Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Building in homes for nature in the housing that we build would be a very concrete way of ensuring some future for our much-loved wildlife. As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, said, this is something that the public would really understand. If the Government are going to move forward with the Bill without further amendments to Part 3 in the main, then, to reassure the public that they are putting nature first, building homes for nature at the same time as building these homes, and accepting these amendments, would be the way to go.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I give the Green group’s strongest possible support for all the amendments in this group. I am pleased to say that my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb is recovering well from her operation last week.

If there is one amendment that my noble friend will regret not being here for, it is Amendment 212 on swift bricks. She is very passionate about swifts, and is it any wonder? These amazing creatures, with their top speed of 110 kilometres per hour, travelling 5,500 kilometres each way for their migrations, are long-distance athletes. They are making that journey, and then finding nowhere to raise their young. That is the reality of what we, by our actions, have created. Of course, they are now red-listed.

The noble Lord, Lord Randall, has already set this out very clearly and carefully, and the other noble Baronesses have already said a lot. I just note that, when we debated a very similar amendment to what is now the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, then on the Opposition Benches, said that she was “delighted” to see the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, that it was

“justified because of the unique nature of these precious birds’ nesting habits ”.—[Official Report, 6/9/23; col. 541.]

and that it had the Labour Party’s full support. Can we get to there, please? This is such a small measure. Why not? It is such a tiny action and a small cost. Yet, if you are a swift, this is not a small thing. This is a matter of life or extinction.

The other amendments are on other things we need to do, but there is a lot of discussion that the situation of swifts is unique. I fully back the hedgehog highways, the gaps in fences and other simple things, but swift bricks are just so simple.

Amendment 225, which was clearly introduced by the noble Baroness, is on bird-safe buildings. The British Trust for Ornithology has done a great deal of work on this, estimating that 100 million birds crash into the windows of buildings in the UK each year. One-third die as a result. That is a huge toll that is almost invisible. Back in 2022, the BTO did some research looking at local planning rules and essentially, there is no protection in any of our major cities and communities.

I will take noble Lords back to a case study that illustrates what happens on a day-to-day basis. It happened in a single day, so it really made an impact. Back in 2023 in Chicago, as a result of citizen science efforts, all the sad carcasses of more than 1,000 birds that had flown into one building in the US were collected. You may recall the pictures; a huge array of bird bodies was laid out. As was set out then, some very simple measures would have stopped that happening—the measures this amendment calls for.

Amendment 227GA is in my name and has considerable similarities to the amendment introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, but perhaps goes a little further. It says that, within 18 months of this Act coming into force—I am allowing more time because this is much broader than what we need for swifts—regulations under the Building Act should be brought in to protect, and to ensure

“opportunities for living and feeding space for nature, mammals, birds, reptiles and insects”.

I also talk about the need for resources for plants.

The inspiration for this is probably not unique, but fairly unusual. It comes from an exhibition now on—I urge noble Lords to go and see it—at the Design Museum. It is called “More than Human” and is the first major exhibition of a growing movement of more than human design: a new generation of designers who understand that humans can flourish only alongside other activities and systems. It is part of the future observatory, the Design Museum’s national research programme for the green transition.

Let me give one example. There is a piece of artwork by Andres Jaque, “Transspecies Rosette”. It is a piece of a façade of a building made of cork, which is ideal for mosses, grasses, bacteria and mould. Normally, the façade of a building is designed to be impermeable—to stop anything growing and to keep everything out. What if we turned that around, and started to think about what a different kind of society would look like? I will very briefly mention “Sculpture for Octopuses” by Shimabuku, who experimented to see what colours octopuses liked and made artwork as a result.

I will conclude with a recollection from my youth. In 1988 I was a young journalist, and some Australians were marking the bicentenary of the start of the genocide of the Aboriginal people and the massive destruction of the environment of Australia that followed. The Australian parliament building was opened, but it was bogong moth migration season, and almost immediately the building filled up with bogong moths. No one had thought about this. They had brought in British western design traditions, plonked them down in Australia, and that was the result. So many decades later, the bogong moth, which the Aboriginal communities had feasted on over centuries—they had eaten them but also protected them—is now on the IUCN red list. It is gravely endangered. Something that, only decades ago, existed in great numbers is now threatened with extinction. We have to stop making buildings that have that kind of impact.

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I will be even swifter than the noble Lord, Lord Randall. There are some good ideas in these amendments. If we can protect bats in the belfry and great crested newts in the pond, why can we not do the same for swifts? They are such wonderful birds.

I am also interested in Amendment 225, because I have witnessed, very distressingly, quite a few birds smashing into windows and glass on my small farm in mid-Wales. To see these beautiful creatures lying on the ground, either stunned or dead, is very upsetting. Any efforts we could make to protect our dwindling bird population from crashing into buildings is to be supported.

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One of the advantages for housing developers of delaying housebuilding after they have got permission is that they can use up the housing allocation in the local plan to the extent that a local authority no longer has what is required, which is a five-year supply of housing sites. By getting permissions but not building, housing developers can by law then move on to greenfield sites because there is no five-year supply and use them first because there are more profitable and easier to build, while leaving those other sites, sometimes brownfield sites, waiting even longer to be developed. There is a lot of game-playing by housing developers on this issue. That is why I have tabled Amendment 219 to provide some leverage for local authorities to get houses built, which is the policy of this Government and the previous one. If there are levers to make sure that developers that have housing permission for more than 100 units—medium sites and beyond—that will help us get houses built, instead of having 1.2 million homes with permission that have failed to be built.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed Amendment 219. It would introduce a new clause so that where there is permission for a development of 100 homes or more and it is not used, it is use it or lose it, and within the applicable period there is a justifiable case for compulsory purchase of the land. I do not think anyone in your Lordships’ House is going to disagree that we have a housing crisis and a broken housing system. I point noble Lords to a recent “Big Read” in the Financial Times titled “Making British homes affordable again”, which focused on a number of issues, including the role of financial deregulation in the massive escalation of home prices.

Here, we are talking about the plan where the land is identified and everyone agrees this is the way forward, and then we run into the private housebuilders, where the legal obligation of the managers is to make money. They have no legal obligation to build homes: the law says to make as much money as you possibly can.

I would be very tempted to use the term land banking to describe managers who just sit on land and wait until they can make more money. That means that homes are not built, and they are needed in places where people want to live. The amendment does not force anything but allows the possibility of a CPO, to take this forward to get those homes built. Surely, that is what some communities are desperately aching for.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this important group of amendments about planning consents and compulsory purchase. I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 217, so convincingly introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. It seeks to ensure that acquiring authorities and those acting on their behalf adhere to the normal code of conveyancing practice—the same principles that would apply in a transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller. This is a sensible and pragmatic proposal. Compulsory purchase is, by its nature, an intrusive power and must always be exercised with care, transparency and fairness. Ensuring that conveyancing practice aligns with what would be expected in an open market transaction will help to build trust and minimise disputes between landowners and acquiring authorities. It is essential that landowners do not continue to be disadvantaged and mistreated through the CPO process, as the noble Lord described.

Amendment 219 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, proposes a new clause that would make land subject to automatic consideration for compulsory purchase under the Housing Act 1985 where permission for a development of 100 homes or more has not been acted on within the relevant period. She touches on an interesting and widely debated issue: the problem of land banking—if I may use that term—and delays in delivering housing once planning permission has been granted. Her amendment raises the question of how we might create stronger incentives to build out permissions in a timely manner, particularly where housing need is acute.

Before considering supporting this amendment, we would need to understand how widespread this practice, as the noble Baroness describes, really is. The figure of 1.2 million homes consented but unbuilt is bandied around. However, how many of these developments are unviable due to the Section 106 costs, community infrastructure levies and biodiversity net gain costs that are put on them? How many of these homes are stalled in negotiations around the details of implementing those consents? How many are stalled due to other issues outside developer or landowner control? I am not convinced that land banking is necessarily such a widespread issue as she contends, but I am very willing to listen to evidence. I would be grateful to the Minister for any information she can share with us.

It is worth bearing in mind that housebuilders are businesses: they have obligations to their staff and their shareholders, and they need to have a build programme that ensures they know they can employ their staff over a multi-year period and develop profits which allow returns to shareholders. The shareholders are often pension funds and other such institutional investors in this country. The principle of housebuilders making profits is important. Where a developer does have more short-term supply ready to build on its balance sheet, in most cases it will be because it is building out sites in markets that can absorb only a certain number of units each year without undermining prices to the detriment of the local community. Housebuilders also generally have a 15% return on capital employment commitment to their shareholders. That means that if they are holding land off the market, they need to be very confident that they are making more than 15% per annum doing that, otherwise they are letting their shareholders down. The financial incentives for land banking are not clear.

I would be most interested to hear if the Minister can identify what land banking is really happening in this country, where developers or landowners are holding on to consented land that could be built on right now without impacting on local housing prices. I very much look forward to her reply.

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[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to move my Amendment 227H and address the proposition that Clauses 53 to 92 of Part 3 should not stand part of the Bill, as well as a number of other amendments, notably Amendments 334, 346DD and 346DE in my name, which are intended to provide an effective, simple and cost-effective way of addressing the issues that Part 3 professes to simplify.

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—I wish her a speedy recovery—the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, for their support to the clause stand part propositions. This is a broad church, and our reasons and solutions are likely to differ, and I look forward to their contributions. I am also grateful to the Minister for stepping in to help her colleagues with her deep Defra expertise, and for making time the other day to meet before this Committee sitting.

I have asked for the amendments to be grouped in this way to allow a debate on the limitations of Part 3 and on better ways of addressing the challenges it is seeking to tackle. I will endeavour not to repeat arguments that I have made previously, but a common thread of argument runs through all the amendments in this group, and it seems only reasonable that we should debate them together in this way.

At Second Reading I expressed deep scepticism about the approach to be taken to simplify environmental objections to planning processes in Part 3 of the Bill. I quoted environmental NGOs, rural lobbying groups and even development bodies that were united in their opposition to or concern about Part 3. I am most grateful to the Government for their amendments to strengthen environmental protections in this part. However, I am concerned that they are missing the point. The purpose of my amendments at this stage is to probe the necessity of such dramatic changes to environmental protection in the planning process. I would very much like to have a comprehensive answer from the Minister to the question of what exactly is wrong with the current environmental protections that cannot be addressed by tweaks to our current regime?

I do not wish to open up a complete Second Reading speech about everything that is wrong with Part 3 and why. I simply highlight that the effect of Part 3 is to create another process for dealing with environmental issues alongside existing processes. That will lead to confusion and muddle. The body tasked to implement this part is widely believed not to have the resources to do so effectively in a timely manner, and in fact often seems to be part of the problem. Existing protections for the environment through the planning process, such as the mitigation hierarchy and the use of private markets for biodiversity net gain, are functioning well and improving every day. The implementation of EDPs—environmental delivery plans—is likely to ride roughshod over the interests of farmers and land managers, be more costly than the current system, deliver uncertain outcomes and remove localism.

We know that up to 160,000 houses are being blocked by Natural England advice on nutrient neutrality. This House chose to defeat our amendments to what became the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act that would have removed this blockage. These regulations are not designed for or well suited to our country, and the sooner we make them fit for purpose, the better. Amendments 346DD and 346DE are a reformulation of the amendment we proposed to that Act. This means that those 160,000 houses could be unblocked by the Secretary of State from the commencement of this Bill, faster than any EDP can deliver. It would be simple and free.

Amendment 334 would require the JNCC to review the habitats regulations and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and to publish a report on consolidating them. This would be with a view to the Government bringing forward legislation to replace them with domestic legislation that is fit for purpose in this country. This need not be a lengthy process and is a medium-term solution to the issues we have been left with in our planning system from adopting one-size-fits-all EU regulations. I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether the dynamic alignment with Europe that her Government appear to have adopted would pose problems for our legislating to protect our own environment.

We know that what appear to be poor decisions have been taken on a number of occasions: the £100 million bat tunnel for HS2 and the protection of the Ebbsfleet site as an SSSI. As we dig into these issues, we find that all too often it is questionable work that leads to these poor decisions, not the system itself. My noble friend Lord Howard of Rising tabled Amendment 346DB, debated in an earlier group, which would remove protections for bat species that do not need them in our country. Had that been in effect, it would have meant no bat tunnel under HS2, as well as reducing the cost and increasing the speed of many if not all refurbishment and construction projects across our country. I know that my noble friend has taken on board the criticisms of some noble Lords and is working on a more nuanced amendment for Report.

I am not suggesting that these amendments are the only solutions to the planning issues being experienced in protecting the environment, and I know that they will not necessarily win everyone’s approval. I have also put my name to Amendments 242A, 185F and 185G in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, which provide a constructive alternative approach that could also offer a better solution than Part 3 of the Bill. I know that those will be debated later in Committee.

Amendments 302 and 303 may not fit particularly well in this group, but they are tidying amendments which would make it clear that, under the auspices of EDPs, only the direct actions of those EDPs to address those features allow those features to be disregarded. I am very grateful again to the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, for her support on these amendments.

We on these Benches are trying to provide a constructive alternative to Part 3. These are, by their nature, probing amendments. We are not intending to destroy Part 3 but simply questioning whether it is the right answer and whether more direct and simple action within the existing system is not better. I hope I have made the case that judicious use of the scalpel, through these and other amendments, can revise current environmental protection without weakening it and immediately get Britain building, rather than relying on yet another team of government employees with an open-ended chequebook. I very much look forward to other contributions to this debate and the Minister’s response. We are trying to unblock the planning system and reduce cost and complexity. I will need to be convinced that Part 3 is necessary not to bring similar amendments back on Report. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed all the clause stand part elements in this group, which essentially aim to delete Part 3. Unlike the noble Lord, we in the Green group think that Part 3 is not as bad as it was, but we would still be better off without it. That is the view of many NGOs, campaign groups and experts who have been in contact with me. Indeed, although there is a bit of competition at the moment, the mailbag I have had on this issue is one of the bigger mailbags that I have encountered.

My noble friend majored on this in her Second Reading speech and asked why the Government had it in for bats, newts and frogs. It appeared that perhaps some members of the Government were scared by some of them as small children and were bearing the scars. It is encouraging to see that we have seen some back-pedalling in their apparent attitude to harmless small mammals and amphibians, but none the less there are still grave concerns about Part 3. We have already debated this in a number of groups, and it is a pity that we are getting to this so late and in such an incoherent manner, given the importance in this hugely nature-depleted country of the issues covered by Part 3.

I will not run through all the amendments, but I want to highlight the response of the Office for Environmental Protection, which published an analysis of the Government’s amendments. It states that,

“even after the material amendments the government proposes, the Bill would, in some respects, lower environmental protections on the face of the law.”

I will raise four big issues and I hope that we might hear some reassurance from the Minister. We have had some reassurances in statements from the Government, but that is not the same as on the Floor of the House. The first issue is the safeguarding of the mitigation hierarchy, ensuring that the developer has taken reasonable steps to appropriately apply it, including by seeking to avoid harm whenever possible to our most important biodiversity assets. We are still nowhere near where we need to be on that.

Secondly, there is the overall improvement test so that conservation measures must significantly and measurably outweigh the negative impacts. We are talking about biodiversity net gain, but we are also talking about the conservation status of identified features, given the absence of European protected species legal tests. Thirdly, this is all about environmental delivery plans, and there needs to be an implementation schedule to provide the guarantees that the conservation measures will deliver the benefits, prior to the damage being done. Once valuable biodiversity is lost, it is gone, and promises to fix something up later, I am afraid, just do not crack it.

Finally, something I feel very passionate about is the irreplaceable habitats. I have stood at the foot of oak trees that were many hundreds of years old and thought about all the species and biodiversity that are dependent on them. There is no way of replacing that once it is lost and we have lost so much that we cannot afford to lose more. I am afraid that the Green position remains that we are nowhere near where we should be, and we are still heading in the wrong direction. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate; I can see many noble Lords have stayed late with the intention of delivering a forceful message, I am confident. I look forward to the Minister’s response.