Well, Mike Hedges will know that he and I have had a couple of sparring matches on this point over a large number of years. So, he knows I don't agree with him on that, which I'm sorry to say. Applicants can appeal against refusal of permission, where an independent inspector then checks the decision of the local planning authority against local and national planning policies and any other material consideration raised. I absolutely recognise the point about local plans, local strategic areas, HMO strategy areas and so on—there are a number of them—strategic design orders and so on.

We have got a good relationship with all of our local authorities in Wales, and where I've been asked to do so—and I'm very happy to invite such a request from any other local authority—the planning inspectors have been able to work with officers from those authorities to understand what the evidential requirements are in order to defend an appeal, in order to make the decision in the first place, and, indeed, in order to strengthen their particular design orders or HMO restraint orders, or whatever it is they're doing, so that they don't get overturned on appeal. And, in fact, actually, we've produced statistics, because there is a perception that more get turned over on appeal than not, and we've produced statistics that show that that's not so.