Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the other cosignatories on putting forward the two amendments in this group. My only concern is what time commitment and resources would be required of the local authorities, given the fact that they are very heavily challenged at this time. I pay tribute to the lead local authorities, especially on the work they are doing on flood prevention, which is already a major resource commitment timewise. I know it has made a big difference already in areas such as north Yorkshire, which I am most familiar with, where we do have a number of functional flood plains. Across the country, the advice of the Environment Agency is not always pursued.

As regards the habitats directive, we need a firm steer from the Government on how we are going to steer this path, where we have the retained EU law Bill where, presumably, we are going to park the habitats directive on one side. But there is a possibility here, through this group of amendments, for nature recovery strategies to try to achieve a balance.

I end by saying that my noble friend is only too aware of my commitment to farming and ensuring that, within nature recovery, farming is recognised as a major contributor to these strategies.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as in the register. I came in to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, because I thought I liked the wording of her amendment. Having listened to her and the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, I am absolutely convinced of the justice of their case. As my noble friend will know, one of the most crucial parts of the Environment Act is local nature recovery strategies—it is what it is all about in many ways. At the moment, the Bill says merely that local authorities must “have regard to” it. We all know—the lawyers present will explain no doubt ad nauseum and for a reasonable fee—that “having regard to” is fairly meaningless in many ways. A local authority could “have regard to” a local nature recovery strategy and then find a dozen reasons to reject it, because they had regard to it but for this reason or that reason did not wish to pursue it.

I particularly like the wording here, which does not seem to tie local authorities’ hands. It says that they

“must ensure that their development plan (taken as a whole) incorporates such policies and proposals so as to deliver the objectives of the local nature recovery strategy”.

It does not tell them what to do or how to do it; it just says that they have a free hand to invent their own policies that deliver the objectives of local nature recovery strategies. I ask my noble friend the Minister: what is the point of us developing local nature recovery strategies at a national level if they are not going to be implemented locally in local development plans?

I do not think that my noble friend is right that there will be great additional cost to local authorities in doing this—I can see nothing here to suggest that—but, if local nature recovery strategies are to work as every single person in this Chamber wants them to, the wording of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, is probably the only way to deliver that. I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could explain to me what the problem is with the noble Baroness’s wording.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support these amendments. The noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Willis, have made an absolutely convincing and compelling case for strengthening the responsibility of local planning authorities to consider local nature recovery strategies.

This is exactly the arrangement that the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, set out when he was trying to persuade us not to press our amendments on this issue to a vote during the passage of the Environment Bill. At that time, he made it clear that the Government viewed local nature recovery strategies as key to identifying where action for nature and the environment would have the most impact. He went on to make it clear that Defra was working with the then Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to develop planning reforms that would contain a defining role for local nature recovery strategies and set them at the heart of decision-making. Obviously, there have been some changes in government and some movement on this since then, but that does not alter the nature of the pledges that were given at that time.

Since then, we have made good progress on establishing a network of local nature recovery strategies around the country. They are getting on with the job of surveying their local biodiversity priorities, providing crucial local data and mapping their local habitats. Their local knowledge and insight are proving crucial in identifying what action and resources can best be targeted. Through their partnership in stakeholder roles, they are also bringing together a wide group of interests to support a local strategic biodiversity recovery plan. However, what is the point of them doing all this work if local planning authorities can simply override their work and priorities? If we are not careful, those involved in drawing up these strategies will quickly become disillusioned and this will be seen as yet another talking shop.

This matters because, as we know, we have crucial statutory targets; for example, to halt the decline of species abundance by 2030, to deliver on our COP commitment to protect 30% of land and nature by 2030, and to deliver the many nature recovery targets set out in the environmental improvement plan. These are simply not going to happen unless local planning authorities put nature recovery at the heart of their decision-making. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, pointed out, there is widespread support for greater weighting to be placed on these local biodiversity recovery plans. There is also a real concern that, when it comes to the crunch, those nature recovery strategies will once again slide down the list of priorities and be seen as a second-tier concern.

I am grateful for the Minister’s letter to me and my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone on this issue. Again, she flagged up that the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023 commits to publishing guidance on how local nature recovery strategies can be reflected in local plans. As we have heard, we have received statutory guidance since then; however, it does not answer the central challenge that, unless we have wording along the lines of Amendment 184ZA or something very similar, the current imbalance will continue and local nature recovery strategies will not play their deserved and necessary part in decision-making.

This is not a total determination but about getting the balance right and ensuring that local nature recovery strategies are part of the decision-making. I am very pleased to hear so much support for these amendments from around the Chamber today. I hope that the Minister is hearing that strong case and can reassure us that the Government will take this away and come back with a stronger commitment, along the lines of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

I have learned the truth of that, and I hope the noble Lord will recognise that this really could create a huge amount of trouble for everyone if they press ahead with a cut-off date.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as per the register. I apologise to the Committee that I have not previously participated in these proceedings, but I have been away a lot with the Council of Europe, monitoring elections in Montenegro and Bulgaria, and other places. As an aside, I must say, with Lib Dem Peers here, that Bulgaria adopted a proportional representation system. It has 14 political parties, organised into seven coalitions, and this was the fifth general election in two years we monitored, with exactly the same result as the other four. It has got a completely ungovernable country and, once again, a Government who will shortly collapse.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that we have 250,000 miles of footpath, and we will shortly have completed 2,000 miles of the King Charles III England Coast Path. That seems to me to be an awful lot of mileage for people to walk on, but of course there are some right to roam fanatics who want to make a political point about having the right to roam on anyone’s land. I think it is more important that we develop footpaths and make sure they are open for access by ordinary people in every part of the United Kingdom.

I really must congratulate my noble friend Lord Randall on an outstanding speech today, moving his amendment; it was highly persuasive. The current amendment is an important opportunity to further nature recovery aspirations across the 24% of England designated as national park or area of outstanding natural beauty. England’s areas of outstanding natural beauty and the national parks are even more important now as we face the climate, nature and well-being challenges of the 21st century. They are more important than when the iconic National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act was passed in 1949, as part of the World War II settlement.

I have lived in the Lake District National Park for about 20 years—just outside it now—and I can honestly say that the biodiversity of the national park is every bit as bad as some of the silage fields outside it, which are crop-bare three times a year and the hedgerows cut down to almost nothing. There is no better biodiversity in the national park. That is something which the amendment seeks to change, and I know the Government want to change it.

There is widespread recognition, including in the 2019 Landscapes Review commissioned by the Government, that aspects of the legislation need updating if our protected landscapes are to be able to rise to these 21st-century challenges and deliver the crucial benefits people and nature need. My noble friend’s amendment is a crucial opportunity to make these important changes, fulfilling the welcome intentions of the Government announced in last January’s initial response to the review. However, if the Government are minded to add a reference to nature recovery and biodiversity, it should be added, in my opinion, with equal priority to the current statutory purposes, not given primacy over the existing purposes. That is where I depart slightly from my noble friend: it should not be given priority over the other purposes but have equal weight.

I suggest also that the duty of regard placed on public bodies is strengthened and extended to encompass delivery of agreed statutory national park and AONB management plans. It is possible that a similar effect to the amendment, regarding statutory purposes, could be achieved if the Government and Defra, and my noble friend the Minister, asked Natural England, the statutory adviser on landscapes in England, to provide further advice or guidance to clarify interpretation of the current wordings, although I accept this would not give the same strength or security, or the signalling, desired by some concerned with the issue. However, I suggest that it might be an acceptable compromise if my noble friend’s amendment is not acceptable in any way to the Government. Without a slightly tweaked amendment or the compromise I have suggested, I am afraid we may miss the opportunity to build in appropriate and more effective tools to protect these landscapes at this critical time.

In my final comment, I say to my noble friend Lord Hodgson that I live near the A66 and, if I had known he was coming, I would have invited him in for a glass or two of Highland Park. I would hope that, after a few glasses, I could have persuaded him to give up this mad idea of walking the whole length and breadth of the country.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on their 30 by 30 target. It is an enormous and ambitious thing to take on. In that context, I urge them to support my noble friend Lord Randall’s amendment. We have large areas of national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, a lot of which does not sensibly qualify for 30 by 30 at the moment. We have structures within them which could help drive them in that direction, if we pass the sort of amendment that my noble friend has suggested. I like proposed new subsection (5) in particular, which would make other agencies join in the purpose of the national park.

My Amendment 504GJC—after 30 years, I still do not understand how the numbering works, but that is where it is—concerns other effective area-based conservation measures. We are not, I think, going to get to 30 by 30 on the basis of national landscapes. We need a structure which allows not for nature protection to be provided somewhere else but for nature protection to be something that all of us can influence and be involved in.

Fortunately, the Convention on Biological Diversity has provided the concept of an OECM, which I think we can adapt in very positive ways. An OECM could be a corner of a park in a city, or a corner of a school playground that is developed in conjunction with the National Education Nature Park, which I see from the Natural History Museum is starting to be rolled out. It could be this great network of connection that we want farmers to develop across the landscape, so wildlife can move across it. It could even be golf courses, for goodness’ sake—I believe there is one golf course which allows daisies on the fairways. There is real scope for getting wildlife back into golfers’ lives—I have not yet met one who wants it but we will get there in the end.

It was one of the underpinnings of the Dasgupta report that everybody should have an appreciation of and involvement in nature. The structure of OECMs allows us to create that, involving everybody in getting to 30 by 30. The structure I have proposed in Amendment 504GJC has a low threshold, because you want people to be able to join in to begin with, without going through huge layers of bureaucracy, but you may well need a fiercer award within that to qualify for 30 by 30. It identifies an individual who has charge of the area and a purpose for it. This should be something personal which is down to a group of people or an individual landowner, which they are doing themselves and for which they are responsible, for which we can thank them for taking responsibility, but to which we can also hold them to account. I therefore very much hope that the Government will democratise 30 by 30, spreading it out and making it a national rather than a purely institutional ambition, and that they will give us the tools with which we can do that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, last week, my esteemed colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, asked whether I would support his amendments on pavement accessibility. I trusted him completely so I said, “Yes, of course, I would love to support them”. Then I read them and, actually, they are quite tough and strict in places, but the more I read them, the more I liked them. I particularly liked Amendment 450, which is about taking bits of the road—I love that idea—and reducing the space for traffic, as well as Amendment 459 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, and others, because that is so tough on smoking and I loathe smoking. I support many of these amendments. Obviously, I support all the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. There is, perhaps, some space to bring in the fact that cars park on the pavement. I hate pavement parking and I hate loads of rubbish bins being heaped up on the side of pavements because they inhibit free access.

My local shopping street has gone absolutely bananas with this, and it has changed the whole feeling of the street—it is so much more friendly. At the moment, only the Co-op, Iceland and Boots, I think, do not have tables and chairs outside them, with people eating, drinking and having fun. I am all in favour of this section and look forward to Report, when I would be happy to vote on many of them and perhaps even sign up to them as well.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. She did say that some of my noble friend’s amendments were quite tough but that she liked them. I think the Committee would agree that the noble Baroness is quite tough and we rather like her as well. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond on the initiative he has undertaken in tabling these important amendments. He is to be congratulated by all disabled people, fighting our corner—or narrow strip of pavement, as the case may be.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am not quite sure why the Control of Pollution Act is put in the same group as swifts. Anyway, my Amendment 282 is in this group.

My local authority, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, unlike some local planning authorities, refuses to impose by planning condition any requirement on developers to mitigate noise, dust and vibration during construction work in accordance with an improved construction method statement that the developer is routinely obliged to submit as part of its planning application for a major development. Instead, with respect to such developments, it promises to encourage developers to submit applications for prior consent under Section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, failing which it promises that the council will issue a Section 60 notice.

These consents and notices create legal obligations on the developers but the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea can take action only if a breach has been notified. However, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea does not publish the consents and notices anywhere on its website or even the fact that a notice has been issued or a consent agreed to. As a result, residents are not aware whether or when a notice has been issued, what measures a developer has promised to take, what the obligations are under the notice or whether an obligation has been breached. They therefore cannot notify the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea that a breach has occurred. As a result, the system is rendered useless.

My proposed solution is simply that local planning authorities should be obliged to publish all such consents and notices on their planning websites promptly upon issue and not remove them. In the other place, the Minister’s response was that Section 69 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 requires local planning authorities to keep a register of applications. The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 requires that these registers contain parts 3 and 4 containing details of local development orders and neighbourhood development orders respectively. Part 3, for instance, must include copies of any draft development orders that have been prepared but not adopted by the local planning authority and any adopted local development orders.

The Minister’s reply in the other place completely missed the point. Notices issued under Section 60 and consents given under Section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act are not planning applications or local or neighbourhood development orders. The reply in this place from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, in Committee showed that she did not seem to understand what the amendment was seeking to achieve or why. She said:

“Legislating for information to be published in a specific way would remove their ability to make decisions at local level, for little additional benefit”.


This is incorrect. It would not affect in any way local authorities’ ability to make decisions. She concluded, without explanation, that

“the Government believe the proposed amendment is unnecessary and cannot support it”.

On being pressed by my noble friend Lord Bellingham, she replied:

“Since this is a Defra lead, I will commit to write to my noble friend and share the answer with the rest of the Committee”.—[Official Report, 18/4/23; col. 577.]


She did not do so.

When an LPA imposes a planning condition to require compliance with an approved construction method statement, it is obliged by law to publish on its planning website the text of the condition and the fact that the condition has been imposed. No one argues that this removes or affects its ability to make a decision, nor have I ever seen it argued that there are any circumstances in which it would be justifiable to keep the imposition of a condition or its text secret. Measures whereby the developer promises to mitigate noise and disturbance during construction do not touch on privacy or national security. By analogy, I cannot think of any circumstances in which it would be justifiable for a local planning authority to keep the issue of a Section 60/61 notice or consent, or its contents, secret. The Government have not explained why keeping it secret might be justifiable, and that is why I tabled the amendment on Report.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests set out in the register. It was a delight to listen to my noble friends Lord Goldsmith and Lord Randall describe the importance of swift bricks to the preservation of this species and to stopping their decline. I am delighted to be able to support it.

Installing these bricks is an absolute no-brainer. They cost between £25 and £35. Last year, the big four housebuilders—just four of them, Barratt, Berkeley, Persimmon and Bellway—made profits of £2.749 billion. I am sure they can afford a £25 brick for the 300,000 homes they might or might not manage to build next year. Installing the bricks is a no-brainer.

I learned today—I hope, wrongly—that the Government may be opposed to this measure. That, too, would be a no-brainer if they are. I wonder where the opposition has come from. I hope they have not been lobbied by the Home Builders Federation—the organisation which lied, lied and lied again about the Government blocking the building of 145,000 homes because of nutrient neutrality. That was totally untrue. Of course, housebuilders are sitting on more than 1 million planning applications and are land-banking until they can release them gradually and make maximum profits. If that is legitimate, so be it, but let us not let them attack the Government for holding up housebuilding when it is not the Government doing it.

I understand that in the Commons the Government said they could not mandate this nationally and it must be left to local voluntary discretion. Housebuilding left to local voluntary discretion? You cannot build a house anywhere in the country without the Government almost dictating the colour of the curtains. Look at the national regulations on every aspect of housebuilding: electrics; plumbing; the type of cement; the way the damp-proof course is laid; the tiles and insulation. Nearly every mortal thing of importance in the house—the width of the doorways, the bannisters, the boilers you may install after 2030—is dictated by central government, and rightly so. I am not complaining about that, but I am complaining about the apparent hypocrisy if the Government I support are now saying “Oh, we can’t order every house to have a little brick installed because that is taking national government interference too far”. If that is the case, I think that is nonsense.

I know that some Government Ministers have already installed these bricks. They have done it voluntarily, without guidance. If it is good enough for some Ministers, quite rightly, to save swifts out of their own volition, then it should be quite right that the Government support a measure to impose this nationally.

If it is the case that the Government are opposed to this, I would really like to know where that opposition came from in government. If it is true then some idiot—an adviser, spad or civil servant, but hopefully not a Minister—has decided to oppose this. I exempt my noble friend the Minister, as this is an environmental matter and nothing to do with her brief, but why in the name of God should a Conservative Government oppose this?

In the first three years of this Government, under Michael Gove and George Eustice in environment, we made the biggest strides forward in environmental and nature protection that this country has ever seen, with the 25-year plan and the Environment Act. Now we could lose that good reputation because of a trivial thing if we oppose installing a 25-quid brick in a house wall to save swifts.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 221A on swift bricks, as your Lordships might expect. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb has, in the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Randall, flown back from a nearby cavity just to be here for this debate, but she could not be here at the start, so your Lordships get me instead.

This is something that I have been talking about. I was on TalkTV, talking to Julia Hartley-Brewer about restoring biodiversity. I happened to mention swift bricks in that discussion and the presenter said in response, “Isn’t that just a small thing? Don’t we have to do much more?”. Of course that is true, but, if you are a swift then a swift brick is not a small thing. The fact that you need somewhere to make your home and raise your young is a matter of life and death. As the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, there has been a 60% decline in the population in the last 25 years. These beautiful and utterly amazing creations of nature depend on having a place to rest and raise their young, and we are closing those spaces off.

The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, also made an important point about human well-being—how much we all benefit from having swifts around and what a wonderful addition they are to our environment. Think about young people, such as the toddler who says, “What’s that?”, and has it explained so that they learn more. That is crucial.

The state of our biodiversity is absolutely parlous. We are one of the worst corners of this planet for nature. As we heard passionately from the Benches opposite, surely the Government cannot oppose this—they cannot oppose what was said by MPs in the other place and is being said by so many petitioners. Please let us have some common sense here.