Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for introducing his Amendment 102 in the way he did. I was pleased that Amendment 87D, which he signed with my noble friend Lady Coffey, was passed earlier, giving further protections to assets of community value. As the noble Earl says, spelling out the cultural value of assets in our communities is important, not just to protect them for the future but to galvanise enthusiasm while they are there in the community at the moment and to encourage people to use them. I very much support everything that he said in his introduction.

I have the other amendments in this group. Amendments 109 and 110 seek to commence provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act that were passed but which have not yet been commenced. At this late hour in our deliberations, it may be rather dispiriting to remind your Lordships that often we spend many hours debating things that we put on the statute book to give the Government powers which they do not yet use. These would be very valuable in the context of the Bill that we are debating today.

One of those powers relates to historic environment records. The Bill, as Ministers keep rightly telling us, intends to usher in a faster, more informed process of granting planning permission and other consents, but that aim will be hard to deliver if the Government do not take advantage of some of the things that were put on the statute book in the last Parliament, including Section 230 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. Those provisions set out the requirement on local authorities to provide the historic environment record which underpins a heritage service, including the necessary supplementary regulations by the Secretary of State, so I would welcome an acknowledgement from the Government of the value to what they are trying to achieve in this Bill of supporting the provisions relating to historic environment records found in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. It would be good to hear when they might start to take advantage of those powers.

The other amendment in my name, Amendment 111, is about national listed building consent orders. The resourcing for most local planning authorities is notoriously inadequate; it has been for many years under successive Governments, and that is particularly true when it comes to heritage services. Part of the reason for this is that listed building consent has no equivalent of the permitted development, which sets out clear guidelines and expectations and greatly reduces workloads in the rest of the planning system. Every change, major or minor, to any listed building which affects it positively or negatively requires a full listed building consent application. That contributes to a national workload of up to 30,000 applications every year.

A solution to this was proposed by heritage organisations and adopted in primary legislation under the coalition Government in 2013, building on the Penfold review, which was commissioned by the last Labour Government, through the introduction of national listed building consent orders. Those are designed to grant consent for specific, carefully scoped and conditional categories of routine and low-impact interventions, such as repainting, repointing and draught-proofing, which nobody wants to see languishing in the current and cumbersome processes. The concept has been tested, the idea has cross-party support, and one important potential national consent order has been oven-ready for some time now, having been drafted and consulted on by Historic England and the Minister’s own department. That is the one drawn up by the Canal & River Trust, which manages one of the largest collections of listed buildings in the country, essential to the safe operation of our waterways.

For many years, the Canal & River Trust has worked with Historic England and the Government to work on what could be the first national listed building consent operation. But, rather like a canal boat waiting for the lock-keeper to level the waters, it cannot proceed without some assistance, namely from the Government, to provide time for Parliament to consider it. The only barrier here has been procedure. The current requirement in law for measures such as this to receive affirmative resolution has prevented progress, as securing parliamentary time has proved impossible. My Amendment 111 would replace that affirmative procedure with the negative one, ensuring that there is still parliamentary scrutiny while allowing long-prepared consent orders such as this one to move forward.

It is worth noting that listed building consent orders could technically be signed off by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government under Section 60 of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act without any parliamentary oversight. My amendment would therefore provide more, not less, scrutiny while unlocking the practical benefits of the system. That is why many across the heritage sector besides the Canal & River Trust consider this amendment essential, not just to deliver the order that has been waiting in the wings for so long but to enable others in future, reducing burdens on local authorities and ensuring efficient management of our heritage.

I hope, therefore, that the Minister can give clear assurance and a clear date by which we might see that long-prepared consent order from the Canal & River Trust. If she was able to give us assurance that it is going to come before us, I would not need to test the House’s opinion on this and seek to change the law. I will listen carefully to what the Minister says.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to follow two of your Lordships’ House’s leaders in the culture and heritage space and I find myself in a position I am quite often—modestly backing up the excellent work of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg.

The noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has already set out Amendment 102 very clearly. In essence, it fills a gap in terribly important legislation, the Localism Act, in respect of assets of community value. I have gone up and down England and visited many communities where they have saved pubs, they have saved shops, and they have saved places that are terribly important to them, but there is not that explicit recognition of cultural assets, which clearly needs to be there.

Many of the places where this is going to be most important are rural areas, small towns, market towns and coastal towns—places that are really struggling. Those community cultural assets are, as the noble Earl said, of crucial economic value and crucial to quality of life, mental health and the sense of community.

There is a lot of crossover. This is a logical grouping, particularly alongside Amendment 110 from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. Often, heritage and cultural assets will be one and the same thing in these kinds of communities—the old theatre, the old cinema and places such as that which will now be used in all kinds of different ways. I want to put on the record a really interesting report from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, published on 25 September this year, on the impacts of changes to local authority funding on small to medium heritage organisations. As I said, heritage and culture very often will be the same place.

I should declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association at this point. Local authorities, still the main providers of heritage services, have seen a 49% cut in central government grants and we are seeing a massive overall cut in the form of closures, reduced opening hours and scaling down of public programmes. This is where the community can step in when all else fails—when the local authority simply no longer has any money, which is increasingly the case. The amendment would allow the community to step in very clearly in that cultural space. I know the hour is late, but if the noble Earl wishes to test the opinion of House, we will certainly be behind him.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches wholeheartedly support Amendment 102 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. It is quite sad, if we reflect, that local government formerly would be in a position to support those assets of community value, including those of cultural value, in the days before, say, 2010. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has reminded us, there were very large cuts in funding for local government, so it is no longer able to be what it used to be.

Local government used to be the governance of a community which enabled and encouraged all aspects of community life, as far as it could, to flourish—economically, socially and in community values. That helped communities to come together and stay together. We would not have some of the problems that are raising their ugly head currently if that had not happened. Therefore, we on these Benches support adding buildings of cultural value in the same section as those of community value.

The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is always the torch-bearer for heritage, and I am right behind him in what he proposes. As we have said on other occasions, heritage makes us as a nation and as a community. Currently, I am helping to fight a local battle about a 325 year-old monument to a woman that has been disregarded, taken down and stored in a highways depot—I might speak to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, about it. It is important to me, and it matters to that community because it stands for their heritage and history. These things are very important and we support all of them.