier to the independence of the Planning Inspectorate, and it operates in this independent quasi-judicial role within the context of the policy which the Secretary of State or the Government of the day set out. That slightly awkward arm’s-length relationship, whilst standing in the shoes of the Secretary of State, has worked extremely well. I never had any difficulty with it. The Secretaries of State that I dealt with when I was there, who mainly were Lord Deben, as he now is—John Gummer—and Lord Prescott, as he now is, and the junior Ministers who worked with them, understood that completely and there was never any problem; no one tried to bring any influence to bear that they should not have, and we had a cordial relationship. That was how it was. Of course, Secretaries of State can recover appeals, and have been recovering rather a lot recently. They can change that relationship in particular cases.

As to how they can work together, Katrine talked about this earlier. She talked about how the inspectorate has knowledge not about what the policies should be, because that is not for the inspectorate, but about how policies are working, whether they are effective or not, whether they having the intended effect, whether they are clear and what confusions are arising. I am sure when Katrine was there—when I was there, we would regularly feed that information back. There used to be quite extensive consultation with the Planning Inspectorate about policy changes when I was there, so that we could say, “We think that will work”, “We don’t think that will work”, or whatever. I am not sure that happens to quite the same extent as it used to.

Baroness Parminter: In recent years we have seen the Government taking our energy infrastructure out of the planning process, and obviously fracking is the latest example which is going to be pulled out. You are saying in the past, the Planning Inspectorate would have given a view on whether or not that was appropriate, given your understanding of the working of the system. Are you saying that is not happening quite so much now?

Mr Shepley: The Planning Inspectorate would have been consulted not on whether it was right to take fracking out, but on the practicability of it. Let me give you an example of what I have in mind. Somebody mentioned wind farms. There is a policy on wind farms which talks about the wishes of the local community, or words to that effect, but the local community is not defined, so the planning inspector would say, “Hang on, we need to know what you mean by the local community. Do you mean the people in the immediate vicinity or do you mean a much wider community?” The planning inspector would not be saying, “You should not do this”. They would be saying, “You can do that but it’s not clear what you mean and therefore we will have problems in inquiries.” That happened a lot when I was there, and although I do not have direct experience of it, given the speed at which things happen these days, my sense is that rather less of that consultation takes place.

Baroness Andrews: From my experience, I completely concur with that. When we were in government, we spent a great deal of time listening to the Planning Inspectorate about the impact of policy, and it was extremely valuable advice we received—and it was completely independent. I do not know whether it was Katrine or one of my fellow Ministers who said to me, “Never refer to the Planning Inspectorate, as one Minister once did, as ‘my Planning Inspectorate’”. It is “the” Planning Inspectorate, and when cases are recovered, that principle of independence really makes an impact on Ministers, who know they have to follow those principles. We are in a quasi-judicial position as well, because you inherit that from the Planning Inspectorate, and judgments you make on recovered cases have to be seen to be independent.

The Chairman: Thank you. Is that a happy note on which to end? An equally happy note is that we are sorry you are going because it has been terrific—a wonderful session. You have engaged with us terrifically and given us a lot more information than we knew we needed or expected. I am particularly grateful to you for giving us this time. You will of course have the transcript. Thank you.