Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Willis of Summertown Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Willis of Summertown]

115: After Clause 52, insert the following new Clause—
“Local plan compliance with Habitats Regulations assessmentsWhen developing a local plan, a local planning authority must—(a) consider whether the plan complies with the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/1012); and(b) conduct strategic environmental impact assessments for all sites being proposed as suitable for development.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to enable local plans to guide developers towards sites most appropriate for development and speed up and simplify the subsequent planning application process by conducting Habitats Regulations strategic environmental assessments at local plan stage

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I have retabled slightly amended versions of Amendments 115 and 116, and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone, Lady Grender and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support. These amendments try to ensure that compliance with habitats regulations assessments happens earlier in the process, at the local plan and spatial development strategy stage. This would better direct development away from the most vulnerable habitats and would help speed up the pre-planning process for developers by enabling them to focus on sites that are more suitable for development.

This approach is very much in line with conversations I had a number of years ago when, as a biodiversity scientist in Oxford, I was asked to provide advice to senior officials from a certain extractive industry. They made the point that, in looking for areas in which to work, they often get extractive rights for around 10 kilometres but their footprint is only half a kilometre. I asked them what information they needed from us biodiversity scientists, and the answer was, “We want to know, where can we damage?” As a biodiversity scientist, I was slightly alarmed by that reply, but that is the nub of the problem, and it is a really good question. Can we inform people before the pre-planning stage which areas are suitable for development and which are not, based on the ecological risk they would carry if they were damaged? This is about looking in a totally different way at where to put our energies, and it would do what it did for those extractive industries and provide, in this Bill, a pragmatic and fast way for developers to move on.

These two amendments are very much in line with that sentiment. We already have in place a mechanism that should be doing this—land use frameworks— but in the absence of that, I bring forward my Amendment 115. It would provide that, when developing their local plans, local authorities must consider the habitats regulations and conduct strategic environmental assessments for all sites proposed for development. Amendment 116 seeks to ensure the same with spatial development strategies, so that local authorities will have already done the work on the habitats regulations, and planners can then move on to the areas where they know they are not going to get huge pushback the minute they submit their plans to the planning authorities. Such measures would highlight the areas that can be developed, streamline the process and protect those really important areas of biodiversity—all things that the Bill’s key objectives set out to do. They would just change where these things sit in the process to ensure that it is good for building and good for nature.

Finally, although the majority of planning delays are caused not by environmental regulations but by other pressures, such as lack of resource and expertise in our planning departments, I want to emphasise that my amendment would also reduce costs. The work would have been done already, so we would not have a whole slew of environmental impact assessments, for example, coming in at a later stage, and the duplication that causes much of this delay. I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, for her introduction to this amendment, to which I put my name.

I have read carefully what the Minister said in Committee and during the various meetings that have taken place, which she kindly arranged. I am comforted somewhat by the assurances given that both local plans and spatial strategies will be required to take account of the habitats and species regulations and to conduct appropriate environmental assessments. As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, outlined, the aim of these amendments—in conjunction with Amendment 130, which we will debate later—is very much to encourage as much of the heavy lifting on habitats regulations compliance as possible to be undertaken in advance of planning applications, in order to guide developers away from more sensitive sites so they can achieve a faster trip through the planning process.

There is, however, one issue that remains unresolved in my mind, which is the question raised by Amendment 116 as to whether the spatial strategies will be required to take account of the land use framework. I was encouraged on Monday when the Minister spontaneously referred to the land use framework. At least that must mean that the land use framework is still alive; I thought it might have been parked by new Ministers. Perhaps the Minister could assure us about the relationship between strategic spatial plans—and indeed local plans—and the land use framework, and when we might expect to see the land use framework. If used properly, it would obviate many of the requirements of Part 3 by having a rational approach to competing land use demands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. I shall make a couple of points. What we are talking about here is a matter of both scale and timing. If we had a land use framework in place, it would look, I hope, at the habitats regs for different areas that had been earmarked as appropriate for development, farming and all the other land uses that we need in this country. But we do not have it in place, so it comes down to a matter of scale.

We can argue that we have to wait until we get to the very fine detail of a plan coming in from a developer and then, at that point, they have to get the habitats regs in place but—this is where I am afraid I disagree with the Conservative Benches—that is not the point of these amendments. The point is to do it before the developers go in. If you do it before, it makes it faster and cheaper, and they can then move in quickly. Right now, there is one barrier after another for the developer, so I do not understand this matter of timing and detail. We keep coming back to the detail, but we have to take a strategic approach. Is that not what strategic plans are for? If we are not going to put them in strategic plans, where will they be?

However, I appreciate the response from the Minister and, therefore, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 115 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 128 and 129 in this group, which are in my name. I suggest to noble Lords that, if they want to follow the purposes of these two amendments, it is best to have a look at Clause 55(1), since they are, in essence, about understanding how the drafting is intended to work and what that means in relation to the practices of an environmental delivery plan in due course.

In Committee, we had a useful probing debate in relation to these issues to try to understand whether all of the environmental impacts of a development should be identified in an environmental delivery plan. The debate showed that it was not the Government’s intention that an environmental delivery plan—EDP for short—should identify all of the environmental impacts resulting from a development to which that EDP relates. Relevant in this group is that, for example, the EDP could focus on a specific subset of environmental impacts, or one or more environmental impacts, such as river quality or nutrient neutrality. Given that that is the intention—I am arguing not with the intention of the Bill in that respect but, simply, with the drafting of this provision to give effect to that—how should that potential focus be reflected in the structure of the power for making an environmental delivery plan?

Clause 55(1)(a) provides that the EDP will identify

“one or more environmental features”.

An environmental feature is either a protected feature of a protected site—Clause 93 can be seen for interpretation —or a protected species. An example that I think is relevant and useful, not least to the debate that we are shortly to have on Amendment 130, is the effect of a development on a protected site, such as through nutrient pollution arising from a development in, say, south Norfolk, which might have an impact on the nutrient level in the Broads. The Broads, as the protected site, and the nutrient level, as the feature concerned, could be the environmental feature to which the EDP relates. That being the case, if that feature is the subject of the EDP, should each of the ways in which a negative effect on that feature arises be identified in the EDP? I think that it should.

Amendment 128 would change “one or more”. I direct noble Lords to Clause 55(1)(b), where it refers to

“one or more ways in which that negative effect is likely to be caused by the development”.

That defines the environmental impact. I propose in Amendment 128 that we take out “one or more”, so that the sentence would read

“the ways in which that negative effect is likely to be caused by the development”—

that being the environmental impact.

That would preclude the possibility that there may be ways in which the development causes the negative effect on that feature but they are omitted. I do not understand why it would be at all reasonable for them to be omitted. That being the case, I hope that the environmental impact is always defined by reference to the ways in which a development impacts on a protected feature of a protected site or species. The focus can be narrow—which precise feature?—or it can be wide.

However, the next line after Clause 55(1)(b) says:

“But an EDP need not identify all of the possible environmental impacts on an environmental feature”.


It feels a bit as though Ministers have decided not only to not necessarily to deal with all the effects of a development—they can focus down; we have accepted that—but that they definitely do not even need to explain to us in the EDP how the negative effects on a protected site, or a protected feature of a site, are to be understood and incorporated into the work of the EDP.

Instead of taking that out, I have chosen, in Amendment 129, to define it a little more precisely. Why are the Government doing this? I think they are trying to say that we might be looking at an environmental feature, such as algal bloom in the water in the Broads resulting from a change in the nutrient level, but we do not want to focus on the question of allowing things to be left out of a count in the EDP because they simply relate to that effect; we want to focus on where the development gives rise to the effect.

Amendment 129 proposes adding to Clause 55(1) so that after

“But an EDP need not identify all of the possible environmental impacts on an environmental feature”,

it states,

“unless they are environmental impacts expected to result directly from the development to which the EDP relates”.

I hope that clarifies the purpose of the Bill, which is to focus, in an EDP, on the feature that is concerned and the specific ways in which a development might create a negative effect in relation to the feature that gives rise to the EDP.

I hope that makes clear what the amendments are intended to achieve. I hope that what this does is in line with the Government’s intentions in relation to an environmental delivery plan and that, from the Government’s point of view, Amendments 128 and 129 would therefore do no harm to the purposes. Even if Ministers are not immediately able to accept them, I hope that they might reproduce something of this kind at Third Reading.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 130 in my name. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Grender, and the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, for their support. When preparing this speech, I went back to remind myself of the core objectives of the Bill: to speed up and streamline the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure and, as part of this, to simplify the process by which we address impacts on the natural environment.

I would argue, however, that what we have before us is a further layer of potential bureaucracy. I say that because, if the Bill passes as it is—this has been confirmed in the other place but also in this House—developers will have to take on an additional layer of assessment. They will now need to do an environmental impact assessment, a habitats regulations assessment and a biodiversity net gain assessment, and then apply for an EDP for specific features, before they even pay into this nature restoration fund. I struggle to see how that streamlines the process for developers, and I would be very grateful if the Minister could tell us how this will speed up the process.