Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gideon Amos]

The amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Henley and Thame would definitely provide a much stronger justification for a CPO that enabled footpaths and cycle paths to be made. As he said, it would create a more level playing field with the compulsory purchase powers already in use for highways. I certainly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord). New clause 22 is a very logical amendment, and there is no logical reason why Ministers should reject it, although that has not stopped them so far; I hope that they break the habit of a lifetime.

We are clear in our amendments that communities should lead, and should be in the driving seat, when it comes to development and land. When people see the infrastructure for which they have been calling, it drives more community consent for the homes we need and the communities that we want to build. We need infrastructure for nature as well. Good places to live have gardens, open spaces, parks and meadows, so our new clause 114 would charge development corporations with ensuring those things.

I remind the shadow Minister that development corporations discharged planning powers under Conservative Governments, just as under Labour and coalition Governments. It is not always local authorities that deliver development. It is therefore right to ensure that development corporations discharge their duties as effectively as possible. If and when they build new towns and major developments, as the Government want them to, they must ensure open spaces for nature—spaces that work for people and our environment. Amendment 151 would require them to report regularly on their environmental and climate duties.

The first garden cities were supported by a Liberal Government and built without felling a single tree, as the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) confirmed yesterday. Their successes were emulated, and they are still emulated in the best developments, right up until today. The vision was a radical one of bringing people and the environment, town and country, and nature and humanity closer together. Those pioneers ensured healthier places to live in, an objective that our new clause 6, promoted by the Town and Country Planning Association, would insert in the planning objectives. Today, however, we face the much greater challenge of saving nature, as well as community cohesion and consent, before it is too late.

These amendments may not pass, but make no mistake: there are no greater threats to our way of life than the breakdown of trust, which risks destroying communities, and the breakdown of our environment, which is destroying nature. Those are the challenges that our amendments would tackle head-on, and I humbly urge Members to support them.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

Once more unto the breach. I rise to speak in favour of amendment 68 in my name, and I hope to find as much common ground with Ministers as possible. I fully agree with the Government that we need bold reform of the planning system to tackle the housing crisis, and that is what even stronger reform of CPOs would deliver.

We have substantially more homes per capita than we did 50 years ago, yet over that time, house prices in the UK have risen by 3,878%. The Minister for Housing and Planning was right to argue that housing supply is not a panacea for affordability. There have been 724,000 more net additional dwellings than new households in England since 2015, so the Deputy Prime Minister was right to argue that there is plenty of housing already, but not enough for the people who desperately need it. The fundamental planning reform we need is an end to the developer-led model, which Shelter estimates is on track to deliver just 5,190 social rented homes per year, despite those being the very properties that we need to reduce waiting lists and get families out of temporary accommodation.

The housing crisis is one of inequality. We must move away from reliance on the vested interests of private developers, whose priorities will never align with the public good. Amendment 68 is intended to ensure just that. Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population. Between 1995 and 2022, land values rose by more than 600% to £7.2 trillion, which amounts to more than 60% of the UK’s net worth. The amendment would build on Government proposals to give councils the land assembly powers necessary to acquire sites to meet local housing need at current use value, and so would do away with speculative hope value prices, which put taxpayers’ money into wealthy landowners’ pockets. That would finally make it affordable for local authorities to deliver the new generation of council homes that is the true solution to this nation’s housing crisis.

If we coupled strengthened compulsory purchase powers with a more strategic approach to site identification and acquisition, we could not only increase the amount of affordable housing built, but achieve genuinely sustainable development, and would no longer be beholden to whatever ill-suited proposals developers chose to bring forward.

The failings of our developer-led planning system are writ large across my constituency. In the 10 years from 2014 to 2024, North Hertfordshire and East Hertfordshire delivered a significant expansion of housing supply—3,973 and 7,948 net additional dwellings respectively. What happened to local authority housing waiting lists over the same period? They rose from 1,612 to 2,449 in North Hertfordshire and from 2,005 to 2,201 in East Hertfordshire. There have been more than enough new homes in my area to clear housing waiting lists, but the affordable homes we need are simply not delivered by a profit-driven model. A further fact stands out: over that decade, during which housing supply and waiting lists grew simultaneously in North and East Hertfordshire, not a single council house was built in either authority.

It is time for a genuine alternative to this farce. I urge the Government to look closely at the amendment, and to push onwards to create a planning system that once again puts people before profit.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

I will speak to the amendments relating to compulsory purchase powers, and to my new clause 128. I note that much of the Bill and most of the clauses will not affect Scotland, but, unusually for a planning Bill, there are components that do affect it.

Before I talk about the detail of my concerns about compulsory purchase powers, I want to set out a little of the context, and say why the issue is exercising so many of my constituents. I am privileged to represent the Scottish Borders—the place I call home. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom, but it is under attack. The net-zero-at-all-costs agenda of this UK Labour Government, backed by the SNP in Edinburgh, is causing huge concern to my constituents. Massive pylons, solar farms, wind farms and battery storage units are ruining the Scottish Borders as we know them, and compulsory purchase powers are a key part of delivering many of those projects.

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[Matthew Pennycook]

It is a pleasure to respond to what has been a thoughtful and, largely, well-informed debate about a piece of legislation that is, to quote the shadow Minister, “groundbreaking”. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions this afternoon. Can I take the opportunity to thank the shadow Minister and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos), for their robust but civil and fair approach to scrutiny in Committee?

I want to respond to the key amendments and the arguments that have been made this afternoon. Among other reforms and interventions, the Government are clear that significantly boosting our housing supply requires a renewed focus on building large-scale new communities across England. Development corporations are vital vehicles for delivering large-scale and complex regeneration and development projects. The Bill creates a clearer, more flexible and more robust framework to ensure that they can operate effectively. While there is clearly widespread support across the House for the effective use of development corporations where appropriate, a number of amendments have been tabled that seek to impose specific requirements on them.

New clause 114 in the name of the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington would ensure that development corporations include provision for green spaces in new developments. The Government absolutely agree that delivery of large-scale development and regeneration projects must include the provision and stewardship of green space, which has a wide range of benefits, including supporting health and wellbeing, climate mitigation and adaptation, and biodiversity and wildlife.

We do not believe that the new clause is necessary to deliver on these objections. First, development corporations have a strong track record of providing suitable green space. Ebbsfleet development corporation, for example, has a target for the delivery of parks, open spaces and recreation areas, providing almost 15 hectares of parks in recent years, and this year aiming to provide around 10 hectares of new parks and open spaces.

Secondly, development corporations that take on local plan-making powers are already subject to national planning policies, including those concerning green infrastructure. This means that where development corporations take on local planning authority powers, any planning decisions made should be informed by the national planning policy framework, which, as hon. Members will be aware, is a material consideration when determining planning applications.

As the House will know, the NPPF sets out policies to encourage the provision of green infrastructure and outlines that plans should set out an overall strategy for the pattern, scale and design quality of places, making sufficient provision for the conservation and enhancement of the natural environment, including green infrastructure. The NPPF also sets out that planning policies should be based on robust and up-to-date assessments of the need for open space, sport and recreation facilities and opportunities for new provision that plans should seek to accommodate. It is the Government’s view that the duty proposed in this new clause may unhelpfully constrain some development corporations—for example, where development corporations are designated specifically for the redevelopment of smaller commercial spaces.

On the stewardship of green spaces, each development corporation has a designated oversight authority, which is either the Secretary of State, a mayor, or local authorities, and it is for them to set specific frameworks for stewardship arrangements. Although I commend the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington for once again highlighting this important issue, I hope that with the explanation I have provided he will agree to withdraw his amendment.

I turn to the reforms to compulsory purchase in the Bill, which are designed to improve the CPO process and land compensation rules to enable more effective land assembly through public sector-led schemes. New clause 127 and amendment 153 tabled by the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) would repeal section 14A of the Land Compensation Act 1961. Let us be clear: the amendments propose to repeal a power introduced by the last Conservative Government, in which the hon. Member served and in which he voted for the specific piece of legislation containing the power.

The power allows acquiring authorities to take forward certain types of scheme by compulsory purchase and to pay a reduced value for land where it will deliver clear and significant benefits and is justified in the public interest. The hon. Member’s amendments do not seek, as proposed in the Bill, to limit the extension of the power to parish and county councils or to the use of compulsory purchase powers as they apply to Natural England. The amendments seek to repeal a power contained in a piece of legislation that he voted for, and it is frankly embarrassing to listen to him try to explain that sharp U-turn.

To support the delivery of the housing and infrastructure that this country desperately needs, we must make better use of underutilised land across the country. We know that many local authorities share this objective, but their plans are often frustrated by unrealistic compensation expectations on the part of landowners. This can result in significant amounts of developable land remaining unused and overpriced, with the result that the building of homes, transport links and schools becomes prohibitively high.

[Chris Hinchliff]

In the debate today, Conservative Members have robustly defended the principle of paying landowners the uplift from the current-use value to the value that land would have with planning permission. Given how Winston Churchill said such unearned increments in land are “positively detrimental” to the general public, are they not attacking their own best traditions?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is a shame that the Conservative party has seemingly changed its view. [Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State said, “Yes, that’s right. We’ve changed our view. It was a bad piece of legislation.” Many provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 were some of the best introduced by the previous Government. There is lots in the previous Government’s record that Conservative Members should rightly feel embarrassed about; these powers are not among that. Far from removing that power, we want acquiring authorities to use the power. For that reason, we cannot possibly accept the hon. Member’s amendment.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 9th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Tomlinson]

I will make a bit more progress.

Let us take the example of nutrient neutrality. It is estimated that no fewer than 160,000 homes across the country have been blocked by Natural England on that basis. That is because on-site mitigation on a site-by-site basis is often virtually impossible, and those homes remain stalled. The environmental delivery plans that Natural England will produce will mean that rather than homes being held up by those rules, the very issues causing nutrient neutrality challenges can be addressed in a strategic way—better for building, for nature and for people. EDPs take the challenge of nutrient neutrality seriously and mean that builders can get stalled sites built, providing much-needed new homes.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend may have slightly confused the point of amendment 69, which is merely to address the concerns raised by the Office for Environmental Protection and to ensure that the nature restoration fund works to deliver exactly the points that he describes with the right nature protection.

[Dan Tomlinson]

I will come to the point my hon. Friend raises in a second.

If the amendment were adopted, the homes that have been blocked to date would continue to be blocked, and vast numbers would face unacceptable delays or, indeed, never be built. What would happen under the amendment, as we can interpret it, is that we would first have to wait for the EDP to be drafted, for the relevant funding to be secured and for the funding to be distributed to the relevant farmers or others who can help with the mitigation. The works would then have to take place; the impact of the mitigation would have to be monitored; and the monitoring would then have to conclude that it had been a success before any new homes in an area could be built where nutrient neutrality is a concern.

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[Chris Hinchliff]

I rise to speak in favour of the amendments in my name, particularly amendment 69, which has 53 supporters from across the House.

Every family stuck on a housing waiting list, and every child suffering the insecurity of temporary accommodation, represents a moral stain on our country. I welcome Ministers’ urgency in seeking to address those corrosive failures, which, for millions, underpin a lingering sense that our country is deeply broken. However, I fear that the Government have misdiagnosed the root cause of the housing crisis, which is fundamentally that private capital will never deliver the public good that we need.

The evidence is clear that processes that uphold democracy and nature are not the problem; profit maximisation is. The planning system consistently approves more homes than the private sector delivers, and when homes are built, they are too often unaffordable for those at the sharp end of the housing crisis. Last year, less than 2% of homes delivered through section 106 were for social rent. After 20 years of deregulation, hoping that just one more wave will finally make the market deliver is simply not credible. It certainly does not justify stripping away the few protections that we have left for our natural environment, especially when the Government’s own assessment could provide no concrete evidence that it would work.

We are already one of the most nature-depleted nations in the world, and we can spend what little remains of our natural inheritance only once. If the Government press ahead with their proposals, the national account will soon be empty. There is the kernel of a good idea in a nature restoration fund, but the weight of evidence against the way that it has been drafted is overwhelming: nature organisations, academics, ecologists and the Office for Environmental Protection have all raised serious concerns. I welcome the tone of earlier commitments from Government Front Benchers, but amendment 69 gives Ministers the opportunity to rescue something positive from the wreckage of this legislation by ensuring that environmental delivery plans serve their purpose without allowing developers to pay cash to destroy nature, and that conservation takes place before damage, so that endangered species are not pushed close to extinction before replacement habitats are established.

The amendment outlines that conservation must result in improvements to the specific feature harmed. That will protect irreplaceable habitats such as chalk streams. Our natural capital, which underpins all prosperity in this country, declined by a third from 1990 to 2014. This is a chance to reverse that trend. Given that Letchworth Garden City in my constituency sprang into life without a single mature tree being felled, we can build the homes that we desperately need to clear our housing waiting lists in harmony with nature.

To conclude, the primary value to which our politics has sought to appeal has for decades been self-serving ambition, but as the party of change and of the people, Labour has a duty to serve a higher virtue: hope. I am talking about hope for a future in which our nation no longer imagines housing as an ever-appreciating financial asset, and instead builds homes that provide the secure and healthy environment essential for our physical and mental wellbeing, and that allow everyone to put down the roots necessary to grow and fulfil their truest potential; hope for a future in which we create connected communities of friendship and co-operation, rather than having the grey and miserable utilitarianism of commuter dormitories; hope for a future in which we take every possible opportunity to restore the glories of British nature and can meaningfully say, for the first time in generations, that we have left the nation richer than we found it; in short, hope that we choose by design to surround every man, woman and child in these islands with constant proof that life is beautiful.

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I declare my interest as co-chair of the all-party group on local nature recovery.

When the Government first introduced this Bill, they branded it a win-win. They said that we could build the homes and infrastructure that this country desperately needs and protect and restore nature. We have seen in my constituency—one of the fastest growing areas of the country, with a Liberal Democrat-run local planning authority—that it is indeed possible to demand from developers both ambitious house building and high environmental standards that restore nature. We Liberal Democrats believe that a healthy childhood for all children includes homes that are energy-efficient and warm, not cold and damp; access to green space for mental and physical health; and infrastructure, including public transport, GPs and schools.

When done well, nature is a partner to the healthy homes and green energy that our country needs. However, through this Bill, the Government risk taking a wrecking ball to good-quality development. Nature is not a blocker to development. We are pointing the figure at the wrong culprit, and this is cheap, false rhetoric. Nature is not to blame. The Government’s own watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, has publicly warned that the Bill in its current form will be a regression from current environmental protections, rather than increasing the number of homes, helping nature and helping us to meet our binding climate and nature pledges. Instead it will remove vital safeguards and put protected sites and species at risk.

Over 30 leading environmental organisations, including the RSPB, the wildlife trusts and the National Trust, have raised the alarm about part 3 of the Bill, with its very worrying plan to move to a “cash to trash” model for the nature restoration fund. I know the Minister has rejected that characterisation, but in the Environmental Audit Committee we heard robust evidence from expert witnesses that we could call it a “pay some amount later for something, somewhere” fund.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

The origin of Britain’s planning system is as deeply rooted in the legacy of the post-war Labour Government as that of the national health service and the welfare state. Like those great Labour institutions, it has faced relentless underfunding, attacks and dismantling from the Conservatives, who prioritise the rights of wealthy landowners over the entitlement of working people to affordable housing and quality infrastructure.

I commend the Government for bringing forward a Bill that offers the opportunity to at last get to grips with the appalling mess made of the planning system by the parties opposite; after all, it was they who allowed more than 14,000 hectares of our best farmland to be lost to development since 2010. The reality is that while we now have substantially more homes per capita than 50 years ago—a surplus that has grown rapidly in recent years—house prices in the UK have risen by 3,878% since 1971. Whatever may be said by their lobbyists, the housing crisis is not a straightforward issue of supply, and it will not be solved by simply putting more powers in the hands of profiteering developers. Waiting for a market solution to this societal emergency would be an exercise in utterly extravagant futility.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

For the past 30 years, successive Governments have attempted to deliver affordable housing through the private sector, and they have failed. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time for a publicly funded council house building programme?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Hinchliff]

I completely agree.

The Government need to deliver a coherent vision for development in this country that matches the clarity and boldness of Labour’s 1947 vision, putting democratic control and social justice back at the heart of the planning system.

First, we must contend with the fact that more than 1.2 million homes that were granted planning permission since 2015 have not been built. Rather than waiting for developers to drip feed land into the system at their convenience, keeping prices high and profits maximised, we must introduce firm financial penalties for land banking to spur on construction and dampen price inflation.

Secondly, in towns like Buntingford and Royston, although thousands of houses have been built in recent years, local people remain stuck on sky-high waiting lists, with enormous knock-on costs for those families and our wider communities. We must therefore address not just the aggregate quantity of building but the types of homes we are providing with a new era of council housing, especially in our small towns and villages.

The housing crisis is also about the concentration of land ownership in the hands of the super-rich. Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population. Between 1995 and 2022, land values rose by more than 600% to £7.2 trillion, now representing more than 60% of the UK’s total net worth. I welcome the Bill’s expansion of powers for local authorities to prevent developers cashing in on inflated land prices at the cost of the taxpayer. We must maximise the public capture of land value uplifts to provide the necessary funding for genuinely affordable homes that are linked to local incomes and based in well-designed communities that benefit from easy access to all the facilities we need in our daily lives.

Simultaneously, the Government must also grasp this opportunity to reshape how councils develop local plans. Empowered councils with well-resourced planning departments should be able to take an active role to assess the needs of local families, identify appropriate sites and proactively use compulsory purchase orders for genuinely strategic land assembly to meet the needs of their communities.

Finally, given the collapse of nature in our country, we must use this legislation to recognise the very real environmental limits on growth. It is high time our planning system ensured that a presumption in favour of sustainable development ceases to act as a presumption in favour of any development whatsoever.

I look forward to working with Ministers to advance this legislation and secure the strongest possible Bill, which restores our role as custodians of the countryside, compels the private sector to deliver and places the power to meet our housing and infrastructure needs firmly back in democratic hands.

Political Finance Rules

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I intend to make a short contribution on one particular aspect of political funding that I believe is especially corrosive to faith in democracy in our country. Across North East Hertfordshire, from Buntingford to Thundridge, local communities have worked hard to create local neighbourhood plans that are pragmatic but full of hope for the future. However, time and again, those plans are overruled, and residents get development that could hardly be further from what they have sought to secure�poorly designed, palpably unsustainable, and outrageously overpriced. So often, the reason for this is the enormous financial and political pressure that big developers are able to bring to bear on the debates around the future of our towns and villages in their relentless pursuit of profit maximisation.

Our constituents will never have faith that our planning system will deliver fair outcomes that put nature, community life and genuinely affordable homes before developer greed for as long as those same developers�and the lobbyists they employ�are pouring vast sums of money into the bank accounts of political parties. Given the constant clamour for planning deregulation and the already enormous profits that these developers are making, it is hard to escape the conclusion that those sums of money have been a very wise investment on their part.

The Labour Government have inherited the Conservative party�s housing crisis; we must not inherit the same issues of influence that plagued the previous Administration. Trust in politics will return only when we make our position unimpeachable, and the future of development in our towns, villages and countryside is too important even to appear to have been subverted on behalf of private interests. If we want the public to believe that the planning guidelines that we set nationally and locally will be fairly adhered to, it is my contention that we must ban all political donations from developers, those who work for them and the lobbyists they employ.

Affordable Rural Housing

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Matthew Pennycook]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. We think the changes we have introduced and the revised standard method are appropriate. Every part of the country will need to play its part in achieving our ambitious plan for change milestone of building 1.5 million new homes across the country. That is the scale of ambition we need commensurate with the crisis we face, and that crisis affects every part of England.

The Government believe in a plan-led system. It is through local development plans that communities shape decisions about how to deliver the housing and wider development their areas need. Local plans must remain the cornerstone of our planning system and we are determined to progress towards universal coverage. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading West and Mid Berkshire will appreciate that I am unable to comment on her local plan or how her local planning authority may interpret national planning policy due to the quasi-judicial nature of the planning process, but there is merit in me making some general comments on plan making in local authority areas that overlap with national landscapes, as is the case in her own area.

As my hon. Friend is aware, the Government are committed to maintaining strong protections for our protected landscapes. We are clear that the scale and extent of development within such designated areas should be limited so that we are able to pass on their attractions and important biodiversity to future generations. National planning policy is clear that significant development within a national landscape should be refused, other than in exceptional circumstances where it can be demonstrated that the development is in the public interest, taking into account a range of considerations. That includes fully exploring the role of planning conditions and developer contributions to mitigate the impacts of development or support infrastructure provision as appropriate.

When it comes to plan making, local authorities are expected to use the revised standard method to assess housing needs. However, they are able to justify a lower housing requirement than the figure set by the method on the basis of local constraints on land availability, development and other relevant matters such as national landscapes, but also protected habitats and flood risk areas. Local authorities will need to consider these matters as they prepare their plans, but we expect them to explore all options to deliver the homes their communities need. That means maximising brownfield land, densifying available brownfield sites, working with neighbouring authorities on cross-boundary housing growth and, where necessary, reviewing the green belt. They are then expected to evidence and justify that approach to planning for housing in their local planning consultation. An examination of their approach will be scrutinised by a planning inspector to determine whether the constraints are justified and the plan is sound.

I turn to the focus of my hon. Friend’s remarks—namely, the case for supporting rural communities to build new homes for local people, and in particular for boosting the supply of rural affordable housing. The Government are committed to doing so, and it was a pleasure to have the chance to discuss this matter with my hon. Friend last month. It cannot be right that, as a number of hon. Members said, young people in particular are often unable to remain in the villages in which they grew up. That harms not only them and their families but the vibrancy and long-term viability of rural communities.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the most important policies that we can look at in planning reform to deliver genuinely affordable homes in rural communities are a bold approach to land reform, the abolition of hope value and the reform of compulsory purchase orders to allow our local planning authorities to assemble the land that we need in our rural communities?

[Matthew Pennycook]

As my hon. Friend is no doubt aware, we have already brought into force a discretionary power to disapply hope value in certain instances where a public interest test could be met. We are committed, through the forthcoming planning and infrastructure Bill, to bring forward further reform of the compulsory purchase process and compensation, so he can look forward to seeing more action in that area.

National policy makes it clear that local authorities should ensure that their planning policies and decisions respond to local circumstances and support housing that reflects local needs. That includes promoting sustainable development in local areas and ensuring that housing is located where it will maintain and enhance the vitality of rural communities. Planning policies should identify opportunities for villages to grow and flourish, especially where that will support local services. We also want more affordable housing in rural areas, as part of our manifesto commitment to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation. We have already taken steps to support the delivery of affordable rural housing. For example, our golden rules for green-belt development—which ensure an affordable housing contribution 15 percentage points above the highest existing affordable housing requirement that would otherwise apply to the development, subject to a cap of 50%—will unlock new affordable housing provision in a range of rural locations.

New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I begin by making a declaration of interest: my former employer, CPRE, the countryside charity, is a supporter of the Bill. Many of my constituents are also passionate supporters of the proposal for mandatory rooftop solar on new buildings; it is one of the issues on which I have had the most correspondence in recent months.

In North East Hertfordshire, the towns of Royston and Buntingford have seen rapid development in recent years, as have smaller villages such as Barkway, Puckeridge and Standon. In the near future, a new estate will be built on the edge of Letchworth Garden City and the town of Baldock is due to roughly double in size. At the same time, we face many challenging decisions locally to balance the need for renewable energy with the protection of our high-quality farmland, while also preserving and enhancing space for nature. It is therefore unsurprising that residents in North East Hertfordshire can see the common sense in making the best possible use of our finite land by putting the solar panels we need on rooftops.

Our approach to delivering the renewable energy we undoubtedly and desperately need has been far too laissez-faire.

[Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)]

My constituency has also seen significant population growth; it has grown by 35% in the past 20 years. New estates in Didcot, Great Western Park, Wantage, Kingsgrove, Highcroft in Wallingford and Wellington Gate in Grove have not all sought the opportunity to have solar panels on the new houses. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we do not create the homes of the future now, there is a risk that we will have to retrofit them in future, at great expense, to reach our net zero targets and help residents with their bills?

[Chris Hinchliff]

I wholeheartedly agree.

As I was saying, we could suffer from the potentially profound impacts of competing demands for space for the homes we require, our commitment to protect 30% of our land for nature by 2030, and our fragile food security. Government figures show that with an industry average of 5 acres per megawatt, the proposed ground-mounted solar schemes put forward to date would, if they all went ahead, require a total land area roughly equivalent to Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Newcastle and Leeds combined. Yet at the same time, academic analysis indicates that between suitable existing buildings and new construction, there is potential space for 117 GW of rooftop solar in England by 2050.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it was a shocking dereliction of duty when the previous Government cancelled the zero-carbon home programme, which would have allowed for the generation of around 3,000 MW if every house built since 2015 had had solar panels on it? Does he agree with my residents in Taunton and Wellington, who are aghast and want to see solar panels on the new houses being built in Comeytrowe, Staplegrove and Monkton Heathfield?

[Chris Hinchliff]

I find myself, once again, in wholehearted agreement.

Ensuring that solar panels are installed on the rooftops of new buildings specifically could deliver a generating capacity over six times greater than that of Sizewell C. Clearly, if we start applying a strategic approach beginning with the provisions in the Bill, we can host the vast majority of the solar panels we need on our rooftops. Other nations are already proving that this can be done, with similar regulatory measures currently in place in Germany, China and Japan. Better yet, enacting this legislation would not only accelerate our progress toward meeting our climate targets, reducing the industrialisation of our countryside and protecting rural communities; it also offers the most effective way to ensure that the net zero transition lowers electricity bills for consumers.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; my former colleagues at the MCS Foundation have provided research in support of the Bill.

I want to pick up on the hon. Gentleman’s point about timescales, because in my experience this issue is the one that is raised most commonly by residents wanting to see action. Why on earth, they say, are new homes being put up without solar panels on them? Time is of the essence, but is it not the case that we have already lost many opportunities to progress? Regulations were due to come into force in 2016 that would have required all new homes to have zero carbon standards. Those regulations were scrapped by the coalition Government. [Hon. Members: “No, they weren’t.”] The briefing I have had says that they were scrapped in 2014. [Interruption.] Either way, I am pleased to see cross-party support today to press ahead with this proposal at speed. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that speed is of the essence here to ensure that homes are not being put up without solar panels?

[Chris Hinchliff]

I agree that speed is of the essence in multiple ways, and I encourage the Government to move as quickly as possible.

Empowering households to generate the electricity that they use will help families to lower their bills far more rapidly than commercial schemes that feed into wholesale energy markets influenced by international commodity prices. This strikes me as a well-drafted Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) on its clarity and flexibility. The only thing that I might suggest is a widening of the provisions to cover commercial buildings as well, given the vast opportunities provided by warehousing space. It is estimated that we currently use only about 5% of warehouse rooftops for solar generation. Claims that the regulations would hinder innovation are clearly spurious, especially in view of the provisions for exemptions where other forms of renewable energy generation are installed.

It is high time that our country had common-sense standards for rooftop solar on new builds, and I hope that the whole House will support the Bill.

Planning Committees: Reform

Chris Hinchliff Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

I encourage the hon. Gentleman to engage with the proposals set out in the working paper. Nothing is definite, nothing is finite; these are our initial views, which we want to test, and I welcome his contribution to that. We are saying in particular that, yes, elected members should be taking decisions on the most significant and controversial applications, but for minor reserved matters and technical issues on which skilled local planning officers can come forward and make decisions, that is helpful and appropriate to streamline the planning system locally.

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

Residents in towns and villages across my constituency want an efficient and accountable planning system. Could the Minister set out in more detail how he sees these plans interacting with processes around master planning and the negotiation of planning conditions?

[Matthew Pennycook]

I encourage my hon. Friend to read the working paper. He is welcome to submit his views on the potential interaction of these proposals with master planning and planning conditions. We have not set out specific proposals for those areas in the working paper, but I am more than happy to take his views into account.