Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Teverson]

131: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Enforcement of planning decisions(1) A local planning authority when exercising a relevant function under the Planning Acts shall have a duty to—(a) enforce planning conditions, and(b) enforce the removal of any structure that has not received planning permission.(2) At the discretion of the local planning authority, minor infringements may be excepted from the duty to enforce.(3) Minor infringements under subsection (2) may not include any environmental, climate or nature-related conditions.(4) The costs of enforcement by a local planning authority shall be recovered by the application of a penalty payment regime.(5) The Secretary of State must, after consultation with local planning authorities, lay down a schedule of penalty charges.(6) The schedule under subsection (5) must—(a) reflect the full costs of enforcement by a local planning authority, and(b) be reviewed annually to reflect changes in costs.(7) The Secretary of State must lay down a schedule giving examples of what might be deemed as a minor infringement under subsection (2).”

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I remind the Committee that I am chair of the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, but I am also a director of Wessex Development and Investments Limited, a development company, so I am on both sides of planning and nature issues.

This is a probing amendment but quite a specific one. It comes on to the area of planning enforcement. Generally, the planning system is meant to be a permissive one; unless there is good reason to stop development, it should happen. Paragraph 60 of the National Planning Policy Framework states that the planning system is discretionary and proportionate, but it also makes the point that enforcement of the planning system is there to maintain public confidence. It is that area that I want to concentrate on this evening.

We will all know of residents who are concerned that people move ahead with developments that are wrong, without planning permission. They feel that those individuals are cheating the system and moving ahead of other people who are trying to go through a system legally and properly. That can cause a great deal of discontent. At the moment, planning enforcement is not a duty of local authorities. When I have talked about this area with local authorities, they have made it very clear that they are not funded to enforce, so it is not an area always given a great deal of emphasis because there is no return.

One area that I came across with one of my own principal local authorities is that, with regard to environmental conditions on planning, the track record was that 40% of those environmental conditions were never actually implemented over quite a long period of time. That is why, in this amendment, I have stressed environmental, climate and nature conditions on planning that are widely ignored in development and, because they are relatively minor on individual cases, are not enforced. However, on a broader scale, because that is the case, they are a major threat to biodiversity and net gain in nature and all the things that we need to do to more forward the environment and climate agenda. As we all know, with the built environment, if we do not get it right to begin with then that is a problem for the length and total age of the building.

I am trying to find out from the Government how we get out of this issue. On the whole, local authorities do not want to enforce. I am clear that, on other things, such as minor infringements that are not to do with nature, we do not want a system that looks like a police state, but we have the balance wrong at the moment, particularly around planning conditions that seem minor but are important on a macro scale. That is my question for the Minister: how do we get out of this? I believe that there is a way forward on this if we can reflect the costs on people who do not comply with planning, if those particular issues then have to be enforced. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

Before we proceed, the Government Whip will make a brief statement about the progress of business.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I could write to the noble Lord on that specific point. But it seems to me that the principle is well established among planning officers and putting it on a statutory footing will not speed up the decision-making. Similarly, we are not convinced that we need a review on this matter. We, of course, are always looking at opportunities to improve the planning system and if there is evidence that supplementary consents like reserved matter approvals were unnecessarily revisiting matters, we would want to take action, but we do not think a review would be proportionate.

Finally, Amendment 185SE seeks to ensure that changes required to extant planning permissions to comply with changes in legislation would benefit from automatic planning permission. I can say we share a common goal, which is to ensure that developments are not delayed by new legislative requirements. When the Government introduce changes to planning legislation, they are usually not applied retrospectively to avoid the uncertainty this would cause, but we recognise that changes to other regulatory regimes, such as building regulations, can impact on approved development and this may require subsequent amendments to the planning permission which can be frustrating for developers. However, we do not think this amendment provides a solution. It is too broad, and some regulatory changes can have a material impact on approved development which warrant further consideration from a planning perspective.

Instead, we are keen to ensure that, when new legislation is developed which could impact on development, the consequences for planning are recognised and minimised. There are already a number of mechanisms available within the planning system which allow changes to planning permissions in a proportionate way, such as light-touch applications for non-material amendments under Section 96A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and we are keen to see these mechanisms being used to address the consequences of any wider regulatory changes on approved development. For these reasons, I hope that the noble Lord will beg leave to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. To be honest, the enforcement regime is not the right balance at the moment that the Minister suggested. I think there is a real concern about the confidence that those that receive planning permissions apply them properly, and that those who do not feel that they are under pressure from enforcement when those issues come up.

The other issue is that, clearly, even it is not a duty, the principle that the offender should pay for the cost for enforcement, is one that the Treasury and department should find a way forward on and maybe solve it on that basis. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 131 withdrawn.