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6. Property, Land and Local Government
Housing disputes
1. We referred in our last Annual Report to the Law Commission's plans to undertake a project on resolving housing disputes. This project began in the latter part of 2004. It aims to take a broad, problem-based approach, starting with thinking about what practical problems people have with housing. It will not be constrained by pre-existing legal categories.
2. Housing disputes are at present resolved in a wide variety of forums: the civil and criminal courts, tribunals, ombudsmen and other forms of dispute resolution. The field seems ideally suited to the general approach to proportionate dispute resolution advocated in the White Paper "Transforming Public Services: Complaints, Redress and Tribunals" discussed in more detail elsewhere in this report. From our point of view, we see the Law Commission project as pioneering the kind of holistic study that we would expect an administrative justice and tribunals council to pursue in relation to the administrative justice landscape as a whole.
3. We were represented by our secretariat at an initial seminar at the Law Commission in September 2004. A consultation paper is expected later in 2005. We are looking forward to making a contribution towards this important project.
Property tribunals
4. In addition to our usual visits programme and routine consultation on procedural rules, we have continued to maintain good contacts with tribunals concerned with property matters, especially the Residential Property Tribunal Service (RPTS) and the Valuation Tribunal Service (VTS). One of our members regularly attends RPTS Management Board and National User Group meetings. This is particularly informative in view of the expanding jurisdiction of the RPTS tribunals in consequence of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 and the Housing Act 2004.
5. We have also attended events organised by the new VTS, which was launched in April 2004. Towards the close of our reporting period the VTS published a consultation paper "Strategy and Development Planning 20052012". The paper made important proposals for changes to the present system of appeals and the organisation and administration of valuation tribunals, with an emphasis on greater coherence, better partnership working and increased customer focus. We shall report next year on the outcome of the consultation.
Planning matters
6. We referred briefly in our last report to a useful meeting we had last year with the Planning Inspectorate's Chief Executive, Katrine Sporle. Among the matters we discussed were the challenges presented by the implementation of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which significantly increased the volume and altered the balance of the Planning Inspectorate's work against a background of financial constraints. The Planning Inspectorate subsequently organised and facilitated a trilateral meeting in Bristol involving the Advisory Panel on Standards to the Planning Inspectorate and representatives from the Planning Inspectorate and the Council on Tribunals. We have referred in earlier reports to the work of the Advisory Panel on Standards, which we have followed with interest, but this was the first occasion on which we had met. The meeting provided a good opportunity to discuss matters of common concern and we hope that it will become a regular fixture.
7. The Planning Inspectorate subsequently involved us, through our secretariat, in the working out of appropriate procedures for the independent examination by inspectors of development plan documents. The testing of these documents for soundness is a key aspect of the new regime under the 2004 Act.
8. It is also intended that inspectors will have a role in the determination of disputes between neighbours about high hedges. Part 8 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 provides a regime for the resolution of such disputes, in which complaint to the local authority and any subsequent appeal to the Secretary of State would be very much the last resort. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister consulted on the detailed arrangements in April 2004. We had no comments of substance on the draft High Hedges (Appeals) (England) Regulations but strongly urged the view that this was an area where other ways of resolving disputes should be fully explored before an appeal was made.
Local government
9. The Local Government Act 2000 provides for case tribunals to adjudicate on alleged breaches by local authority members of a local authority's code of conduct. Case tribunals (and interim case tribunals, which deal with temporary suspension) are drawn from Adjudication Panels, one for England and one for Wales. In England, cases are referred to the Adjudication Panel by the Standards Board, following investigation by ethical standards officers. Case tribunals (and interim case tribunals) are under our supervision. We have made several visits to hearings.
10. In September 2004 we were glad to invite Mr David Laverick, the President of the Adjudication Panel for England, to a meeting to talk about the work of the Panel during its first two years of operation. Among the matters we discussed were waiting times, hearing venues, frequency of sittings, training of members, and the respective advantages of procedural rules and presidential directions for regulating the conduct of hearings. In some respects the work of the Adjudication Panel is not typical of the majority of tribunals under our supervision. It has much in common with the work of professional disciplinary bodies, which are in general outside our remit. But it plays an important role in the maintenance of standards in public life. We shall continue to take a close interest in its work.
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