Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
(2 days ago)
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Viscount Trenchard
To ask His Majesty’s Government, given their intention to align dynamically with the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) regime of the European Union, whether they intend to comply with Chapter 7 of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership on SPS measures.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, the UK and the EU are working towards establishing a common sanitary and phytosanitary area that will remove trade barriers for areas within the scope of the agreement. The UK will not be rejoining the single market or customs union. Our focus will be to regulate consistently with the EU on specific rules in the scope of the CSPS area. We expect the agreement with the EU to be consistent with our international obligations, including those under the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. We have entered negotiations with the European Union in full awareness of those international commitments.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply but I do not share her optimism that dynamic alignment with the EU’s SPS regime will be compatible with our membership of the CPTPP. The CPTPP’s processes depend on the assessment of equivalence, rather than alignment or harmonisation, between two party’s specific SPS measures. Our CPTPP partners are concerned about our proposed dynamic alignment under the European court for many reasons. For example, the EU’s GMO, gene editing and beef hormone bans are not based on sound science. The EU could put us in breach of the CPTPP’s SPS and TBT rules. A challenge would have to go through Brussels, but the EU is not a CPTPP member. Does the Minister not agree that we would do better to retain responsibility for our own rules and avoid the risk of protracted and expensive litigation?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, quite rightly we have reset our relations with European partners to improve our diplomatic, economic and security co-operation following Brexit. We are now looking at the opportunities that can follow on from that. The discussions with the EU are at an early stage. We signed a common understanding in May this year, and there will be further negotiations that may lead to a new formal agreement in some of these areas. That may require primary legislation for domestic implementation of the agreements in the UK once finalised. Formal negotiations on the EU SPS agreement have not yet begun and we will set out further details, but we will, of course, make sure that anything we do will be consistent with our international obligations and other arrangements with trading partners.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that the Opposition’s obsession with being isolated from the rest of Europe is very damaging to Britain and the industries?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, as I say, we see huge advantages to our reset with our European partners. The fact is that UK agri-food trade with the EU has, since 2018 to 2024, fallen by 21% for exports and 7% for imports. It is important that we re-establish those relationships so that our own trade can benefit from the new opportunities that we will have with the reset arrangements following that common understanding with the EU.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I think we are all grateful to the noble Viscount for causing the Minister to put her trade hat on. It is good to discuss trade. The Financial Times recently reported an influx of Australian steak, which is undercutting British beef. Does the Minister agree with what the Liberal Democrats said at the time: that the Australian FTA, which was made in haste by the Conservative Government of the time, sells out British farmers? What will her Government do to try to protect them from this problem?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, we remain committed to our high agriculture and food standards. As the Trade and Agriculture Commission report has confirmed, all food and drink products imported into the UK will still have to meet our existing import, food safety and biosecurity requirements. We have not lowered our standards to join the CPTPP. For example, hormone-treated beef and ractopamine—I knew I would fall when attempting to pronounce that—pork remain banned in the UK, as will other products affected by pesticides. We will maintain our existing food standards.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
We will hear from the Cross Benches.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, since we are a member of the CPTPP, can the Minister tell us whether any of the other members of that organisation have raised this problem with us and said there will be any incompatibility? After all, our intention to sign an SPS agreement with the EU is a matter of common knowledge.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, these issues are, as ever, discussed at the CPTPP ministerial meetings. We have assured all those partners that we will maintain our existing agricultural standards, as I have confirmed.
Lord Jack of Courance (Con)
My Lords, our membership of CPTPP is facilitated by our ownership of the Pitcairn Islands. Can the noble Baroness confirm that the Government are not planning to give that island away as well?
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I will try to avoid long acronyms in my question. We had the negotiation back in May for the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement. Nothing has happened yet. My colleagues in the inshore fishing sector in the south-west of England want to understand whether they will be able to export to Europe in the way that they used to, without all the red tape and bureaucracy they have had since Brexit.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, as I have said, the discussions are only just beginning, and we will set out more details, including with respect to our other trade obligations. I assure the noble Lord that we will do everything we can to remove a lot of the red tape that was introduced, quite unnecessarily, when we left the European Union.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, on 27 August, the responsible Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, said that any disputes under the SPS agreement
“go to international arbitration, not the European Court of Justice”.
However, the Commission’s negotiating mandate, agreed in July, says that the SPS agreement is based on EU law and
“should ensure uniform interpretation and application”
of EU law, and that
“the Court of Justice of the European Union is the ultimate authority for all questions of European Union law”.
Can the Minister explain how those two statements can be reconciled?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I have not seen that piece of advice. I assure noble Lords that, as those discussions continue, we will continue to keep Parliament updated, no doubt in your Lordships’ Chamber as well as through our standing parliamentary committees.
Lord Lilley (Con)
Can the Minister confirm that the value of goods exported by the EU to us that will be relieved of any liability to SPS checks is five times the value of the goods that we export to the EU? So this deal is five times as valuable to the EU as it is to us. I have no objection to being generous to the EU, since I am a French farmer myself, but was it necessary to pay for the privilege of being generous by also giving away 12 years of our right to enhance our rights over fishing in UK waters, and to agree that we would pay for the privilege of implementing this deal and give up sovereignty over our right to control our SPS rules over the rest of the world?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
We will maintain our SPS standards, as I have consistently said. I remind noble Lords that the EU remains the UK’s largest trading partner for agri-food and vice versa, so there are huge benefits in maintaining or re-establishing a lot of those European trading partners, which will benefit our farmers and consumers as well.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I will develop a theme that was started by my noble friend in his supplementary question. Given that the UK is ahead of the EU in developing a proportionate regulatory framework for gene editing and that the sector has attracted significant inward investment positioning Britain as a potential global leader, will the Minister confirm that an exemption will be secured for gene editing in any SPS agreement?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
That issue will be discussed as part of these agreements; it is not specific to the discussions that we are having at the moment. I remind noble Lords that we see ourselves as a global trading partner: the fact that we already have deals with India and the US and are now developing them with the EU will ensure that we can provide food on a cheaper basis for consumers while maintaining our own established food standards. That is the way that we should go in the future.
UK Defence and Aerospace Facilities: Protests
(2 days ago)
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Lord Austin of Dudley
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of protest movements targeting UK defence and aerospace facilities and exports, on the UK’s security and economy, and the supply chains and reputation of the defence industry abroad.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, the Ministry of Defence tracks risks to the defence sector as part of its routine monitoring of supply chain resilience. Some UK defence companies have faced costs and disruption due to criminal damage and staff intimidation by groups such as Palestine Action. We are working with the police to address those offences and mitigate future risks. Although individual businesses have been affected, the overall impact on defence has been limited, with no significant effects reported on the defence supply chain or the reputation of our world-leading defence industry.
Lord Austin of Dudley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the defence industry is vital to our national security and our economy, not least when we must do more to increase support for Ukraine. It provides thousands of highly skilled and well-paid jobs. We have to stand up for it and support it and the people who work in the industry. It is not just buildings and equipment that have been attacked; workers have been intimidated and police officers have been injured as extremist groups have smashed their way into factories. This is not peaceful protest; it is a violent national campaign. Will the Government put in place a robust strategy to support the defence sector and get the people responsible for those attacks before the courts more quickly, as they were able to do with other examples of public disorder?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The noble Lord makes a really important point. Let us use this opportunity to state that it is totally unacceptable for people to act as they have. There is legitimate protest, which this country is proud to facilitate, but we will not allow our bases to be broken into, people to be intimidated and protests to stray into the realms of illegality and violence. None of us in this Chamber would accept that. That is why we have proscribed Palestine Action and why we see people before the courts. We work strongly with the Home Office, the police and others to ensure that those who think that they can do that will face the full force of the law.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, the activity to which the noble Lord, Lord Austin, rightly refers is de facto sabotage of our critical defence capability. In Napoleonic times, setting fire to a naval dockyard was construed as such and punishable by death, which was abolished only by the Criminal Damage Act 1971. Does the Minister agree that any sabotage activity of the type described is profoundly serious, and is he satisfied that the criminal law is adequate to deal with the appropriate charge and penalty in such grave circumstances?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I know that the British media are always concerned with accuracy, so let me start my remarks by saying that, whatever I say now, we have no intention of restoring the death penalty—let us get that out of the way first; whatever review may or may not take place, that is not on the table. The noble Baroness who speaks for the Opposition makes an important point. This is a very serious matter. That is why we have proscribed Palestine Action. That is why we will take the action necessary to protect our defence industry and to stop intimidation and do all we can to support our world-leading industry. We will always continue to discuss with our Home Office colleagues and with others across government whether more needs to be done. Let us be clear: there is legitimate protest, which is perfectly acceptable, but some of the things that have gone on are totally unacceptable.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, there seems to be an issue with public opinion at present about a failure to understand the importance of defence. Recent polling has suggested that many people of service age would not be willing to fight for our country. What are the Government doing to engage in the national conversation that the strategic review said was necessary to help people understand the importance of defence to our country and that any attack on the defence sector is also an attack on our own resilience?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a good point and, by asking the question, she starts to raise the conversation that we need to have as politicians about having more confidence to speak to the British public about why, as a country, we do the things that we do—and why it is extremely important that we do them. On a practical level, to make that rhetoric a reality, one thing that we are doing is to talk about the need for national resilience, the importance of protecting our critical national infrastructure and the importance of the reserves as well as the full-time personnel. The noble Baroness, who follows these matters closely, will also have seen the massive expansion that we are bringing to the cadet organisation in this country, which I think will help to make a very real difference.
Lord Walney (CB)
My Lords, it is welcome to hear what the Minister has said about the importance of the defence industry. Does he share my view that it is completely unacceptable for anyone who says that they support working people in industrial settings and, most of all, those who claim to represent working people to seek to excuse and underplay the level of intimidation and fear caused to workers in defence factories, who have been terrorised for many years? Those people who defend that should have no place in the Labour movement. Is that not right?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I know the point that the noble Lord is making, but the general point is that nobody should face intimidation for going to work. That is a completely unacceptable way of behaving. The noble Lord has done a lot of work in this area and has defended the right to protest and the right for people to make their views known, but to do so in a way that is acceptable and according to the law. It does not matter what hat people have on when they speak about this; we all need to encourage people to behave appropriately and properly when it comes to protest.
Lord McCabe (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that smaller suppliers, essential to our defence, often lack the resources to withstand sustained intimidation and sabotage? Will the Government provide targeted support against extremists to ensure that those companies can continue to deliver critical components to our Armed Forces and maintain Britain’s reputation as a reliable defence partner?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Obviously, the deployment of police resources is a matter of operational independence for the police, but my noble friend makes the important point that, whether it is a large business, a small business, an international business or a business located in a small rural area, they all deserve protection, whether they are the workers or the business overall. The important point of principle is that we are proud of our defence industry and, whether they are small, medium or big businesses, we will support them.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, have the Government made an assessment of the impact on the UK’s reputation of not imposing sanctions on arms deals with Israel when the Palestinian people are facing genocide?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
That is an example of what I have been saying: the noble Baroness, in terms of freedom of speech, has been able to get up and say something in this Parliament about Palestine—this is something that we should point out—and to challenge the Government on what they have done with respect to this in an appropriate and proper way, as she always does.
The noble Baroness knows that the Government have made comment about the need for an immediate ceasefire, the release of the hostages and all the things that the Foreign Secretary made a Statement about just a few days ago and has continuously made Statements about. She has also heard what the Prime Minister has said with respect to the recognition of Palestine unless Israel meets certain conditions. She will also know that, last September, the Government changed the export rules so that we stopped exporting arms to Israel that were going to be used with respect to Gaza. I know that the noble Baroness does not think that goes far enough, but the Government have taken proportionate and reasonable action to say to Israel that this is what we think is acceptable and to stand up for that while we also pursue the two-state solution that we all want.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister explain how a relatively unsophisticated attack was able to put out of action an RAF aircraft?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
We have sought to explain that. We have said that the security in place at that time at Brize Norton was not good enough. The noble Earl will have seen that since that incident we have been looking at what we do to improve and enhance security in the short term in our military bases, and in the longer term. The point that needs to be reiterated is that the people at fault are those who thought an acceptable way to protest was to break in—whatever the rights and wrongs of how they were able to do that. We all agree that it was unacceptable that they could do that. Why on earth do some people think it is acceptable to break into an RAF base and put at risk this country’s national security? It is not, and I am glad that through the proper processes people have been charged and we will see what the outcome of that legal process is.
Lord Pannick (CB)
Does the Minister agree that the criminal penalties for violence and intimidation are perfectly adequate; what is necessary is for the police to identify the ringleaders and the perpetrators quickly, for the prosecutions to be brought to court without delay and for the courts to impose severe sanctions that deter those people?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The noble Lord provides my answer in the point he makes in the question. Of course, that is the right thing to do. Through the appropriate legal processes established in this country, in a democracy, the police investigate according to the priorities they set, and we see this as a very real priority. An investigation is held and if the police have the evidence and believe that the charging threshold is met, they will charge and then it is for the courts to determine guilt or not. The court will then put in place the appropriate punishment. That is the division of responsibility in this country. That is what we are standing up for in Ukraine and across the world and, going back to the noble Baroness’s point about young people or others and fighting for our country, I think democracy, freedom and the rule of law are pretty good things to fight for. They are not bad things to stand up for.
European Framework Programme 10
(2 days ago)
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Viscount Stansgate
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the draft European Framework Programme 10 on research and innovation.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and, in doing so, I am returning to the subject of my first ever Parliamentary Question.
The Minister of State, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Lord Vallance of Balham) (Lab)
We welcome the initial proposals for the EU FP 10. We identify strong alignment between the proposals and our own focus on using research and innovation to drive economic growth. We are particularly looking at how the proposals align with the principles of excellence, openness and good value for money. I was pleased recently to have been welcomed by the informal meeting of EU Research and Innovation Ministers in July, when these proposals on the future of European research and innovation were discussed.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. I am pleased to see things are going in the right direction, first, because scientific excellence and value for money remain at the heart of the Horizon Europe programme and, secondly, because academic participation rates have risen so much since we rejoined. What is the position for industry? Can my noble friend tell the House anything about the discussion he referred to with counterparts on the future of FP 10 and its ambitious budget? Is it the case that the United Kingdom will no longer be excluded totally from the areas of quantum and space? Finally, would he agree that, with China in the ascendent and the United States damaging itself scientifically, it is all the more vital for our future prosperity that the UK co-operates with European countries in science?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I am very happy to answer my noble friend’s four questions. In terms of industry, we do not have as good an uptake yet. Academia has increased the uptake of EU grants very successfully and in Pillar 1, which is largely the academic pillar, in 2024, over 13% of the money came back. In the European Research Council awards, 56 were won, which was more than any other country in Europe. We are fully back there, but not so in industry where it is still slow. I think it is really important that we get the message out that this money is there for industry to apply for. It lost a lot of confidence when we left the programme, and we need to get the confidence back because of the reasons stated—we need to be fully part of the system. We are now able to do much more in both space and quantum that we were initially excluded from.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)
My Lords, there have been a number of calls from research and university representatives for the programme to take a balanced approach to research security but also to reduce bureaucracy. Can the Minister please say how he will evaluate and negotiate on FP 10’s provisions for ethical research but also on derisking investments so that we can ensure that they align with UK priorities but do not increase additional barriers or financial strains?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. Obviously, the FP 10 negotiations have not really started yet; it is just a discussion of what this might be. We are going to look very carefully at the principles of openness, excellence and value for money. We will also look at accessibility: we want to be a part of all the programme, not excluded from areas to do with military and defence. We are now included in some of those; we would like to be fully included as we increase the relationship. We are very keen to make sure, as we look at all of this, that we have transparency on the finances and value for money.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, can I ask the Minister one broad question? Would the Government, in assessing FP 10, take into consideration the success in research that British universities have had since we joined, even recently, the Horizon programme? For example, Imperial College has a direct grant of about £180 million and broader involvement leading up to, over several years, several billion pounds. The draft programme is much aligned to our own strategy. Therefore, I hope the Government will seriously take into account the success we have had and may continue to have if we join the FP 10.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The noble Lord is right. Our ability to get money through this scheme is a great success story. We are back to nearly full strength in terms of the academic side of that. Just to give some figures, in the past scheme, the University of Cambridge had £70 million and the University of Oxford £67 million. We have a large number of grants through this scheme. It is a very important part of the system, and we need to look at this in conjunction with UKRI funding to look at the totality of how we think about spread across all disciplines. I think this is a very important part of our funding system and, provided it is open, excellent and value for money, we will negotiate to try and be part of FP 10.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, can I press the Minister on timelines? He will be aware that universities are advocating for early clarity as regards the Government’s timeline for declaring their intent to associate with FP 10. Will this declaration be made early enough to influence the programme’s final design and ensure UK participation from day one? Given that multiple departments are involved, can the Minister clarify which Minister has overall responsibility and how interdepartmental co-ordination is being managed?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
We have got the money for the first two years of the programme in the spending review so, assuming that we associate, the money is there for those first two years, which covers the period of the spending review. The timelines for FP10 are in the hands of the EU, which has not yet defined what the programme is. As I have already said, I was invited to a meeting in July, so we are engaged with the process. I will continue to be engaged with it and work across other departments to make sure we represent every department. But I cannot give any more timelines, because the EU has not given its timelines yet.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s comments about Horizon and the greater involvement in space. Can he confirm what progress has been made on the UK rejoining EGNOS, which basically is the European navigation system for flying small planes in very bad conditions? We were a member and then, of course, we were kicked out because of Brexit.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I am going to have to get somebody else to answer that question in writing, I am afraid, because I do not know the answer.
Lord Markham (Con)
My Lords, I think we would all agree that the UK has most of the leading universities and institutions in Europe. The result, as the Minister said, is that historically we punched well above our weight in this area. We contributed only 12% of the funds and received 14% to 15% of the funds back; now, in the latest round, we are still contributing 12% and receiving only around 10% to 11%, so we are now punching well below our weight. What can we do to address this now and in future rounds to make sure that our universities are not losing out?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
As I have said, we are actually above 13% for Pillar 1 in the university sector and we are increasing again. We took a big hit when we left—a very big hit—and it is taking a while to come back. We are now on track and doing better in increasing our share than any other nation in Europe. The biggest area on which to concentrate is the industry side. Industry took a big hit because of loss of confidence when we removed from the system, and that is going to take a little longer to come back.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)
My Lords, in relation to industry, in the Minister’s first substantive Answer, he said that industry did not have the same percentage as academia. How can Government work with both industry and academia to forge closer collaborations so that they can partake of this investment, particularly when it is industry that usually identifies the difficulties that have to be solved and academia then comes up with the solutions?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I wrote to vice-chancellors to encourage them to make sure they apply to get into all of the scheme, and that had an effect on applications. I am doing the same with trade bodies and other parts of industry to get them linked. The general point about links between academia and industry is crucial; we need much closer collaboration. The noble Baroness will see, as we go through our next REF exercise to assess universities, that the links to industry are going to be a very important part of that.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, I declare I am a professor at Cardiff University. Can the Minister explain how there is co-ordination between the devolved Administrations? In terms of which Ministers and departments are involved, as mentioned in a previous question, I want to know how the co-ordination is happening to ensure that all universities across the whole of the UK find that there are consistent messages and have the appropriate support towards applying into the grant programmes.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I have regular meetings with Ministers from the devolved Administrations. Most recently, they were around some of the issues to do with REF. Unfortunately, the meeting with the Welsh Minister was cancelled twice by them, but I will none the less persist.
Refugee Accommodation: Move-on Period
(2 days ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the risks to social cohesion and the pressures on local councils and homelessness services presented by the recent decision to reduce the “move-on” period that newly recognised refugees are granted to find new accommodation to 28 days.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I declare an interest as a patron of ASSIST Sheffield, a wonderful charity that seeks to support asylum seekers and refugees in our city of sanctuary.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
The Home Office monitors the impact of all its policies, especially move-on and the impact on wider communities and local authorities. We are committed to working closely with our partners to identify improvements and make efficiencies in supporting newly recognised refugees who move on from asylum accommodation.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
I thank the Minister for his response, although my concerns are not entirely allayed. It is important to remember that those affected by move-on period policies have already been formally recognised by government as refugees, with rights to protection that are enshrined in international law. First, given the success of the recent 56-day extension, as reported by local authorities and numerous organisations supporting refugees, what impact assessment was undertaken in commending a reversion to 28 days? Secondly, what metric will His Majesty’s Government use to measure the success of this reversion? Finally, will the Minister commit to update the House within six months on the impact of this change?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I hope I can assist the right reverend Prelate with some clarification on what has actually happened. First, nobody who is in the system as of 1 September will have their 56-day period changed; that will still be operational. The pilot we are undertaking runs until December this year, and we will fully evaluate the pilot accordingly. Those individuals affected by the announcement on 27 August, who will change from 56 days to 28 days from 1 September, are single applicants; no families, nobody over 65 and nobody with disabilities will be impacted. We are trying to help tackle the longer-term asylum accommodation problem, but the pilot on 56 days to which the right reverend Prelate refers is continuing, and we will evaluate it and report back in due course. We have tweaked the pilot—we have not ended it—so we will continue to monitor the impact assessment issues. There will be full accountability on the outcome of the pilot when it is completed in December, but the majority of individuals to date will not be impacted by the change.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, the arguments given last year for the 28-day/56-day pilot are the same as those given currently. In the Statements given to this House at the time, it was quite clear that this pilot was until the end of July and would be evaluated and the results published by the end of the summer. We are bound to suspect that, in moving as quickly as the Government have now done in shifting people from hotels into the hands of local government so swiftly, they will meet with the same problem of more homelessness that we had last year. Can the Minister confirm that the assessment so far has found a reduction in homelessness, and will he publish the interim evaluation promised to this House last year?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I repeat what I said to the right reverend Prelate: we are running the pilot until December and it will be evaluated. We have made some changes from 1 September, but not for the vast majority of people in the system—they will still be eligible for 56 days. Families, over-65s and those with disabilities will not be affected; it is single applicants who will be affected from 1 September. As this House continues to press the Government on, we need to reduce the reliance on hotels and provide a move-on period. The objective of the actions we have taken now is to relieve some of those pressures on hotel and asylum accommodation.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, how are the Government working with places of worship to see how they could help alleviate some of the hotel usage problem? There are thousands of places of worship across our country; they should be playing their part. They are often large buildings with catering kitchens and everything else. It is about time we rethink how we look after people who come in but maybe should not be here and, in the meantime, utilise places of worship. They are often left empty and could probably do with a little financial assistance from the Government—but much less than hotels.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her suggestion; I will certainly examine it. It is important that society as a whole embraces individuals who have come to this country fleeing persecution, hunger, war and destitution.
For those who are not across the detail of this proposal, it is about individuals who have been granted asylum and who are being helped to move on from that into the community to begin their new life with approved asylum status. We are trying to ensure that we evaluate that pilot, monitor it successfully and give due regard to those who are already under the 56-day period, but to look at what tweaks we can make, because there are immense pressures in the system on hotels and the whole House wants us to resolve that as a matter of urgency.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, the Home Office has reported that in some cases, when the 56 days expire, asylum seekers are simply refusing to leave the hotel. What are the consequences for them?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I am grateful for the noble Lord’s question. For individuals who have been granted asylum, under the pilot we have extended the period from 28 days to 56 days to ensure that transition takes place. We are now tweaking that for certain categories of individual applicants back to 28 days. In a sense, the noble Lord hits a very important point: the asylum claim has been approved, and the period—be it 28 or 56 days—is there for that transition. At the end of that period, the Government have fulfilled their responsibilities in the asylum claim approval and the hand-on period. Therefore, we need to ensure that individuals then begin their new life under their own steam.
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
My Lords, throughout the summer we all witnessed a number of protests relating to asylum accommodation, suggesting that social cohesion in certain areas is under severe pressure. Does the Minister recognise the challenges faced by local authorities and local residents’ frustration, given that the number of asylum seekers temporarily housed in hotels has increased by 8% since the end of June 2024?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I always find it fascinating that the Opposition continue to raise these questions with the Government, because if I wind the clock back to 2016, there were no hotels in use for asylum accommodation. Asylum claims rose dramatically under the previous Government and only a couple of years ago asylum hotels reached a peak of over 400, which is starting to fall now. We inherited that massive number and are trying to deal with that backlog of asylum claims, and the asylum issue as a whole, in a proper and effective way.
For me, community cohesion means the best way to deal with that is to speed up asylum claims, to ensure we close those hotels as a matter of some urgency and to determine who has the right to asylum in this country. We then give them a 56 or 28-day period of settlement and remove those individuals who have no right to reside in this country, their asylum claim having failed. With due respect to the noble Lord, the previous Government failed miserably on all those things. We are trying to do them.
People have a right to protest. But people also have a right to understand why and how we are dealing with this issue and what we are doing to resolve it to maintain community cohesion so that people welcome those who are fleeing persecution, war, starvation and the other forms of economic misery driving them to seek asylum in Europe and this country.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, I remind the Minister, when he refers to hotels, that in the last nine months of the last Government we halved the number of hotels being used to accommodate asylum seekers. That fall came to a grinding halt when the present Government came to power.
I draw the Minister’s attention to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Young, because I do not think he answered it. My noble friend asked what the consequences are, for those granted refugee status in asylum accommodation who fail to leave when they are supposed to, of their failure to leave that accommodation.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
With due respect, I thought I did try to answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord Young. Heads are shaking, but I am accountable for my answers. At the end of that 28 or 56-day period, individuals will have to leave that accommodation. That is a consequence for them. We have given support, determined their asylum application and given a transition period, and then that asylum claim has been approved so people need to move on.
I will challenge the noble Lord back. At the peak in 2018, under his Government, there were 400-plus hotels in use, reduced to 210 now. In the past year we have saved £1 billion of taxpayers’ money, over and above what the previous Government—the noble Lord sat in the Cabinet—expended. That £1 billion is better spent on speeding up asylum claims and making sure we determine them as a matter of some urgency.
Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
(2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Cameron of Lochiel (Con)
My Lords, there is never a more solemn occasion in this Chamber, in my mind, than when we discuss the issue of child grooming gangs. Noble Lords are all aware of the utterly horrendous nature of the abuse that was—and still is—being perpetrated. For that reason, as ever, these Benches are immensely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for all the work she has done in this area, although we regret the delays in publishing the Casey review earlier this year.
I start by welcoming the action that the Government have taken so far. We are pleased that they have continued the grooming gangs taskforce, which in its first year of operation arrested over 550 people. The establishment of Operation Beaconport is also a welcome move. I am sure that we all hope that this joined-up approach will deliver real results and give victims the justice they deserve.
As my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower said on 18 June, we on these Benches are pleased that the Government have announced that they would finally launch a full, statutory national inquiry into these vile grooming gangs. There were many calls, including in this Chamber, for such an inquiry, and it was highly unfortunate that it took the Government so long to agree to this, but they have finally come to their senses. However, we have heard in this Statement that not quite as much progress has been made as one would have hoped. On 18 June, the Minister when asked about timelines said
“we will be bringing that forward at an early opportunity; we have to appoint a chair and set terms of reference”.—[Official Report, 18/6/25; col. 2087.]
The inquiry was announced over two months ago now, yet the Minister for Safeguarding in this Statement has confirmed that they have not yet appointed a chair nor agreed the terms of reference. We appreciate that the Home Office is in the final stages of the appointment process, but might the Minister be able to give us a date? Surely the department knows when it will announce this appointment.
Given the amount of time that has transpired between when many of these crimes were committed and now, it is absolutely vital that the next stages are completed at pace. Not only should the chair be appointed imminently, but the terms of reference should also be speedily nailed down and the start date for the inquiry announced as soon as possible after that.
While the inquiry is being established, we must ensure that the police and Home Office continue to do everything in their power to investigate historical cases, identify current perpetrators and prosecute anyone involved. I stress to the Minister how important it is that justice does not wait for the results of the inquiry. We know that such an inquiry will probably take between two to three years. Obviously, there is much ground to cover, and it must be thorough and rigorous, but in the meantime, there are people who simply cannot wait.
In the light of this, can the Minister tell the House when the Government will publish their violence against women and girls strategy? How will the Government ensure that this strategy is not merely warm words but contains actionable plans that can be delivered upon, and will it include tough measures relating to the victims of the grooming gang scandal? We all owe it to those survivors to end their nightmare swiftly.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing the update as promised to Parliament earlier in the year—it is refreshing and a sign of how seriously this Government are taking group-based child sexual exploitation. From the Liberal Democrat Benches, we also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for her excellent work.
I start by thanking the whistleblowers and victims, who are still speaking up about this. The speed and success of the actions forecast in this Statement will be judged to have satisfied their demands for justice, and should change policing forever, so that we never end up in this position again.
The national inquiry and national police operation must not just be survivor-centred but must always check back with survivors about process. On many, many occasions, your Lordships’ House has highlighted other victims of appalling circumstances, inquiries and compensation schemes, where the Government of the day paid the right lip service but the reality has left those survivors getting caught up in the bureaucracy that definitely is not survivor-centred. I think particularly of the Hillsborough tragedy, the Manchester bombings and the Windrush scandal, as well as the scandals of infected blood, the Grenfell Tower fire and the Horizon postmasters.
The update on the national police operation is encouraging, but there seems to be one glaring hole: all the detail is about training senior and specialist staff. There is no mention of the front-line staff, including control or police officers on the beat. Their lack of training in years gone by meant that the police missed the obvious first signs and ignored whistleblowers. This has also been a problem in other areas, such as in recognising stalking and domestic abuse. Can the Minister say what is planned for those on the front line, because, without their involvement, cases may not even make it to the high level specialist units?
The update on the Tackling Organised Exploitation programme—TOEX—is also helpful, including the details of the rollout. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches understand that things cannot change overnight, but can the Minister tell your Lordships’ House when every police force will be TOEX trained and funded?
I will briefly make two other points. It is good to see the commitment to improving ethnicity data. The Statement says that this will be used for all cases with child sexual exploitation suspects, but is that not too late as well? Data needs to be consistently collected across the board. We therefore welcome the inquiry considering the intersection with ethnicity, race and culture, as well as safeguarding.
Finally, while it is right that the focus of this Statement is on the horrific gang-based child sexual abuse, as the Minister knows, the vast majority of child sexual abuse is hidden from view. NSPCC data estimates that one in 20 children face child sexual abuse, accounting for probably close to 90% of child sexual abuse across the board. The average age of a victim finally finding the courage to volunteer information about what happened to them is, shockingly, about 20 years after the event. What will the Government do to ensure that all adults—parents, teachers and especially doctors—are able to identify the signs early on and report it, so that this serious scourge can be reduced too?
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful for the questions, and the broad welcome for our measures, from both His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and the Liberal Democrat Benches. I too echo the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for her work and focus on these issues.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Lochiel, rightly pressed me on the final stages of the appointment of the chair of the inquiry. I reassurance him that we are working at pace to do that. He knows that it took two years to get Alexis Jay into post. We are trying to do this as a matter of urgency. We want to make sure that the victims and survivors are consulted, and we are undertaking formal measures, as is outlined in the Statement, to ensure that they are involved in the process. That is similarly the case for the terms of reference. I am hopeful that we will be able to bring forward proposals to both Houses of Parliament, in relatively short order, to finalise those issues. It is the Government’s intention to establish the inquiry as a matter of urgency.
I cannot give the noble Lord too much detail today on the violence against women and girls strategy, because that will be developed and then announced and put before both Houses of Parliament in due course. I assure him that tackling violence against women and girls is a key manifesto commitment, as is the strategy. The Minister responsible directly in the Home Office, my honourable friend Jess Phillips, has a very keen interest in making sure that the strategy has a real impact on violence against women and girls. I expect to make a Statement in this House, alongside the Minister in the Commons, at some point in the relatively near future.
It is also important that the noble Lord noted—this also goes to one of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made—that Operation Beaconport, which we announced today, has reopened an additional 1,273 cases to be reviewed now. Some 216 priority cases of historical abuse are being reviewed. As the Statement outlines, we are bringing together partners and police under the National Crime Agency to look at these issues and to put some energy into this. That will be trialled later this month, with further announcements, I hope, from the National Crime Agency and policing partners on how they will deal with those issues on the ground.
I think that partly answers a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, but we also have the great involvement of victims and survivors. We need to look at the training issues that she mentioned, and the policing partners will review that in due course. The ethnicity data is extremely important and, as the Statement outlines, we are trying to move that forward at pace. Between that and the extra resource we have announced this week of more than £400,000, on top of the money already allocated, we have a reasonable initiative with which to take forward these issues.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also made the valid point that the Statement relates to grooming gangs and particular problems and challenges that have arisen because of them; the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, focuses its direction of travel on that. However, there are also many other issues to do with child sexual abuse that the Government need to grapple with and bring forward some solutions to.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is aware of the Crime and Policing Bill, which will come to this House after the Conference Recess. A number of measures in the Bill will ensure that we meet the Alexis Jay recommendations, including on mandatory reporting. If the Bill achieves support from both Houses, there will be additional new legislative measures to improve performance on mandatory reporting, as well as new powers on tackling AI generation of child sexual abuse images.
It should also never be forgotten that the Home Office itself spends in the region of £60 million per year on preventing child sexual abuse, as well as on supporting victims and bringing perpetrators to justice. The Statement is therefore an update on where we are; it is not the end product. If noble Lords look at the Crime and Policing Bill, the work the Home Office is doing and the announcements in the Statement, they will see that big movement is being made to tackle this issue in an appropriate and effective way.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, when the Government first announced the national inquiry, they said that it would be an innovative—and, I thought, very interesting—new model, which would enable individual local investigations to be overseen by a national commission with statutory powers. However, this Statement, which I appreciate is not the end point, now seems to refer to a standard overarching inquiry which will identify priority areas for investigation and report the findings at a local and national level. The main body of work seems to be being carried out by the chair and whoever they may have to support them. I might be missing something, but this is exactly how IICSA operated. There is nothing wrong with that—it did a great job—but I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify whether there is, in fact, any difference in terms of structure between this inquiry and the one that went before it? As it stands, the only thing I can see is the introduction of a time limit, and that is a very good thing, but it is perhaps a little easier to do in this instance, given the great body of evidence we have already amassed over many years in this area.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question and the work she has done in this area. She will remember that in January, the Home Secretary announced a £5 million fund for local inquiries, and we are encouraging any local authority to bid for that resource if it still wishes to. The terms of reference for a national inquiry will be set when the chair is appointed. We want to consult and involve the chair in how that operation works and how we get the best information, knowledge and inquiries at a local level. I anticipate that the chair will be able to formulate the view of the inquiry’s operation in relatively short order once appointed, and that I will come back and update this House on how local and national issues are intertwined. There is that £5 million fund, and local authorities are currently developing examinations of their performance because of that fund. I am hopeful that, although we are moving to a national-based inquiry, the lessons at a local level will not be lost and, instead, will be intertwined into national conclusions from the future chair when appointed.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for the Statement, which is necessarily looking into things that have already happened. To pick up on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton—and I know that I shall stray a little from the Home Office’s brief—does my noble friend agree with me that it is critical that schools are places where children are able to use their voice in their own advocacy, that children’s rights are necessarily respected, and that all schools have a sense of what trauma-informed practice looks like? Beyond the punishment of offenders, we still have young people, victims and survivors, who will be in schools, and we need to make sure that those are places where all members of staff in schools have the time, space, training and empathy to be able to understand what has happened and to help young people move forward.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
My noble friend tempts me to stray into areas that are the responsibility of the Department for Education, but the points that she has made are well made. We need to have supportive mechanisms, training and the ability to identify individuals. Critically—and this is a Home Office responsibility—we are putting mandatory reporting into play in the Crime and Policing Bill, which again requires training and support for teachers particularly and those individuals who come into contact with children to ensure that children have the confidence to report and get over—and, if those reports take place, to ensure that individuals have a mandatory statutory duty to report that to the police for further investigation. The points she makes are very well made, and I will refer those comments to my colleagues in the Department for Education.
Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)
My Lords, I, too, put our record our thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, for the work she has done to date and for the further work I hope she will do in future.
I follow up on the comments made by the noble Baroness opposite on not only schools, but on youth workers and services in particular. Detached youth workers are in a prime position to befriend and seek the confidence of young people who may have been victims of grooming gangs. It overlaps with education, but it is really important that we do not silo things into Home Office affairs and education.
Often, victims are not only young people but vulnerable people. That is what I have seen from my experience of working in youth services for the last 30 years. People who were grooming were picking on people because they were vulnerable. One vulnerability is people fleeing domestic violence. Often, you will see that people are away from where they used to live, and in some communities they have been very visible—that is, people can see they are from outside. I seek assurances from the inquiry on the group-based gangs that we will also seek out working alongside refuges for women in particular to see whether they can bring victims forward. I am concerned that in some communities, because of the issue around honour, women will want to remain silent because they just want to put that horrific past behind them. They also have to be brought forward to be able to tell their story and hold those perpetrators to account.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an extremely valuable contribution. I agree with him that we need to look not just at teaching staff but youth staff and other contacts within the church and community that come into contact with young people. The purpose of all that is to give victims the confidence to be able to talk about those things. The mandatory reporting measures that we have put in the Crime and Policing Bill will make it a responsibility for individuals to then report that to the police for further investigation.
The noble Lord makes a very important point about confidence in bringing forward historic sexual abuse issues, particularly honour-based sexual abuse issues. He will know that the operation I mentioned earlier, Beaconport, is looking at historic abuse. Over 1,200 cases are now being surfaced. They will be investigated. There are 216 priority cases within that. If there are further cases to be brought forward, they should be reported for further investigation of a historic nature. My colleagues in the National Crime Agency will be detailing more about that, because that is an operational matter for them, later this month.
Planning and Infrastructure Bill
Thursday 4th September 2025
(2 days ago)
Lords ChamberPlanning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 View all Planning and Infrastructure Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 110-IV(Rev) Revised fourth marshalled list for Committee - (3 Sep 2025)
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe the Government’s intentions in seeking the power to require a local planning authority to set the level of fees for planning decisions.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I start by reiterating our view that the Bill does not go far enough. It tweaks processes, roles, fees and training but leaves the fundamental planning framework—the very framework needed to unlock genuine house building—without the proper reform that Ministers promised. We now hear in the media that a second planning Bill is expected. The Government have missed an opportunity with the Bill.
Amendments 94FB and 94FC in my name seek to probe the Government’s intentions behind the powers given in Clause 48 to local planning authorities and the Mayor of London to set specific fee levels for planning applications. Fee setting must strike a careful balance between national consistency and local flexibility. Planning authorities operate in vastly different contexts, from rural districts handling modest, small-scale applications to major cities building highly complex developments. That diversity and its differences must be respected; a one-size-fits-all approach risks overlooking the practical realities faced by local authorities on the ground.
As currently drafted, Clause 48 enables the Secretary of State not just to permit but to require that these bodies set fee levels. While enabling authorities to set fee levels is one thing, which would potentially support greater local flexibility, requiring them to do so raises important questions: first, in what context would the Government require a local authority to set a specific fee?
My Amendment 99ZA is also a probing amendment. In tabling this amendment, we are seeking to understand how subsection (6) will work in practice. Can the Minister please explain the process Ministers intend to use in calculating appropriate surcharges, and how the duty to have regard to relevant costs will work in practice? It will also be helpful to know whether Ministers intend to consult local planning authorities going forward to ensure that the fees imposed do not exceed the relevant costs incurred.
I will now briefly set out our view on the other amendments in this group. We agree with the principle behind Amendment 94G from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. Of course, all fees should be proportionate. That said, delivering it through an amendment to the Bill may be more challenging. Therefore, will the Minister please address the principle of proportionality and how the Government intend to ensure that fees are proportional as well as responding to the amendment itself?
I move on to Amendment 95, tabled by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering. As drafted, Clause 48 explicitly excludes enforcement. She makes a strong case for her amendment, and I hope that the Minister will reply constructively. In particular, we would like greater clarity on the “polluter pays” principle. Will the Minister please explain why enforcement action has been left out of this fee-raising power? Is it because the Government feel that it would be inappropriate for applicants acting within the rules to pay a higher fee to cover the cost of enforcements against bad actors? I hope that the Minster will be able to give an unequivocal answer to that question.
Furthermore, Amendments 96 and 97, tabled by my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, address two important aspects of the planning system: transparency and heritage protection. Amendment 96 would ensure that guidance to local authorities includes references to archaeological and other services, so that external services are correctly funded. I know that my noble friend has a wealth of experience on heritage issues, and he was a truly excellent Minister for the arts and heritage. We would appreciate a clear assurance from the Minister on this issue.
Amendment 97 would rightly preserve the very long-standing policy of not charging for listed building consent. This is a vital protection for owners, who often invest significant time and resources in maintaining some of England and Wales’s most treasured heritage assets. Although policymakers in the socialist tradition and the owners or prospective owners of heritage properties may not be natural bedfellows, our historic houses have an important role to play in our housing stock.
The UK has the oldest housing stock in Europe; almost four in 10 houses were built before World War II, and two in 10 were built before World War I. Too often, historic houses are left empty to wither and decay because of the costs and complexities of taking them on, yet every historic property that is restored is an empty home returning to use. We must encourage more people to take on the challenge of restoring our heritage properties, both as a practical step in driving down the number of empty houses and as a gift to future generations. Our historic houses are part of our great island story, and my noble friend is right to seek assurance from Ministers that listed building consent will remain free of charge. Can the Minister give him a cast-iron guarantee on this issue?
I turn to Amendments 98 and 99, tabled by my noble friend Lord Banner. These proposals represent sensible and pragmatic reforms to our planning appeals system. We see the merits in the case that he makes for the introduction of differential fee levels based on the type or complexity of an application. His amendments reflect the practical realities of casework and seek to ensure that the system better aligns with the demands placed on it. Likewise, the proposal to allow the planning inspector to charge appeal fees and, importantly, to retain that income, is a constructive measure. It would enhance the inspector’s operational resilience and reduce their reliance on central funding.
Amendment 99 goes further by proposing a fast-track appeal process that is optional, fee-based and designed to deliver quicker decisions where appropriate. This is clearly a constructive proposal that Ministers should take away and consider carefully. I hope the Minister will engage positively with this amendment.
In conclusion, this group of amendments raises essential questions about the funding, fairness and functionality of our planning system. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to my succinct and simple Amendment 94G, and in doing so draw attention to an issue—planning fees—that might seem a bit techy on the surface and perhaps even boring, but in reality strikes at the very heart of fairness, opportunity and the future of our housing market. I recognise and acknowledge that this Government are trying to address the concerns of SME builders in different ways; thus I believe that this amendment is in line with their thinking. It seeks a simple fix to a gross unfairness within the planning fees regime.
The reality is that the way our planning fees are currently structured disproportionately penalises the very people we need most—the small and medium-sized enterprise builders, the SMEs who once formed the backbone of housebuilding in this country. Our high watermark was the 1960s and 1970s, when SMEs delivered almost 50% of our homes. But now, there are just 2,500 SME builders, down from just over 12,000 in the late 1980s.
When the large developers apply for planning permission, they can absorb the cost of these fees—dozens, or even hundreds of units. For them, the fee for a major scheme is just a fraction of their overall margin. It is, if you like, just one more line on a long spreadsheet. But for the SME builder, often working on only one site at a time, sometimes building just a handful of homes, usually locally in the community where they live, the same planning fee represents a very different calculation. Proportionally, it is far higher—sometimes eye-wateringly so—relative to the potential return. For some, it can make the difference between a scheme being viable or never getting off the ground.
Let us not forget that many SME firms operate on tight margins—it is just a fact of the market today—and have limited access to capital. They do not have the balance sheets of the volume builders, nor teams of in-house planners and consultants to smooth the path. They are nimble, creative and often willing to take on small and difficult sites—precisely the kind of brownfield or infill plots that larger developers might overlook. In that sense, they perform a vital public service, delivering homes in places where others cannot or will not. If the Government are serious about reviving the role of SME builders, whose share of new homes has plummeted to barely 10% today, we cannot afford to ignore the structural barriers that hold them back. Planning fees are one such barrier, and it is entirely within our power to address them in this Bill.
My amendment addresses this issue without costing the Treasury a single pound. I am not suggesting that planning departments should be starved of resources—quite the opposite: we all hope that they will be even busier in the future. We all know they need proper funding to recruit and retain skilled staff and to deliver timely decisions, but surely there is a case for a more proportionate, graduated system—one that recognises the scale of development, the number of units and the genuine impact on the planning service. Without such reform, we risk reinforcing the dominance of volume housebuilders, who are of course essential; this is not a downer on them but a recognition of the role that SMEs can play in increasing innovation and diversity. They bring local knowledge and understanding to their role. By ignoring this, we weaken our ability to deliver the variety of homes this country so desperately needs.
The reason for my amendment is that planning costs are probably the most significant disparity, with SMEs facing costs that are over 100% higher than their plc counterparts. In fact, planning fees at the moment are £626 per home for the first 50 units, and only £189 per home thereafter. Therefore, a 50-home scheme pays three times more per unit than a 1,000-home scheme. This is where it creates a real structural disadvantage for SMEs, deterring those much-needed smaller developments and slowing delivery on small and medium sites. Under the Bill, fee-setting powers are being devolved to local authorities and/or mayors, so there is a genuine opportunity to fix the imbalance.
This is not about special pleading; it is about fairness, proportionality and the kind of housing market we want to create. Do we want one dominated by a handful of big players, or one where smaller, local builders have the chance to thrive? I urge the Government to look again at the planning fees regime and at how it might better support our SME builders. Without them, our housing crisis will only deepen. My amendment would help ensure that SMEs are not burdened with excessive costs; and, over time, alongside other government measures, it might reverse their sad decline. I am pleased to note that it also chimes with Amendment 98 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Banner. I hope the Minister agrees.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Scott for opening this small group of amendments and for lending her support to my Amendment 95, to which I will briefly speak.
As drafted, the Bill leaves out the question of enforcement measures being recovered from the fee. I put a very simple question to the Minister: was this a wilful omission or was it omitted by default? As my noble friend Lady Scott said, it would be helpful to know why the question of enforcement measures not forming part of the fee that can be recovered has been left out.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering. Her Amendment 95 may be modest but it is very sensible, and I congratulate her on the way she outlined it. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, on the way she outlined her amendment in this group. As well as speeding up the delivery of the provision of more houses, making it easier for small and medium-sized enterprises is a way of making sure we can deliver the sorts of smaller developments that are popular in local areas and that match the local vernacular rather than imposing a sort of identikit, sprawling housing estate on every part of the country with no reference to local design.
I have Amendments 96 and 97 in this group, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Harlech and the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, who signed the second of these, as well as to my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook for the support that she outlined and her kind comments in her opening speech. Clause 48 would allow the Secretary of State to subdelegate the power to set fees for planning applications to local planning authorities, allowing them to set their own fees to reflect the actual costs that are incurred in dealing with applications and other relevant planning functions, and with that income ring-fenced so that it could be spent only on those specific functions. In many ways that is a welcome and sensible provision; I can understand why local authorities would welcome it. But for it to be truly welcomed, a great many people would like to see some further details and to hear some reassurance about this proposed change.
As is so often the case with legislation nowadays, those details and that reassurance are not in the Bill but are to follow. The Government have said that they intend to consult on the precise arrangements for localised fee setting later this year, and in Committee in another place the Minister stated that detailed processes would be set out in regulations. But it would be very helpful if the Minister could make clear today that this new provision will not include the potential for local authorities to introduce fees for listed building consent. That reassurance would bring great relief to organisations from across the heritage sector, and indeed to the very many ordinary people who happen to own listed properties and who are worried about the detrimental effect on our shared heritage and the potential financial penalties for the people who are the custodians of it.
Under current legislation, obtaining listed building consent is a cost-free process. Consent is required for works that affect the special architectural or historic interest of a listed building under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, in addition to any planning permissions that might be required.
Listed status is a badge of honour—a mark of our collective appreciation for buildings of particular significance—but it brings with it burdens in the form of conservation and maintenance that are in the public interest, not just for those of us who are alive today but for future generations too, and owners of listed buildings cannot opt out of these obligations. This issue affects a very large number of home owners, not just the grandest stately homes but ordinary family homes in every part of the country. The UK has the oldest housing stock in Europe, as my noble friend Lady Scott said, with around two-fifths of homes built since the end of the Second World War and one-fifth since the end of the First World War. There are some half a million listed buildings across the United Kingdom, many of them owned by people of modest and increasingly stretched means. Ensuring that this service remains free of charge to the people we ask to look after these historic buildings for posterity is hugely important. I am not the owner of a listed building but should perhaps declare a non-financial interest in that I am a trustee of the Cambridge Union, which has its own grade 2* listed property. This issue affects many charitable and civil society organisations as well.
Adding a fee for listed building consent would strongly discourage desirable work to listed buildings, especially work such as decarbonisation and conservation repair, which are often financially unrewarding to the generations that carry them out. Imposing a new fee would also discourage compliance, increasing the already considerable amount of work that goes ahead without the proper consent, risking harm to our cherished buildings and headaches when they come to be sold.
It is also worth noting that a high proportion of listed building consent applications mirror corresponding full planning applications, which already incur a cost. The introduction of fees for listed building consent would in effect be a duplication of costs for applicants when the applications are handled as a pair by the local planning authority. Even in cases where planning application is not required, having to make an application for listed building consent already carries substantial costs in the forms of obtaining drawings, which would not otherwise have been required, professional fees for analysis of heritage significance and potential impacts, and the cost of often lengthy delays. That is why a huge array of organisations across the heritage sector—the Listed Property Owners’ Club, Historic Houses, the Heritage Alliance, the CLA and the Government’s own statutory advisers, Historic England—have said that the applications for listed building consent should remain free. If the Government agree with them and with all this, and do not want to see local planning authorities introducing new charges for listed building consent, they could put that beyond doubt by adopting my Amendment 97. I hope the Minister will say that they are minded to do so.
Separately, in addition to the above, it is important that the consultation and regulations to follow the Bill recognise that many local planning authorities obtain their archaeological and other heritage advice from another local authority under service level agreements. For instance, county councils often provide such services for the district councils and national parks in, and sometimes even beyond, their own administrative area.
My Amendment 96 would ensure that guidance which goes out to local planning authorities about assessing the correct level of charges includes a reminder or recommendation that inputs from other authorities should be included to ensure that external services are correctly funded in this way. I hope that the Minister will look favourably on this amendment.
Lord Banner (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 98 and 99, tabled in my name, which would enhance the existing statutory power under Section 303ZA of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to charge fees for planning appeals to the Planning Inspectorate. That existing statutory power has never been used. There is currently no charge to submit an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate against the refusal or non-determination of a planning application. That contrasts with the position in relation to planning applications, where applicants for major developments pay application fees of tens of thousands of pounds, and sometimes more.
A huge amount has rightly been said in the context of this Bill and planning reform generally about the importance of ensuring local authorities are fully resourced to improve the speed and quality of planning decision-making at local level. That is of course right, but the same applies to the Planning Inspectorate, which performs a critical role in scrutinising local authority decision-making and plan-making. The inspectorate is already overworked and underresourced. This has consequences for its ability to deal as effectively as it would like with its existing case work, and for its ability to attract the widest possible range of candidates to become planning inspectors, including from the private sector. A couple of years ago, many inspectors went on strike due to what they said was unacceptable pay, which in most cases is significantly less than that of a First-tier Tribunal judge, which is, broadly speaking, the equivalent of a planning inspector in other aspects of the justice system.
With the expected uptick in planning appeals and local plan examinations resulting from the new National Planning Policy Framework, as well as the Government’s promised 150 development consent orders and a raft of new spatial development strategies which inspectors will need to examine, the demands on the inspectorate’s resources are bound to increase. Given the constraints on the public purse, an obvious solution is to introduce appeal fees for some or all types of appeal. I have advocated this publicly and privately for a long time—indeed, longer than I have been in this House. I have been reliably told that a key blocker to introducing this has been that, under the existing power to charge fees, any money charged by the inspectorate could not be retained by it but would go to the Treasury.
Amendment 98 is designed to address this by providing that, if the power to charge appeal fees is implemented in future, the fees received will be ring-fenced for the inspectorate. That mirrors the existing provision in Clause 48 for local authority planning application fees to be ring-fenced for planning. I must stress that this is only an enabling provision. The effect of Amendment 98 would not be to introduce appeal fees; it would simply ensure that, if the existing power to introduce such fees were to be implemented in future, the inspectorate could keep the fees. I find it very hard to see what policy objection there can be to that, particularly given the Bill’s existing provision for fee ring-fencing at local level.
Amendment 99 goes further and would make provision—again, this is only an enabling power—for an optional fee that appellants could pay for a fast-track, bespoke appeal process, a bit like one can pay extra for a fast-track passport or a fast-track visa. Ask any developer or land promoter what their biggest concerns about the planning appeal system are at the moment and they will tell you four things. The first is unpredictable delays in the process, particularly the time taken between when a planning appeal is submitted by the appellant and when the Planning Inspectorate validates it and issues a start letter.
The second is the lack of a right to a public inquiry, where the local authority’s refusal or non-determination of their planning application can be subjected to detailed scrutiny through cross-examination. The appeal statistics persistently show that inquiry appeals have the greatest success rate—they are the form of appeal that delivers more homes and more growth—yet there is no right to the inquiry. The Planning Inspectorate chooses the process and, given the constraints on its resources, there are only so many cases it can allocate to the inquiry procedure. More and more often, I personally have seen cases for substantial schemes involving issues of real complexity being allocated against the appellant’s will to the hearing process, or even written representations, which are much lighter-touch processes and, in my view, in the light of that have a markedly lower success rate.
Thirdly, there is the inability of the inspectorate to recruit from the widest possible range of backgrounds in the planning profession due to the pay constraints. There are, I must stress, many really brilliant planning inspectors, but there could be many more. Fourthly, once a planning appeal is started by the inspectorate, often after weeks of delay since the appeal was submitted by the appellant, inquiry or hearing dates are then imposed on the parties at relatively short notice, which can have the effect of depriving them of expert witnesses or legal representatives who have been on the project for years and are integral to its conception and formulation.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, my noble friends Lady McIntosh, Lord Parkinson and Lord Banner have made powerful cases for their amendments. I will briefly take survivors of LURB back two years to Amendment 235, which I had proposed in Committee, and which was proposed on Report by my noble friend Lady Pinnock, and which effectively did what is now in Clause 48. Crucially, it enabled or authorised local authorities to recoup the costs of their planning department, but it did not require them so to do. I take the point that my noble friend Lady Scott made in her speech as to why the words “and require” were not in the original request by the local authorities. On Report, the Government resisted the amendment. They were defeated, and I confess that I played a modest role in that defeat. To the Government’s credit, they then accepted it in the other place and it came through.
The crucial question—one touched on by my noble friend Lord Banner—is whether this is going to be enough to solve the crisis in our planning departments. Reforms to the national planning policy introduced by the last Government are still working their way through the system. Earlier this year, only a third of local authorities had adopted a plan in the last five years, while 291 had plans of more than five years old, and they have to get those plans up to date. The moment they have done so, they are then confronted by local government reorganisation, with smaller units turning into larger, unitary ones. The Government have then said that, where reorganisation occurs, new unitary authorities are expected to promptly prepare a local plan covering the whole of their area. So they basically have to start again.
At the same time, the Government want to reduce all the current delays in processing planning applications so that we can get on with infrastructure, and a large majority of applications are not processed within the statutory timescale. Shortly, we will come to Chapter 2 of this part of the Bill, which introduces spatial development strategies. Again, under the Bill, the planners in these new strategic authorities must produce spatial development strategies providing strategic policies for the use of land in their area.
In a masterly understatement, the Government said:
“We are aware that areas undergoing local government reorganisation and devolution will experience a transition period where responsibility for spatial development strategy might transfer between authorities”.
The crucial question that the Government must answer is whether planning departments will, even with these reforms, be able to respond to the Government’s requests. If planning departments were fully staffed with the necessary skills, they might rise to the challenge. However, there is an additional problem in that many planning officers will have to reapply for their jobs. Some may well take redundancy as a consequence of the merger of local authorities. The LGA workforce survey found that 62% of councils have difficulties recruiting planning officers and 45% have difficulties retaining planning officers, many being tempted by higher salaries elsewhere—a point mentioned by my noble friend Lord Banner.
Finally, we are going to have new town development corporations. They will need planning departments. When the Minister replies, I hope that she can reassure the Committee that there will be the capacity within the planning system to respond to the Government’s ambitious agenda.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am not a planner, but I do have the joy of owning a small property in Cornwall, which is part-listed. I took a lot of advice when I wanted a new kitchen at the back of the building on whether I needed listed building consent. The answer was, “If it’s in Cornwall, yes, but if it’s in London, no”. There are many differences between areas of this country, which we have not talked about this morning but will come into the assessment of how the criteria are done.
In Cornwall, they are trying to keep the villages and towns looking good and beautiful, which is fine. However, you then hear comments from people like a friend of mine who wants to put a summer house at the far end of the garden, away from the listed house, and must get listed building consent. Everybody is moaning about that and the cost. On the other hand, if you do not have some criteria like that, you will have a mess. On Amendment 97, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, it is a great idea to say that these charges should be waived, but an awful lot more needs to go into it. Frankly, the amount of money needed to pay for listed building consent for the average small house is not that great. Therefore, I do not support Amendment 97. I hope that we can accept that there will be pros and cons but that the need to have listed building consent in a reasonable way overturns everything.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 95. Nobody likes to see fees going up, and I totally support the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in her concern about calculation and control. I also support the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, in her very well-reasoned cry for support for the SME builders.
I want to put my weight behind Amendment 95, because quite often in this House I have said how much we like to make legislation and how little we then resource the enforcement of it. This Bill seems specifically to exclude money for enforcement. I cannot let it pass without asking the Minister to explain why and to lend my support to Amendment 95.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. I agree that enforcement of legislation is almost as important as legislation itself.
I support the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, in her quest for lower fees for SMEs, even if that means that other fees must be a trifle higher. We worked on the problems facing SME builders and the dire decline in their market share when we sat together on the Built Environment Committee. I also agree with my noble friend Lord Parkinson on that subject. It is clear from the forensic contribution of my noble friend Lord Banner that the appeal system would also be a nightmare for SMEs.
In her summing up, I very much hope that the Minister will advise on what the Government are doing to help SMEs more broadly, and whether it is enough, and for those building houses on their own—which my sister did successfully in Vermont, USA, but which is extremely rare in the UK.
Lord Mann (Lab)
My Lords, I feel obliged to declare an interest as the owner of a listed building with a lot of practical experience of listed building consent. I strongly endorse the words—and, I suspect, the amendment—of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. I certainly endorse the spirit and the direction of the amendment. Without repeating anything that he said, I will elaborate on two points, one that he alluded to and one that he made.
The one that the noble Lord alluded to demonstrates in a lot of depth the main points that he made in relation to fees and listed buildings. He alluded to the style of politics that has come in over 10, 20 or perhaps more years of Governments choosing to use statutory instruments to add to legislation. He is far too young, though certainly not unstudious enough to have researched if he chose to, my first ever clash with the Government Whips in 2003. It was on a statutory instrument on listed buildings. The then Government, and a Minister who has long since disappeared into obscurity outside politics, had the great idea that they would introduce, I think for environmental reasons, a change in planning legislation, so that for listed buildings every single window would be required to have listed building consent for any change to it.
It was well motivated, it was technical nonsense and it was logical nonsense. I pointed it out and, bravely at the time, very publicly abstained, for which my Whip wanted to give me the sanction of banning me from ever sitting on a statutory instrument again. I thought then and think now that this was probably a reward for bad behaviour that should be gleefully accepted. However, there was no question. The civil servants and the Minister had not thought this through, but it was a statutory instrument, done on the green Benches, the Whips lining people up on both sides, not to speak but quickly to vote it through in as many seconds as they could so that people could get on with the rest of their Commons life. Somebody pointing out that the whole thing was total nonsense was a bit of a shock to the system. Of course, it was passed.
Therefore, the law in this country is that if you have 300 windows—which, because of the design of windows, our property does—then every physical alteration to any one window requires an individual listed consent. I am not sure that this is too logical, but if a fee is applied, the behavioural response is very straightforward. Nobody at any level within the country is going to start putting in listed building consent for any repairs to windows. If one wanted to change a wonderful traditional historic wooden window and put in some grotesque modern UPVC alternative, then it is right and proper that the planning authorities should be able to stop you. However, if you want to splice a bit of wood and replace a bit of a window, it is rather a nonsense.
That nonsense would be compounded if, for environmental reasons, some future Minister decided to add further legislation or keep this legislation. Then there is the cost to be paid. That is an unforeseen consequence. It is an absurdity, but the absurdity already exists.
Lord Inglewood (CB)
My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 97, to which I have put my name. I am an owner of a listed building, and I have been involved with a large number of others, both as an owner and a trustee, over a long period. I am also president of Historic Buildings & Places, which is one of the national amenity societies, and I ought to add a confession: I am a geek about old buildings, having become a life member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings as a 21st birthday present.
I echo the general comments that have been made on this grouping more widely. The proposition behind Amendment 97 is relatively simple; it was laid out in some detail by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, so there is no advantage in my going over much of it again. Listed building consent is an integral and important part of the overall town and country planning code of this country—albeit its character is a bit different from the general rules about development, as the noble Lord speaking previously pointed out. In reality, its scope is wider and deeper than the general planning rules in some ways and relates to matters of historic and architectural significance, which are very important to place-making—which is one of the things at the centre of current thinking about the future spatial development of this country. Sometimes, these things are hardly noticeable to the layman; they may not necessarily be understood. It is the reality of the world in which we live that many of them are overlooked and go by default—sometimes, I regret to say, wilfully and sometimes not.
Against a background of that kind, charging a fee is likely to encourage more of the same—more turning a blind eye and more hoping that nobody will notice. We are talking about physical things here, and our response should be pragmatic and to accept this reality.
As was commented on by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, some may say that some listed building consents are integral to big, visible schemes. As he said, in those circumstances, regular planning consent—if I can call it that—is invariably required for the wider scheme of which they are an integral component. That is the way that the matter should be dealt with. I simply suggest that this amendment represents a realistic and pragmatic way to make the system work as well as it can, simply because charging a fee is unlikely to make the system as a whole work in the public interest.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, it has been an interesting debate. I will ask two questions of the Minister. I apologise for asking them at the end of the debate, when the time available to get a reply is modest, but I was prompted by some of the points that have been made. I declare an interest as the owner of a listed property, but I do not propose to talk about that much, as I thoroughly agree with my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who explained the case very well.
The first question is on setting fees. The Minister may recall from previous debates on other Bills that I am keen on the capacity for applicants to enter into planning performance agreements with local planning authorities, and for those agreements to have not only the opportunity to pay additional fees to secure performance by the local planning authority but a rebate if the performance of the local authority does not meet the agreement. I am not entirely sure that that is presently legal. Can the Minister let me know, now or later, whether we need to do more to ensure that the regulations that this Bill will enable will stretch so far as to include that kind of provision to support planning performance agreements?
The second question is in pursuance of my noble friend Lady Scott’s Amendment 99ZA. She is asking on what basis the Secretary of State, in Clause 49, will ensure that the income from the surcharge does not exceed the relevant costs of the listed persons—these are mainly statutory consultees and the like. New Section 303ZZB(8), inserted by the clause, says:
“Regulations under subsection (1) may set the surcharge at a level that exceeds the costs of listed persons”.
So we appear to have a clause that says, “They shouldn’t exceed the costs; oh, but, by the way, they may exceed the costs”. What precisely is the Government’s intention?
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I will make two brief points. This debate has shown us that we need to charge fees for planning permission, and one has to understand the purpose. It is common ground that there is a lack of planners in this country, which is one of the reasons why the fee arrangement has to change.
One reason why we have insufficient planners in this country is not that we cannot charge enough. My authority, South Norfolk, has an advanced programme of upskilling planning technicians to become fully qualified planning officers, on a work release scheme, by using the apprenticeship levy that all councils and large employers put into the system. However, this Government have stopped that, because those sorts of people, who have made their way for a few years and have shown expertise and enterprise, are no longer able to be upgraded by using the apprenticeship levy. That has been cast away and it is an omission. I ask the Minister whether she might consider revisiting that rather short-sighted decision to stop upgrading these planners, which would start to address this.
I have huge sympathy with the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, about proportionality in planning fees, but I need to explain that, although the planning fee is important, it is just a single sliver of the total cost that developers, particularly small developers, have to pay. For example, there is the complexity of Section 106. As a council leader, I had to review a Section 106 agreement of which 15 banks were cosignatories. Can your Lordships imagine the cost not just of the applicants’ but of everybody else’s fees? The bespoke nature of many Section 106 agreements is really onerous. Some planning authorities require the use of only their particular lawyers, at a full rack rate. I will not go into nutrient neutrality, although that has an additional level of fees, or building control and so forth.
I know that we are in Committee, and I sympathise with what the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, but, if she is minded to bring this matter back on Report, we might have a full idea of all the layering so that proportionality can be taken into account in the round.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
This group of amendments raises several interesting areas about which I, as a chartered surveyor and an occupier and co-owner of listed buildings, feel strongly. I welcome the opportunity to discuss these and the question of proportionality referred to by several noble Lords and by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. It relates to how the costs are built up and into what particular categories, pigeonholes or whatever one wishes to put them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, referred to this question of the preponderance of very large developments in terms of their cost, and how the same metric applies to smaller SMEs and indeed, one could say, to individual householders with really quite small-scale things. She could perhaps have referred to the fact that the way in which large developments end up setting the tone and the content that goes into planning applications therefore raises the expectation. Whether deliberately or inadvertently, it creates that rather awkward but historically well-known feature of a barrier to entry by the very nature of where you have to get to, what boxes you have to tick and what expense you have to underwrite to get there. This principle is as old as economics, but it is one of the things that is particularly germane to this discussion.
Of course, if we are getting into the situation referred to by other noble Lords of some sort of cross-subsidy from the application fee to issues of enforcement or covering other things, for instance the general costs of the legal department dealing with gruesomely complicated Section 106 agreements—I have seen some gruesomely complicated ones and am very glad to say that I have never had to draft one myself—that rather raises the question: is that right, or should we be subdividing, for instance, the costs of enforcement as a separate charging entity and the costs of dealing with a particular Section 106 agreement dealt with as part of that process? We have to worry about the degree to which there is this cross-subsidy approach, because without a set of rules for that, almost any sort of charging process can be set in place. That might be manifestly unsatisfactory for all sorts of reasons.
I very much welcome Amendment 97, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. I can relate to it as an owner, and in the past a professional adviser on heritage properties, although I would not really claim to be a heritage expert. We have heard that listed building applications are an addition to the need for development consent generally. Because they may revolve around matters that involve the historic character of the asset in question, it then becomes a matter of what is the character and what is the effect. These are often largely subjective considerations. That inevitably results in a sort of precautionary reaction in the eyes of local authorities. Inevitably, if that precautionary reaction takes root, all sorts of assessments and justifications may then be demanded of the applicant. Whether in fact they are reasonable is often in question. Given that, for owners who happen to live in or own listed buildings—putting aside badges of honour, in my case, several have been listed during my lifetime and ownership gratuitously imposed without consultation—I think it fair that the listed building element should not attract an additional fee.
It is important that we get this in context, and I observe that many local planning authorities do not have their own trained heritage officer. Many used to but no longer have one. In my experience, it is often outsourced to a private firm for so many days a month. Again in my experience, even where the external contractor so appointed makes a sensible recommendation, further conditions quite often get added by the local planning authority itself, in some instances displaying quite woeful failure to understand the practicalities of carrying out the work proposed. I will not go into further details on that, but I have several examples. It is therefore a matter of concern that defensively preventive or precautionary permitting practices and a lack of in-house officer competence—and, indeed, confidence—lie behind the added costs. Added to this, of course, is the citation relating to listing of buildings. In many cases, it is so cursory as to prevent a clear understanding of what features are actually important in terms of its character.
I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Mann, that something needs sorting out on a much wider scale here. I certainly would commend the Minister to take this away and see if we cannot, in the context of the Bill, produce something more cohesive going forward.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I do not envy the Minister having to respond to this very cogent debate, which at first sight seemed important but not as in-depth as it has turned out to be. We on these Benches strongly support the amendment in my noble friend’s name, and she made a very strong argument for its adoption. Other key points have been made and we have broad agreement with them, dependent on the detail that will come, I guess, from the Minister.
First, on listed building consent, which is currently free—not the project itself but the actual listed building consent—we would support that remaining free of charge for the owners of those listed buildings. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, clearly made the very strong case for its continuation. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us a categorical reason for its retention.
Secondly, on enforcement and appeals, it seems to me that the legislation that enables costs of appeals to be made ought to be enforced and enacted, and the money should go to where it belongs—not to the Treasury but to the Planning Inspectorate. Again, that was a strongly made argument with which we have broad agreement.
Finally, the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham—which he and I raised during the long debates on the levelling-up Bill—has come back again. He rightly raises the issue, as I did at the time, that councils ought to have a local plan and, without it, the planning system falters or, indeed, often fails. It would be good to hear from the Minister what actions the Government intend to take to encourage and enforce the idea of all councils having a local plan, albeit within the context of further reorganisation of local government, which will put such concentration of energy on to a strategic planning system for local councils in jeopardy.
This has been a really good debate, and we have broad agreement with all the points that have been made.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, that was a very interesting, wide-ranging, detailed and thoughtful debate around many planning matters, including some of the amendments that had been tabled. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part. As a planning geek myself, it is never a trouble to listen to these types of discussions. I will answer some specific points, but I would like to make a couple of general comments first.
In introducing her amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, asked for a more radical approach to planning. The noble Lord, Lord Young, set out the radical approach even better than I could myself. I have, of course, heard completely opposing views on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill before us, with one set of people saying that it is too radical and another saying it is not radical enough. I always think that if you get to there, you are probably in about the right place, but your Lordships will be the judge of that.
The Bill is a step in driving forward the infrastructure planning and changes to planning that we want to see in order to get economic growth going, but it is not the only step. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, outlined, as we continue with our planning for new authorities, there will be further change in introducing the strategic plans—that is coming forward in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I look forward to debating those changes with noble Lords in due course.
The noble Lord, Lord Young, also mentioned the investment that is needed in planning. We are very aware of the fact that the cuts to local government funding that we all experienced over a couple of decades have meant that the investment in planning was not always there. We have already put £46 million in to try to improve the investment in planning and the quantity and capacity of planning departments. We will continue to work on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised the issue of local plans. We are already making progress on that. The Secretary of State has made it very clear to local authorities that she expects to see local plans in place. You jeopardise the whole process of development in this country when you get an out-of-date local plan, and developers can ride roughshod over local wishes because there is no local plan in place. It is a very important part of the process. The noble Lord, Lord Young, raised the issue of how these local plans will be reconstructed when we get new authorities in place. Of course, much of the work will have been done. We will not need to redo all the studies; they can be aggregated into those wider plans. But it is important that those plans will be in place.
To pick up a point that is not in these amendments, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, that I am aware of the issue with level 7 apprenticeships in planning. I was very keen on planning apprenticeships and having that route to good quality and more capacity in planning teams. I am discussing that with colleagues in the Department for Education and will comment on that further when I have had more discussions with them.
Turning now to Amendments 94FB and 94 FC, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, I understand the importance of ensuring that local planning authorities or the Mayor of London are not burdened with unnecessary obligations, particularly in relation to fee setting. That is why I want to be very clear. The Government’s intention is to pursue a local variation model. The approach will not require local planning authorities or the Mayor of London to set their own fees but instead provides those authorities with the option to vary from a national default planning fee where they consider it necessary to do so to better meet their costs.
However, we believe it is important to retain a flexibility within that power. The inclusion of “or require” preserves the ability to mandate local fee setting should there be a compelling case for it in the future—for example, to improve service delivery or address disparities in performance. Removing that flexibility would risk constraining our future ability to evolve the system. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, talked about how we will monitor planning performance. He will know very well that an extensive planning monitoring regime in already in place, which local authorities have to meet. Keeping an eye on this, as well, will help with that. I hope the noble Baroness will agree that retaining this power in its current form represents a balanced and prudent approach and that she will agree to withdraw her amendment.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for tabling Amendment 94G. I am entirely in accord with her on the importance of ensuring that fees are proportionate to the nature and size of the planning application. In her very clear explanation of her amendment, she rightly highlighted the importance of our SME building sector, which we also saw highlighted, as she will remember, in the report of the Competition and Markets Authority. I share her intent to do all we can to support SMEs. Indeed, it was a local SME builder who helped me kick off my housing development programme when I was a council leader. It was a mutual arrangement—we helped support them and they helped support what we were doing. There can be very good arrangements locally.
However, the Bill already provides a clear and robust framework to ensure that planning fees are proportionate. The noble Lord, Lord Fuller, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, mentioned the proportionality issue. As I just mentioned, the Government intend to introduce a local variation model under which a nationally set default fee, developed through benchmarking and public consultation, will serve as a baseline, as is currently the case with planning fees. To answer the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Neville-Rolfe, this will account for variations in the size and nature of sites.
The model ensures both consistency and transparency in fee setting while allowing local planning authorities the flexibility to depart from the nationally set default fee where circumstances warrant. The Bill requires that any locally set fee must not exceed the cost of delivering the relevant service—I hope that picks up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—and that local communities must be consulted on proposed changes. Importantly, the Secretary of State will also retain the power to intervene where fees are considered inappropriate, thereby providing an important safeguard to uphold consistency and equity across the system. I am therefore confident that the Bill already addresses the concerns that this amendment seeks to resolve.
On Amendment 95, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I agree that well-resourced planning departments are essential in enabling the development that our communities need, but also for safeguarding those communities from unauthorised or harmful development. We appreciate the intention of the amendment in supporting the resourcing of enforcement activity but, as planning enforcement serves the wider public interest, it is appropriate for local authorities to allocate funds to support these services. Allowing planning authorities to raise planning fees to cover enforcement costs could result in disproportionately high fees. We are concerned that that may deter development at a time when we are committed to accelerating housing delivery and getting Britain building.
To answer the noble Baroness’s question directly, this was not an oversight in drafting the Bill; we did consider it. More broadly, the Government have, as I have already mentioned, committed to the £46 million package of investment to support the capacity and capability of local planning authorities.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I am most grateful for the Minister’s response to the amendment. My concern is that it looks as though the Government are going to build on functional flood plains. That is why the role of property resilience measures is so important, and why the enforcement should be included in the fees. So, I hope she will think again.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for that and for her long-standing lobbying on flooding issues. We have a group of amendments later today on flooding. I hope that I can pick up some of the questions she has raised under those amendments.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for his Amendment 96, which seeks to ensure that guidance to local planning authorities on setting planning fees explicitly advises them to include the costs of essential services, such as archaeology, provided by local authorities. We recognise that, especially in two-tier areas, planning authorities may need to obtain expertise from other authorities to determine applications. Where local authorities choose to set their own fees, they will be expected to take account of the costs incurred in obtaining such contributions and reflect them appropriately in their fee-setting process.
As I have just highlighted, we are currently undertaking a national benchmarking exercise and engaging with local planning authorities to develop a consistent and evidence-based approach to local fee setting. A consultation on the national default fee schedule and the framework for local fee setting will then be published later this year. These matters are best addressed through secondary legislation and detailed guidance, as that provides the flexibility we may need—I can see the noble Lord nodding; he has probably given that answer himself from the Dispatch Box—to respond to evolving practice and local circumstances. That is particularly true in planning, which is such a dynamic area. As such, I do not consider it necessary to place the requirement in primary legislation.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in an important debate. In closing the debate for the Official Opposition, I would simply like to say that a number of crucial issues have been raised this morning by noble Lords across the Committee. We hope that Ministers will continue to engage constructively between Committee and Report, as there are still some questions to answer about the proposals, so that we can come to an agreement on a number of areas where we believe the Bill can be improved. At this point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Thurlow
“(1A) Training for all members of local planning authorities must include specific training on the role of design for the external appearance of developments as it relates to their exercise of relevant planning functions.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that mandatory training for all members of local planning authorities in England includes training on design as it relates to their role in determining planning applications, particularly in the context of the built environment, character of the area, local materials, and variety of styles to break up monotony within larger housing developments.
Lord Thurlow (CB)
My Lords, I rise to introduce the second group of amendments today and to speak specifically to my Amendment 99A. These amendments focus on the need for wider training in design for those involved in the planning process, particularly within local authorities. In doing so, I declare my interests as a surveyor and a consultant in the property sector and the occupier of a listed building, although that is not relevant in this group. These interests are set out in the register.
To understand fully the background to this group, it is important to have some awareness of the way in which planning applications are processed within local authorities. Anyone present in the Chamber today who has had experience of making planning applications in the past few years will be woefully aware of the difficulties that process usually involves. It has become something of a nightmare for applicants. There are difficulties in arranging meetings with senior planners, and receiving advice and guidance in any sort of a timely fashion is hopelessly slow. Non-controversial consents can be delayed for many months. My son George is currently waiting and waiting and waiting for progress to build a house. It is non-controversial, and there have been no objections, and he has had support from the local planning authority, but can he get his piece of paper? No, he cannot, and it is difficult for him to establish why.
As we heard eloquently in discussions on the first group, the teams are underresourced—in almost all cases, from what I can glean, critically underresourced. Morale is often low, and we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Banner, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Fuller, about this. The revolving door of staff leaving for better paid, more interesting work, usually in the private sector, is a constant drain on resources.
Planning officers receive a steady flow of new applications, each of which needs attention. They are often up against well-resourced applicants, frequently professional developers who are adept at using loopholes to optimise their objectives by working the system. This has the unfortunate effect of putting staff in planning departments on the back foot; they feel defensive, when they should be positive and playing a constructive role, working with applicants in all cases to produce the optimum fair and appropriate result. It becomes very difficult for them to perform this service. With the revolving door of staff, the file on any given project, particularly a larger one, may go through the hands of three different planners who have none of the history and embedded knowledge to work with. They are bound to be defensive. Proper training is vital for these professionals, but that training should not exclusively refer to the disciplines of health, safety, building control and knowledge of the wider body of legislation, let alone enforcement. Training for planners should involve a wider and more subjective brief.
Particularly with regard to the Government’s objective of 1.5 million new homes over the next few years, we must expect to see a large number of massive housing projects, which will be given some sort of fast-track treatment. Planning officers and members of committees need therefore to have an understanding of more than just the compliance with regulations and the fast-tracking, which other sections of the Bill address. Careful thought needs to be given to the impact of these new large housing projects on communities and the public at large. We must avoid the easy mistake of allowing hundreds and hundreds of lookalike matchbox developments to be built at the lowest cost, at the expense of appearance. These massive schemes—indeed, small schemes of several houses as well—should have regard to a wider design brief to overcome the relentless roadside appearance of almost identical buildings.
There have been some impressive exceptions, such as Poundbury, in Dorset, Chapelton, south of Aberdeen, and many others, but they are few and far between. This must change. It is not difficult to build row upon row of houses from a master plan with all the economies of scale for the principal elements of the construction process with a little more attention to interesting external elevations and the use of different building materials and finishes. In fact, this is cosmetics; while it will cost a little more, the benefit to local communities and society as a whole of an interesting streetscape, rather than relentless monotony, is an uplifting social service. I think it goes without saying that landscaping should be part of this.
This explains why planning officers should be carefully trained, to ensure that these simple but lasting improvements are introduced to larger-scale projects early on, for the wider benefits, not just for the residents—though they will be the principal beneficiaries. This training would require planning professionals, and in turn housing developers and their architects, to consider the impact of projects as a whole. It would require developers to display a carefully thought-out approach to the appearance of their completed developments and the wider impact of the finished product, insisting upon imaginative treatment when applied to external appearance. The process of continuous professional development, or CPD as it is known, would be a simple and rapid chance to deliver training to these professionals and to do so within months, rather than years. Bearing in mind the obligation within most professions for a minimum number of CPD hours annually, this really is an opportunity.
I firmly believe that this subject of imaginative design and external appearance applying to projects as a whole should become a required element of the training for professional planners. As the Government attempt to squeeze hundreds of thousands of housing units into a limited space, with lasting effects on the landscape and the quality of life of residents, it is an opportunity to kickstart a new era, with an intelligent planning discipline for the benefit of society as a whole. I look forward to the Minister’s comments and hope she will accept this proposal. I beg to move.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 99AA in my name is the first of a number of amendments we will be considering over the coming weeks on the importance of sport and recreational provision being an essential priority for planning policy in this country. At a time when playing fields are under threat, swimming pools are being closed and obesity is a growing reality among the population, especially young people, the need for a national plan for physical activity, recreation and well-being is vital if we are going to turn the tide and deliver a legacy for a country that rightly still celebrates the outstanding Olympic and Paralympic Games of London 2012. I declare an interest as a member of the Olympic committee which had oversight of the Games from 2005 until 2012, a board member of the London organising committee of the Games, and then chair of the British Olympic Association responsible for Team GB and the 29 gold medals that our Olympic athletes delivered.
Although we had a wonderful Olympic and Paralympic Games, which left a legacy of regenerating the East End of London well ahead of the projected schedule—in fact, 10 years earlier than would otherwise have been the case—we failed to deliver a lasting sports and physical activity legacy for our country. Today, this amendment provides the opportunity for the Government to deliver that long-overdue legacy and demonstrate to the country a true commitment to sport and recreation.
The reason is unequivocally clear. The planning system provides the building blocks for the provision of open spaces, play areas, sport and recreational facilities and the well-being of the nation. As with the East End of London in the run-up to London 2012, every single facility under the leadership of Sir John Armitt, the inspirational leader of the Olympic Delivery Authority, was built with legacy use for the community in mind. Nothing failed to be considered in that context.
I want to take that experience of the Olympic Games in London nationwide. That is why my amendment would place in law a requirement that:
“Training for all members of local planning authorities must include an emphasis on healthy placemaking, which includes planning adequate provision of sport and physical activity spaces and facilities to meet communities’ needs”.
It is for not just some members of planning authorities but all.
In the planning for London 2012, we learned a great deal from Australia and the success of the superb Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Today, seven years in advance of the Games, the Minister from Queensland responsible for the Games in Brisbane is here to listen to and learn from our debate in person. He is the hard-working Deputy Premier, Minister for State Development, Infrastructure and Planning and Minister for Industrial Relations in the Government of Queensland, Jarrod Bleijie. He is an outstanding politician, responsible for the delivery of his vision of a lasting legacy for the 2032 Games in Brisbane—for the people of Queensland, well beyond the closing ceremony. We wish him well. I briefly place on record that the relationship between Britain and Australia in sport is defined by a deep and historically significant, though always contentious, rivalry, which is second to none. Yet, although that rivalry is often intense, it also involves a strong sense of mutual respect and a shared sporting heritage that continues to evolve.
So, to reflect that close relationship, what can the Government do today? They can accept this amendment. Why? Because, as the Schools’ Enterprise Association stated, 500 swimming pools have been lost since 2010, totalling a massive 34,859 square metres of water space lost to the public. Of all the pools lost in that time, almost half—42%—have been lost since 2020, and this continued into the last year. With increasing financial pressures, ageing facilities and rising operational costs, many more pools and leisure centres are at risk of closure. Of the 10 local authorities that have seen the biggest decline in pool space, 70% have higher-than-average indices of multiple deprivation, risking exacerbating already-stark health inequalities.
By the end of Committee on this and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, I aim, with my colleagues from across the Committee, to set out the building blocks for a national recovery plan for physical activity. This amendment, and others that ukactive and colleagues across the political divide, both in the House and in this Committee, are promoting, necessitate the integration of sport and physical activity facilities into planning law. We want to ensure that this is given weighting in priority that is equal to other facilities and services. It is essential that sport and physical activity are understood as the bedrock of health and well-being within a community and that there is adequate provision of facilities on this basis.
By accepting this amendment, the Government would take a small but necessary step to meet residents’ needs and provide the necessary training for all members of local planning authorities to understand the importance of adequate provision of sport and physical activity spaces and facilities to meet community needs and the health and well-being of the nation.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on his amendment. I entirely agree with everything he says. Not that long ago, a lido not far from where my daughter lives in east London was ripped down and turned into, of all things, a car park, which seems an ultimately depressing sanction on today. I can tell him right now that, if he chooses to divide the House on that subject in the future, I will walk behind him through the Lobby. I thank him.
On my Amendments 100, 101 and 102, I am very grateful to be supported by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, on all three and by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, on Amendment 100. They are in addition to Clause 50, and they are about training to do with climate change, biodiversity and ecological surveying. This does not just hold up planning distinctions—it is a question not just of newts, bats and different kinds of badgers but of people not knowing what they are talking about. Therefore, a lot of decisions are not only delayed but end up going to appeal.
My Amendment 100 would mean that the training would be mandatory in the overall planning that is to be provided in general under Clause 50. Amendment 102 provides that the training must be provided not only to elected members of the planning committees but also to local authority planning officers responsible for making any planning decisions. Amendment 101 includes the highways, with the list of authorities to which the training provisions apply. That is obviously crucial and often gets left out, because roads, after all, cut through animal corridors, divide woods, divide fields and separate areas where nature is trying to talk to itself and be together.
These skills and resourcing gaps with planning authorities have been identified very generally across the board as a key blocker. Indeed, the Government’s own impact assessment for the Bill states:
“There is very limited data on how environmental obligations affect development”,
yet there is clear and mounting evidence, including from the OEP, that ecological capacity and skills within the planning system is a key reason for the environmental assessment not functioning effectively.
The OEP goes on to say that
“without Government commitment to providing those public bodies responsible for assessments with the skills”
and
“expertise … needed … now or in future”,
they
“will not deliver as they should to support positive environmental outcomes”.
It advised that the Government should now develop a strategy for this resourcing and for securing the expertise by the public bodies.
A survey undertaken by the Association of Local Government Ecologists of its planning authorities found that only 53% of survey respondents said that their LPA has limited access to an ecologist for planning work, and only 5% of respondents said that their system is adequate. Any noble Lord who was in the House on Monday listening to the Science Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Vallance of Balham, answer a question about AI and training would have found it interesting to hear him say that a report from MIT last week on the use of AI across companies
“noted that 95% of companies got very little benefit and 5% got massively disproportionate benefit”.—[Official Report, 1/9/25; col. 511.]
The reason was that they had been properly trained. Whether we are talking about training to build sports grounds or training to protect wildlife, the training is needed.
The excellent charity Plantlife has highlighted that these gaps are even more acute for, say, botany and mycology. Botany was once compulsory, I guess, when most of us took GCSE biology. I certainly did it, and I did at A-level too. Research shows, however, that it is now practically non-existent. That is why, again, it is crucial that the amendment includes botanical and mycological survey.
Much has been made here of the cost. The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, mentioned this as well, but I always feel that I am trying to plead amendments that put more and more emphasis on local authorities doing more and more. I expect that many Members remember the extraordinary Dasgupta report that came out from the Treasury under the Tory Government and looked at the costs of nature. I had the privilege of spending much of last night interviewing Professor Dasgupta. We were talking about many specific things, one of which was that the real way to rebuild our shattered biodiversity and our ecological strength is, generally, through a community, but there is a very strong financial aspect here. Our GDP, at the moment, is an incentive to depreciate all natural assets. The system for measuring the state of public finances discourages all investment in maintaining the UK’s stock of natural capital. Shockingly, the Bank of England mandates do not recognise that value.
It would make a lot of sense for the Government to revisit some of these local-looking economics and say, “Yes, we can afford to train people properly; in fact, we can’t afford not to train them properly”. Well-trained councillors and well-trained planning leaders will also add to people’s enjoyment and, as with building sports facilities, the joy they take in nature, being out in the countryside and thinking it is something in which they have a vested interest to protect. Unless we all start doing that, we will all be poorer, regardless of what we do.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 103, which was tabled in July but has risen to the top only today. The aim of this amendment is really simple, although I must congratulate the Public Bill Office for also making it comprehensive. “Comprehensive” is the appropriate word here, in the week when so many people have gone back to school after the summer holidays. If this amendment is accepted, quite a few people in government might find themselves returning to their alma maters. This amendment would go beyond the provisions that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has just outlined, because it would include Ministers and officials.
The Minister and I both go back some way in local government. While we might have trodden different paths in the sense that we approached things through two different political lenses, we have progressed by making evidence-based decisions grounded in policy with an intellectual honesty that would increase the well-being of those we served. I want to make the distinction between the different sorts of decisions that we take in local government. Some are political, some are part of an executive function and sometimes we make decisions within the scrutiny function. When it comes to planning or licensing, however, we make quasi-judicial decisions. These are the decisions that carry the weight of law and, when you make them, you need to be clear that you are acting within the law.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 162 in my name is in this group and I am very grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Shipley, who have also put their names to it. I am glad that we have included it in this group and brought it forward, because it adds to the debate we had on the previous group—and this one—about how we arrive at a resourced and professionally effective overall planning function in local planning authorities. The last debate was principally about the resources that are available; this group and this debate tells us the importance of understanding the scope, complexity, breadth and degree of professional expertise that is required to deliver a successful planning function, and the planners themselves. The amendments that lead this group, on issues relating to health, the environment and so on, have amply demonstrated the degree of influence and importance that should be attached to the planning function in a local authority’s activity. I was delighted to hear what my noble friend Lord Moynihan had to say. I hope, when we reach Clause 52, he will note its value in showing that spatial development strategies should focus on health effects and inequalities. I hope that we can develop that important point.
Planners are often in this space already. Chapter 8 of the National Planning Policy Framework includes precisely the issues that relate to delivering on healthy and safe communities, including promoting healthy living. I am sometimes in awe of what is needed, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, when putting together a local plan: the range and complexity of what needs to be included in it and the extent to which one has to anticipate the many issues that many communities will face in order to deliver it.
The new clause proposed in Amendment 162 says that local planning authorities should have a chief planner and, in doing so, they can—if they choose to do so—join together and appoint a chief planner for more than one authority. I say this advisedly, knowing that in my own area Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council jointly run a shared service, with the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning service at its head. The clause would allow for what is current best practice. It would also flexibly but necessarily require of local planning authorities that the person they appoint to be a chief planner must have the relevant expertise and experience to justify their doing so. I hope that we could say that was always the case; it is pretty nearly always the case, but it is necessary when giving them a power and requirement to do so that we should be clear that it should be exercised in this way.
Why do we need this? Many local authorities have a chief planner—but not all. I was very struck in the briefing that we received the Royal Town Planning Institute—and I am very grateful to it for inspiring this amendment—by how important this could be in terms of supporting the professionalism and development of the profession. We want more planners; I agree with the Minister about managing to maintain level 7 apprenticeships if we possibly can—these have been very important. We need more planners, and I welcome the Government’s financial support for additional planners. However, we need not only more planners but to make sure it is very respected profession.
What will bring people into planning as a profession is an understanding that there are professional leaders. I suppose my pitch for Amendment 162 is that not only should we be resourcing planning and increasing the number of planners but we should recognise that leadership matters in every walk of life, and that we should encourage local planning authorities to have chief planners who are themselves leaders of their profession. In future there will be fewer local planning authorities than there are now. I hope that through the chief planner role, we can encourage them to look to have that kind of professional leadership.
The example we might look to is the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government itself. My noble friend Lord Fuller talks about relevant planning functions and decisions made by Ministers; they are informed by professional expertise within the department. That is a profession led by the chief planner, who herself demonstrates the value of a chief planner role in relation to the planning functions of any organisation.
Interestingly, when the Government published their technical consultation on reform of planning committees—we will come on to more about that in the next group—they referred specifically to the question of a decision being made about the allocation of decisions to planning committees to tier A and tier B, and said that it should be done by the chief planner, together with the chair of the planning committee. That seems to me to be a present, important illustration of the independence of the professional expertise that should be brought to decision-making in local authorities.
If we are to rely on that, not least in relation to the national scheme of delegation, as a basis for making solid decisions about the allocation of decision-making, we absolutely need assurance that there will be a chief planner in each of these local planning authorities. I hope that when the Minister comes to respond to this debate, this might be one of the things that she has written against it not “resist” but “agree to consider”.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 162 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Best, as well as mine. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has rightly pointed out, this is an issue of professional leadership. It also underpins the delivery of the Government’s objectives with this Bill.
I add my support on the importance of comprehensive training for those involved in making decisions on planning matters. There are some very wise additional proposals in Amendments 99A to 102, and the case made by all those amendments is overwhelming. Someone in a local planning authority has to manage the training process, which has to be done at a senior level. That is one reason why I support the statutory requirement for local planning authorities to have a chief planner—but there are other compelling reasons, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has identified.
Yesterday in Grand Committee, there was a statutory instrument to devolve housing and regeneration powers to Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Warwickshire councils. It was most welcome, it was approved, and it is a decision by the Government in their drive to devolve more decision-making to a local level, but it will succeed only if the capacity is there to deliver the desired outcomes. That capacity relates to the number of planning officers, their status and the training they have received. As we have heard, in recent years there have been rising levels of complaints about the planning system, its complexities and its delays. As we have heard also, one major cause is the lack of qualified planning staff and the downgrading of the status of planning, given the low number of chief planning officers reporting directly to the chief executive of a local authority.
We should recognise that Scotland has, for a year, had a requirement for statutory chief planning officers to be appointed by local authorities. I submit that we should do likewise if the planning system is to be speeded up in England and if the Government are to deliver their devolution agenda.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendment 162 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. It calls for every local authority to appoint a chief planner, and I thank the Royal Town Planning Institute for championing it. I must declare various interests as I have not already contributed in Committee: I am an honorary fellow of the RTPI and a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and the Local Government Association.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 100, which is in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and to which I and the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, have attached our names. In the interests of time, I will chiefly restrain myself to commenting on that, although I note the fortunate congruence of Amendment 99AA, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, appearing right beside it, because they fit together very well in thinking about a one health perspective.
Amendment 100 is about environmental health, but human health is entirely dependent on environmental health. In fitting all those things together, the lack of healthy places is undoubtedly one of our society’s great problems. The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has already made a powerful argument for Amendment 100. I commend her on including mycological surveys, because that is all too often left out. That relates to the issue of soil health, which we are starting to recognise is such a crucial issue that we have ignored far too long. It is crucial to our health—human health and environmental health.
The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said that we have a real shortage of education in our highly concentrated education system about ecology and biology. That is undoubtedly true, but our understanding of biology and ecology is moving and changing enormously fast. If you were taught biology and ecology 20 or 30 years ago, what we know now will disavow a great deal of what you were taught as statements of fact 20 or 30 years ago.
To illustrate that, and because I know your Lordships’ House loves a good chalk stream, I refer to a very alarming study out this week of the River Itchen, which is a chalk stream that has been found to have alarming levels of microparticle pollution. Microfibres and fibreglass fibres were sampled throughout the chalk stream. This has been found in samples from spring 2025. The researcher who found this says we have got to work out the sources of this pollution and what to do about them. We need to start thinking about how we stop polluting these wonderful environments and make sure that the built environment is not wrecking that. This is ultimately related to a planning question that we have got to understand.
Tying in with that—I am sorry, this is also alarming—is a study just out this week about tyre wear particles in the Rhine River. Where does the road go? The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, talked about the importance of where roads go in terms of splitting up habitats, but roads also pollute the watercourses. This is a fascinating study that shows that the nature of bacterial biofilms in the river is substantially changed by the presence, absence and nature of these tyre wear particles. Bacterial biofilms are at the base of food chains. They are key parts of aquatic ecosystems. They control nutrient cycles and form the basis of food chains.
All this is news from just the last week. If we are going to ask people to make decisions that are crucial to the biology and health of our environment, I am not saying that everyone has to be spending their time—as I probably spend too much time—focusing on studies such as this, but people need a basic level of understanding of biology or ecology to understand the way in which this knowledge is moving so fast to be able to read these reports and understand them.
My first point was about understanding ecological and biological education. In my second point, I will venture with some tentativeness into the legal side of this, because it is worth noting that the law around biodiversity and the climate emergency is a very fast-changing area. It is crucial that people have at least a basic understanding of these areas if they are going to make planning decisions that, as the noble Baroness said, are both right and will stand up in court.
I point Members to the Law and Climate Atlas, a really useful resource which was developed by the Centre for Climate Engagement in partnership with the Net Zero Lawyers Alliance. It notes that:
“Climate change may be a material consideration in individual planning decisions, and may be a necessarily material consideration, but there is no statutory requirement”,
but it may come up in court. I note that chapter 14 of the National Policy Planning Framework states that the planning system could lead to
“radical reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”.
But how are we going to make sure that happens? This is where the training is crucial.
With some trepidation, I will venture briefly into a specific case: the R v Surrey County Council judgment given on 20 June. This was around the scope 3 emissions from fossil fuel extraction. The final judgment given in this case in the Supreme Court stated:
“The only issue is whether the combustion emissions are effects of the project at all. It seems to me plain that they are”.
These are all issues in a fast-moving area and it is crucial that we provide planners with the training to understand what is happening. That training will have to be updated regularly. If we throw people into decision-making positions without this understanding, which we cannot expect their previous experience to have given them, we are setting them up to fail—to fail themselves, their councils and our communities.
Baroness Sater (Con)
My Lords, I will briefly support my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s important Amendment 99AA. The role of training can never be underestimated, and the importance and consistency of knowledge and skills introduced by training is very important. There is no statutory protection for playing fields, parks or playgrounds, and people are extremely concerned about the potential loss of the playing fields and parks in their communities. These open spaces are critical to preserve if we can because, once they are gone, we cannot get them back.
Diminishing any existing levels of scrutiny, especially with Sport England’s role as a consultee potentially being relinquished, could further impact the loss of our sports fields and physical activity spaces and facilities. We have heard from my noble friend Lord Moynihan about the desperate state of our swimming pools and sports centres.
A study by the Fields in Trust charity quantified the well-being value of parks and green spaces at £34 billion per annum. Frequently using these spaces results in better general health and reduced need to go to the GP, quantified as saving the NHS £111 million every year. It certainly goes a long way to help the NHS and it gets people, especially young people, active, playing sport and outdoors.
Work done by other organisations, including Fields in Trust and ukactive, is vital to sport and physical activity in this country. Training all members of local planning authorities and including an emphasis on healthy place-making, which includes planning adequate provision of sport and physical activity spaces and facilities, will help greatly to ensure that we have open spaces for sport and physical activity for future generations.
My noble friend Lord Moynihan said that this is his first of many amendments to several Bills. I will support him and would like to hear from others about these critical issues that will affect us in future. This amendment is important to ensure that planning officers have the skills and knowledge to deliver the planning outcomes that our local communities really need.
Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, in his Amendment 99A on the training of planning officers to improve the environment and the appearance of the built environment. This is extremely important for lots of reasons, one of which is, obviously, that anything that makes our streetscapes more beautiful is to be encouraged. But it is more fundamentally important than that.
If we are to manage to build, as this Government tell us they will—previous Governments made the same claim—300,000 new homes every year, we will need to get local support for the homes to be built in local areas. In other words, it is no good trying to impose housing developments, new towns or whatever from the outside, without support from the local community. Local community support will be heavily dependent on the appearance of the development. If it fits in with the classic way of building in that local area, it is more likely to be accepted. If the buildings are diverse and beautiful, they are much more likely to be welcomed. If they end up being ticky-tacky little boxes all looking the same, I have to say that local opposition will be stirred up and might well be brought to a frenzy.
Lord Banner (Con)
My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 162, which would put chief planning officers on a statutory basis. I agree with the case made for it by my noble friend Lord Lansley and the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Best. I can add little to what they said, but I want to emphasise one point in particular. It is not uncommon in some—not all—local planning authorities for officers to come under considerable pressure from members in relation to matters that are within officers’ remit, whether it is preparing an officer report or an application to committee, or a delegated decision or work in relation to an emerging plan. It is entirely right and proper for members to reach their own views on matters within their remit, but matters within officers’ delegated remit should be exercised in accordance with their independent professional judgment. Putting the role of the chief planner on a statutory basis would buttress their independence and that of those working underneath them, all the more so were it to be combined with a statutory purpose of planning, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, proposes in another amendment. This is an issue already; it will be all the more of an issue in the event that the proposed national scheme of delegation becomes effective pursuant to the Bill. Amendment 162 would help give greater effect to that national scheme of delegation and ensure that it would not be undermined by officers who have additional delegated powers going forward being unduly lent on by their members in the context of exercising those delegated powers.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, the issue of training was behind my comments in the previous group about planning and proceeding on the basis of competence and confidence, so I support all the amendments in this group as well, and particularly Amendments 102, 103, and 162, which are absolutely pivotal.
In my profession, it is incumbent on practitioners not to undertake tasks for which they have inadequate technical knowledge or practical experience. Unfortunately, there is nothing which currently mandates the use and input of such professionals. So, when resources are tight and finance is limited, the inevitable result seems to be that it is passed down to the lowest-cost element of the process. This is, as other noble Lords have commented, to the increasing dismay of local communities, many of whose members have high levels of relevant knowledge and are therefore particularly concerned about what they see as self-evident flaws in what is presented. It erodes confidence, and we should really be concerned about that.
I remember that some years ago a senior political figure rubbished the idea of quality in development. It was a numbers game, and not quality. The noble Lord, Lord Carrington of Fulham, referred to the critical nature of satisfaction. That is satisfaction not just in the physical environment but in the working environments that we present to the people who have to administer this. Once trained, the knowledge is, of course, portable with the individual. I remember not so long ago an instance of a planning officer who left his authority, tempted no doubt by better terms from a developer, who then returned as a private sector consultant only for the purpose of undermining the very policies that he had formulated and was defending in his previous authority.
As other noble Lords have said, this goes to the heart of the satisfaction of the job, the longevity of it and whether it is properly paid, respected and nurtured, both from outside in terms of the standing of the individual and inside among committee members—I think the noble Lord, Lord Banner, referred to that. It is a false economy not to make these positions worth while, durable and of standing. I remember in my early profession how important certain local government officials were. The planner, the estates director or whatever his title was, and people in other walks of life, such as the district valuer for whom I worked for several years down in Brighton, had standing and status, but not so today. They are regarded as just another, if I may put it like this, petty official. That is to the great detriment of good delivery.
I wholeheartedly support the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, in support of Amendment 102. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Lansley, Lord Shipley and Lord Best, in particular, that we need to address an awful lot of these things if we are to achieve a fraction of what this Bill is capable of delivering.
I turn to Amendment 103, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. In the central government sector, I recently spoke to a professional body which had laboured long and hard to get a particular departmental official to understand a very complex series of issues, all of which had critical outcomes for the way in which policy would be delivered. I am not going to embarrass anybody by saying which department it was. However, with their having reached this elevated stage and got this person to really understand what was involved, that official was promptly moved to another, completely unrelated function—I am not even sure that it was within the same department. That was a loss of human resource and a waste of knowledge and experience, and it was to the considerable dismay of this body which had been trying to deal with it. If the idea is that as soon as somebody understands something, they have gone too native, or something like that, that is the wrong sentiment. We are losing people, and we are losing the force and direction of policy. While I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I fear that a much wider organisational change in terms of holding on to those core skills in appropriate locations is necessary.
Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, referred to the scope of training. I would add groundwater and geology to her list of basic skills and understanding. Like her, I do not suggest that people have an in-depth knowledge of this as a trained geologist or ecologist, but they must have a minimum understanding to do the job, to know when they need further, more detailed technical advice and to understand what the advice is when it is being given. On all those counts, we are falling down. Therefore, I very much support what she says about getting this right.
This is a very large issue. I fear that much of it may, in terms of policy and implementation, stray outside the strict terms of this Bill. However, unless we address these issues and unless that forms part of the consciousness of how we move this forward, we will have another large body of Explanatory Notes, impact assessments and all the rest of it, which will ultimately be on somebody’s cutting-room floor. That is a terrible waste of the resources of this House, of the other place and of all the people who have engaged with us to give us their views on how aspects of this should be brought forward. There is a common golden thread here that I hope will be picked up by the Government. It is at the core of getting delivery on this Bill.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate, with many different points made. Clearly, training is important to us, as is the status of planners, but I want to touch on issues that, much to my surprise, have not been mentioned. They have been hinted at very slightly by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, who came close.
I have attended and delivered planning training to councillors. You can take a councillor to training, but you cannot make him think or learn or go back into a committee room and act any differently from how he or she did before. To be perfectly honest, I have been shocked by the arrogance, attitude and behaviour of some councillors at meetings, which I was obliged to observe as part of my role within that council. What bothers me is that there seems very little ability to sanction or take to task. Often it is individuals. Within councils, they know who they are—but they still put them on the committee the following year. That cannot be ignored. It was not just lack of understanding or wilfully not wanting to understand or genuinely not understanding, but sometimes it was the tricky and thorny issues of probity and ethics within the whole area of this and public standards.
Talking to planners, which I still do, with their work on the ground, I know that they say that the following issues are the rotten aspects of the job. There is hostility from the public—aggression, the way that they are spoken to. You have set up a positive consultation meeting with everything that you think they want to know and sometimes it deteriorates into some really quite shocking situations. They feel like they are piggy in the middle.
The other side of that coin is the politicisation of planning. There is no doubt that this has happened. I said years ago that we have turned nimbys into BANANAs—build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody. Even in my local area, I find that my local environment group, which I was very proud to get well and truly established, is objecting to developments miles away which could not possibly have any impact on them. It seems to be the new form of activism and we cannot ignore that.
Planners hate their decisions being overturned by councillors, because they are professionals. They understand their role, but there are times when they just feel ignored, overruled and put in this position. They too need training in that regard.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I apologise to the Committee, as I should have done that earlier.
Under the previous Government, as part of the capacity and capability programme, the planning skills delivery fund was established to support local planning authorities to manage backlogs and strengthen professional expertise. Around £24 million was committed over a two-year period, in recognition that, for far too long, a shortage of skilled planners has represented a barrier to effective development and regeneration and the delivery of sustainable communities. I am pleased that this Government have continued that funding.
It has been clear from the debate that, across all sides of your Lordships’ Committee, there is a shared recognition of the central importance of training, whether, as we have heard, on good design, the urgent challenges of climate change and biodiversity, the practical application of planning law or, importantly, building healthy communities—as ably argued by my noble friend Lord Moynihan on his Amendment 99AA.
There is broad agreement that both elected members and professional officers must be equipped with the knowledge and confidence to take decisions in the public interest. I am particularly grateful to those noble Lords who have spoken on and reinforced the value of a well-trained planning system not only for councillors but for planning officers and, indeed, all those who play a formal role in shaping or determining planning applications. Ultimately, if we want a system that is trusted, effective and capable of delivering the homes and infrastructure that our country needs, investment in skills and training must remain at its heart.
I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Fuller for his Amendment 103. His contribution underlined that training should not be regarded as simply a local requirement but as something that ought to apply consistently across all levels of government, including civil servants and Ministers. That emphasis on alignment between national and local implementation is an important reminder that central government must also hold itself to the same standards that it expects of local authorities. He is also right about the importance of driving up standards in decision-making. I therefore ask the Minister to set out how the Government intend to align central and local government training standards. How will they help bridge the gaps between national policy direction and local implementation?
I also thank and support my noble friend Lord Lansley for Amendment 162, which requires local authorities to appoint a chief planning officer to ensure professional leadership. I am sure that the Government can do nothing but support this amendment. If they do, I would be interested to know what the Minister thinks a chief planning officer’s role might be in co-ordinating central government, local authorities and industry stakeholders.
Amendment 99A from the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, also raises the important issue of design. In government, we did important work on design, and it was very disappointing when the Government announced the closure of the Office for Place. Well-designed homes that are in keeping with local vernacular are what local residents want and what this country needs, which is why design has such an important role to play in planning. Therefore, can the Minister give the House a clear assurance that the Government still recognise the important role that good design plays in housing delivery? In addition, how will the Government ensure that the future training requirements are properly supported so they are realistic for local planning authorities already under considerable pressures? How can we be confident that training will genuinely enhance decision making, rather than becoming a formality, and how best can consistency across the system be achieved while still respecting the role of autonomy in planning? These are important questions that have been asked in the last hour or so, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reflections on them.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and the noble Lords, Lord Fuller, Lord Thurlow, Lord Moynihan and Lord Lansley, for their amendments, and all noble Lords who have spoken in this very important debate around training. I agree with what noble Lords have said generally about the importance of training in this area. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Shipley, Lord Best, Lord Carrington and Lord Banner, as well as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Sater, for their contributions, which are much appreciated.
Before I started working on the Bill, I did not realise that it was not compulsory for members to have training in planning. It has always been compulsory on my local authority, both at county level and Stevenage level, and I was quite shocked to find out that it was not compulsory.
Before I refer to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, I did not really recognise his description of rows of box-type construction. Since I became a Minister, I have visited literally dozens of construction sites across the country, from Durham to the Isles of Scilly, and from Greenwich to Northern Ireland. What I have seen is that they do not have this issue. There is certainly not a lack of regard for design, biodiversity or zero carbon. We have a dynamic building industry, overseen in planning terms by local councillors and officers who genuinely want the best for their communities. I have seen some excellent examples. I am sure there are some that are not as excellent as some of the ones I have seen, but this is a very dynamic industry, and it is doing its best to provide homes and communities for people across our country.
I turn to Amendments 99A, 99AA and 100, which seek to ensure that the training of committee members includes climate change, biodiversity, ecological surveying, design and healthy placemaking. I assure noble Lords that the Government believe that all these matters are crucial to good planning, and all feature strongly in the national planning policy framework. To respond briefly to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on her point about design, the Government are absolutely committed not just to good design in the properties themselves but in placemaking as well. That is set out in the NPPF and in design guides, and we will be publishing our future homes and building standard later this year, which will go further in setting out what we expect. I always had a rule when I was a council leader that I would not build any homes that I would not want to live in myself. I hope to apply the same guidelines as a Minister.
I would expect these matters to feature in any training for planning committee members. For instance, it would be unthinkable for the training not to mention that there are special statutory requirements for biodiversity net gain. The Government believe, however, that it is unnecessary to stipulate all that in the Bill. It is customary to use regulations or guidance to set out details with regard to the implementation of planning law, and the training of planning committee members should not be an exception.
The details for the training are currently under development. We will continue to engage with local government and industry to ensure that the training covers all the basic principles of planning. It would be impractical in primary legislation to provide a complete list of matters that must form part of the training content. This is an area that develops all the time, and we want to make sure we have a mechanism for changing it as things change.
There will be an element of local consideration in this. For example, I think chalk streams were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I have chalk streams in my area; they are not right across the country. Everyone should know about them, in my view, and I always talk about them. If you lived in an area where they were present, you might want more training on that aspect.
Furthermore, such a list would have to be kept up to date. That process would take up valuable time in Parliament to amend the Bill.
Amendment 101 seeks to include National Highways, local highway authorities and integrated transport authorities as local planning authorities to which mandatory training will apply. Although National Highways, local highway authorities and integrated transport authorities are intricately involved with spatial development, they are not local planning authorities and do not have a decision-making role in planning committees, which is the focus of this Government’s training reforms. We therefore do not believe that it would be appropriate to extend the provisions to them.
Amendment 102 raises important questions about who the training should apply to. The Government introduced mandatory training for members of local planning authorities to improve the decision-making process for the many planning applications that are considered by local planning authorities every year through the planning committees and delegated authority. Many councillors sitting on planning committees are proficient in planning matters, but that is not necessarily the case, nor is it expected to be. Councillors are lay people with busy lives, juggling their councillor duties with other responsibilities. It is important that we get the balance right between training that is necessary for them to be able to take their decision-making properly but also to enable them to make the kind of decisions that make sense to local people. The training is therefore aimed at them so that they better understand the key principles of planning. In doing so, we want to ensure there is a higher level of debate and consistency in decision-making across the country.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, rightly raised the issues of standards. I pay tribute to our planning officers. They face unacceptable behaviour from the public but also, occasionally, regrettably, from councillors. I can reassure the noble Baroness that I am about to embark on a significant piece of work with the code of conduct task force. We will be talking about that more in the early part of next year.
The training is not intended for officers of local planning authorities with responsibility for making or advising on planning decisions, nor any other person to whom decision-making functions are delegated. That is because it can reasonably be expected that all officers who have a formal responsibility for advising on or determining planning decisions are recruited with an emphasis on professional planning qualifications or have extensive planning experience. As we know, they are also able to call in support from experts on key issues where it would not be proportionate for a local authority to have that expertise in house.
On Amendment 103, for similar reasons, the training is not intended for civil servants who make decisions on behalf of Ministers. As noble Lords will be aware, if an applicant appeals or applies directly to the Secretary of State, a planning inspector considers the case. They are planning professionals recruited for their expertise and the Planning Inspectorate provides them with considerable ongoing training.
On the training of Ministers, it is important to highlight that Ministers need, and get, bespoke training and support to fulfil their decisions. They also operate within the Ministerial Code and planning propriety guidance. It is probably a good soundbite to say that Ministers should also be subject to the same training requirements as a councillor. From a personal point of view, I welcome training. I have had some training, and I am happy to take it on. But I understand that in practice the role is different. We therefore do not intend to extend these mandatory training requirements to Ministers who make planning decisions—for instance, when they call in applications.
Lastly, Amendment 162, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, ably assisted by the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Best, seeks to make it a statutory requirement for local planning authorities either separately or jointly. The noble Lord is quite right to point to the practical approach of local government in some areas in developing joint planning functions to improve their capacity and resilience, and the scope of their work, which can often help with recruitment and retention as well—and the noble Lord also spoke about appointing a suitably qualified chief planning officer.
I share the noble Lord’s ambition of ensuring that all planning decisions are made with professional leadership. I am not convinced that we need to put the chief planning officer role on a statutory footing. We need to consider what a very clear rationale for such a step might be, and I am very cautious about overlegislating as the Government believe that local authorities are best placed to determine the structure of their planning departments. In practice, local planning authorities already have a senior officer who performs a function similar to that of a chief planning officer, but I will continue to reflect on that because as we go through the process of the further changes we are anticipating to the planning system, I think we need to consider it further. I hope to carry on discussions with the noble Lord and others on that. For now, for these reasons, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Fuller (Con)
Before the Minister sits down, I have a question. She mentioned that when Ministers—who are lay people, not specialists in this field or professionally qualified in planning—take decisions, they are so advised. I cannot quite get in my mind the distinction between a Minister making a quasi-judicial decision on planning and a councillor or a mayor. None of us has mentioned mayors, but mayors are contained within the provisions of the Bill. Of course, I understand why the Secretary of State might want to resist having to get a qualification, but that is not really answering the point because this is not just about the Secretary of State and the Minister for Local Government. This is about Secretaries of State and Ministers throughout all the departments of state, including the Treasury, which is setting planning policy and so forth. Can the Minister help me by explaining clearly what the distinction is and why the Government appear to be resisting this so strongly?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I come back to the point I made that if an applicant applies to the Secretary of State, a planning inspector would consider the case and then advise the Minister or the Secretary of State who was taking the decision. Planning inspectors are highly qualified and highly trained. Regarding the training of Ministers, we have access to bespoke training. I have undertaken some training. Because we have to operate within the Ministerial Code and planning propriety guidance, when we are making decisions we have a different call on us from that in local planning committees.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Fuller does not need to keep the Minister on her feet. This being Committee stage, he has the right to speak as many times as he likes.
I encourage the Minister to take further the last sentiments she expressed in the context of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the words spoken by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. It is important that we do something to increase the status of planning officials in local government. I have observed the effect that having chief scientific advisers in government departments has had on science and the way it is regarded within ministries. Over time it has had a really salutary effect. Having a chief planner, someone with that name and status, would be a good way of working back, providing status to the planning profession and making sure, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, that we get a collection of people who understand the limits of their knowledge and the advice that they are given and that the public trust them in that regard.
As a small contribution to that, I have tabled an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to try to rescue level 7 apprenticeships. If the Minister was able to have a word in the ear of her colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to encourage her to give a positive response to that, that might solve a range of problems, not only for planning but for other professions where level 7 is an important qualification. The point that my noble friend Lord Fuller made about the importance of taking people who have entered the profession at the technician level and upskilling them to professionals is an important part of a healthy society.
Lastly, I associate the qualities of determination and optimism with the Minister, but does she really believe that we will get to Amendment 135? If she is wavering in that belief, it would be a great help to noble Lords, when the Government realise they might fall short, if they could tell us so that those of us who have amendments late in the day might find an opportunity for more time with our families.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
To take the noble Lord’s last point first, my optimism and determination is to get to Amendment 135, but we shall see. I hope I have reassured him on the point about continuing to reflect on the issues around chief planning officers. I think I already responded to the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on that, so I hope that reassures him.
Lord Thurlow (CB)
I am impressed with the advocacy standing behind the amendments in this short group. It has taken a lot longer than I thought it would. It is clear that there is a real concern regarding the crisis in provision in the planning process and the emphasis on training needs. All these amendments should be non-controversial from a political point of view. They are about supporting apprenticeships and training at all levels and improving the positive aesthetic, pride in planning and career opportunities.
I thank the Minister for agreeing, in her very first few words in winding, with all the amendments proposed—if I heard her correctly. Perhaps that was agreement in principle. I am particularly pleased that she does not recognise my reference to street upon street of matchbox lookalike developments. I think we have been travelling in different directions. As a surveyor, I do a great deal of travelling in the car and on trains. I think the objective is the same and, like the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, I think we have to make absolutely sure that the massive developments that will arise from the housebuilding targets the Government have announced do not descend to the lowest common denominator of design and appearance.
I am afraid I am nervous about the reference to addressing our concerns across the group by way of regulation and delegated authority. We all know where that sometimes leads. We will doubtless return to the Minister’s comments on Report.
Baroness Pinnock
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and others in the name of Baroness Pinnock change the provision of regulations in Clause 51 to guidance issued by the Secretary of State.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, we now turn to the mechanics of making planning decisions. I accept the Government’s purpose in Clause 51 to drive greater consistency and expectations of the process by developers. There is a great diversity of the ways in which planning decisions are made across the country. The Government have obviously had their ear bent and are trying hard to understand that and to come to some arrangements by which planning applications are dealt with in a similar way across the country.
However, a drive to do so through regulation removes what I assert is absolutely vital local flexibility. Setting regulation by, for example, the size of application, number of houses, by hectare or, worse still, by local plan site allocation only, as may be the case, absolutely ignores local geography and the existing local built environment. Unduly restricting publicly taken decisions on planning issues may well feed the lack of trust in public institutions, which we surely all want to avoid.
That is why my amendments—there is a whole string of them—are designed to ensure that local decisions remain with local people and their elected representatives, where that is determined by local policies and by a combination, as we heard on the previous group, of local chief planning officers and the planning committee chair. People care passionately about the places where they live, and they care about the changes that are made to them. They want to be included in helping influence decisions about those changes—for example, new housing sites.
Enabling residents to take part in planning decisions is vital. At the moment, there are two ways in which residents can do so. The first is by formally objecting to an application through the planning portal and hoping that that will be taken into account in a decision. But, if that is a decision made by an officer, there is no report that will include those objections and the reasons why they may have been overturned. So one of the benefits of having decisions, particularly and mainly about controversial developments, is that the objections made by local residents can be heard in public and seen in the report that the planning officer has to make for the planning committee, which will include a summary of the objections and the reasons for them. Restricting the number of applications that are heard in public, as the regulations will do, is totally detrimental.
I will give one example of why that may be the case. A planning application near where I live is bounded by a busy main A road, the M62, a cricket field and a residential road. There are a lot of constraints on this small housing development of 20-odd houses that have to be taken into account and will conflict with one another—dealing with the motorway noise, the cricket field, the busy main road, access and safety and all the rest. A lot of issues have to be considered. Under these regulations, it is very likely that that planning application would be determined by officers. There would be no ability, as there is currently, for local councillors, in conjunction with the committee chair and the chief planning officer, to make a decision. There are so many controversial and conflicting issues that that decision is best taken through an open decision-making process in the committee. We ought to be proud of that as a country—that is how we make decisions. It is democracy, and we need to strengthen it, not pull the rug from under it.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)
My Lords, I have to notify the Committee that if Amendments 103ZZA and 103ZZB are agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 103ZA by reasons of pre-emption.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 104, but, first, I must declare my interests, as this is the first time I have spoken formally in Committee on this Bill. I am still a farmer and land manager, or at least my family is; I now farm and manage land from the perspective of a retired farmer.
Amendment 104 is very much a probing amendment. I approve of the proposed delegation of planning decisions to a sub-committee or to officers of a local authority. This will give a degree of reliability and constancy in the decision-making process, possibly even a degree of speed, which in the planning system as we currently know it would be in most welcome. The proposed training of planning committees in this context is also welcome. It will, I hope, avoid decision-makers succumbing to parochial interests or, worse still, the views of their immediate social circle, whom they might not want to upset, which I have come across.
Therefore, I was surprised to find national park authorities excluded from these sensible improvements. In my experience, national park authorities are no exception to some of the parochialism and resistance to change that occur elsewhere. If anything, the resistance is greater. Some national park authorities do not have a planning committee, and all planning decisions come before the whole authority, with the inevitable resultant delays and, worse still, greater opportunity for parochial subjectivism.
I would trust trained national park officers to be able to take certain planning decisions in line with both national and locally set policies. Above all, those chief officers have the necessary vision that perceives the national park as being there to benefit both the lives of those who live and work in the park and those of people who visit it. I have always seen national parks as being like a branding that needs an overall vision, which includes everything from transport facilities to better landscape management et al, in order to enhance the lives of the many both inside and outside the park. Without that overall vision, which I believe not everyone who sits on a national park authority committee necessarily has, those national parks will fail to maximise their potential. I just wondered why our national landscapes were excluded from this section of the Bill.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I intend to speak to Amendment 103ZA in my name and to Amendment 104 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who has just spoken. While I intend to reserve my comments more broadly on Clause 51 until group 4, where we will debate whether it stands part, I am astonished that we are in the situation where national park authorities are in effect the only kind of local government that this would not apply to. I say that because no one is directly elected on to a national park authority.
Some of the board members may indeed be elected councillors but, by and large, they are appointed as a proportion and the majority are appointed by the Secretary of State and central government. A great irony of this wider debate is that we are most likely removing ways for locally elected councillors to make determinations, but where the Government have already appointed people, they can carry on. It seems an odd thing in this whole set-up.
I have tabled Amendment 103ZA—as I say, I will get on to the merits of the clause in the next group—because I am concerned that with the pressure of the increasing housing targets that have been imposed on local councils, the pressure about aspects of five-year supply, it will be too easy for officers to simply say they have to go beyond the plan that has already been agreed. As has been set out regularly by Ministers in this debate, the local plan is agreed by local people. It is not really, but at least there is an opportunity for the public to contribute towards that determination and it is then decided and voted on by locally elected councillors, who are therefore accountable to their constituents.
The issue of going beyond the boundary of the local plan is important. I see this happen quite a lot in parts of rural areas where developers take a bit of a chance on trying to keep extending the boundary, including by making housing go beyond the local plan boundary and then trying to say that for economic reasons this should all be approved, even though it has already been through a process. I am concerned about that, and I think officers would be less hesitant to simply brush it aside.
The other issue I am very concerned about is housing density, and I have put my name to an amendment attached to Clause 52 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, which will be debated later on in the Bill. One example is part of a town called Felixstowe, in Suffolk, where the previous councils had agreed a pretty ambitious local plan building on greenfield to expand the town in what they perceived to be a controlled way but still making sure that the town was going to be vibrant and sustainable. Within that, they specified a particular housing density for the building of some 2,000 houses. That was to constrain it within the envelope of what was deemed to be land suitable for development. It was about 150 houses per whatever the geographic dimension was to reach 2,000. An application was made for outline planning permission. Developers had indicated that of course they would stick within this housing density, but the officers in their analysis presented to councillors considering the outline planning application anticipated the housing density would really be only about 50 if they took into account the extra bits such as access to nature, sustainable drainage and all the different things. So, there we go—and, by the way, I am pretty sure the officers recommended that they accept that outline planning application, knowing full well that they would not get anywhere near the 2,000 houses that had been allocated to the fields on the outside of Felixstowe.
The consequence of that would be that considerably more land would be needed to build the other houses that were due to be built in that part of the district. My concern is that by not being very specific about housing density—and we will come on to this later—we will end up with a lot more sprawl and issues connected with not having gaps between villages and towns.
The reason I have tabled this amendment is to make sure that, if these regulation-making powers do go through to the Secretary of State, for determinations of planning applications such as that, it really must be down to the elected councillors to be able to determine it—in effect, to go against their own plan that they, or their predecessors, had already voted on to approve. We are already aware of how many decisions are delegated to officers in a routine way that is right, but on these things, where the application is contrary to what had already been agreed in the overall strategic purpose, that must be done by elected councillors, who will be accountable to the wider electorate.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 105 in this group. We are not debating that Clause 51 stand part in this group, but I intend to speak to it regardless, because it should be grouped with this, and it will save me having to make another speech on the same subject in the next group.
I do not object to Clause 51; indeed, I support it. There should be a national scheme of delegation. It is an important mechanism by which some of the planning reform policies being pursued can be reinforced in practice in the decision-making processes in local government and assist in the process of speeding up planning decisions.
Lord Inglewood (CB)
My Lords, I will briefly support my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington’s amendment. In the 1980s, I was chairman of the development and control committee of the then Lake District Special Planning Board, and I can see no reason why those kinds of organisations should not be treated exactly the same as the others on the inherent merits of what is being proposed and what the authority members wish to occur. I was the Secretary of State-appointed member of the Lake District Special Planning Board. It occurred to me then that that was rather analogous to being a Member of your Lordships’ House as a life Peer—but, of course, I would not understand that.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I strongly support this set of amendments, particularly Amendment 135HZE, which I think my noble friend is just about to wrap up on.
Noble Lords will recall that I have been a councillor and sat on a local planning committee for 23 years; I was the leader for 17 years. It was one of my privileges to appoint the committee and choose the chairman. I always explained to my members that the purpose of planning was not an administrative function that existed as an end in itself—although this Bill sometimes treats it as if it were so—but to arbitrate between the private interests of the applicant and the public interest. I use the word “arbitrate” purposefully, because people who sit on a planning committee have a difficult job. They must weigh up so much conflicting information within an adversarial system and, ultimately, either the proposer or objector wins.
Much of this Bill is established under the false premise that local planning committees are blockers of development and that the ranks of officials will not rest until every square inch of our nation is concreted over. But this is nonsense. The premise is that officials bring none of their prejudices to bear, but that is simply not true. We have Natural England, which leaves no stone unturned in blocking development. We have the railways, which ballast every proposal with ridiculous costs, such as £5 million for a footbridge to cross between two platforms. We have the highways authorities, which tie themselves in knots under the misdirection that personal transport outside development boundaries is unsustainable. That is before all the other bad actors in many other quangos that increasingly advance their own narrow self-interests rather than the public interest.
I do not deny the importance of some of their representations, but the problem with these quangos is that they all claim a veto—it is their way or no way. It is from these vetoes that we have got the £100 million bat bridge, to which I expect my noble friend Lord Howard may refer. It is from these vetoes that we get this mitigating trade in natterjack newts or whatever they are, organisms that are rare in Europe but commonplace in every English village pond. And then of course there is the insanity of nutrient neutrality, as if building a bungalow in Bristol is going to somehow clean up the River Wensum.
Given the way planning works, in many cases it takes only one of these vetoes from just one of the statutory consultees to block the entire proposal. That is especially the case when officers advise members to refuse an otherwise acceptable proposal on the overly precautionary grounds that an adverse decision could be grounds for appeal or expensive judicial review. We need the planning committee to cut through the undergrowth, and to stop looking over their shoulder and being fearful of challenge.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Banner, who is not in his place, on his report in which he made several recommendations. But those will count for nothing if there is nobody without the mandate, duty and courage to get those applications to committee. In my experience, it is the committees populated by the accountable councillors that do more to get Britain building than the faceless dead hand of the state quangos.
We need elected people who know a self-serving veto or spurious objection when they see one. We need people on the ground who know the importance of building homes, economies and places that enhance communities to arbitrate those competing interests. That is why this amendment is so welcome and necessary. It is absolutely right that the chair of the planning committee, working with the senior planner, should be able to revisit otherwise fatal objections to get that balance, to enable the local champions who populate those committees to take all the evidence into account, to listen carefully to objections, to balance the private and public interest and to get Britain building, and not pander to the self-serving quangos sometimes interested only in pursuing their own ideologies to the exclusion of all else.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 135HZF and to my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook’s Amendments 103A and 103B before addressing the other amendments in this group.
Local democratic accountability must be protected. Local people should have a say in the decisions that affect their daily lives. These amendments seek to ensure planning decisions remain the remit of elected councils which are accountable to their communities. It is important that large or controversial applications should be considered through local debate so that all views are sufficiently represented.
Delegation of decision-making to unelected planning officers not only deprives local people of their democratic voice but compromises the entire planning framework. Public planning committees allow for transparent and easily accessible forums for residents, ensuring that their voice is heard in the planning process. Enforced delegation of important planning decisions or controversial ones would make the whole process more opaque, weaken community engagement and disfranchise those most affected by the decisions. With a loss of local trust in the whole planning system, how do the Government plan to maintain community engagement and trust in the planning system if they are not involved?
By ensuring the Secretary of State does not have sweeping powers of delegation, local autonomy would be preserved, empowering those best equipped to make decisions about their local community. Amendments 103A and 103B question the Government’s decision to make guidance on the scope, size and composition of the national scheme, subject to delegation rather than primary legislation.
Amendment 135HZE enshrines the right for an application to be determined by a planning committee where there are objections to the application and both the head of planning—or, potentially, the chief planner—and the chair of the planning committee have agreed that these are on valid planning grounds, which is best practice, currently. While some have raised the risk of spurious arguments causing delays, the above protections and subsequent amendments in my name on finality should address these concerns, enabling us to get on with housing delivery while retaining the democratic voice. This is the right balance.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock, Lady Scott and Lady Coffey, and the noble Lords, Lord Jamieson, Lord Lansley and Lord Cameron, for their amendments. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Inglewood and Lord Fuller, for their contributions to this discussion. This group of amendments relates to Clause 51 on the national scheme of delegation, which was debated extensively in the other place and during Second Reading in this House.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for her recognition of the need to develop greater consistency and equity in the planning process. Of course, the other motivation is to ensure that councillors can focus their attention both on local plans, where they can really make a difference to place-shaping, and on those local applications that genuinely benefit from their input. Having been a councillor for 27 years, sitting on the planning committee listening to a two-hour debate on whether a fence should be four feet high or five feet high, I think there is a good case for focusing attention on what matters.
I turn first to Amendments 103A and 103B. I understand that these are probing amendments to understand the rationale for the Secretary of State’s powers to issue guidance on the national scheme of delegation and composition of planning committees and why they are not subject to the regulatory procedures which can be scrutinised by Parliament rather than setting it out in primary legislation itself. These powers for the Secretary of State to issue guidance are auxiliary to the main powers to make regulations about the national scheme of delegation and the composition of planning committees. The regulations will set out the key requirements and the guidance will supplement them.
As many of us know, the planning system is very complex and nuanced, and there are often calls for clear guidance to complement planning regulations. In line with other powers for the Secretary of State to issue guidance within the planning system, we do not propose to make this guidance subject to regulatory procedures. However, there is a clear requirement for the Secretary of State to consult on the guidance along with regulations before reissuing it. This enables all stakeholders, including local planning authorities, to comment and feed into the draft guidance.
On Amendment 104 from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, he asked about national parks authorities—which includes the Broads Authority. They are a special class of local planning authority which make planning decisions for their area. Due to the different governance arrangements and the nature of development in these areas, they were deliberately excluded from the national scheme of delegation provisions, which applies only to conventional local planning authorities. Development corporations and Homes England, when acting as the local planning authority, were also excluded for similar reasons. The justification for intervention in the reform of committees includes creating a more consistent approach to applications for housing development and delivering more predictable outcomes in the planning system in order to achieve growth and support the delivery of 1.5 million homes. There is less imperative to intervene in national park authorities, where we do not envisage large-scale housing developments.
Amendment 105 seeks to make regulations relating to the national scheme of delegation subject to the affirmative procedure, as just commented on by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. I am not convinced that this amendment is needed. It is common practice across planning legislation for regulations of a detailed and technical nature such as these to be subject to the negative procedure. I also draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has published its report and has not raised any concerns about either this power or the proposed procedure. Of course, this does not mean there will be no further scrutiny of the proposed regulations. We have included a safeguard in the Bill to require the Secretary of State to consult appropriate persons before making the regulations. In practice, this means that key stakeholders, including local planning authorities, will be able to respond on the detailed proposals to ensure that they will work effectively in practice.
Just to pick up the point the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made on NDMPs, it is the intention to publish the NDMPs—I am going to say “in due course”; he knows I do not like that expression, but that is where we are—and I will follow up in writing to him about whether these will automatically be delegated. I think that is under consideration, but I will respond to him in writing on that. However, we do hope to publish them as soon as possible.
I will address Amendment 103ZA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and Amendments 135HZE and 135HZF, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, together as they both deal with the types of application which should go to committee. Taking Amendment 103ZA first, it would require applications for development not included in the local plan, or for a housing density lower than that specified in the plan, to be determined by committee. I appreciate the sentiment behind this amendment. The Government also want to ensure that the right development happens in the right areas, and our brownfield-first policy is designed to achieve that. However, there are many applications involved in development which do not conform with a local plan. That does not mean they are all controversial—many are not—and therefore I do not believe that they all need to be considered by committee.
Amendments 135HZE and 135HZF from the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, deal with whether certain types of applications should go to committee or not. Taking Amendment 135HZE first, as the noble Lord will know, it is very common for there to be valid planning objections to an application. This amendment would give free rein to committee chairs and chief planning officers to take a great many more applications to committee. As such, it would undermine the whole purpose of the national scheme of delegation, and therefore the Government cannot support it.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
I thank the Minister for allowing me to interrupt. I am slightly curious: the Government trust a planning officer to make a decision on something, but they do not trust them to determine whether there is a genuinely valid objection to an application? I find that slightly curious.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
We trust planning officers, but we do not want to undermine that scheme of delegation.
Amendment 135HZF seeks to ensure that any applications by the council itself or any of its employees or councillors where there are no objections do not need to go to committee. While I understand the noble Lord’s reasons for tabling such an amendment, I again think that this is a matter best dealt with in the regulations rather than in the Bill. Indeed, the recent technical consultation on planning committees sought views on the treatment of such applications. I can therefore assure the noble Lord that we will consider his suggestion alongside the formal responses to that consultation.
To conclude, I assure noble Lords once again that Clause 51 is not about taking away local democratic oversight. It is about improving the system to allow planning committees to operate more effectively in the interests of their communities and to give them the time to focus their attention where it really matters.
I now turn to a series of amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, which seek to remove the requirement to create regulations needed for the framework for a mandatory national scheme of delegation and would replace this requirement with a power to make statutory guidance. They would also remove the ability for the Secretary of State to control the size and composition of planning committees.
The Government have been very clear: we want to see a national scheme of delegation introduced to ensure greater certainty across the country and to speed up decision-making to support the delivery of 1.5 million homes during this Parliament. I emphasise that these reforms are a real priority for this Government. We need to ensure that the legal framework for the national scheme of delegation is robust and clear, and that is why we need to legislate for it through regulations. Statutory guidance is not sufficient to provide the certainty and consistency that we want to see.
I also disagree that we should not legislate to control the size and composition of planning committees. I fully accept that many planning committees have slimmed down in recent years and are nearer the optimal size for effective engagement and debate. However, there are still too many which are unwieldy, undermining the quality of decision-making. We firmly believe that there remains a strong case to have powers to regulate the committees’ size and composition. With these explanations, I kindly ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken in this debate about the practicalities of planning application decision-making. I thought the most telling point that the Minister made was in her introductory remarks, when she said that the Government want councillors to focus on local plan making. Local plan making is an absolutely vital building block to planning decision-making, because it sets the local policies within the framework of the National Planning Policy Framework, and it sets out and, in theory, agrees sites for development by business, commerce or for housing—or institutions of various sorts.
In my long time as a local councillor, I have taken through, I think, three or four local plan-making processes, and all my experience tells me that it is very difficult to get local people to engage in the theory of site allocation and what it will mean for them. And that is why I have made the case I have today. Yes, local plans are vital and set the foundations for a plan and for place making for an area, but, equally, we need the flexibility within that for local people to have their say. If local people do not have their say, that essential safeguard, that essential safety valve of an open public discussion about an issue which is controversial, will be taken away, to the detriment of local democracy and national democracy.
However, with those points, and thanking everybody who has contributed to the debate, because it has been a good one, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, we have degrouped the Clause 51 stand part notice to facilitate an urgent debate on issues that have come to a head over the Summer Recess—namely, local community engagement on asylum hotels and media briefings from the Government in respect of environmental regulations. As such, I will not elaborate much further on Clause 51, given that most of the relevant issues have been debated on a previous group.
I begin by addressing the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising on bat protections. Without pre-empting his argument, I believe his amendment was born out of the report in the Times on 17 August 2025 that the Chancellor is considering reforms to change the rules on nature protections in respect of bats and newts. My noble friend will surely set out the case for his amendment, but this Bill is an opportunity to deliver the reforms we need to unlock housing. If the Government hope to deliver 1.5 million homes in this Parliament, as they have promised, they cannot afford to wait for a second planning Bill for these reforms.
I now turn to the issue of asylum hotels and to Amendments 135HZB to 135HZD, 360A and 360B in my name. At their core, these amendments are about fairness, accountability and democratic consent. They seek to give local communities and planning authorities the voice and the agency they currently lack. Too often, decisions to convert hotels into asylum accommodation have been imposed on towns and cities without consultation, leaving residents feeling powerless and ignored. We saw this most recently in Epping, where anger spilled on to the streets only after the decision had already been taken.
The principle is simple. Changing the use of a hotel or an HMO, a house in multiple occupation, to accommodate asylum seekers should be recognised as a material change of use under planning law. That would mean that planning permission is required, just as it would be for a significant change of use or major building works. This change matters for two reasons. First, it would ensure that local people are consulted through the normal planning process before hotels or shared housing are converted for this purpose. Communities deserve a say in decisions that affect their neighbourhoods. Secondly, it would resolve the current legal uncertainty highlighted by the Bell Hotel case, where the courts have been asked to consider whether an injunction should apply. The Court of Appeal ruling on the Bell Hotel was not a decision on whether planning permission was required. Rather, it was a decision on the merits of an interim injunction, which is a particular type of urgent planning enforcement.
Case law and planning decisions on both sides have accepted that individual hotels did or did not require planning permission when they changed into asylum hostels. In the absence of any MHCLG planning policy, the practical result is uncertainty for councils, uncertainty for residents and uncertainty for local businesses. It would be far better if there were a clear set of rules, with individual councils determining planning applications on their merits with due process, rather than councils and courts retrospectively enforcing vague laws.
Above all, these amendments are about trust—trust between government and local communities, trust that local voices will not be bypassed and trust that decisions with such profound social consequences will be taken openly and not forced on people with no notice and no consultation. I hope that noble Lords on the Benches opposite agree.
The choice before us could not be clearer: either we stand with local communities that want a fair and reasonable voice on how and where asylum accommodation is provided, or we allow the current system of central diktat and imposed asylum hotels to continue. These amendments are targeted, proportionate and urgently needed. They offer a sensible way forward that balances compassion with consent and national responsibility with local accountability. The country is watching us. I hope that the Minister takes these amendments forward and that the Government reconsider their position of placing the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of our local people. I therefore commend them to the Committee.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 346DB in my name is a probing amendment to debate what can be done to get rid of the absurd rules relating to bats—I am resisting calling them “batty”. The legislation is complex, but that does not alter the need for something to be done to get rid of the present insanity.
There are no bats in the United Kingdom of the type that is threatened with extinction, so there is no harm or danger to them; you cannot damage something that does not exist. There are some types that are close to being endangered, but there are abundant quantities of these types in other countries throughout the world. If the existing legislation were got rid of, there would be no danger to the world’s bat population. In short, legislation to preserve bats is unnecessary.
I will give two examples of the absurdities caused by the present legislation. Your Lordships will have read of the first, which my noble friend Lord Fuller referred to—the £100 million bat tunnel built during the construction of HS2. At a time of appalling government finances, it is scarcely credible to spend £100 million in this way.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend realise that we could have had 10 front doors for that price?
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
I am very grateful for the intervention. It makes the world of Alice in Wonderland look normal and sensible, and that also applies to the front door.
My second example is on a smaller scale. With the support and blessing of English Heritage, I recently purchased and pulled down a particularly ugly and inappropriate 1960s chalet-style house adjacent to Castle Rising Castle, which is a listed monument, in order to replace the horror with cottages built in the traditional local stone. This was a project for the greater good that, fingers crossed, might have just broken even. That was before the bat people got involved.
An inspection took place to check whether there was any trace of bats in the house. There was no evidence of bats, but that was not good enough for the bat people. I was made to take off the roof, tile by tile, so that a bat person could inspect each tile as it was taken off. This was despite the inspection having shown there was no trace of bats. To get to the roof in safety, the building had to be scaffolded, an absurdity for something about to be pulled down. It then took six men four weeks to remove each tile and show it to the bat person before the tile could be thrown away. Using machinery already on site would have taken one man half a day. I ask your Lordships: what sanity can there be in carrying on in this manner?
I have not even started on what the archaeologist wanted. I was made to dig down three metres, a metre below the two-metre foundations that were planned. At all stages, this had to be inspected by an archaeologist, with men and machinery having to wait for the archaeologist to find time. Your Lordships can guess what that cost.
As a country, we have managed to get to a situation where the greater good is being destroyed by the antics of minority interests, which can look at things only from their own—in many cases laudable, maybe, but very narrow—perspectives. How can any Government expect houses to be built with the enormous difficulties that builders have to contend with? I have mentioned only two. Let us start on the road to sanity by repealing all legislation relating to the preservation of the bat population. They will not disappear; they will still be around centuries after the legislation has been repealed.
Lord Banner (Con)
My Lords, I offer some views on the legal effects that Amendments 135HZB and 135HZC, on asylum hotels and asylum HMOs, would achieve, in particular to develop the point made by my noble friend Lady Scott on the current legal uncertainty relating to those kinds of accommodation. Broadly speaking, under the planning Acts, planning permission is required for development. Development is defined in Section 55(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as including
“the making of any material change in the use of”
the land or building in question.
As my noble friend Lady Scott has outlined, the current case law in relation to this kind of accommodation is that whether the change of use of a hotel to accommodation for asylum seekers is a material change of use is a matter of fact and degree in the particular circumstances of each case. There is no hard and fast rule. That, in turn, breaks down to two questions. Has there been a change of use, from hotel to what normally is sought to be characterised as a hostel for asylum seekers? If there has, is that use material in planning terms, having regard to the particular circumstances and effects?
The difficulty with that situation is that, as my noble friend said, it generates considerable uncertainty for all stakeholders. It creates uncertainty for the commercial party behind the hotel. Is the investment that they intend to make—in converting the hotel and making it fit for this kind of accommodation—at risk without obtaining planning permission or a certificate of lawfulness guaranteeing that permission is not needed? There is uncertainty for the local planning authority. Does it enforce, with the potential risk of enormous costs—potentially millions of pounds in a particular case—not necessarily knowing what the outcome of that would be? If it does not, has it turned a blind eye to something which is illegal? There are really difficult issues there. It is quite hard to advise local authorities in those situations which side of the line they are on, because it is so evaluative and fact sensitive.
There is obviously uncertainty for the public in question about what is going on in their area. There is, dare I say, quite possibly also uncertainty for the Home Office in understanding the planning status of asylum accommodation within this country. These amendments would provide clarity by drawing a clear line in the sand that this kind of accommodation requires planning permission, with the local consultation that goes with, so that everybody knows where they stand, thereby eliminating the current ambiguity.
Lord Fuller (Con)
I strongly support my noble friend Lady Scott’s amendments, particularly the one in which she requires the asylum provisions to be implemented immediately on the passing of the Bill. I congratulate my noble friend who, by gripping this, demonstrates the urgency of the situation we find ourselves in, in direct contrast to the ponderous approach from a Government, who appear to give greater weight to the process of international law than the well-being of our settled populations.
This is an infrastructure Bill. I alight on a simple truth that hotels are an essential part of an area’s economic infrastructure. Their importance exceeds the turnover of the business and the payroll for the cooks and cleaners behind the scenes and the front of house staff. Hotels accommodate more than weekend tourists. They enable commercial travellers to visit distant customers, provide shelter for tradesmen working on local building sites away from the main base, and drive a huge multiplier effect in holiday hotpots and conference cities. Local restaurants, tourist attractions, coach operators, florists and artisan food chains all benefit. Hotels are a huge economic driver.
If you take away the liquidity in accommodation that hotels provide, local economies are damaged, especially in rural market towns that might only be able to sustain a single coaching inn. This is a matter of public interest. In the pursuit of growth, it is a matter of national interest. So, we cannot and must not carelessly allow the conversion of hotels into hostels after behind-closed-doors under-the-counter deals between the Home Office and local landlords. I do not blame the owners for entertaining these blandishments, but we cannot allow ourselves to sleepwalk into a situation where these decisions are taken—a connivance between the Home Office and the investors behind the hotels—over the heads of local people, whose justifiable concerns are swept aside and airbrushed away. That just will not do.
A friend of mine who operates a small seasonal seaside hotel with 29 rooms has been offered £40,000 per month for 12 months of the year for three years—£1.5 million in aggregate—for a property that might otherwise have achieved at best £500,000 at auction. She was then offered a fully expensed refurbishment at the end, while having to fire all her staff, who were already costing more because of the national insurance increases. She has not taken the bait, but others have. The contracts and values here are madness. They are economically illiterate. It is distorting whole economies with perverse incentives. These deals are being done right under our noses.
As my noble friend Lord Banner said, the conversion from a hotel to a hostel is not just planning semantics. People staying in hostels have no freedom to choose their accommodation. They stay for months, not days. They are required to check-in with a commissar each night. They share rooms with people they do not know. They do not pay the bill. They have nothing to do but wait. There are many other differences between them—
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Does he feel a sense of humility given that, by 2023, a peak of 400 asylum hotels had been reached under the previous Government?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
By June 2024, that had gone down to 213. At the moment, there are 2,500 more asylum seekers in those hotels than there were when the Government changed.
Lord Fuller (Con)
I will answer the noble Lord’s question directly, because this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. The points I have just made—
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
Will the noble Lord clarify the point? In particular, the argument before us is that some hotels in some places are not suitable for asylum seekers. The previous Conservative Government recognised this point and closed the Bell Hotel in Epping in April 2024. I know because I asked them to do so, and they did so taking into account the opinions and sensitivities of local people, which have been ignored by the current Government.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
Since the noble Baroness provokes me to return to the question, I ask the noble Lord whether he agrees that 400 hotels were in use for asylum seekers in 2023 and that the reduction that took place was met with no change in asylum law that enabled the new Government to address the situation in a constructive way?
Lord Fuller (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friends for answering some of the technical questions for me. I was not aware of the numbers, but I am better apprised now. The point I was trying to make is twofold. First, I am trying to draw out the distinction between a hotel, a hostel and an HMO. In so doing, I am only repeating arguments that were made in the judgment referred to by my noble friend—the interim injunction in the case of the Bell Hotel in Epping. The noble Lord may wish to throw mud in my eyes, but I am only repeating the authorised judgment of the Court of Appeal and the points that were raised there, and I take no criticism for doing so. It is a matter of public record. There are many of my learned friends in this Committee, including my noble friend sitting to the side of me, and if I have erred in what I have just said, I am sure it will come up.
The point is, and the noble Lord gives me the opportunity to say so, that the movement of a hotel into a hostel is a material change of use for the reasons I just gave. The people who are staying there are not the sort of guests who pay their way and are there for a few days. They are mandated to be there by the state. That is the point we need to make. That is a material change of use. It is plain and simple. There is no denying it. As we have just heard from my noble friend, the planning system exists not just to regulate those changes in use but to arbitrate between the private interests of the hotel owner and the public interest. Let us be clear: there is no denying the public interest in this matter.
I want to make the distinction between the interim provision of accommodation for helping whole family units get back on their feet and the circumstance where that situation morphs in the building into the provision of bedrooms for single, mostly male, economic migrants. The conversion of a hotel to an HMO for the use of family groups is a bit of a lottery that shapeshifts with time. There are areas where a hotel might be converted into an HMO under permitted development rules—that is common—and thence separately from an HMO into a hostel. I want to paint a picture where a hotel has been converted into an HMO for family groups under permitted development but then without notice has flipped into a hostel when the Home Office decides to disperse families out and move in single, unrelated migrants. That is not just a theoretical possibility. It nearly happened in Diss in South Norfolk where I used to be the leader. In that town, a whole generation ago, arms were outstretched to welcome the Vietnamese boat people. Demonstrating that humility, under my leadership, the local council worked to welcome the largest group of Ukrainians in our county. More recently, migrant families—again, under my leadership—settled into a hotel which has, in effect, become an HMO. Please do not suggest that I have any ulterior motive; I have done my bit. Not only that but I have done my bit to smooth over some of the difficulties that certain people on social media and elsewhere have tried to make. You invite me to make these points.
In July—I am no longer the leader now I have taken my place in your Lordships’ House—the Home Office announced without notice that the families that had become settled would be dispersed, meaning that 42 children were going to be removed from the school roll just a few weeks before the start of the new school year. Their families would be taken away from the local GP practice and from the networks that they had created among themselves and with the local community, together with the infrastructure that had been wrapped around them. Again, something put in under the budget that I set was to be removed. No wonder local people were cross. They could see the injustice in that approach. If there was a crime, it was from the Home Office, which thought that sort of behaviour was acceptable. But we were lucky, because it had not been four years since the families were initially welcomed, so the council was able to issue a stop notice to prevent the forced removal of those family groups.
Elsewhere, with the slippery slope from moving from hotel to hostel, a stop notice cannot be issued. That is why I completely support the amendment which would stop the limit on stop notices so that there is no sleepwalking into a system where a hotel goes to an HMO then to a hostel without due process. We should put local people at the heart of decision-making and prevent those with an axe to grind claiming that they do not have a say, which is the source of the community tensions we seek to stop. If they do not have their say, they should just not be smeared as far right activists for expressing proper concerns. This problem has been created by national politicians, but local people need to be heard.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
Given how much business we still have to get through today, I wonder whether the noble Lord would very kindly observe the advisory time that is given to speeches?
Lord Fuller (Con)
The noble Baroness will know that I was interrupted on more than one occasion. I am on my last 50 words, so we are going to get there. Normally, interventions from other parties do not count against the time. I will take advice from the clerks if necessary.
This problem is created by national politicians, but local people need to be heard and to be part of the solution. We need to recognise that, in this infrastructure Bill above all, we should be building economic infrastructure and community spirit. We do not do that by removing hotels from circulation.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I rise briefly to offer the strongest possible Green group opposition to all these amendments. I do that to make sure that the breadth of opposition across your Lordships’ Committee is demonstrated. I hope that we are going to hear very strong opposition from the Government Front Bench too, but I cannot be sure of that, so I want to put this on the record.
I will start with the rather oddly grouped amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising, about bats. The noble Lord characterised bats as a minority interest, but I hope that I am going demonstrate why they are not. I begin with a study published in Science journal on 6 September last year about what has happened in the United States of America in certain areas where all the bats have been wiped out by white nose disease. In those areas—it is a natural experiment—the rate of infant mortality has increased significantly. This looks very strange. How can it be? How is the health of newborn babies and bats related? Well, with the bats gone, insect populations have risen enormously. Then, farmers have sprayed 30% more pesticide, and that pesticide is linked to infant deaths. When I talk about this study, I am usually focusing on pesticide use, but in this case, there is an important illustration of a point we were discussing in an earlier group of amendments about one health—human, environmental and animal health are intimately interrelated.
I say with the greatest of respect that, from the noble Lord’s own Benches, there was a suggestion that there should be education about ecosystems for members of the Government and civil servants—maybe we need that right across the House, because ecosystems, including bats, are crucial to the health of all of us. We are one of the most nature-depleted countries on this planet and that is bad for human health.
I come now to the other set of amendments in this group, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott. I was talking, on that last amendment, about the health of our society. My reaction to these amendments is about the nature of our society. What kind of country are we? Changing our planning law by creating a special use category for asylum seekers is entirely inappropriate and dangerous. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said that these amendments are “targeted”—absolutely too right they are. That is very evident and disturbing.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
My Lords, it is interesting to hear what the noble Baroness has just said. Of course, I am sure we must all agree with her about the inappropriateness of hotels for asylum seekers to use as long-term accommodation. I am sure there is widespread agreement on that, but she seems to be ignoring the fact that this amendment clarifies, as the noble Lord, Lord Banner, most carefully and accurately explained, a degree of uncertainty in the current law that is causing considerable difficulties.
I must not pretend that I am not talking about Epping and I suppose I have to declare an interest because I live very close to the Bell Hotel and I represented the constituency in the other place for 27 years. I can tell the noble Baroness who has just spoken that the opinions and feelings of local people are important in planning decisions. The noble Baroness who has proposed Amendment 135HZB is trying to clarify the situation so that we do not have future situations like the one that has developed in the small town of Epping, where people are coming from all over the country every Thursday and Sunday to make their voices heard in a way that is inappropriate and unsuitable. When a situation such as that develops, it is incumbent on the Government of the day and the legislature to take action to try to make sure that it does not happen in future and to learn from the facts unfolding before us right now in real time.
The noble Baroness has brought forward this amendment and my noble friends have brought forward other amendments in this group to try to help the Government to clarify the situation. I sincerely hope that the Minister will look at this group in that light and that, rather than just sticking to the brief, which is “Do not accept any amendments”, she will be able to consider that the world changes all the time and that, in recent times, the world has changed as far as the way in which we look after asylum seekers is concerned, because there are far more. It does not matter when the problem started or who was in government at that time; what matters is what we do now as a legislature. That is our duty and responsibility. We have the chance today to enact this amendment, which would alleviate the situation and mean that the opinions and sensitivities of local people are taken into consideration in important planning decisions. That is not too much to ask of a democratically elected Government.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I am sorry, but the past does matter. It is incredible to me that the party in opposition filled up 400 hotels with asylum seekers, did not think ahead about these issues and then complains about it once the horse has bolted. That is pretty shameful and I think the culpability is on my right rather than opposite.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I contribute briefly to this debate to strongly support my noble friend on the Front Bench in her excellent amendments, both in respect of houses in multiple occupation and of hotels being converted to hostels.
I mention the specific case, in my own former constituency of Peterborough, of the Dragonfly Hotel in the west of Peterborough, which is a very pleasant residential area. Last November, without any consultation, the Home Office moved in 146—disproportionately male—asylum seekers. I raised the issue with the Home Office Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, earlier this year and he gave an undertaking that, henceforth, there would be better communication. Even the Labour Members of Parliament for the Peterborough area had cause to criticise the process of moving—decanting—those asylum seekers into the Dragonfly Hotel. The two Labour MPs, Sam Carling of North West Cambridgeshire and Andrew Pakes of Peterborough, said that
“the Dragonfly is the wrong hotel, in the wrong location and bad for Peterborough and nearby residents”.
There has been no indication of when it will cease to be used. They went on:
“We are a welcoming city but are playing more than our part already”.
The context of that is that there had been no attempt to speak to the Labour-led city council, adult social services, children’s services, the police or NHS primary care.
The context that we need to think about is that, hitherto, the planning process has been well recognised as a form of governance that works in this country. We have local development plans, we have county structure plans and—for those who really have nothing better to do with their time—we have mineral plans. I know that this is all meat and drink to my noble friend Lord Banner. The point is that it is a well-established idea that, where there is significant change in planning and development, particularly in urban development, there is a process of proper consultation between stakeholders and those affected. It might be informal discussions between planning officers and local residents or it might be a formal committee, but there is a process where people are invited to comment.
With any decision to significantly change and impact the residential amenity of a local area and people’s quality of life in that area, particularly where—as in the case of the Bell Hotel—there are a significant number of schools and young people in the area, there will be some legitimate concerns. No one is saying that all asylum seekers are criminals or are likely to be criminals but, when you bring forward very significant local change, you will cause concern.
I think a form of governance, a piece of primary legislation that obliges that information to be put in the public domain, is sensible and would prevent people listening to extreme points of view in pursuit of their particular political agenda. That is why I think that this amendment is sensible.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, can criticise as much as he likes. Let us hear the Liberal Democrats’ view on this and what they would do. It is very easy to criticise and put it on a focus leaflet in the opportunistic way that the Liberal Democrats do; it is much tougher, as this Government are finding and the previous Government found, to be in government, because politics is to choose and to make tough decisions—something that the Liberal Democrats are unfortunately not very used to.
My noble friend Lady Scott makes a very sensible point about accountability, transparency and clarity in the local community. If in future we are to avoid the social dislocation, violence and anger that we have seen in Epping Forest in the last few months, transparency will do that. It will allow people to have their say. It will allow their elected representatives to have an opportunity to properly represent them and ventilate their concerns, and I think that will be all to the good. The Government would be wise to do it, because they are now looking at some policies that we would have pursued. I think they are trying to tackle this issue in a sincere way. We on this side are offering these amendments as a way to ameliorate the issues because we know it is necessary so to do.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, if I may return briefly to the main subject of bats, I do not at all agree with my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising that bats are unimportant. They are absolutely part of nature. Nature in this country is hugely depleted and we need a lot more bats, but the lesson I draw from his story is that for all his huge expenditure, no bats benefited whatever. Nothing that he was made to do benefited bats in any way whatever. It is an entirely wrong-headed way of going about things. What we want is a lot more bats. If we had made my noble friend pay a few thousand pounds to make spaces for bats elsewhere in his estate, I am sure he would have done so with pleasure.
Lord Howard of Rising (Con)
There is no need. The castle provides a home to endless bats.
Lord Lucas (Con)
I think the Government recognise this both in the later parts of this Bill and indeed in what they have done with offshore wind. They recognise that offshore wind will kill a number of sea-birds and that compensation must be made for that.
What we need in this country is a lot more nature. That will take a good chunk of money. It is ridiculous to have a system that just spaffs that money away. We ought to be taking the opportunity of bats, which are pretty mobile creatures. In nature, bats live in cracks in trees. Trees fall down all the time and the bats just move home. We are worrying about bats in a completely ridiculous way. We are wasting huge sums of money and we must stop.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, Clause 51 may look innocuous, but I am concerned that it is removing the effect of democracy. National democracy is imposing its will against the will of the local people. I was reflecting on when in 2013 I was on the Bill Committee for the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, now Act. The House of Commons Committee sat for seven days on a Bill of 28 clauses. This Bill went through the Commons in seven days, with 97 clauses being considered. That is why it is important that this House takes the appropriate time. Interestingly, back then the Lords sat for only five days on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, with the Commons having done a much more thorough job, and that is something for us to think about.
On Clause 51, I was struck by what the Minister said to me on the previous group when I had specifically singled out issues that went against the local plan. The Government’s guide to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill on GOV.UK specifically says that controversial decisions should be done by planning committee and that the best way for councillors and local communities to be involved is in the creation of the local plan—I am paraphrasing slightly. Local plans are not created every four years—sometimes it feels as if they take more than four years to create, although they should not—so I was somewhat surprised when the Minister said that planning applications not in line with the local plan are not necessarily always controversial, so we should not worry about them and allow officers to make that decision. I would love to hear some examples of planning applications that are not consistent with the local plan and have not then been controversial.
Lord Framlingham (Con)
Would the noble Baroness accept that even a small number of illegal immigrants in a tiny village can have as much effect as a larger number in an urban area?
Baroness Coffey (Con)
It is reflective of what is proportionate to the local community. My noble friend Lord Framlingham will be aware of the legal judgments of the past few years where some large-scale accommodation sites were deemed unlawful. As my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough said, the current Government are trying to work this out and balance it as well. It is not a straightforward action, so I will not criticise them for it. However, it is certainly valid to have this debate about whether these hotels need a separate planning class, recognising the decision that was made last week in the Court of Appeal.
Houses in multiple occupation require both planning permission and a licence. I do not want us to get into the situation of having to license hotels. However, HMOs have both because the accommodation is being used in a perhaps non-traditional way compared to its original intention. Therefore, extra conditions are put on by the local council or there is deliberate consideration, recognising the change in impact that the transfer of traditional uses of accommodation to others can have on the local community. Therefore, while I expect that the Government will probably brush this aside, it is important to understand the temperature, but also what we have done in the past to recognise when things have changed significantly, in order to make sure that decisions are made carefully, considerately and competently when addressing this type of situation.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, the sheer hypocrisy of those on the Conservative Benches seems to know no bounds. As we have heard, it was in 2020 that this scale and number of hotels being used for asylum seekers began in earnest. It seems that it has taken five years for Members on the Conservative Benches to come to the conclusion that it may have been necessary for the use of these hotels to require planning consent. What on earth has triggered their sudden interest in planning issues for hotels harbouring asylum seekers? I am struggling to think what the issue could be. What I do know—
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
I will give the noble Baroness one brief answer to her question. An asylum seeker who was living at the Bell Hotel in Epping has been found guilty of the sexual assault of a young girl. That is just one small reason.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
Yes, there were 400 hotels—we have heard from my noble friend Lady Coffey the reasons for that. But in 2024, just before we left government, we were down to 213 hotels. By now, if we were still in government, we would not have any hotels; we were working the number down. It would have helped if the Government opposite, when they first came into power, supported the deterrent that we were going to have—we would then not have the problem.
Lord Teverson (LD)
That was a somewhat desperate contribution—seriously so.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
The intervention by the noble Baroness, Lady Laing, seemed to distance where somebody lives from their behaviours. The intervention she made was irrelevant. The fact is that the previous Conservative Government started using hotels for temporary accommodation for asylum seekers and made no effort to increase the speed of assessment for those asylum seekers, so that they could have certainty in their lives and local accommodation would not be put under undue stress. It was not only a failure of public policy by the previous Government; it was inhumane. It surprised me that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for whom I have high regard, has seen fit to bring these amendments. It is out of character for her to do so. Perhaps on later reflection, she will regret bringing them.
Lord Fuller (Con)
This is the Planning and Infrastructure Bill—the opportunity to have this sort of wider debate on asylum, borders and infrastructure was yesterday with the borders and asylum Bill. What we are trying to do here is focus on the very narrow point about when there is a change in the planning status. As my noble friend said, when there is development, should the rules that cover planning and development be engaged and, if so, to what extent? I think my noble friend’s amendments—I am sure she will say something aligned with this when she winds up—would establish the principle that, when development happens, we cannot just pick and choose which bits are subject to planning law and which are not. When development happens, local people should be able to have their say.
It pains me to do so, but I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, directly: is it her position that local people should not have a say when development happens and there is a material change of use, either from a hotel to an HMO or from an HMO to a hostel? If it is, we need to know.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)
I ask the noble Lord to get to the point of his question.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
I will continue. Why has it taken five years for the Conservatives to wake up to the fact, as they seem to think now, there is a principled planning issue associated with using hotels for temporary accommodation for asylum seekers? That is the question.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
No, I am not taking any further interventions.
The failure of this approach is that, if hotels are not used, what other temporary accommodation is going to be used for asylum seekers? That is where we are with the attempt made by these amendments.
Lord Banner (Con)
My Lords, as this debate has progressed, there has been increased heat and perhaps a commensurate decrease in focus on some of the issues that were raised. I hope noble Lords will appreciate that I chose my own words extremely carefully when I outlined my legal views on the consequence of these amendments.
I reiterate that one of the key issues of the status quo is the uncertainty due to the fact that currently, there are no bright lines as to whether a change from hotel use to asylum accommodation or an asylum HMO is or is not always a material change of use. There is an advantage in having certainty one way or the other, and I am very deliberately not expressing a view on which way or the other it should be. It is simply that the ambiguity is deeply unsatisfactory. I stress that the extent of that ambiguity has increased in recent years, months and days. The case law—not just in the Epping case, but in earlier judgments by Mr Justice Holgate, which were earlier in the High Court concerning Great Yarmouth and other locations—has developed in such a way that the uncertainty has got greater, which has exacerbated the problem. Very respectfully, I invite any remaining speakers to deal with that point objectively and in a focused and unheated manner.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, who brings to this House a greater knowledge of planning law than the rest of us added together. It is absolutely right that there is uncertainty, and the uncertainty should be resolved by the Government having a look at whether the changes that he has suggested need to be made, not by the amendments that have been moved. What we have heard this afternoon sounded much more like the other place in action, where constituency issues have been brought to bear to try and deal with what really ought to be rational arguments.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
Well, well, my Lords. I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her amendments and for notifying us of her intent, alongside the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, to oppose that Clause 51 stand part. I will turn to the notice of opposition first. I was tempted to dive straight in to the other amendments, but I will come to those in a moment.
Clause 51 will give the Secretary of State the power to introduce a national scheme of delegation for planning decisions. This will set out which planning functions should be decided by officers and which should be decided by planning committees. It will also give the Secretary of State the power to set out requirements around the size and composition of planning committees. I am aware that some view these powers as an erosion of local democracy. I cannot stress enough that this is absolutely not the Government’s intention.
We recognise and value the vital role that planning committees play in ensuring that decisions on what and where to build are shaped by their communities, and we know that most committees make fair and well-informed decisions most of the time—there are, of course, exceptions to that rule—but we believe there are issues around the operation of planning committees that we need to address. These include: a lack of clarity and consistency across the country on which applications will be determined by committee; too much time spent considering applications that are compliant with the local plan or considering niche technical details, such as the one-foot fence height difference that I referred to earlier, including post-permission matters that are best dealt with by professional officers; and a lack of transparency of committee decisions and their consequences.
Clause 51 is aimed at tackling these issues and ensuring that planning committees can operate more effectively. It is intended to allow committees to focus on the applications that really need their input and that matter most to their communities. Together with the mandatory training for members under Clause 50, through this clause we want to see the day-to-day operation of a planning committee transformed, with planning committees making informed decisions in the interest of their community. No one who has been in local government for a while—I think most noble Lords in the Chamber today have been—can honestly say that there is no improvement to be made in the performance of planning committees. With councillors focused on the local plan and key planning applications, we think this improvement can be achieved.
I turn to Amendments 135HZB, 135HZC, 135HZD, 360A and 360B. First, I trust that the noble Baroness will understand that I cannot comment on ongoing legal proceedings, and I do not intend to do so. The Home Office has a legal obligation to provide destitute asylum seekers with accommodation while their application for asylum is being considered. The Government absolutely recognise the obvious and very legitimate concerns that people have about the use of asylum hotels; we have been clear that we will stop the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, and we have already made progress. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, commented, at peak, under the previous Government in 2023, more than 400 hotels were in use. Now just over 200 remain in use, and that number is coming down all the time. That is a reduction of 6,000 people staying in hotels.
You do not need a very long memory to go back to when there were no asylum hotels—I could go back to 2016, when that was the case, but I prefer to go back to my three years of arguing with the previous Government about the use of hotels in my area. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, commented that we should give local communities the agency that they deserve—I think those were her words. Her Government did not listen; they did not listen to communities, local government or representations from those working with asylum seekers, and they did not listen to businesses across this country, such as the international businesses I have in my area that need the hotels for the effective operation of their businesses. Her Government forced asylum hotels on us and left us with the mess to clear up.
In a very powerful contribution to yesterday’s debate, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said that it was “astonishing” that an Opposition who passed legislation very effectively but were not effective in solving the problem are now criticising the Government for failing to do in one year what they failed to do in 14.
We will do the job of cleaning up the mess. We will sort it out, but instead of chucking bricks at each other, I strongly agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said yesterday. First, a degree of humility from the party opposite would be very welcome—he said that, not me—and we should absolutely work together to solve this complex issue. Complex issues need careful solutions, not knee-jerk reactions to those who seek to use this issue to divide our country. As well as hypocrisy, I sense a bit of opportunism, and I do not think that is the right way to go; we have to work together on this issue. Knee-jerking will impact worst on those who deserve it least.
Another shocking legacy of the last Government is the 165,000 children in temporary and emergency accommodation. If we do not get a proper solution to hotel closure, the danger is that those children will go further to the back of the queue.
As for the points about the Rwanda scheme, that scheme cost billions and only four volunteers were ever returned. It was a waste of public money. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, again in yesterday’s debate, very powerfully set out some further concerns about Rwanda. It is time we stopped chucking bricks at each other on this key issue and started working together to resolve it.
In my view, this amendment would result in greater instability in the provision of asylum accommodation and prevent us from proceeding in the controlled and orderly way that we want to. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Banner, for his comments on this—as has been said in the Chamber, he has more planning knowledge than the rest of us put together—but I know he will know that this is a much more complex issue than can be dealt with by one approach. All these different hotels were granted planning permission by different local authorities, they all had different conditions placed on them and local authorities are looking very carefully at their own hotels to see how they might proceed with this.
I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that we take very seriously the concerns about the use of hotels to house asylum seekers and we are already taking action, but I am afraid that I just cannot support these amendments, which I suspect were laid for a different purpose altogether. For these reasons, I kindly ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendments.
Finally, on Amendment 346DB tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Howard, I want to start by thanking him for the insight shared; it is good to be reminded that our debates can be incredibly serious but also very spirited, and that is a good thing. This amendment would remove the legal protection afforded to bats under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017. The noble Lord will of course be aware that, as part of our plan for change, the Government are committed to turning the tide on nature’s decline. This means that we are of course committed to protecting our most precious species and upholding our international obligations towards the environment. However, we recognise that people can experience issues with the existing system and there will understandably be questions as to the level of protections afforded to bats and other species and how these protections can affect the delivery of homes and infrastructure.
Amendment 346DB would completely remove all bats from the habitats regulations, regardless of their vulnerability. This would risk undermining our ability to deliver on our commitments under international law, which includes protection for bats. The sweeping removal of protection is too blunt, and this issue requires careful consideration and nuance. We will of course continue to explore further options to improve the handling of interactions between bats and development, including through the nature restoration fund—I am sure we will have a very full debate on that when we get to it—and we will establish a new way to manage the interaction between development and protected sites and species.
Although the nature restoration fund will provide another route to address the impact of development on protected species, we are already delivering a suite of measures to practically improve the interactions between bats and development. As well as progressing actions recommended by the landmark Corry review on environmental regulation, which will remove duplication, ambiguity and inconsistency for developers, Natural England is also expanding its earned recognition scheme for bat licences, which provides a streamlined route to licences that saves developers time and money. Under earned recognition, permissions are determined three or four times more quickly than for standard licences. In addition, Natural England is expanding its popular pre-application advice offer, which can expedite planning applications and avoid unexpected surveys or repeat applications. Finally, it is developing a pilot to test quicker and cheaper bat roost survey options so that less is spent on surveys and development can begin sooner.
Having said all that, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply, and I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this group.
As my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising made clear, his amendment is throwing down a gauntlet to the Government. If media reports are correct, Ministers have plans to deliver reforms that will unlock housing while maintaining genuine protections for endangered wildlife. But my noble friend made it very clear that he thinks that the Government should get on with it. We believe in protecting our green and pleasant land, and we made progress on environmental issues when we were in government, but we also believe in common sense. The much-lampooned HS2 bat tunnel and the ridiculous situation my noble friend had to deal with personally are clearly perverse outcomes, and the Government should seek to resolve them urgently.
“Applications for development consent: modelling and simulation In section 42 of the Planning Act 2008 (duty to consult), after subsection (2) insert— “(3) In conducting a consultation under subsection (1), the applicant must provide and publish a digital twin model and simulation of the proposed development.(4) In this section, a “digital twin model and simulation” must— (a) be constructed to a standard at least equivalent to Building Information Modelling Level 3 (BIM 3) as defined or recognised by the Secretary of State,(b) include a virtual replica of all principal physical and environmental features of the development and its site,(c) simulate anticipated impacts on land, water, air, biodiversity, transport infrastructure and the built environment, and(d) describe the data sources, assumptions, validation methodology, and range of scenarios tested.(5) The Secretary of State may by regulations—(a) define technical standards for digital twin and simulation methodologies;(b) determine what constitutes compliance with BIM 3.”.”Member's explanatory statement
This new Clause requires that applicants for Development Consent Orders provide and publish a digital twin model, meeting at least Building Information Modelling Level 3 standards, as part of the consultation process.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, as well as moving Amendment 107, I shall also speak to the other amendments in this group in my name and the names of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth. I am not personally someone who naturally embraces the cutting edge of technology, and I am very glad that those two noble Lords have put their names to this, because I think they will know far more about it than me, but I was truly excited by the potential of the subject of these amendments, and that is digital twins. I will now attempt to explain what digital twins are.
I am excited because I know from my experience of years chairing a planning committee that explaining proposals and different options, examining different possibilities and translating them into plans is very hard. Doing a planning-for-real exercise with maps cannot really take on board all the changes that embracing various options can bring. The digital twin is a very positive evolution from static models to dynamic digital replicas of what is proposed.
These amendments are deliberately framed around the consultation elements of the various parts of planning law that we are seeking here to alter. That is because digital twins are not just about better project planning and delivery; they are also about winning public confidence and consent—an issue that my noble friend Lady Pinnock spoke about earlier—given the importance of taking a community with you when you are trying to deliver change. In the case of new towns, to which Amendments 195, 196, 198 and 199 relate, this is going to be incredibly important.
I am certain that the Government want to deliver on their housing target in a way that communities can buy into and will support, whether with new towns or extensions of existing developments. There will always be disagreements, but proper modelling of the kind advocated by these amendments would be a critical tool for engaging with those who will be affected by the developments and demonstrate the pros and cons of the various options.
For example, such modelling can take on board demographics when it comes to planning, from schools right through to care homes. It will model what is likely to happen with the population and whether that will be relevant to what is proposed. It would also be a critical tool when various transport options were being designed, as it can model traffic flow, taking into account the changing model of the working week, for example. That is a very dynamic issue—the changing way in which we work. We do not want to design transport systems that are rooted in something that happened 10 years ago. That is the part that I find the most exciting: the community engagement for a digital age and a digitally literate generation.
The other advantage is the one that should excite the Government and the Treasury more. As we know, this country’s record on delivering major infrastructure projects on time and on budget is sadly woeful. We need only look at the recent past. HS2 began life with an estimated cost of £37.5 billion. The latest figure is £80 billion, and that is with the northern leg cancelled altogether. Half the infrastructure has been gained for double the cost. There are lots of other examples, which I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, with their experience, will cite. I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, will talk about Hinkley Point C, which was meant to be operational by 2023 at a cost of £18 billion but is now not expected to be online until the 2030s, with the price tag having more than doubled to £40 billion.
The Government are well aware that the public will oppose necessary infrastructure when they see inefficiencies, costs and overruns, no benefit to them and a big price tag. That is exactly what we are trying to avoid by tabling the amendments with this digital model. As a country, we must find a way to deliver more infrastructure, more quickly, on time and, crucially, on budget.
A digital twin is a virtual replica of assets that can be tested, stress-modelled and monitored in real time, and it offers precisely that capability. If advanced digital twins of the kind now available had been mandated from the start of projects such as HS2, Ministers and engineers alike would have had the data to foresee overruns and mitigate the risks. That is what I am hoping that we can achieve if we can bring this technology into common use.
In 2016, there was a digital technology known as building information modelling level 2. That was mandated for use in government projects in 2016. Level 2 is, in essence, about collaboration on static models. These amendments propose that projects requiring development consent—that is, nationally significant infrastructure projects and new towns and extensions—should be required to deploy building information modelling level 3. Meeting that standard would see construction use genuinely advance in a dynamic, integrated model of the asset that is continually updated. That is the important point: it is continually updated with real-time data and capable of simulating scenarios, predicting performance and informing decisions throughout the life of the project. The Government’s plans are in some cases decades long, so these projects have a long time.
Building information modelling level 2 allowed us to design better, but level 3 will allow us to build better. The good news is that we in Britain are leading the way on this digital twin technology. I have had conversations with the only British company—as far as I know—that is involved in building such simulations. It is called Skyral. Its models can be built in a matter of weeks, and they can simulate how populations of whole countries function and might be made better by new infrastructure.
In winding, I invite the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, to indicate whether she is willing to meet Skyral alongside me, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for a demonstration of these issues. It is exciting that this cutting-edge technology has been developed here, in Britain, by an independent British company.
Although we keenly feel the failures of cost and time overruns, they are far from a uniquely British problem. Research from the University of Oxford shows that more than 90% of big infrastructure projects worldwide go over budget and are delivered late. There is a huge opportunity here for us both in the Government’s plans for infrastructure and development and to export this technology. I hope the Government seize that. I beg to move.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 107 might appear to be of a technical and specialised nature, but I insist that it is fundamental to the modern methodology of infrastructure planning. I will talk briefly about the problems in planning before dealing specifically with the topic of digital twins.
The cost of making detailed plans is cheap relative to the costs of delivery. Good planning increases the likelihood of rapid delivery. With a speedy delivery, the chances are reduced of a project being thrown off course by unexpected events. Overruns of cost and time can be limited by careful planning. One is liable to imagine that recent infrastructure projects in the UK have been uncommonly affected by rising costs and delays, but, as has been mentioned, international comparisons have shown that such experiences are common to many countries.
Nevertheless, many of the dysfunctions of project management in the UK can be attributed to the economic nostrums that arose in the years of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Governments. During the period in question, the doctrine of outsourcing was widely propagated. It proposed that organisations should concentrate on their core activities, which are the things that they do best, and that functions that had hitherto been performed in-house should be assigned to external providers possessed of specialised expertise. It was proposed that this recommendation should be followed equally by the public and the private sectors.
The doctrine of outsourcing has been responsible for many of the problems that have beset the HS2 rail project. It was supposed that specialised contractors could be relied on to undertake both the planning and the delivery of the project. Frequent revisions of the master plan created confusion and delay. The overall direction and co-ordination of the project was the responsibility of a weak and ill-equipped company that was HS2 Ltd.
What is required in a major infrastructure project is a firm and detailed plan and the active co-operation of the contractors involved in its delivery. An example of how this can be achieved has been provided by the projects to build the Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C nuclear power stations. One can extol the arrangements at Hinkley C despite the delays and cost overruns that have affected the project. Some of those are attributable to political indecisiveness and some to the misfortune of the Covid pandemic.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, it is nice to see amity break out across the Committee after the previous group. I imagine a digital twin of the House of Lords would get to Amendment 135 by 7 pm.
Digital twins offer such an ability for local councils and their officers and members, and members of the public, to really get to grips with a plan. Otherwise, you are presented with something static that is really hard to change. It is just, “Shall we push it through or shall we retreat?” With a digital twin you can adjust, look at different ways of doing it and absorb comments as they come through, at a really low cost, and arrive at a much more evolved, much better, solution at the end of it.
I urge the Government, given that digital twins are part of the industrial strategy, to use this as an example to develop the Government’s role as a partner/customer, as a way of helping new small businesses and technologies cut their teeth and get a worthwhile first contract or two out of the way, and not to stand back but be part of the development of a strong new British industry. There is an opportunity here to do that, particularly with the Government’s new town programme. I really hope they take it.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I endorse completely the speeches by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and her supporters. She introduced it engagingly and comprehensively. I have therefore scribbled out most of what I was going to say. She has done the Committee a double service in that respect.
A common difficulty for those citizens who wish to examine or question a development proposal is the scarcity of information, expertise and resources they have, often when up against a large professional development company. Planning authorities have the same problem, and the risk of very expensive and protracted discussions and inquiries to get to grips with the proposed project. Some applications that I have seen seem almost designed to overcome planning authorities and public resistance through the sheer volume and number of boxes of paper that arrive, within which people have to try to find where the bodies are buried.
If such projects were obliged to produce a digital twin model, as the amendment proposes, not only would we have a more equitable process but it would also save a great deal of time, resources and money. I could say a great deal more, but I will not because we all dread the phrase, “My Lords, a lot of good points have been made” and I shall not repeat it. I genuinely shall not. I support these amendments, and I will now sit down.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, from these Benches I support this amendment and thank other Lords for their support. One thing the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, said is that if we had had a digital twin model earlier, the bat tunnel we talked about would probably never have been necessary in HS2.
Clearly, there are issues around this on data privacy, keeping information up to date, legacy systems and so forth. But one of the positives is that once you have a model, you do not just discard it once the project has finished; you continue using it into the future and update it. It allows you all the benefits into the future.
We on these Benches are very interested to hear where the Government are in the development of this area, which I certainly hope is an area where the UK, with its IT prowess, will move ahead of our competitors and use it for the kinds of not very successful infrastructure projects that we have had in recent years.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, in speaking to the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, I am also greatly pleased to say that we seem to have broken out into a spirit of co-operation. As noble Lords will know, modelling and simulation are used to drive efficiency in infrastructure and planning projects. I recall, as a project engineer more than 30 years ago, using simulations and realising just how valuable they are in avoiding mistakes and bringing people on board with exactly what you are proposing.
Therefore, they have the potential to reduce costly mistakes in the planning process, deliver infrastructure that is better, more adaptive and more resilient and, as Members have commented, bring residents and others on board because they can see what is there. They would also, I hope, allow developers to modify their plans to reflect what the public want because it can be done so much more easily through a model.
This technology is moving at pace, as are other technologies such as AI, and it is therefore likely that legislation will be required in future to keep pace with changes. Ensuring that the law remains sufficiently flexible and future-proof and does not inhibit development is going to be important, as is how this is integrated into the planning system as opposed to being a stand-alone, nice little model that you look at. If we are going to look at amendments and how changes can be made, we have to think about whether that means we need to produce a volume of paper documents or whether there is some output that we can integrate. It is a complex issue that we need more thought on, but it is a great opportunity. How do the Government intend to ensure that this planning law evolves, and how can it be integrated so that planners are able to realise the full potential of technology? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.
Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)
I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, for her amendments relating to modelling and simulation technologies and commend her forbearance for waiting this long to get to this important group of amendments. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for his tour de force on the use of twin modelling. I also thank the noble Lords, Lord Lucas, Lord Cromwell, Lord Teverson and Lord Jameson, for their welcome comments.
Amendment 107 seeks to require applications for development consent orders to provide and publish a digital twin model as part of the consultation process. This digital model would need to meet building information modelling level 3. We agree that there is great potential in the development of new technologies, such as digital twin modelling, to support the planning system. The Prime Minister recently recognised the great achievements of planning AI exemplars in speeding up the planning system in local authorities. We also recognise that the use of digital twin modelling could make the potential benefits and impacts of a large-scale infrastructure project more accessible and transparent to the communities affected.
While there is great potential here, we do not think it is proportionate to require it of every applicant at this stage. The purpose of this Bill is to speed up the process by which nationally significant infrastructure projects are consented to deliver the infrastructure this country needs. Requiring digital twin modelling at an early stage in a project’s design is likely to add cost and delay for applicants, particularly given that schemes are likely to change during the pre-application stage.
As noble Lords will be aware, the Bill also removes the statutory requirement to consult before an application is submitted to the Planning Inspectorate. If the Government wish to mandate this innovation on applications in future, they already have the power to do so. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act gives the Secretary of State, and by extension the Planning Inspectorate, powers to request additional digital products when applicants submit applications.
Amendments 195, 196, 198 and 199 would provide development corporations with the power to undertake modelling and simulation to building information modelling level 3 standards in order to evaluate the impact of the activities. As noble Lords will be aware, development corporations deliver large-scale development and infrastructure projects that take years to deliver. We expect robust and up-to-date modelling and simulation to be undertaken by development corporations to plan and deliver each stage.
However, we believe these amendments to be unnecessary. Development corporations already have broad-ranging powers to do anything that is necessary to achieve their objectives. There is therefore no legislative bar to development corporations undertaking this level of modelling and simulation. None the less, where appropriate we encourage development corporations to make good use of digital tools to promote greater information sharing and collaboration across the projects they deliver. I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, managed in less than a minute and a half to explain, in a much more down to earth way, what it took me probably eight minutes to explain. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, very much for his kind remarks, and for lending support to this. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, for his explanation of some of the other issues surrounding this. I was encouraged by the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. I am glad that we had a better sense of unity breaking out in the Chamber. If my amendments serve no other purpose, at least they have brought us back together in a certain way.
I thank the Minister for his positive reply. I am interested that the powers are there for the Secretary of State to require this technology. I think it is going to be necessary for the Secretary of State to really push this and use those powers. Very often it takes a long time for people to grasp the use of technology—whether because of the cost of investing in it or simply because of lack of vision. I hope those powers will be pushed. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Viscount Hanworth (Lab)
May I interject? The Minister seemed to imply that adopting digital twins would impose extra time and cost on planning. I contend that in fact it expedites planning and reduces the costs. I hope the Minister will consider that assertion.
“Residential buildings on floodplains(1) Local planning authorities must not grant permission for residential properties to be built on functional floodplains or areas at high risk of flooding. (2) An area is a functional floodplain or at high risk of flooding for the purposes of subsection (1) if the Environment Agency assesses it as a Zone 3a or 3b flood zone.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that local authorities cannot grant planning permission for residential properties to be built on floodplains or on areas at high risk of flooding.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to address Amendments 108, 109, 155 and 156 in this group. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle and Lady Willis of Summertown, for their support for these amendments. I look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, who will outline her amendments, which are very closely aligned to the content of mine; I think we are more or less on the same page.
The background and starting point to this group is that houses built since Flood Re came into effect in 2009 will no longer qualify for flood insurance if they are built on a flood plain. Flood Re excluded them for a very simple reason: it did not want developers and local authorities to give planning permission to houses on functional flood plains. That is an obvious starting point. I welcome that the Government have commissioned the flood ready review, currently being undertaken by Peter Bonfield. I hope it will report fairly soon, possibly even while the Bill is still going through the House. I will be interested to see what the future holds following that review.
The review will look at property flood resilience measures, which are simple, low-cost, proven interventions installed in a home to resist surface water flooding, significantly reducing the time and cost of recovering from a flood. In my previous life as a shadow Flooding Minister, one of the most poignant and saddest things I had to do was visit homes where there had been major floods, both in my own constituency and elsewhere. I am only too aware that people can be evicted from their homes for three to six months for public health reasons while the house is being put back into shape.
The type of property flood resilience measures that I am looking at and that the review will look at are self-closing air-bricks, non-return valves on toilets, sump pumps and such. The Government’s own studies have found that these measures provide significant cost-effective opportunities to improve flood resilience. Property flood resilience significantly reduces the time and cost of recovering from floods, so I hope the Minister will respond positively to the amendments I am about to go into in some detail.
Flooding costs the UK economy £2.4 billion a year. The average cost of repairing a home after a flood is £30,000 and the average time spent out of a home is nine months. Currently, 4.1 million homes are at risk of surface water flooding. This is a comparatively recent type of flooding, only identified since 2007. This follows on specifically from the measures outlined in the Sir Michael Pitt review of that year. There are now three times as many properties at high risk of flooding from surface water compared to that from rivers and the sea.
Currently, 3.1 million UK homes are exposed to flood depths where property flood resilience measures would be most effective and where they could realistically benefit from such interventions. Some 83% of properties exposed to surface water risks are unprotected—far higher than proportions for river or coastal flooding. The Government will be well aware that, by 2050, 6.1 million homes will be at risk of surface water flooding and the number at high risk is expected to have increased by 66%. So these amendments are very timely and could stem the flow of increased properties at risk. In the 12 local authorities with the highest flood risk, over 7,000 homes have been recently granted planning permission on flood plains. In 2021-22, 7% of new homes were built in flood zone 3. Therefore, identifying those most at risk of flooding is especially appropriate.
Recognising that surface water flooding now has a greater effect than either river or coastal flooding and the fact that, in a group much later in the Bill, we look at my own pet subject of sustainable drainage—I look forward to my meeting with the Minister and her colleague from Defra, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to discuss that—I would argue that introducing flood resilience measures to new properties as well as retrofitting old ones would be an extremely valuable opportunity.
I will discuss each of the amendments in turn. I completely omitted to declare my interests, for which I apologise profusely. I am co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Water and vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities. I have co-authored a number of reports with Policy Connect and the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum, which is a local think tank in London. We have co-authored a number of reports on bricks and water—four to date, and we hope to do a fifth. I am drawing heavily on the recommendations in those reports, and I would be delighted to share them with the Minister for some reading, perhaps during Conference Recess when she has a quiet moment.
Amendment 108 looks at residential building on flood plains. The idea of this amendment is to ensure that local authorities cannot grant planning permission for residential properties to be built on what I would describe as functional flood plains or on areas at high risk of flooding. As Flood Re established, if they are not going to be covered for insurance, it seems very unfair on a householder who may not in fact need a mortgage to find out that, subsequent to buying that house, they are not eligible because of flooding. The amendment would narrow it down so that flood zones 3a and 3b are excluded.
Amendment 109 looks at property flood resilience measures, which I described briefly before, particularly raised electrical sockets, non-return valves on utility pipes, air-brick covers, resilient wall plaster and others such as the Secretary of State herself may wish to identify. These resilience measures are being installed at only a fraction of the pace required to make vulnerable homes insurable once the Flood Re insurance scheme is withdrawn in 2039. That might seem a long time away, but it is only 14 years before the Flood Re scheme expires. Amending building regulations to require the use of basic property flood resilience would offer an affordable way to accelerate uptake and would mean that houses built in higher-risk flood areas are adapted for that purpose. It would constitute a far cheaper option than retrofitting, which, while it brings benefits, is obviously infinitely more expensive for new houses.
I turn to Amendment 155, which looks at local plans and planning applications regarding flooding. The sequential exception tests are planning tools that would help to ensure that new development is directed away from areas at the highest risk of flooding, and would make necessary development in areas of flood risk safe throughout their lifetime without increasing flood risk elsewhere, as the displaced water is often simply moved to flood existing or other developments. However, these tests are currently only guidance. I propose in Amendment 155 to put them on a statutory basis, as that could only help to ensure that local planning authorities place due regard on them when preparing local plans and considering individual planning applications.
Amendment 156 looks at the strategic flood risk assessment maps and would make sure that these included the most up-to-date flood risk assessment provided by the Environment Agency. In this regard, a statutory duty should be placed on local planning authorities to do so. Strategic flood risk assessments are vital to ensuring that planning decisions take into account risks from all sources of flooding, including an allowance for climate change. They would also help to identify whether any proposed development fell into flood zone 3b, the functional flood plain. Placing a duty on local planning authorities to keep strategic flood risk assessments up to date would ensure that they can reliably inform the development of local plans and incorporate the latest information from the Environment Agency’s new national flood risk assessment.
The Minister was temporarily unable to listen because she was being consulted by the party managers, but I am sure that she shares my concern that 7,000 new homes have been built on flood plains in 12 local authorities alone, and that 7% of new homes were built in flood zone 3b in 2021-22 alone. With those remarks, I hope that the Minister will look favourably on these key amendments and put them on a statutory footing. I beg to move.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, who provided a detailed, comprehensive introduction to the amendments in this group in her name, a number of which I have attached my name to. I also look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, on this topic.
I will try to be fairly brief as I am very aware of the hour. I am going to start with Amendment 227A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. In researching this, I found the most perfect case study to follow the recommendations—which I am sure we will hear from the noble Baroness shortly—of the need to build to allow for the practical reality of the world we live in today. This study comes from flooding in York in 2015. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, who is not currently in his place, was then the Archbishop of York. He was resident in Bishopthorpe Palace and tweeted:
“We are fortunate … that back in the 13th Century they built with flooding in mind, such that when the water subsides it soon washes through the original flood drains made for the purpose”.
We have tended over the past century to think that we can just ignore nature and natural forces. We will build a wall—we will just put things down and assume that nature is going to adapt to us. Amendment 227A in particular, but all these amendments, are an acknowledgment of the fact that we now live in a climate emergency world. Many of these issues are much larger than they were previously, but we cannot ignore them anymore—we should not have ignored them previously, but we certainly cannot ignore them now.
Amendment 108 is about not building on flood plains. Many years ago I was chairing a session at the Green Party conference on flooding and heard a phrase that I have repeated many times since, and I make no apologies for that. It was that the flood plain is not beside the river; the flood plain is part of the river. If we think about that lovely little green patch that might be called Meadow Flat, or Wetland, or something—it is just beside the river, with a beautiful view over the river, and we have put housing on it. That is exactly the same as putting the house in the middle of the river. We cannot afford to keep doing that, and that is why I make no apologies for this amendment. If that is the only place where we can put housing, we should not be building new housing in the river.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, went through a great many of the things that I had in my pile, so I am going to avoid repeating them. Just to note that, as the noble Baroness said, there is a government review on measures that we should be taking on flooding. I also note that the Environmental Audit Committee is conducting an inquiry right now in the other place on flood resilience. The concern is obvious, but we really cannot wait for all of these to report many of the measures here in terms of taking action to protect people, their lives and their property from flooding. We already know what to do; we do not need further inquiries.
I will just point out to noble Lords who are interested that there was an excellent report out on 26 June called the UK Climate Resilience Roadmap from the Green Building Council and a number of other largely commercial organisations. To highlight a couple of things from it, it found that flooding would make Peterborough—and I note the noble Lord who would be particularly interested in that is not currently in his place—and the Welsh village of Fairbourne likely uninhabitable by the end of this century, which is not very far away at all. I do not know about Fairbourne, but I know that we are still building new housing, probably in very vulnerable places, in Peterborough.
I suspect we are going to hear lots more, so I will just point very briefly to the Committee on Climate Change pointing out how far we are from tackling the climate adaptation measures that we need to take. To pick out just one of its most recent recommendations, we need to integrate adaptation into all relevant policies. For policies, also, of course, read law. I hope we are going to hear positive words from the Minister on these amendments.
Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as noted in the register, as chair for Peers for the Planet. I am delighted to add my name in support of Amendments 108 and 109, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I also support the other amendments in this group, all of which come together on a core purpose to strengthen our resilience to flooding through the planning system. I particularly support Amendment 135B, which seems really sensible.
It is hard to believe we are having this discussion as we have just come through a summer of heatwaves. However, as we all know, and as we have already heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Bennett, flooding is becoming increasingly common and all the predictions on it are very scary when you look at them. We see this year in and year out, and it is increasingly costly to the UK. We have heard about the cost involved, but it is not only housing that is impacted. The increased flood risk has an impact on all aspects of urban infrastructure. Some 38% of all roads in England are currently at risk of flooding, as are 37% of all railways, 34% of all water pumping stations and sewage treatment plants, and 59% of grade 1 agricultural land. This is not just a housebuilding issue; it is an issue for the whole urban infrastructure.
To flag up another issue that has not been mentioned, it has not only economic risks and risks to lives and livelihoods, but risks to health. There is now a lot of research that shows that flooding can cause long-lasting mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression and PTSD, and all these add a burden to the health budget, as well as everything else.
We have heard from many—and we have even heard from the Climate Change Committee—that it is critical that we build mitigation strategies into our land management policies. This is where the issue comes in. We have natural capital assets in this country that are perfectly adapted for fulfilling this role, and it is in the name: flood plains—they have been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years to do this role. It was highlighted in the Government’s own 2024 State Of Natural Capital Report, in which they made the point that they recognize them as crucial natural capital assets for flood management by storing and slowing water flows. The Office for National Statistics natural capital accounts in 2024 also recognised their value. For example, the total asset value of natural capital in England was estimated at £1.4 trillion. It did not disaggregate the flood plains, but it explicitly noted that wetlands and flood plains are a significant part of these natural capital assets, contributing to this cost through regulating services and risk reduction. Not only does housebuilding impact hugely on the people whose houses are flooded, but by building on the flood plains we are taking away our one natural way of maintaining and enhancing our resilience to flooding.
What is wrong with the planning system? I keep hearing about the National Planning Policy Framework, and I keep being told, “It’s all right, it’s covered in the NPPF”. This time, I went back through it in detail to see what it is in the NPPF that is going to allow us to stop building on flood plains. Of course, the problem is that it is guidance; it is not mandatory. It does not stop people from going ahead and building. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, the report by Localis showed in 2024 that over 7,000 dwellings are currently in the planning pipeline for areas with an existing very high risk of flooding—that is over 7,000 houses. When they flood, should we be surprised? Over 1,600 dwellings have already been given planning permission in the first half of 2024.
Despite the precautions and people saying, “It’s fine, they’re covered in the NPPF”, there is no existing law against granting planning permission for and the construction of homes on the flood plain. Even the Environment Agency advice has been ignored in the building of these houses.
There is a big problem here. I do not think the legislation or guidance we currently have is being adhered to, and the problem is going to get only worse. If we are going to build on the flood plain, we absolutely have to put in some of these mitigation measures so eloquently described in this amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I support these amendments wholeheartedly.
As one last point, I welcome—as I am sure we all do—the increased government investment of £2.65 billion to protect communities from flooding, which was announced earlier this year. That is fantastic, but it does not make sense to have that being pulled in the opposite direction of the legislation we have for housebuilding on flood plains.
To conclude, we need much firmer legislation to prevent the building of houses on flood plains. If there really are no alternatives, we also must have legislation which means that the houses built are able to withstand the flooding that will happen. Let us be honest about it—it is not if, it is when.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, the three amendments in my name in this group are particularly focused on the pressing issue of flood risk. I thank other noble Lords who have tabled amendments in this group raising this all-important issue. This is not an abstract problem but one that devastates families, undermines communities and is set to worsen dramatically as our climate continues to change.
These amendments were originally raised in the House of Commons by Helen Morgan MP, Member for North Shropshire, one of England’s most rural and flood-hit constituencies. She has taken the initiative, along with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, of setting up a new All-Party Group on Flooding and Flooded Communities. She has rightly recognised that flood risk demands urgent solutions. Her determination to give voice to people living in constant fear of floods and repeat flooding is bringing national attention to a critical issue affecting homes and livelihoods and blighting communities.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, for her support on Amendment 135B. It seeks to solve a problem raised by the noble Baroness by bringing paragraph 11 of the National Planning Policy Framework, advice that currently stands only as guidance, on to the statute book. Under this amendment, when considering an application for development consent, a local planning authority would be obliged to assess whether that development might increase flood risk or reduce flood mitigation for neighbouring properties or land.
This amendment would help prevent the frankly indefensible practices we have already heard about of building on flood plains, and it would ensure that drainage systems be properly accounted for in new developments. Too often, these systems—whether attenuation ponds or so-called sustainable drainage systems, or SUDS—are left unadopted and therefore unmaintained, or are simply inadequate to begin with. Of course, we all understand and recognise that local authorities, under extraordinary financial pressure, are rarely in a position to enforce standards strongly, especially when the NPPF is merely guidance, as we have already heard, rather than enforceable law. This would help protect communities from situations where drainage systems are not up to standard and are left unadopted, including by water companies. In north Shropshire, for example, there have been multiple new developments which, despite having SUDS in place and, usually, as I have mentioned before, an attenuation pond, have in turn caused flooding to the existing neighbouring properties.
This amendment also links directly to an excellent proposal in the House of Commons by Gideon Amos MP, Member for Taunton and Wellington, which would bring into force Schedule 4 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. This would make water companies statutory consultees in the planning system, ensuring their expertise and infrastructure responsibilities are considered when future developments are approved.
If we want to protect new home owners, this is common sense. We know that water companies have often struggled with capacity, so excluding them from the table during the planning process is a recipe for yet more flooded homes. This approach protects these new home buyers from the risk of facing flooded homes and inadequate sewage systems, including raw sewage backing up in gardens and downstairs toilets.
Amendment 227A turns to the resilience of new homes. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for her excellent historical example. Changes to the climate will result in more intense and regular flooding throughout the country. We heard from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about surface flooding, a new and dangerous phenomenon that already affects at least 3.4 million properties, making it one of the most significant growing threats to our communities. We have also heard the Environment Agency’s warnings about that.
Amendment 227A proposes that, within six months of the Bill becoming law, the Secretary of State would make regulations under the Building Act 1984 requiring property flood resilience measures in all new builds. These measures are not futuristic; they are simple, practical and already well known to the development sector. They include raised electrical sockets, non-return valves, resilient wall plaster and flood-adapted air bricks. These can make the difference between needing a full year of rebuilding and the home being liveable again in literally a matter of weeks—it is that much of a difference.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I will discuss the serious issue of flooding risks. I thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for their hard work and amendments to the Bill, which I shall discuss in further detail in a moment.
Flooding threatens our communities and livelihoods with increasing frequency and severity. As the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, mentioned, some 6.3 million properties in England are located in areas at risk of flooding from rivers, the sea or surface water. I am experiencing—and I am sure others have experienced this as local councillors—ever-increasing incidences of flooding on our patches.
Flooding negatively impacts many aspects of people’s lives. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, mentioned some examples, and I can attest to examples in my own area and to seeing people flooded out of their homes two or three times in the space of three or four years. It upsets their health, finances and mental health. Can the Government confirm that protecting communities most at risk of flooding is a priority for them?
My noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering has rightly tabled Amendments 108, 109, 155 and 156 to help ensure that the consideration of flood risk is not overlooked in the planning permission decisions. We support her in her objectives and hope the Government will take this issue with the seriousness it deserves.
I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for her Amendments 135B and 135C, on having regard to a development’s impact on the flooding and flood resilience in the broader area. There are, however, concerns regarding the potential scope and practicality of the broader point of assessing the impact on climate resilience.
On Amendment 227A and the incorporation of flood resilience in new buildings, this should be done on a risk-based approach. As we enter the autumn and winter months, it is imperative that the Government are well prepared for the flood risks soon to be faced by millions up and down this country. What procedures do the Government have in place to fulfil their duty of ensuring that strategic flood-risk assessments are up to date? Can the Minister take this opportunity to assure noble Lords that the Government’s flood preparedness is adequate and that Ministers stand ready to implement flood recovery measures rapidly where flooding occurs?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Lady Grender, for their amendments on flood risk and resilience in the planning system. I also thank many Members of this Chamber. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and I had lots of discussion about flooding during the passage of the levelling-up Bill. I know that lots of Members in this House worked very hard to draw these risks to the attention of the House and the wider public.
I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, said about the devastation that it causes. I visited Calderdale—I was doing a peer review there—very shortly after the terrible flooding that the area experienced in 2020. The impact of that was still very live; in fact, some of the shops were still shut because they were still damp. One thing that particularly struck me was that the only way of communicating during that flood, which, from memory, happened over the Christmas period, was to go back to pinning notices on the village noticeboard, because all the infrastructure—IT and everything—had gone down. They could not use phones and could not travel, so they were pinning notices on the old village noticeboard. These are terrible events.
The amendments raise very important issues about how we plan for and mitigate the impacts of flooding, particularly in the context of climate change. I can assure all noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, specifically asked me the question—that the Government take these issues very seriously. We are acutely aware of the misery, disruption and costs that arise from flooding, of the increased risk associated with climate change, and of the need to maintain a robust approach to managing these risks. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson: we cannot overestimate the impact not just of flooding itself, which is awful, but of the fear of flooding when people live in properties subject to it. My area is not flood-prone, but we occasionally get flash floods when there is a big storm, which causes water ingress to people’s properties. I remember talking to a constituent about their terrible fear. As soon as it started to rain quite heavily, they would worry that it would happen again. How much worse that must be if you live in a flood-prone area, I can only imagine. It is not just the flooding itself; it is the fear of floods that impacts people.
The noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Bennett, mentioned the work being done by the Environment Agency. It has commissioned an independent review of property flood resilience. It is not just an untargeted review of this, but a specific review around property flood resilience. The review will seek to identify current gaps and opportunities to grow the property flood resilience market, resulting in a new action plan. That review will report to the Environment Agency and Defra in autumn 2025.
I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, who referred to the investment the Government are putting into flood resilience and maintaining flood defences. She is correct: we are investing £2.65 billion over two years—that is, 2024-25 and 2025-26—to build and maintain defences. That includes an additional £108 million that we are reprioritising into asset maintenance, ensuring that an additional 14,500 properties will have their expected level of protection maintained or restored. I repeat that because it shows, I hope, that the Government take these issues seriously.
Amendment 108 proposes a statutory ban on residential development in areas that fall within flood zone 3. Although we fully recognise the importance of directing development away from areas at the highest risk of flooding, this amendment would prevent development in large urban areas already protected by robust flood defences. For example, significant parts of Hull and central London lie within flood zone 3 but benefit from engineered flood protection. Under this amendment, development in these areas would be prohibited, even where it can be made safe for its lifetime and does not increase flood risk elsewhere.
The National Planning Policy Framework already includes strong protections which make it clear that inappropriate development in areas at risk of flooding should be avoided by directing development away from areas at highest risk, including flood plains. I understand the scepticism of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, about the NPPF, but I do not think that any planning inspector would accept a local plan submitted by a local authority that did not conform with the NPPF in terms of placing houses in flood risk areas, unless significant mitigation measures were put in place to prevent flooding.
Our policy means that new housing and most other forms of development are not appropriate in a functional flood plain where water has to flow or, importantly—the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, mentioned this—be stored in times of flood. Where development is permitted, it must be demonstrated that it will be safe for its lifetime, taking account of the vulnerability of its users.
I turn to Amendment 109, which proposes mandating property flood-resilience measures in all new homes at high risk of flooding, and Amendment 227A, which proposes introducing a requirement for specific flood-resilience features in all new homes. Improving resilience in properties subject to flood risk is an important objective. Reflecting this, the building regulations already support flood-resilient construction in areas at risk of flooding, while ensuring that properties that do not require further flood-resilience measures are not burdened with unnecessary costs. Requiring flood-resilient construction for all new dwellings would be disproportionate, given that many are located outside areas of current or projected flood risk. Designers of new homes may also choose to follow the Construction Industry Research and Information Association code of practice, which includes installing flood-resilient features.
I turn now to Amendments 135B and 135C, which would require local planning authorities to assess both the flood and climate resilience impacts of developments and whether a development could increase flood risk to neighbouring land, alongside introducing an annual reporting duty for the Secretary of State. Assessing the flood risk implications of development, as well as climate mitigation and adaptation more broadly, is already a requirement under the National Planning Policy Framework. The framework is clear that for development to be acceptable it should not increase flood risk elsewhere and should be safe for its lifetime if located in an area where flood risk exists.
Similarly, Amendment 155 seeks to place other aspects of national flood risk policy on a statutory basis—namely, the sequential and exception tests. We can agree about the importance of these policies, but it is important that policy on complex issues such as flood risk is capable of being adjusted as new evidence and issues arise. As I mentioned—I will mention it again—the National Planning Policy Framework plays a powerful role in the planning system. Both plan makers and planning decisions must have regard to it. It is not guidance in the usual sense of the word; it is a very clear part of the statutory planning process. These amendments would not only replicate this but introduce unhelpful inflexibility in our ability to keep policy under review.
The proposed reporting requirement set out in Amendment 135C would also impose a significant reporting obligation on the Government. Local planning authorities are already responsible for ensuring compliance with planning permissions and conditions, including monitoring and taking enforcement action if necessary.
Finally, Amendment 156 on strategic flood risk assessment maps would require local authorities to ensure that their maps are based on the most up-to-date data from the Environment Agency. This is already expected practice. Local authorities are required to use the latest available data when preparing strategic flood risk assessments, and the Environment Agency regularly updates its flood-mapping tools. Mandating updates in statute could impose administrative and financial burdens, particularly for smaller authorities.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to all who have spoken and for the support from the two leading Baronesses who are very much experts in this field, the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Willis. I am very grateful indeed. My amendments and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, are very closely aligned, as I said earlier.
Although I am grateful for the full response I received from the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, she is missing the point. The noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Willis, described eloquently what the role of a flood plain is. It is just not fair if Flood Re is specifically excluding them from any form of house insurance for flooding; they should be there.
The point that the NPPF is non-statutory was made very firmly by those who supported this group of amendments. I quoted the figures for the increasing number of houses which do not meet its requirements. I share what can only be a concern of the Minister that the NPPF is not being adhered to.
But, given the lateness of the hour and the other groups to be debated, I ask for an urgent meeting with the Minister, the co-signatories of the amendments and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and perhaps our own Front Bench. I really believe that we have to crack this. We mean this in a helpful way to the Government because, in effect, it does not matter who is in power; we have to ensure that we are giving the best support we can to developers who are developing houses to meet the government targets, while ensuring that they are flood resilient to the best degree. So I hope that the noble Baroness will agree to such a meeting, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw.
“Agent of change: integration of new development with existing businesses and facilities(1) In this section— “agent of change principle” means the principle requiring planning policies and decisions to ensure that new development can be integrated effectively with existing businesses and community facilities so that those businesses and facilities do not have unreasonable restrictions placed on them as a result of developments permitted after they were established;“development” has the same meaning as in section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (meaning of “development” and “new development”);“licensing functions” has the same meaning as in section 4(1) of the Licensing Act 2003 (general duties of licensing authorities); “provision of regulated entertainment” has the same meaning as in Schedule 1 to the Licensing Act 2003 (provision of regulated entertainment);“relevant authority” means a relevant planning authority within the meaning of section 91 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, or a licensing authority within the meaning of section 3 of the Licensing Act 2003 (licensing authorities).(2) In exercising any functions under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 or any licensing functions concerning development which is or is likely to be affected by an existing business or facility, a relevant authority shall have special regard to the agent of change principle.(3) An application for development within the vicinity of any premises licensed for the provision of regulated entertainment shall contain, in addition to any relevant requirements of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 (S.I. 2015/595), a noise impact assessment.(4) In determining whether noise emitted by or from an existing business or community facility constitutes a nuisance to a residential development, the decision-maker shall have regard to—(a) the chronology of the introduction of the relevant noise source and the residential development, and(b) what steps have been taken by the developer to mitigate the entry of noise from the existing business or facility to the residential development.”
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
I am grateful to have the opportunity; I fear that my preparation will not be as polished as customary.
The genesis for this group of amendments was the ad hoc committee on the scrutiny of the Licensing Act 2003, which I had the great honour to chair. I would just like to record my deep sadness that, since that time, two of the leading members of that committee, Baroness Henig and Lord Blair, who contributed greatly and lent a great deal of knowledge and expertise to its work, have very sadly passed away. I know that Baroness Henig supported me vigorously when I tabled similar amendments during the passage of the levelling-up Act.
I am delighted to say that, for Amendment 110, I have the support, for which I am most grateful, of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. The noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Parkinson, for family reasons cannot be here this evening, but I know that I have their staunch support. Sadly, on Amendment 111, I am very much on my own, but there we go. I recognise the noble Lord, Lord Foster, who was also a leading light and a great authority on that committee, and I am delighted he is in his place this evening.
The purpose of tabling these amendments is similar in one respect to that of the previous group. We have, if you like, the principle of agent of change, which is recognised by the Government, but I would like to see it enshrined in law. I welcome that there has been a recent press release from the Government, as analysed closely by the Institute of Licensing and many of those in the industry who follow this. The press release from the Government is very good news indeed. Obviously, it might be from a different department to that of the Minister who will be summing up the debate this evening. The Government have announced reforms to planning and licensing laws aiming to reduce bureaucratic barriers and fast-track the revival of town centres with a wave of new cafés, bars and music venues. What is important in adopting the two amendments—there should be nothing in them that is objectionable to the Government—is simply to establish the principle that, where people wish to put a new development in place against an existing music or other cultural venue, the onus is on those developers to ensure that the change of use will be recognised and that the ongoing existence of the current venue will be secured.
Why is this important? In 2024, the number of venues making a loss increased from 38.5% to 43.8%, so this is an industry which is very much under threat. If you look at developments since 2020, the impact of Covid probably hit this sector—music venues and the hospitality sector more generally—more harshly than any other sector.
I welcome the fact that the agent of change principle is guidance in the NPPF, and Section 106 agreements between local councils and developers have been vital tools. However, I make the strongest possible submission to the Minister that there are real concerns that they are not being respected as they should be, and I would just like her to agree—or, if she feels that the Government could come forward with amendments that are better crafted than those that I have drafted, I would welcome that indeed. I would like to see Amendment 110, which would insert the new clause “Agent of change: integration of new development with existing businesses and facilities”, and Amendment 111, inserting the new clause “General duty of local authorities”, given the force of statute. With those few remarks, I beg to move.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 110, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on the agent of change principle. As the noble Baroness says, just one example of the effect of this amendment is that it would be of significant help to grass-roots music venues, which are such an important part of the music industry’s ecology. Bands and individual artists cut their teeth in such live music settings. The loss of those venues is then a loss not just to the local community—which is important in itself—but to the music industry as a whole.
Precisely because of their importance within the overall ecology, the Government should do everything possible to protect those venues, which is a major reason why the existing guidance should be turned into law. As the Music Venue Trust says, with almost every constituency housing a grass-roots music venue, this amendment would, unusually, have an impact on over 720 venues across England, in communities from small villages to big cities.
As UK Music points out, this has been inspired by similar protections in Australia. In cities such as Melbourne, it has helped to revitalise the night-time and cultural economies. When a similar Bill was introduced in Parliament in the UK in 2018, it had the backing of music stars such as Paul McCartney, Chrissie Hynde, Brian Eno, Feargal Sharkey and many others. In 2019, the agent of change principle was made statutory in Scotland. It remains a material consideration for the rest of the UK—better than nothing but not nearly as effective as it might be.
The Government are keen to build new housing, so there is immense practicality about this amendment as well as a moral right in the principle. It would pre-empt and avoid complaints and ill feeling, potential court proceedings and the loss of important cultural assets. As Caroline Dinenage pointed out in the other place earlier this year, such legislation is
“supported by the whole live music sector, from the operators of our smallest clubs, pubs and venues to the biggest arenas and stadiums. It will benefit the breadth of our cultural infrastructure, from our historic theatres to our pulsating nightclubs”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/25; col. 710.]
Potentially, one can add sports venues—anywhere where sound is a significant aspect of the activity concerned. Any loss of these assets will have an effect on the local and wider economy, not to mention local pride in cultural facilities.
There is a strong argument that locally appropriate soundproofing should be a default concern for new builds in particular. Also, as the Music Venue Trust points out, full legislation would decrease red tape and speed up the planning process, meaning that housebuilding would be speeded up as well. The Music Venue Trust makes the important distinction about how the process operates in Scotland and England. In Scotland, because the agent of change principle is statutory, an objection submitted by the Music Venue Trust can refer directly to the national legislation alongside the impact of omitting the principle, so that as soon as the planning committee receives the objection, it can go straight back to the developer to ask them to change their plans. It is a relatively simple and speedy process. In England, because it is not statutory, there is a constant back and forth between the Music Venue Trust’s emergency response service and the local authority, with the same venue often appearing in their service multiple times for different applications. Sometimes the venue does not even appear in a noise impact assessment. All this contributes to a slower and fundamentally unsatisfactory process in England, leaving many applications awaiting decisions for far too long. These are significant concerns that making the agent of change principle statutory would address.
This is a very important amendment. Such legislation was a recommendation of the DCMS Select Committee’s 2024 special report on grass-roots music venues. The Government need to take this very seriously. I fully support it.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I apologise, as other parliamentary responsibilities mean that I have not been able to take part so far in this very important Bill. However, in view of my previous involvement in issues around live entertainment and particularly music venues, I was anxious to speak very briefly in support of the noble Baroness’s two amendments.
When I was in the other place in 2012, I had the honour of leading the arguments in favour of what became the Live Music Act, which had been sponsored in your Lordships’ House by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. The purpose of that Act was to reduce regulation on performers and on venues to ensure more opportunity for live music and the growth of live music venues within this country.
More recently, in 2017, I had the opportunity to serve on your Lordships’ committee—ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh—which looked at the 2003 licensing legislation. During our deliberations, we discovered that, notwithstanding the aims of the Live Music Act, the number of live entertainment venues, and particularly music venues, was reducing. One potential cause was the protests made by residents and occupants of premises that had been built after the existing venues. That caused a great deal of problems; hence we came forward with the proposals to introduce the agent of change principle that has already been referred to.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering for these amendments. They are aligned with the shared principle of fairness where development will impact existing communities and infrastructure. In this case, they speak of the need to ensure that businesses already existing in an area do not suffer as a result of the development. I absolutely agree that it is often music businesses or noisy businesses that cause these discussions, and they should be protected: they were there first and everybody should put up with them, in my opinion. They should not suffer as a result of any further development or have unreasonable restrictions placed on them, as I have seen in the past, which does not seem fair. Does the Minister believe that the agent of change principle should have a statutory weight on it, rather than being solely in the NPPF? I think that is the important issue here.
Moreover, Amendment 111 tabled by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering touches on the role of local government as the arbitrator between the business and the developer. This highlights an important issue as we seek to balance the need for social stability with the growth that the Chancellor is promising, and I think these issues will come forward more and more in the future, so we need to get this sorted.
There is no denying that we need more housing—that is clear—but development must always go hand in hand with local economic needs. Without that balance, we risk creating a dormitory town, stripped of social fabric and disconnected from opportunity. How will the Government ensure that local authorities across England are supported to strike this essential balance?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for tabling these amendments, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for their comments. I share the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, to ensure that new developments do not place unreasonable restrictions on existing businesses and are integrated effectively into their surroundings, and the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, just made that live music venues are the things that make our communities vibrant and alive. We have just had our fantastic Old Town Live festival in Stevenage, in a series of music venues right along our high street; they are the things that bring people together and make it a good place to live.
The agent of change principle is already embedded in the National Planning Policy Framework. I reiterate my comments earlier that, although the National Planning Policy Framework is not a statutory document in itself, it forms part of the statutory planning process. The Government are clear that where the operation of an existing business or community facility could have a significant adverse effect on a new development in its vicinity, the applicant or agent of change is responsible for providing suitable mitigation before the development has been completed.
Local planning authorities can also use planning conditions to make developments acceptable by addressing specific concerns, such as environmental impacts from noise pollution—for instance, by the use of engineering to reduce noise at source, or the use of noise insulation to mitigate the impact of noise on residents. Where they receive complaints, local authorities are obliged to take reasonably practicable steps to investigate. This allows them to consider a variety of factors in determining whether a complaint constitutes a nuisance in the eyes of the law. Additionally, local licensing authorities can incorporate the agent of change principle into their statement of licensing policy if they consider it useful to do so. This is at their discretion, as they are best placed to understand their own local context.
I understand the desire to embed these principles into law, but we believe this to be unnecessary given the provisions that already exist. It also risks increasing the number of legal challenges to developments. We will continue considering how the agent of change principle can be better implemented within the planning system through national planning policy reform. For these reasons, I kindly ask the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the support I have received from those who have spoken, in particular the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and my noble friend Lady Scott.
The Minister is missing the point. Each of those who spoke explained how the NPPF is not working because it is not on a statutory basis, and that the integration and harmony we would like to see between residential properties and businesses is being harmed by this. The very fact that one of the venues that Ed Sheeran sang at early in his career has since closed, along with the other examples we heard from the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, shows the importance of this.
I again ask the Minister whether she would be minded to have a meeting before Report with those who have expressed an interest in this area today, because I really believe that we need to progress this and put it on a statutory footing. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Coffey
“Permitted development and demolition: assets of community value(1) The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 is amended as follows.(2) In paragraph B.1 of Part 11 of Schedule 2, after sub-paragraph (e) insert—“(f) the building is designated as an asset of community value under the Localism Act 2011.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that buildings which have been designated as assets of community value cannot be demolished through permitted development rights.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, Amendment 112 regards assets of community value and demolition through permitted development rights. I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Carrington of Fulham for signing this amendment. They both informed me that they could not be here at this point but I know that they support the spirit of it. I will also talk to the amendment tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, about assets of cultural value, which is supported by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering.
This amendment is designed for communities that go to the trouble of putting together an asset of community value. That is a reasonably high bar, by the way. It is not just proving that something has been enjoyed by the community. There is also an element of showing that, if it came up for sale, the community would have the wherewithal to buy that asset. Right now, it is very easy for the original owner, perhaps somewhat frustrated by wanting a change in use for that asset, to demolish it. Suddenly, it evaporates. They do not need any planning permission to get rid of it. There is no protection for the asset of community value.
You may ask, “Would this ever happen?”, but it has happened. I recall a place called Rendlesham in Suffolk, widely known for the story about it having UFOs. It used to be a US airbase and it still has a NATO runway. The US Air Force handed it over to the UK Government, who continued to use it, but over time it was not needed so it was sold to a developer. It is a lovely community and reasonably good for developing more homes and creating a community. The developer put out a wonderful brochure and was selling this vision.
People may be aware that US Air Force facilities, and military facilities generally, tend to have big, ambitious buildings. Even their schools have huge corridors. There was a wonderful sports hall and a wonderful theatre. The selling of this community, right next to the magnificent Rendlesham Forest, although admittedly with a military base still nearby, was part of the mission, and led to it becoming a place where the council thought it was good to grow and, over time, extend its boundary.
I do not know who did the original deal, but the deal was that the developers had to make sure that both the theatre and the sports centre stayed open for at least 10 years. By my recollection, pretty much a day or two after the 10 years were over, the developers closed both facilities. They wanted to get rid of them and convert them into commercial shops and more housing. Understandably, the community was up in arms.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 185H in this group, which is a probing amendment. I ask the Government to give some serious thought to it as it addresses a gap in our thinking about the arts and arts practice. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I am also grateful to UK Music for its input into this amendment.
This amendment would establish a system for locally identifying and protecting physical assets of cultural value—that is to say, the spaces or buildings in which the arts take place, be it a music venue, a rehearsal space, a recording studio, an arts centre, a theatre or a visual artist studio, to list just a few potential examples, and one can think of others. This amendment is intended to work alongside and complement the community value scheme. I should also say that I support Amendment 112 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey.
At the national level, my amendment would be helpful to and complementary to funding bodies such as the Arts Council, whose concern is primarily for artists and arts organisations, although I acknowledge that its new creative foundation fund will be concerned specifically with the repair of selected buildings.
Of course, most arts are being produced in local, non-residential physical business spaces, public and private. Sometimes they are purpose-built. They are most often furnished for a particular cultural use. If individual artists and organisations do not have access, or lose access, to the spaces in which to work or rehearse then they cannot work—or at least, they cannot do so in the optimum environment, irrespective of the value of their work commercially or the value placed on it through support by a funding body. That is the crucial importance of buildings to the arts, which we always seem to be in danger of overlooking. Buildings are always somewhere, and always in local communities.
I want to address one potential criticism of such a scheme, which is that the arts should not be preserved in aspic; fashions change and new ideas come in. However, the great danger in the present day is the unnecessary loss of assets which are still relevant and still have currency, but without there being any form of replacement.
The Music Venue Trust cites examples of music clubs which have had to close days after they have sold out events, such are the often overwhelming contemporary pressures on our cultural assets. Of our grass-roots music venues, 125—16% of all GMVs—closed in the UK in 2023. Last year, 25 closed, but we are still talking about an overall downward trend. GMVs are, of course, important at the local level but a circuit of clubs for performers is of national importance. The loss of so many grass-roots music venues threatens that circuit.
I will cite one other example: theatres. The theatres at risk register 2025, compiled by the Theatres Trust, finds that 40% of theatre buildings face closure without urgent investment. Sometimes, of course, such buildings also have strong architectural merit.
There is a real concern for our cultural assets in the current climate of economic uncertainty, alongside other pressures such as those discussed in the last group. Such pressures include energy and other running costs, rent, business rates and the depletion of council resources, alongside the selling off of council buildings and the contemporary pressures of housebuilding and redevelopment. All these things are piling enormous pressures on our cultural buildings, which ought to be understood as having a significant value, both in themselves and as part of the local infrastructure. The loss of such buildings is a loss—often an irreplaceable loss—not just to the arts, but to local communities, which often take huge pride in their own cultural facilities. The crucial thing, which this amendment specifically addresses, is that we do not think enough about the particular relationship between culture and locality. Local cultural value is not the same, necessarily, as local community value. I hope the Minister will agree with that.
At present, it is all too easy for our cultural facilities to quietly disappear without any local protective system in place to question that disappearance. As I have intimated, this is currently happening across the whole country. Such a system would give power to local people for the protection of their own cultural buildings and spaces. As well as the social effect, there is the effect on the local economy and the ripple effect that can be created in additional jobs and trade. Of course, this is something local people understand more than anyone.
In summary, the value of the scheme—it is not just for the arts in the abstract, but for the local people themselves, whom these cultural facilities serve—is the crucial point. The scheme has a significant geographical local dimension. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Fuller (Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Coffey in her Amendment 112. When I first read this, my mind immediately went to pubs—historic pubs. Of course, we are losing pubs as an accelerated rate. But then I realised, having done some research, that since 2017 it has not been possible to demolish a pub without seeking planning permission. So, my noble friend’s concept comes straight into the ambit of other non-pub things. But then my mind went to the Crooked House, that wonky pub in the West Midlands. I will not say that the owners were crooked, although there have been arrests and there is a police investigation. That building was on the local environmental record.
I wonder whether the noble Baroness might consider strengthening her proposal, because this is not something that is done locally on an ad hoc basis by the local council. Historic England publishes some criteria—pubs aside—for other assets that are not quite yet assets of community value. Of course, “assets of community value” is not as restrictive as you might think: there is no restriction on gifting the pub or on it being sold. The designation does not even last forever; it is for only five years, provided that the use is maintained. I just wonder whether there is any merit in saying that, where a property meets that Historic England designation on the proper national criteria, her anti-demolition provisions ought to be extended to those pro tem, so that at least we do not accidentally and carelessly lose these buildings—non-pubs, or other community buildings —accidentally. We could give additional breathing space to local communities to put a bid forward for protection.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I will briefly lend my support to both amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 185H from the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, which I have signed. It dovetails neatly with the discussions we had in the debate on the last group. The noble Earl has said that this is a probing amendment, but I hope the Government will look sympathetically on it. We lose buildings of cultural value—cultural assets—at our peril, and the noble Earl made a strong case about all the challenges they have with the oncosts, lighting and heating, that they have to meet, given the sheer size of some of these buildings. I hope we can look favourably on establishing a scheme that would look at assets of cultural value in the ways he set out, and I believe it would greatly enhance the possibility of these buildings remaining for generations to come to enjoy.
Lord Freyberg (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for tabling Amendment 185H, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for tabling Amendment 112—I support both of them. In speaking today, I declare my interest as an artist member of DACS, the Design and Artists Copyright Society.
These amendments represent a vital evolution in our planning framework. Although we have long recognised the importance of assets of community value under the Localism Act 2011, we have yet to adequately address the unique vulnerability and significance of our cultural infrastructure. Amendments 185H and 112 address this vital gap by establishing a complementary scheme specifically aimed at safeguarding spaces where creativity thrives and community and cultural expression flourish.
As the noble Earl has said, Britain’s cultural landscape faces unprecedented challenges. We have witnessed the heartbreaking closure of countless music venues, recording studios, rehearsal spaces and artist studios—spaces that are not merely commercial properties but the very bedrock of our creative economy. These venues serve as incubators for emerging talent, repositories of cultural knowledge and gathering places where communities forge their identity through shared artistic expression.
I speak from personal experience. In the late 1990s, I was a member of Cubitt studios, an artist co-operative with a public gallery and 32 studio spaces, based at the time in King’s Cross before its redevelopment by the urban regeneration specialist Argent. At that time, artist-led spaces such as Cubitt prevented historic buildings from falling into decay, giving the area a focus beyond drugs and prostitution, for which it had become known. They sparked the creative energy that would later underpin the success of the King’s Cross regeneration. That pattern has been repeated across the country: artists acting as cultural guardians, only to be displaced when values rise and protections prove absent. As Neil Smith, the late geographer, once observed, artists are often “shock troops” of gentrification. They pioneer in forgotten places, but their very success makes those places vulnerable to speculative displacement.
The cleverness of this amendment lies in its recognition that cultural assets serve dual purposes: advancing the cultural well-being of communities while safeguarding the spaces essential for the development of specialist cultural skills. To a planner, a small rehearsal studio may seem inconsequential, yet it may be where the next generation of musicians learn their craft or where community groups gather to create, celebrate and connect. By building on the tested framework of the assets of community value scheme, Amendment 185H offers a proportionate and workable model.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I was not going to say anything on this but, as noble Lords can see, I have been deserted so it has fallen to me. However, after listening to everyone, I will say a few words. As I will wax lyrical on another day about permitted development rights, I feel that I probably should stand and support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, really because I believe in the planning system. I believe that many developments would still be built but, if they had planning permission, they would be built far better. I have a faith in the planning system to do what is right.
Interestingly, it took me back to my own experience of the 2011 community assets Bill. We had loads of rows about the interpretation of it. I remember being in the monitoring office, really at loggerheads. There was a vociferous campaign to keep a Taekwondo space that was in the basement of a derelict factory and designate it as of community value. Believe it or not, all the parents joined in and the grandparents, but we designated for 60 social homes. You can imagine where the Mayor of Watford’s priorities lay on that.
I wrote to the Minister and got what I would call a very typical ministerial reply saying it was a local decision, but I was given a little line that gave some leeway to say that political choice and discretion could come into it. In that instance, I took a leaf out of what the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, said, and just offered a replacement. It was as simple as that. We managed to juggle things around. We got the social housing and they got a replacement, but it showed how difficult that interpretation was. Has any work been done on what has happened to those assets of community value and how successful they have been?
I think the venues issue a really tricky one, and I have every sympathy with what both noble Lords have said. I believe that, in the end, communities come up with ideas and innovations to make things happen differently when things are threatened. In my experience, music venues do not disappear quietly; they disappear very noisily. We had a particular pub, Taylors, and my son was one of the musicians who played there. There was a great hoo-ha when it closed. Guess what? Something like it popped up somewhere else and a little bit of support was given to help it to do that. I absolutely understand what the noble Lords are saying but I do not believe that outmoded, deteriorating buildings that are underused should necessarily be protected for sentimental reasons.
I am also pleased to tell the noble Earl that another of our grass-roots music venues, which we thought had really gone, has just been given a new lease of life. It was in our local newspaper last week, and the message from the people taking it over and taking a risk with it was: if you do not use it, you lose it.
I would also like to tell the noble Earl the saga of a very old building in Watford that had been the scenery store for the Palace Theatre. When I visited our “asset”, I christened it a pigeon graveyard. That is how derelict it was and, as somebody who is feather phobic, I did not stay in there very long, but I was determined to get it into community use, which we did. It was used for many years as a space for dance, Pilates—you name it—and as rooms for charities to do their admin. But that fell off, it was not used and we were in a dilemma. The current mayor has just redone it and done a redeal with the Palace Theatre for a rehearsal space, so it has gone the full circle.
I do not see any reason why a good council would not and should not list its assets and know what matters to it. We have a wonderful pump house that is many years old. It is difficult to maintain, but I am sure there would be massive protests if that were to close. These amendments are worth considering, even though I think it probably is something that should be in local plans and be built locally from the ground up. What they provide is a moratorium on a sale or a demolition, which is important, and give a window for the community to have their say and perhaps appreciate what they might lose. We know from experience that when libraries were under threat the community stepped up and many libraries and other facilities are used within communities and have new life. There are lots of examples of that.
I am interested in what the Minister has to say and thank the noble Lords for prompting me to say something and realising that it was something quite close to my heart. It was not my amendment to speak on, but I hope that that was okay.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 112 and 185H in the names of my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. At the heart of this debate lies the recognition that housing is not merely the business of bricks and mortar, nor simply the provision of shelter; it is about the creation of places where people may live, thrive and belong; it is about communities, places to call home.
Cultural values matter profoundly. They matter both in housing and community building. When we lose the local pub, the music venue—as we have heard—the sports club or the community hall, we do not simply lose a building; we strip away the places in which people meet, share experiences and forge common bonds. These are the lifeblood of our neighbourhoods.
Assets of community value are often deeply rooted in local history and identity, as we have heard many times this afternoon. Protecting them is a necessity for living in communities and a gift to future generations. In government, we invested in the community and cultural assets through the levelling up fund, which the Government have since scrapped. But we, as a party, will continue to champion our cultural assets in opposition.
Amendment 112, in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey, has the benefit of simplicity. This is a straightforward change in law that could save many important community assets. Amendment 185H is a little bit more complicated. If the Government were to accept the principle of this amendment, we hope that Ministers would be able to flesh out a little more detail on their intentions in the Bill. We do not want a need for delegated powers and then it goes into the ether.
If we are to build not only houses but homes, not only developments but communities, then these questions to the Minister are of no small importance.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for tabling these amendments which relate to the assets of community value scheme, and the noble Lords, Lord Fuller and Lord Freyberg, the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh, Lady Thornhill and Lady Scott, for contributing to the debate. This is an important scheme to enable communities to identify local assets that are important to them and to protect them for future community use. I am grateful for the commitment of noble Lords to ensuring that the scheme provides robust protections for a broad range of community assets, including cultural assets.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for mentioning the Cavern Club. Some of us are heading up to Liverpool in a couple of weeks’ time, and I am sure I will renew my acquaintance with the Cavern Club. The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, talked about a relationship between culture and locality—if there was ever an iconic one, it is that relationship between Liverpool and the Cavern Club.
Amendment 112 would add assets of community value to those buildings that are excepted from the demolition permitted development right. This would mean the owner of a listed asset would need to submit a planning application if they wished to demolish it. Concert halls, live music venues and theatres are already excluded from the demolition permitted development right. In addition, the Secretary of State and local planning authorities have the power to remove certain permitted development rights more widely in their area, through the making of an Article 4 direction, provided there is justification for the direction’s purpose and intent. I trust that the explanation provides sufficient reassurance to the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, and I therefore kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 185H would create a separate assets of cultural value category that would operate in a similar way to the existing assets of community value scheme. However, it would specifically protect arts and cultural spaces that are of importance to the community or foster specialist cultural skills. This would enable community bodies and other bodies to nominate cultural assets, and if a listed asset is put up for sale, provide a set period for this body to put in a bid to purchase the asset to maintain it for cultural purposes. The cultural value of the asset would also be a material consideration in planning decisions.
Noble Lords will be aware the Government have recently introduced the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which contains new provisions to give communities a right to buy valued community assets. Through this change, we have amended the current assets of community value scheme to ensure that it is as strong as possible at protecting locally important assets. This includes updating the assets of community value definition to help bring more assets into scope of the policy, including those that support the economy of a community and those that were historically of importance to the community.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I really enjoyed that debate, not only because it was a trip down memory lane for some, but also because of the support for it—dare I say, apart from the Minister. I am hoping that she might agree to potentially meet me and others who have expressed a view of support.
I genuinely appreciate what the Minister says about making it easier to buy. I guess what I am trying to address, and what other Lords have recognised, is that “If it ain’t there, you can’t buy it”. I hope that perhaps the Government will think again, even if it means modifying another Bill rather than this Bill.
I will simply also say to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, that I recognise his ambition on extending it further, but just trying to achieve something simple and straightforward would go a long way to reflect the intentions of what the Government and your Lordships have shown by their contributions tonight, that they want communities to be able to have assets they really value. I hope the Government will change their mind in due course. With that, I will withdraw my amendment.
Lord Lucas
“Planning decisions: termite-resistant wood(1) A local planning authority may not consent to the development of new-build homes if any wood used in the construction is not termite resistant.(2) Wood is “termite resistant” if it is—(a) a species of wood that is recognised as being naturally resistant to termites such that the risk of consumption by termites is acceptably low, or(b) sufficiently treated so as to resist satisfactorily consumption by termites.(3) “New build homes” has the same meaning as in subsection 138(5) of the Building Safety Act 2022.”
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I do not know if the Minister has spent much time looking at the maps of the advance of termites across France. It is a gentle horror film, if she likes such things. They have reached Paris. There are now extensive provisions in French law for dealing with termites, for checking your house for termites before you sell it. It has become a very serious economic problem for them. As with eight-toothed bark beetle and other pests, it will doubtless make its way across the channel at some moment. It is very much headed in our direction.
Termites are not susceptible to the same pesticides as we use to control woodworm, because they function in a different way and occupy a different part of the wood. It therefore seems sensible, given that we are likely to get this thing, for us to make preparation for its arrival and not leave our entire housing stock vulnerable.
Indeed, if we were to make preparations before the termites arrive, we would have a set of people who are used to combating them and dealing with the pesticides involved, and an industry that is not building houses that are vulnerable to them. I therefore very much recommend this provision to the Government, although I appreciate that it may not actually require an amendment to the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 113, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas, which raises an important and thought-provoking issue that merits the attention of your Lordships’ Committee and the Government’s consideration.
Amendment 113 concerns the use of termite-resistant wood in new-build homes. My noble friend Lord Lucas draws attention to the risks that they pose. Although historically more common in warmer climates, they may become prevalent here as our own climate changes and, as he mentioned, as they inevitably move further northwards from France. The damage that termites can inflict on timber structures is both severe and costly. In regions where infestations have taken hold, the consequences for home owners, insurers and local authorities have been profound. As temperatures rise, it is only prudent to consider the resilience of our housing stock to such emerging risks.
While I will not take a definitive position on the amendment, I commend my noble friend for raising these matters. They speak to the broader challenge of building homes that are not only fit for purpose today but resilient to the demands of tomorrow. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on how the Government intend to engage on this important issue.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling Amendment 113. He is right that I was not intimately acquainted with the procedure of termites in France. However, I do now know far more about the house longhorn beetle than I have ever known, and I will continue to look at this issue.
The noble Lord may have been in the Chamber on Monday when we were discussing wood being used in construction. I mentioned an office development I visited, which is just across the river from Parliament, and which makes extensive use of wood in its construction. We will see more of that; wood is a good building material and developments such as that are good uses of wood. It is therefore very important that we take these matters extremely seriously.
The noble Lord’s amendment seeks to prevent planning authorities from granting planning permission for new-build homes if timber construction products specified at planning stages are not termite resistant. Fortunately for us, termites are not endemic to the UK. Even though an infestation was recorded in the 1990s, that was subject to a successful eradication programme.
While I appreciate the noble Lord’s intention, the Building Regulations, rather than the planning system, are the appropriate way of establishing minimum legal requirements in the design of new building work. The sanitary arrangements we have in place to regulate timber imports allow us to remain vigilant. The Government take the view that mandating termite resistance in any wood used for construction materials in new-build homes would be a disproportionate measure, leading to an increased cost for developers and consumers, and adding to local planning authority burdens. However, if a threat were to emerge, guidance on timber products for new development and suitable wood treatments could be included in Approved Document A, which accompanies the Building Regulations for structure.
I hope I have given some reassurance to the noble Lord; nevertheless, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful for that reply, even though I had hoped for something more positive. I did take out of that, given the caution that the Minister expressed about raising costs for housebuilders, that the rumours of a change to the landfill tax are probably erroneous. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Best
“Gardens Trust to be statutory consultees for planning applicationsIn Schedule 4 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) Order 2015, after paragraph (zf) insert—
“(zg) | Development likely to affect historic parks or gardens | The Gardens Trust”” |
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, had to leave, so I am moving Amendment 114 in his place, with the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Freeman of Steventon and Lady Pinnock, and the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. The amendment would make the Gardens Trust a statutory consultee for planning applications that are likely to affect historic gardens and parks.
In sponsoring the amendment, the noble Lord would have declared his interests, which are also his credentials. He is the owner of a listed garden of some consequence and the park around it, and he has been involved with other owners and trustees of historic and particularly important gardens and parks. He is president of Historic Buildings & Places, previously the Ancient Monuments Society, and he is a member of the Gardens Trust, which I will come back to in a moment.
The working of the town and country planning system is buttressed by the various national amenity societies, which can bring to bear their very often specialist expertise in respect of some of the most sensitive sites in the country. These national amenity societies are essentially focused on buildings, but it is increasingly recognised, not least in the many debates on place-making, and I have been part of a lot of them, that the setting of buildings may be at least as important as a building itself. This relates both to the views in and to the views out.
Equally important are open spaces, which may have no buildings at all—for example, public parks and historic gardens. Expertise in these matters is not necessarily found among the established national amenity societies or planning authorities. The Gardens Trust, which was previously called the Garden History Society, has the expertise in this area, the same as national amenity societies in relation to buildings. It has evolved its work over time as the scholarship on this matter develops. It has been suggested that these matters do not require a statutory consultee because they can be dealt with through local plans, but local plans cover only about a third of local authorities and this is often about the detail. It is the devil in the detail that matters here.
I hope it is possible for government to add another statutory consultee in respect of gardens, parks and the planning applications that are likely to affect historic gardens and parks. I believe that consultation is under way and may lead to this happy outcome, but it would be great to hear the views of the Minister. I beg to move.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, I am in a similar position to the noble Lord, Lord Best, with the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who expected a 7 pm finish, having gone for a train. I will try not to make a dog’s breakfast of her notes.
I will speak to Amendments 118 and 119 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. The Liberal Democrats accept the aim of the Government in their desire to ensure that decisions on planning applications are made in a considered and timely way. The proposals in the Bill appear to neglect the notion of a considered and inclusive approach to planning decisions. Planning decisions matter hugely to communities because decisions can have a lasting impact on that community. The aim must surely be to get the balance in favour of enabling decisions to be made with the communities affected. Failure to do so can lead to long and acrimonious disputes between communities and developers. I can vouch for that.
Pre-application consideration of an application supports the needs of both a developer and the community affected. Pre-application consultation is most relevant for larger domestic and commercial applications, but may be of use in small but controversial ones, and here is why: a comprehensive pre-application stage allows for issues to be identified and resolved at the earliest opportunity, preventing costly delays and complex disputes later in the process. For example, at a pre-application consultation with residents on an application for a large housing estate, residents were able to provide vital information to the developer on the siting of historic mine workings. The precise information as to the location was not available from historical records, but residents whose families had lived in the area for many years knew. The pre-application meeting saved the developer from extensive works to find the shaft.
Another major commercial application, which cost the developer more than £100 million in preparation fees, was refused on grounds that would have become very clear if residents had been consulted before the application was submitted.
The pre-application process is currently good practice, and Amendment 119 in the name of my noble friend Lady Pinnock is designed to make this a mandatory process. The pre-app should include, as the word suggests, an opportunity for councillors in the ward and residents to have details of the planned application, to ask questions and make suggestions about it—crucially, before a more formal application is submitted, when it becomes much more difficult to make changes. It empowers communities to be able to influence an application that will change their neighbourhood. This collaborative approach builds trust, ensures that proposals are fit for purpose and fosters greater public acceptance of vital infrastructure.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 114, 118 and 119, tabled, respectively, by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and introduced so ably by their deputies—sorry, substitutes. These amendments seek to improve the quality and accountability of consultation within the planning system. Amendment 114 seeks to make the Gardens Trust a statutory consultee for developments affecting historic parks and gardens. These are not just green spaces; they are vital heritage assets, and their protection should be part of the planning process.
Amendment 118 seeks to require pre-application consultation with the emergency services where developments may affect their operations. Too often, the fire and ambulance services are brought in too late, after issues arise, not before.
Finally, Amendment 119 addresses a more systemic issue: the need for meaningful consultation with communities. It would require the Secretary of State to consider how developers have engaged with local people before accepting applications for development consent. The message is clear: consultation should be early, serious and able to influence outcomes. It should not be just a tick-box exercise.
The role of a statutory consultee is important in the planning process, and it is right that appropriate bodies are consulted. However, it is also important that their responses are timely and pragmatic and do not unduly delay the planning process. Expanding the list of consultees may be justified but we must at all times have an eye on the risks of delay and overburdensome rules in the planning system, too.
Ultimately, these amendments are about restoring public confidence. When people feel genuinely listened to, development is not only more likely to succeed but more likely to be supported. Relationship building is intrinsic to successful planning. This helps everyone: communities, planners and developers alike. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who tabled these important amendments and their two substitutes for speaking to them. I thank all noble Lords for their patience in a very long Thursday Bill session; I am grateful to them all.
Amendments 114 and 118, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seek to designate the Gardens Trust and the emergency services as statutory consultees within the planning system. I begin by acknowledging the contributions these organisations already make across a range of functions. When you have been involved in planning, you know how important that expert advice is on significant environmental, transport, safety and heritage issues to make sure that we end up with good decision-making.
However, on 26 January the Chancellor announced a pause in the introduction of new statutory consultees, pending a broader review of the current framework. The Housing Minister subsequently issued a Written Ministerial Statement on 10 March, setting out the Government’s intention to reform the system to ensure that statutory consultees can provide timely and expert advice that supports high-quality development. The Government will be consulting on those proposed reforms shortly.
The Statement also set out our intention to consult on the impact of removing certain statutory consultees, including the Gardens Trust. This reflects a desire to streamline processes and address duplication, as Historic England already holds statutory responsibilities for higher-graded parks and gardens. This is a consultation only, and no decision will be made until we have fully considered the feedback on potential impacts.
The Government also intend to consult on their approach to the introduction of new statutory consultees, recognising that risks and responsibilities of course evolve over time. This consultation will reflect the fact that there must be a high bar to creating new statutory consultees if we are to avoid exacerbating current issues of uncertainty, bureaucracy and delay. We should be requiring consultation on a case-by-case basis only if it is not possible to address matters strategically. Input is often effectively secured through local plans, including engagement with the emergency services, such as designing out crime; and where case-by-case engagement is warranted, local authorities already have the discretion to consult these bodies on a non-statutory basis.
Furthermore, in considering potential additions to the list of statutory consultees, it is essential that the roles of existing statutory consultees should not be duplicated, and that functions already addressed through other regimes, such as building regulations, should not be duplicated either. The fire and rescue service, for instance, already must be consulted on relevant plans as part of the building safety regulations, while the Building Safety Regulator oversees and approves work for high-risk buildings. Meanwhile, the Health and Safety Executive operates a hazardous substance licensing regime and is a statutory consultee on development applications which may be impacted by this.
Finally, although we deeply value the insights provided by a wide range of organisations during public consultations, statutory consultee status carries with it a legal obligation to respond within prescribed timeframes. That is a very significant responsibility, and sometimes even existing consultees—sometimes even upper-tier councils if you are in a district council—face challenges in meeting the requirements. For this reason, we believe the threshold for granting such status must remain appropriately high.
As I have set out, we intend to consult on these matters soon. If decisions are taken to introduce new statutory consultees, this can be done through secondary legislation under existing powers.
Amendment 119 proposes that the Secretary of State consider how community consultation has been carried out when deciding whether an NSIP application should be accepted for examination. It suggests specifically that the Secretary of State must consider whether the application has sought to resolve issues, enabled interested parties to influence the project during the early phases, obtained relevant information about the locality, and enabled appropriate mitigation through consultation.
We agree that engaging communities can support applicants to improve their applications by enabling them to identify issues important to the local community, to understand the likely impacts of the scheme, and to consider potential mitigations. However, as we have seen over our time debating these clauses, we know that the existing statutory tests related to consultation do not achieve that in a proportionate way.
We know this because evidence shows that existing statutory pre-application consultation requirements, the scale and specificity of which have been unique to the NSIP regime, have led to unintended consequences. Developers, keen to avoid risk, produce overly complex documentation aimed more at legal compliance than genuine engagement. They are reluctant to adapt their plans in response to feedback, fearing that they will need to reconsult if they do so, which slows down delivery and drives up costs—which in turn frustrates the UK’s ability to plan and deliver essential infrastructure.
I remind the Committee that, since 2013, the pre-application stage has doubled in length. Our proposals could save businesses up to £1 billion over the lifetime of this Parliament by reducing delays across projects. That is why we have proposed removing statutory consultation requirements at the pre-application stage, including the adequacy of consultation test in Section 55 of the Planning Act 2008. Instead, we are introducing a clearer, more practical acceptance test: is the application suitable to proceed to examination?
This new test allows the Secretary of State to make a balanced judgment about the quality of the application and recognises that the NSIP planning process is a continuum from pre-application through to decision. I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that the changes that the Government are proposing do not undermine the importance of consultation and engagement on applications, as my honourable friend Matthew Pennycook made clear in his ministerial Statement on 23 April. Applications are unlikely to be of sufficient quality to be granted consent if meaningful engagement has not been undertaken on them.
Instead of statutory requirements, the Government have now issued a consultation on guidance which will seek to help applicants understand what good engagement looks like. That consultation is open until 27 October, and we are looking forward to receiving responses. The Planning Inspectorate’s advice will also continue to emphasise the value of early issue resolution. With those reassurances, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, is satisfied with the comments of the Minister. In relation to the Gardens Trust becoming a statutory consultee, I note that there is a review of the whole process and, indeed, of the individual components within that, and that if it is going to be possible to have a new statutory consultee, secondary legislation could take care of that. At the same time, I also noticed a certain reluctance to be enthusiastic about this amendment. We will hope for the best, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.