Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, before this debate started, I was confident that we would hear repeatedly the word “architect”, but in fact we have hardly heard it at all in a debate about housing. I want to talk about design and the role of architects and in doing so, I say that the speech I agreed with most was that of my noble friend Lord Best.

I should confess that for a time I was the unpaid chair of Design for Homes, the organisation that runs the Housing Design Awards, and therefore was exposed to the work of architects in great measure. I want to argue that building well-designed homes is a key aspiration to be realised through the Bill. I would like to congratulate the Government on their ambition to build so many dwellings, including, as I understand it, so many much-needed social housing units to enable young families, above all, to be able to remain in their own communities. That applies nowhere more than in rural areas, including the sort of community I once represented in another place.

I have been troubled by some of the grudging comments from parts of the Conservative Party. I can just about recall, having done a bit of research, what the Conservatives achieved in 1953 when Harold Macmillan was the Minister for Housing. In 1953-54, the Conservative Government built 301,000 new homes in one year, and most of those were council houses—something they trashed following the 1979 election, and I very much regret that.

In speaking about architects and design, I urge the Government to do a number of what I regard as very important things. First, have proper space standards within homes. The Parker Morris standards, now out of use for many years, served their purpose. Look at some of the best council houses—for example, in the Minister’s and my hometown of Burnley, where many council houses on the Brunshaw estate were built to Parker Morris standards, and good houses they were.

Then I would invite the Government to ensure—this is going back to my noble friend Lord Best’s speech again—that architects are not sidelined. Often in big housing developments, the architects are asked to do a design and then they are forgotten about until something goes wrong, and then if there is litigation, they may be the ones who are sued. But, actually, the truth is that architects should be there throughout, because it is only with good design that the Government will be able to build neighbourhoods predicated on creating places that people of all ages will want to remain in permanently and not leave because they cannot afford to live there or because there are only old people or young people there or other social mismatches.

I agree with the Government that compulsory purchase orders have an important role to play. If this ambition of the Government’s is to be achieved, then land should be made available, not at ridiculous prices, but certainly at fair prices. In order to achieve what the Bill is designed for, it will, frankly, be necessary to use compulsory purchase orders.

I agree too with the proposal to use development corporations, and I urge the Government to look at the equivalent of development corporations in areas where there are not per se development corporations to ensure that standards are kept up.

I would encourage the speeding up of the planning process by providing template standards and accelerated processes. I agree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, when he advised that there should be far more people trained to do the work in planning authorities so that it can be done thoroughly, quickly and decently.

Above all, I would encourage the Government to ensure that communities are involved in the design of their own neighbourhoods so that those neighbourhoods can stretch forward into the lives of the new generations who will be living there.

The Bill is about building to scale. Building to scale gives an immense opportunity to build good, because if you are spending a lot of money on a large scale, you can demand of those who do the work—the architects and developers—that they do it well. We should build with pride and give to the generations that follow us estates and areas to live in which will stand for them and their future generations for long to come.