Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Seventh sitting)

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 14th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Olly Glover]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, and thank you for your ongoing generosity to those of us who continue to learn how Bill Committees work.

Lib Dem amendment 122 would require the production of infrastructure delivery plans by local authorities and accompanying funding to meet the requirements of those. I note the comments of other hon. Members about taking into account the administrative burden on local authorities; we need to strike the optimum balance here, but I shall explain why I think infrastructure development plans are of merit and need to be mandated.

For those not familiar with IDPs—to use yet another dreaded acronym—I should say that they are developed during the local plan-making stage and serve as an important part of the evidence base and quality of those local plans. They identify and schedule the infrastructure needs for a community, including social, physical and green infrastructure, all of which are needed in addition to houses for the high quality, well-functioning communities we all wish to see.

The planning policy team at the local authority writes to all infrastructure providers to ask them to identify what infrastructure will be needed to accompany the development that the local plan is proposing. That becomes a list, which is tested through a viability assessment and local plan examination. Once the plan is adopted, and at the point where planning applications are submitted, planning officers will use the IDP to help to secure infrastructure—through direct delivery, financial contributions or indeed a mix of the two. IDPs are therefore an important part of both securing infrastructure and tracking the progress of its delivery.

However, at present IDPs are not compulsory and are not specified in the national planning policy framework or the Government’s planning practice guidance. Local plans are supposed to be reviewed every five years, although many are not, and by extension IDPs may be updated only infrequently. We think Government should compel local authorities to produce infrastructure delivery plans so that communities get the necessary infrastructure to create the well-function communities that we need to transform our country.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. As we have seen, there are very many amendments to this part of the Bill, which speaks to the fact that it is one of the most important parts of the legislation the Government are moving through. It is absolutely necessary that it should happen, but I want to make a quick point about infrastructure that is pertinent to this amendment.

As the Minister knows, and the Committee may know, I represent Ebbsfleet Garden City in Dartford: a new community that has arisen from no homes in about 2015 to around 5,000 now, and is due to be 15,000 by the middle of the next decade. We have seen with Ebbsfleet Garden City the importance of social and physical infrastructure being built alongside homes. Generally, the corporation there has done a good job in making sure that there are schools, recreation areas, community spaces and medical facilities; the timing has not always been brilliant, and sometimes the growth of the homes has outstripped the provision of infrastructure, but that infrastructure does eventually get delivered.

It is extremely important that the Minister gives an assurance, in line with what the amendment, I know, is seeking to do. I do not know whether the precise format that the amendment suggests is the right way to do it, but it is vital that we see that social and physical infrastructure grow at the same time as the housing.

[Lewis Cocking]

Does the hon. Member agree that nothing in this Bill makes developers build the social infrastructure that he is describing, which many communities desperately need, first—or at all?

[Jim Dickson]

The hon. Member is helping me to make my point. The only difference I have with him is that I know that the Government intend to ensure that infrastructure appears at the same time as homes and the Minister will provide reassurance on that. It is vital that that happens, via either a development corporation with those powers, or the spatial development strategies that we are discussing. Let us ensure that we do build the physical and social infrastructure at the same time as homes, with the examples of generally good development we see in Ebbsfleet Garden City reproduced elsewhere, as the Government meet their ambitious plans to build 1.5 million homes during this Parliament.