13
Examination of witnesses
Leenamari Aantaa-Collier, Jeanie Bell and Sarah Clover.
Q1 The Chair: Good afternoon and a very warm welcome to this meeting of the Liaison Committee. I am delighted to welcome our witnesses, both in the room and virtually, and, indeed, Lady McIntosh of Pickering and the former members of the Licensing Act 2003 Committee, whose work we are following up today. I shall hand over to Lady McIntosh and members of the committee for questioning, but before I do so I invite the witnesses to introduce themselves.
Leenamari Aantaa-Collier: I am a partner at the Wilkes Partnership, and my specialities are planning and some licensing.
Sarah Clover: Good afternoon. I am a barrister based in Kings Chambers. I was the specialist adviser to the committee between 2016 and 2017, and I am on the board of the Institute of Licensing and other trade organisations.
Jeanie Bell: Good afternoon, everybody. I am here representing the Local Government Association. I am also a local councillor and cabinet member for stronger, safer communities at St Helens Borough Council.
Q2 Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: Can I say what a wonderful opportunity it is to be able to have a follow-up inquiry into the Licensing Act 2003? We are very grateful to you, Senior Deputy Speaker, and to the Liaison Committee for making this possible. I would like, if I may, to thank our committee research assistant Hannah Murdoch, who has worked exceptionally hard in preparing for today, also Heather Fuller and to Philippa Tudor. Thank you all for bringing us to this place.
Before I put my first question, can I declare my interests, from both the original inquiry and the present one? I am non‑executive chair of the national Proof of Age Standards Scheme known as PASSCo CIC. I am a non-practising member of the Faculty of Advocates, co-vice-chair of the all‑party group on food and drink, vice-chair of the APPG for the Night Time Economy, and a member of both the APPG on food and drink and the APPG on wines and spirits. I have received occasional hospitality from the Scotch Whisky Association. I am a judge, and have been a judge last year and this year, for the Food and Drink Federation community awards. I have previously received briefings and hospitality from the Scotch Whisky Association. As an MEP in about 1996 to 1998, I was assisted by David Williamson, who subsequently became public affairs and communications director of the Scotch Whisky Association.
I would like to look first at the licensing system, and pose my first question to Councillor Bell and to the excellent specialist adviser to our previous inquiry, Sarah Clover, whom I am delighted to see with us today.
We looked very closely at the Section 182 guidance and the Licensing Act 2003 councillor’s handbook. What are the most significant developments in licensing since the committee produced its report in 2017? Do you think that the changes made to the Section 182 guidance and the Licensing Act 2003 councillor’s handbook, which is referenced in the Government’s follow-up response, have brought greater clarity to the licensing system?
Jeanie Bell: I will take the Section 182 question first, because that is probably the most straightforward to answer for you. The LGA has consistently received really positive feedback about the licensing handbook, in that councils find it really helpful when setting policy and monitoring how policy is implemented. It has lots of information about the roles and responsibility of licensing committee members, as well as really good guidance on best practice, so we know, based on the feedback in training and supporting members, that it is widely used.
In addition, we have the LGA’s licensing leadership essentials course, which I am speaking from today and delivering this afternoon, which provides members with additional support and guidance on how to chair an effective licensing committee. It addressed many of the very specific points raised in the committee’s report, especially on standards for members.
Since the committee reported in 2017, there have not been many significant developments, unfortunately, in relation to the Licensing Act. On the positive side, placing the cumulative impact policy on a statutory footing has been really helpful. We have seen that in use in some areas. We use it in my area to help manage the opening up of stand-up bars rather than seated bars and restaurants. It was really helpful for us in managing our night-time economy, but we are still waiting for the late-night levy to enable authorities to target some of those financial resources.
On what has not changed, the first is the licensing fees. The LGA view is that licensing fees should be set at a local level so that we can allow full-cost recovery, and I know the committee supported that. If fees cannot be set locally, it is crucial that we start to talk about the Government committing to a flat-rate increase from the 2005 levels. It has been a long time since that has changed. It is crucial for the Act to be amended to introduce a public health objective—we feel really strongly about this—to require businesses to think about public health and to provide councils with better enforcement powers.
Sarah Clover: Thank you for your kind comments, Lady McIntosh. It is a great pleasure to be back and to be of assistance.
First, on the Section 182 guidance, the question is whether anything brought greater clarity to the licensing system. My response would be no, not particularly. The Section 182 guidance was updated in 2018. I understand that there may be more updates pending, but, in my experience, the key change to the Section 182 guidance was in paragraph 9.12, which previous committee members might remember related to police advice and the weight to be given to that. It was weighted slightly in favour of police advice as opposed to any other responsible authority, and it was a committee recommendation to correct and amend that in order to put all responsible authorities on a level playing field.
That has made a significant difference, in my experience, and committees are mindful of that change and the changes mentioned by Ms Bell to put cumulative impact on to a statutory basis. That is it, on the Section 182 guidance. That tool could well be put to greater use in effecting more change, and perhaps we will touch on that in some of the other questions.
The Local Government Association councillor’s handbook may have brought greater clarity to councillors about the Licensing Act. I do not know that it has brought greater clarity to licensing. It follows and reflects what the Licensing Act and the Section 182 guidance say. I have spoken to some of the trainers in the Institute of Licensing about councillor training and access to the handbook. They did not give me any clear idea as to how widely used or how popular the councillor’s handbook is, although I have no reason to do anything other than reflect Ms Bell’s comments about the quality of the document. I know that the IOL was instrumental in updating it in recent years.
The Institute of Licensing has also been involved in providing training to councillors. Some of the comments that have come back are that the standard training package for councillors is over one day and that there are issues with councillor training. That might be a question later, so I will perhaps leave that there.
Briefly, on changes and challenges in licensing generally, I would identify Covid, obviously, as being a massive change and challenge to the licensing world and hospitality. It has thrown up all sorts of issues that have brought into sharp focus what needs to change. One that we will look at in a moment or two, I hope, is urban regeneration and residential intensification in town and city centres, which has a massive impact on licensing and planning. It is a change that the industry is facing. The consequences are running away with us, and it is an area that licensing and planning really could intervene in more.
Q3 Baroness Henig: May I, please, start by declaring my interests? I chair the Chartered Security Professionals Registration Authority, and I am president of the Security Institute. I am also non-executive chair of a company called SecuriGroup, which, among other things, provides security for night-time venues. I am sure that at least one of our witnesses, Sarah Clover, will remember that a key finding of the committee’s report was the lack of co‑ordination between the licensing and planning systems. Indeed, we spent much time on this matter.
The gist of my question is whether co-ordination has improved since the committee’s report. In the first instance, we understand that there has been work to explore solutions to the problem, including stakeholder workshops. I wanted to ask how they were going. In the second instance, I wondered whether the Government’s ongoing planning reforms might provide an opportunity to build effective mechanisms for the licensing and planning systems to work together. Maybe Sarah should start on this, because in a way she is very familiar with the background to this question.
Sarah Clover: I have been working with Leenamari Aantaa-Collier on this issue as well, so she will be able to supplement what I say. In relation to the greater co-ordination since, the answer is, regrettably, no. Not a great deal has happened. I am sure that, again, the Covid pandemic and pressures on councils have played a part in that, but in real terms what I am seeing on the ground in practice is some ad hoc organic solutions growing up in different authorities and authority areas as they try to grapple with the problems they are faced with.
The nature of the problem, as I touched on a moment ago, is the greater intensification of people coming into night-time economy areas to live. We see all sorts of vibrant city living advertised. People move in. Development needs to be controlled very carefully to mediate and harmonise the way people live in their new environment cheek by jowl with hospitality venues, to have co-ordination between licensing, planning, environmental protection and environmental health officers, and to have that discourse and discussion up front, so that these land use relationships can be controlled effectively from the get-go. That does not happen. What tends to happen is that people move in; licensed premises are not ready for it and are not handling noise breakout effectively; residents complain; and then, three, five or 10 years later, however long it might be, environmental health has to pick up the problem in terms of complaints and then enforce. That is being amplified exponentially in our current situation.
Moving quickly to the workshops that we did, and Leenamari will be able to pick this up, there was a round of workshops jointly between the Home Office and the Institute of Licensing. They were very well attended, and we got some fantastic feedback and information from a wide group of stakeholders about the very nature of this problem and what could be done to bring greater co-ordination to these departments in local authorities. A number of good ideas came out of that. We produced a report, which I have sent to the Liaison Committee to consider. That is as far as we got, because that was the tail end of 2019 and early 2020, and then the pandemic hit, and here we are. That is my answer to that question.
Leenamari Aantaa-Collier: I concur with Sarah. Coming back to the workshops, there was a lot of good will, but, practically, nothing happened. As to whether licensing and planning work together, Sarah is absolutely right. It is almost too late to do it with the agent of change policy. It needs to be done prior to anything else to avoid the problems that will occur both for local hospitality businesses and for residents themselves. It creates conflict in the community, and that cannot be right, really.
Baroness Henig: Jeanie, as a councillor, presumably, you might have first-hand experience of this.
Jeanie Bell: Yes. I can speak on behalf of the LGA, but also, as a councillor, I sit on our licensing committee and I have chaired licensing for quite a while. In the LGA, we did not support the committee’s main conclusion, around the recommendation that the committees for licensing and planning be merged. From a councillor perspective, I agree; I would not recommend that. Licensing is much broader and much more in depth, and touches on issues of community safety and prevention of harm to the public as well as the crossover that it has with planning. They are two very distinct committees, but I think they need to work together much more closely. I would agree with colleagues who have spoken that it is not happening enough.
There are patches of good practice where that is developing. We definitely saw it through Covid with the pavement licensing schemes, which were a really good example where we saw planning mobilising very quickly to work with licensing in order to support those businesses to get up and running and operating. It was a shift in that planning became an enabler, with licensing enabling businesses, rather than just having a regulator. That is the kind of good practice that we want to see.
We would like to see proper reform of the pavement licensing regime in the way it blends the best bits of the regime under the Highways Act and the Business and Planning Act to benefit residents. I would absolutely agree with Sarah Clover about the difficulties that have come through Covid and the management of noise nuisance for licensing, but also that with regulatory services such as environment health you are talking about a whole regulatory regime. We saw exponential increases in residents’ complaints due to pavement cafes and licensed premises operating outdoors, and that is a very difficult area to manage.
Q4 Lord Foster of Bath: Thank you very much indeed. It is great to have Sarah back with us. As she knows, in our report we recommended that the agent of change principle be adopted in both planning and licensing, and we explained why at the time. Since then, the National Planning Policy Framework has incorporated the agent of change, yet we have just heard from Leenamari that what is causing the problem is the fact that it is in the planning guidance but not in Section 182, the licensing section. Can you explain to us why it creates a problem, since it is already in one bit of legislation but not the other?
Leenamari Aantaa-Collier: The agent of change is a very good start, but it is only a start. There are competing requirements in a council currently, and one is a substantial increase in housing. Of course, there is immediately a priority competition between the licensed premises and the planning. The policy is a good start, and it could be strengthened to start with. If you cannot get anything in the legislation, it could be made better by giving more weight to the fact that there might be significant effect, and if the mitigation is done at earlier stages and agreed before development starts. With regard to noise, it should be agreed with the environmental department because the noise is the biggest issue in these circumstances. What has happened is that the priority of creating housing takes over the agent of change policy as it stands.
Lord Foster of Bath: I am sorry to interrupt you, but, to be absolutely clear about this, if we were to persuade the Government to introduce the agent of change principle in the Section 182 guidance, would that actually solve your problem, or is the problem really what we have already heard about the difficulty of licensing and planning not working together?
Leenamari Aantaa-Collier: It is the fact that licensing is separate. It is a starting point, but it will not resolve the problem because the planning will take priority at the end of the day.
Lord Foster of Bath: Councillor Bell, do you share that concern?
Jeanie Bell: It takes time for any policy or change of policy to bed in. We are seeing evidence that the agent of change principle is being applied through planning by local authorities. I think it has been seen in a couple of recent appeals where the developers have not been able to evidence that they have put enough mitigation in place and have been turned down on appeal, so it can be used effectively in the planning system. If there is evidence that it needs to be moved into the licensing regime, absolutely we have to look at that, but we would need to see the evidence of the need for it to be in the licensing regime to support it. There is a part for the LGA to play in amplifying messages on agent of change in our councillor handbooks. That is certainly something that we will do.
Lord Foster of Bath: Sarah, have you any further comments on that?
Sarah Clover: This is a key area. My work in agent of change, noise complaints and so forth has been exponential in the last few years, particularly post Covid, because of people’s experience and relationship with noise. Because the impacts were occurring, the NPPF—the National Planning Policy Framework—was amended to incorporate the agent of change principle. It is policy only, and that is important to emphasise. It is one planning policy among many, and even if it went into the Section 182 guidance, it would still be policy only. The problem with policy or guidance is that it is not definitive. Different policies pull in different directions, and that is part of the problem that we have.
Local authorities are playing catch-up on this. As you have heard from the other witnesses, councils are having to apply the agent of change policy and having to make changes, but because there is no national consistency, they are making it up as they go along. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is very organic. What the agent of change policy and the NPPF actually say is this: if you have development going in near noise sources such as music venues or something of that sort, just be careful of the business. It is something of a toothless tiger. It does not really have any specific guidance to give decision-makers as to precisely what they should do in that situation.
That is where the co-ordination between licensing, planning and environmental health really comes in. If there is that education piece, and other departments can come in and say, “In this situation, you need to implement the agent of change policy, and it would mean this, this and this”, you would get a quality decision up front. That is exactly what tends not to happen, so integrating agent of change into the Section 182 would be a good mirror for what is in the NPPF. However, we have to recognise that it is still policy guidance only.
Ultimately, the goal would be to have it in legislation. There was a possibility for that to happen in accordance with the current planning reform that was going through and the planning Bill. That now seems to be off the table, possibly to be replaced by the levelling-up White Paper and Bill. That, again, would seem to be taking this opportunity away to escalate agent of change to a legislative provision, perhaps something like the way we protect listed buildings, which would have been a much more powerful tool to cure this very real problem.
Q5 Lord Blair of Boughton: I think this has been touched on already this afternoon. What progress has been made in the development and rollout of training for councillors? Would it be useful for a required training standard to be included in the Section 182 guidance?
Jeanie Bell: As I said before, I am here in Coventry at the moment where we are delivering a two-day training course that is very interactive. There has been significant progress from our perspective in councillor training for those who are willing to access it. We have a two-day interactive course where people can come together, problem-solve, share issues in their own licensing committees and compare the different structures in licensing, because obviously not every committee operates in the same way. A lot of people do not understand that, so it is giving people a chance to look at other systems and how they work.
We piloted the course prior to the first Covid lockdown, so this is the second one, but the demand for the course is really high, so we already have another date set for October. We are hoping to run several more over the coming years. The LGA has funded this at the moment, but with dedicated funding from the Home Office we could expand that much more quickly and deliver much more thorough training to as many people as we can get on it.
We are in the process of refreshing our support to assist officers, including licensing officers, in the council, so there are new e-modules that they can access. We are developing training videos for members, which will be scenario-based, where they can problem-solve and respond to how they would look at and deal with that situation in a hearing. We also have handbooks on the Licensing Act, the Gambling Act, taxis and the whole range. Obviously, there are training programmes provided by other organisations such as the Institute of Licensing.
In terms of a required training standard, in my authority we insist that members have mandatory training every year. Regardless of how long they have been on a licensing committee, they have to have that annual training. The problem with that is that when there is a move mid-year, you then have to retrain that individual member who has moved on to the committee. That can only be done by officers, so there is consistency there. If you are offering training only in a set time and there are standardised requirements, how do you then adapt to a fluctuating political environment where you have by-elections and committee numbers change very quickly? It would be useful for us to have really clear and set guidance on what training should be covered, and then we can adapt and change to that.
Lord Blair of Boughton: Should that be in the Section 182 guidance?
Jeanie Bell: Yes.
Lord Blair of Boughton: I should have declared my interest, which is long service in the police that included this area of policy.
Sarah Clover: The training issue is crucial, not only for councillors but for the police.
Lord Blair of Boughton: We will come to that in another session.
Sarah Clover: The Institute of Licensing has been working with the Home Office to try to establish standardised training programmes, and it is absolutely key to have something that is standard nationally and mandatory. The quality needs to be clear and consistent, and access to it needs to be clear and consistent as well. That would apply to both councillors and the police.
The mandatory element is very important. I have taken some soundings from the trainers at the Institute of Licensing, and the feedback we get is that the standard training package is a day, which is just about enough to cover the basics. Sometimes they get inquiries from local authorities seeing if they can do less than that, maybe two hours or half a day, which is not regarded as a sufficient training package. Sometimes councillors will attend training courses, and sign in and then leave, so there seems to be variable commitment to it, which is regrettable because it is hugely important. Obviously, it ties back into the councillor’s handbook as well.
It would be useful, in my view, to put it in the Section 182 guidance as a requirement. This may be an area that could be resolved without the need for primary legislation, because you could have a cultural development whereby people ask and have an expectation that a certain level of training has been accessed and understood, and if the answer was, “No, I haven’t done that”, there would be an instant lack of credibility for that individual in not having accessed a national programme that everybody understands, knows and recognises. That could be very effective, but it would need to be implemented as a cultural and educational shift in people’s mindsets. You could do that through the Section 182 guidance and a standardised package of training for all those who need to access it.
Q6 Baroness Scott of Needham Market: I will start by declaring my interests. I am the president of the National Association of Local Councils, and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
The committee originally took evidence from people with a range of disability issues, and that theme was picked up during another Select Committee’s report into the Equality Act, yet 66% of respondents to the 2020 UK Disability Survey say that they have either been unable to access licensed premises or had extreme difficulty. Are any positive discussions are being had or any positive moves being made on this situation?
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: Who would like to answer that first?
Baroness Scott of Needham Market: I do not mind. Jeanie has put her hand up. That is very helpful. Thank you.
Jeanie Bell: I will come in briefly. I do not know how helpful it will be, but my understanding is that there has been limited follow-up on the issue. There have been some examples of councils pushing for powers to be able to protect the interests of disabled people in relation to access. The Government’s temporary pavement licensing regime has thrown up some issues, so a lot of licensing authorities felt that they did not have adequate enforcement powers under the temporary regime. They were not able to take enforcement action where businesses placed tables and chairs outside, causing blockages for people not only entering the premises themselves but walking past or going past in a wheelchair. That even applies to people using prams.
The temporary structures that are placed outside can have a massive impact if the furniture is blocking the pavement, but also if it does not have a barrier around it with bright colours to make it visible and to enable people to differentiate from the rest of the street furniture. We are really concerned that, in a future permanent regime, licensing authorities have adequate time to get public responses in, and a good determination period to consider licences and ensure that they do not negatively impact on anybody with a protected characteristic. The main thing is the ability to take enforcement action when premises are causing problems.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market: Thank you, Jeanie. That is really helpful. Would any of the other witnesses like to comment on whether it is genuinely a problem that they do not have the power or whether, among all the other pressures, councils are simply not prioritising enforcement on this? The easy thing is always to ask for more power. You would need to explore whether it is actually being used.
Sarah Clover: I do not have anything particularly helpful to add, but the negative might be informative, I suppose. What follow-up has there been? The answer is that there has been none, as far as I am aware. I am not conscious of any follow-up at all. I remember, when the committee originally looked at issues of disability and access, that there was some examination as to what could be done through the medium of the Licensing Act 2003 itself. From memory, it was considered that because of the structure of the Act it might be difficult to enforce access issues through one of the four licensing objectives that apply to the Act. It does not fall naturally in any one of them.
There was some discussion about whether one could review a licence, for example, because of access issues and non-compliance. Again, from memory, it was felt that that was perhaps not the right medium to pursue the problem. In terms of enforcement outside the auspices of the Act, I am not aware of any progress having been made. I am sure that the comment about council priorities is absolutely correct at this point in time.
Q7 Lord Foster of Bath: We know that the Local Government Association’s guidance says that councils should already have mechanisms in place to take online applications and payment. Of course, the Covid pandemic then led to people saying, “That should be the default situation”. We recommended that the Government’s website, GOV.UK, be developed in a way that they could take these applications on to their site. We have been told subsequently that there is a trial going on. I wonder, Councillor Bell, whether you could bring us up to speed with what is happening in relation to online applications and the ability to use the GOV.UK website to facilitate that.
Jeanie Bell: Thank you for your question. I will try my best to answer that. Unfortunately, there has been very little progress to develop that GOV.UK licensing platform since the committee’s original report. What is more worrying for us is that the Government have recently proposed to retire the service altogether with no plans in place for a replacement. Following the LGA and others raising concerns about that, we were assured that the Government Digital Service would work with councils on it, but, as of now, we still have no clarity about what is expected of licensing authorities or when we may even be consulted on the changes to the licensing platform.
That uncertainty is causing a lot of unrest really. It is impacting authorities and the range of options that they are able to offer licensed premises. It is certainly unsettling the licensed premises themselves as to the future of the GOV.UK platform and what will happen. Although some councils have the resources and the capability to develop an in-house online alternative, others simply do not. It may lead to an inconsistency in service provision if that platform goes. Some councils will be forced to return to paper-based systems. That level of inconsistency in licensing is not something that we should want.
Lord Foster of Bath: We absolutely accept that. One of the reasons we wanted GOV.UK is so that there was consistency of application of the legislation across local authorities. In terms of the mechanics, in St Helens, your own council, are you satisfied that you have an adequate and robust online application and payment procedure?
Jeanie Bell: Yes. We developed that through Covid, so the majority of our applications are going online for licensed drivers, but they still have to come in and show physical evidence. In terms of licensed premises, we would then have to develop further resource to support the minimal resource that we have in place already.
Lord Foster of Bath: Has the LGA, which you also represent, done any work to co-ordinate the online platforms of individual local authorities in the absence of the Government doing anything?
Jeanie Bell: I understand that the Institute of Licensing will issue a survey to gather a clearer picture of what is likely to happen if that platform is retired. We would be really interested in supporting that in any way we can. We also want to work with government and businesses to develop a viable alternative to it. Additionally, the LGA Safer and Stronger Communities Board, which I sit on, is going to write to the Government again to seek clarity on the issue and offer assistance. That is the important thing. We do not want just to be seen to be objecting. We want to offer to assist in any way that we can with the work at any point that we can.
Lord Foster of Bath: Before today is out, we will ask Ministers that question on your behalf. Sarah, reference has been made to the Institute of Licensing and the work it may be doing in this area. Can you bring us up to speed?
Sarah Clover: I cannot really add anything to what Ms Bell has said. There will be a survey. We are deeply concerned about it for all the reasons that have just been given. It is a backwards step. It is highly concerning. Licensees are very worried about it. This lack of access and consistency is going to cause chaos.
Lord Foster of Bath: You share the same view, Leenamari.
Leenamari Aantaa-Collier: I share the same view.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: Would you like to ask a question, Lord Blencathra?
Lord Blencathra: No, not on this. Disabled access is nothing to do with this session. It is all down to the Government and the Equalities Act 2010, so if I had any questions, they would be for the Ministers, but thank you.
Q8 Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: I wonder whether I could ask two quick-fire questions of our witnesses before we lose them. From the perspective of the Local Government Association especially, Councillor Bell, do you believe that for the night-time economy you have the right tools to do the work we are asking you to do under the Licensing Act?
Jeanie Bell: We have always said that the Licensing Act does not need major reform and upheaval. We can work with what we have and improve on it rather than a complete rehaul and reform. The tools are there. It is about joining the dots in areas where we can work better. To the comments about planning and licensing working more closely together, for us, our key asks would be that we need licensing fees to be locally set, and we would really welcome the committee’s assistance with that. Licensing is underfunded. The rates of fees have not been changed since 2005. They need to be locally set.
We would also really want a public health objective to be added to the Licensing Act on supporting alcohol but also gambling, which is an emerging issue that we are really concerned about and need to be addressing. By bringing public health to work closely with licensing, we can do that. Finally, we would welcome the committee’s assistance in securing urgent clarity on the future of the GOV.UK licensing platform. That is a tool that we need to be running, and the removal of that without a back-up could be catastrophic.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: I think it was Sarah Clover who spoke about the importance of having it in legislation rather than guidance only. Having a commitment in either the planning Bill or the levelling-up Bill is something you would particularly emphasise, as you said previously.
Sarah Clover: Yes, absolutely. The policy for agent of change at the moment is indicative. It sets decision-makers along the right line but in a very inconsistent way. Some of the mechanisms for implementing agent of change even are relatively chaotic, so you see some local authorities implementing what they call an agent of change agreement, which is largely made up. Others are mediating exchanges of money between developers and night-time economy or music businesses. Others will try to implement Section 106 agreements or conditions in a planning permission. There are all sorts of different implementations and interpretations of the agent of change policy because it is so vague.
My vision for legislation would be, as I say, more like listed buildings protection, which has a structure to it and a duty built into it—a duty for a decision-maker and a duty for developers that they cannot avoid, or they will not get their development. That is the direction in which we ought to be moving.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: Leenamari, do you agree or disagree?
Leenamari Aantaa-Collier: I agree, but it will be very tough to get that in. I would suggest that the agent of change policy is changed and given more guidance because there is room, by wording the policy differently, to have more weight on certain issues and to create the mitigation method into that policy in a different way. At the moment, it is saying it has to be done when the development has been completed. This could be changed prior to development being implemented, for example, and that would make a difference. It could be that the noise levels had to be agreed with environmental health rather than anything else. That is at least a step towards better handling of the agent of change policy, and then I hope it will get to the legislation, but I do not think levelling up will get there.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering: Could I, on behalf of the committee, thank you very much, Leenamari, Sarah and Councillor Bell, for being with us and being so fulsome in your responses?
The Chair: May I reiterate our thanks to all the witnesses.
