Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Sater Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.