Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Rachel Taylor Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th May 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Holmes]

My hon. Friend is right; I think that we have all seen that happen as Members of Parliament. It makes a mockery of the planning system when people—they know exactly what they are doing—retrospectively apply for permission and still reap the benefits. There was an example of this in my old constituency that involved removing trees that had tree preservation orders, in order to build on some land. Doing so destroyed that area of land, and it went completely against what should have happened. When the developer went to the local authority, it retrospectively granted planning permission, and the local villagers were outraged.

My hon. Friend is right: the new clause is meant to tackle those who know how to play the system. However, if someone has made unintentional changes to a house that could be covered under permitted development rights, but may go slightly beyond them, we would give local planning authorities the jurisdiction and authority to use their own minds in such cases.

I hope that the Minister understands why we are trying to probe him to see whether he can strengthen the Bill in relation to unauthorised development. He may have to write to me after the Committee—I am sorry to the officials for asking for another letter—about whether the last Government’s measures to give local authorities that power has worked and, if not, how we could work together to ensure that unauthorised development is stopped. We do not want to stop developments, but we think that there needs to be fairness in the planning system. People, who may not be well off, who want to make a planning application for their own home often find it a difficult experience when, just down the road, people are doing it willy-nilly whenever they want to. I look forward to clarification from the Minister. If he needs to write to me, that is absolutely fine.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship again, Ms Jardine. I rise to speak first to new clause 1, which seems to me, as someone who has worked closely with developers, ill thought out. It does not address the need to build more social and affordable homes.

Permissions that are granted, particularly on brownfield sites, often contain any number of conditions that are extremely difficult for developers to achieve—discharging conditions around environmental remediation and, for example, looking after bats or newts, which are common where I practise. There is also a lack of local authority staff competent to deal with section 106 agreements. Permissions are often granted to developers before they own the land, and there may be suitable tax reasons why people do not wish to sell the land until the following tax year. It is easy for those things to stretch over way more than three years, and sometimes up to five years. I am in favour of building more social homes, but the new clause would not achieve that objective. It also does not take into account the massive shortage of workers in the construction sector, the skills that we need or the shortage of materials, which has become even more acute in the past couple of years.

I also want to talk about new clause 76. The hon. Member for Hamble Valley has entertained us for most of the day with minor matters, but his new clause would have an effect that he has perhaps not thought about. The majority of unauthorised planning that I saw in my practice was carried out by farmers who were not able to make enough money from farming their land, so very often diversified their large warehouse-type structures and started using them for small businesses—perhaps renting them out to local engineering firms and so on. After a period of 10 years, somebody would complain in the local village and they would then apply for an authorised use certificate, and nine times out of 10, it would be granted.

The impact of new clause 76—that unauthorised change of use—would prevent those people from developing new homes on their site or opening up more opportunities for new businesses. It needs more thought and attention, because the very people who would be impacted are those who the Opposition say that they stand up for. Very often, they will be farmers who are looking to diversify their property.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Jardine. I wish to speak to new clause 25, which would, for developments of more than 10 houses, require that where 20% of those houses are to be developed for social housing, developers would not be able to reduce that amount below 20% over the fullness of time, as often happens today. We all seem to support the need for more social housing, but we have debated at length in Committee how best we get there.

In the interest of brevity, and conscious that we have more new clauses coming than the entire Dead Sea scrolls, I will keep my remarks concise. We in the Liberal Democrats feel that new clause 25 is necessary to hold developers account to that 20% quota for social housing, rather than being able to fritter it away. It relates to points that we previously made, that it would seem that without more regulation, market forces alone are not succeeding in delivering the social housing that we all recognise we need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Pennycook]

Well, the market does need to be disrupted, in the particular sense that we need new entrants coming forward, and small and medium-sized enterprises and community led-housing back in the game.

The hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington said, and I think he is right, that developers have a business model, particularly volume builders. Some are changing their business model and we would encourage change to those business models, but there is a particular model that relies on very high margins. I know the academic study that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire cited. We must and will reduce our reliance on that. We also must be careful about weighing in on viability in a way that would just stop house building coming forward in lots of cases, because that would ultimately help nobody.

A final point that I think is pertinent to this debate: I always find the nimby and yimby debate incredibly reductive, but I think that some who oppose development on the basis that they only prioritise social and affordable housing discount the fact that building homes of any tenure in localities assists people trying to access social and affordable rent. It all helps and it need not be one or the other.

[Rachel Taylor]

I think what comes across in some of the proposed new clauses, which is not the case in the Bill itself, is a punitive scheme for developers. What we need to do is work in partnership with smaller developers and community developers in particular, so that we can build out any number of different types of homes—whether they are apartments, bungalows, or small starter homes. All of those are important in the market and will help young people to feel that they can get on the housing ladder and not have to rely on living in their parents’ spare room until they are in their mid-30s.

[Matthew Pennycook]

That is a good point. To wrap this debate up, I think it is right that the Government seek to take forward planning reform in the way we have, and to streamline the planning process in a way that drops costs on developers where it is appropriate. Equally, we must be robust with developers. We want to put this mechanism in place and ensure that local authorities can negotiate section 106 agreements robustly. Where those agreements are entered into, we expect them to be delivered and we expect sites to be built out. As I say, hon. Members will not have to wait too long to see some of the changes that are not in existing law, but that the Government are bringing forward. On that basis, I hope hon. Members might not press the new clauses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Chowns]

I warmly welcome the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington. I refer colleagues to the fact that I have proposed a private Member’s Bill on exactly this topic—the Carbon Emissions from Buildings (Net Zero) Bill—and my very first Westminster Hall debate was on environmental building standards, so I am fully behind the new clause.

It is essential that we build new housing to the best possible standards, and that we build new homes that are fully fit for the future. We know that doing so has social, environmental and economic benefits. It has social benefits, because it reduces people’s fuel bills and tackles issues such as mould in homes. It has environmental benefits, because, of course, there are huge energy efficiency advantages. It has economic benefits, not least because it is much more economically efficient in the long run to build houses effectively at the start so that we do not have to retrofit them years down the line. We already have a huge retrofit challenge in the coming years, so the very least we can do is to ensure that all new houses are built to zero carbon standards.

The new clause refers specifically to solar power generation on roofs. I warmly welcome the Government’s announcement—I believe it was on local election day—that they are moving in that direction. However, in zero carbon design, other factors are much more important, including building orientation, design around transport and fabric first. I would like to discuss another factor, namely embodied carbon. I have tabled new clause 91 on the subject, but I am not sure that we will get there. When we talk about zero carbon, we need to recognise both the operational carbon, which is the carbon produced by a building during its lifespan—over the next, say, 80 years—and the embodied carbon in buildings, which is becoming a larger factor in the construction industry. We will soon be at the point where embodied carbon is half of the carbon associated with a building during its lifetime.

[Rachel Taylor]

I thank the hon. Member for her lengthy and detailed explanation of zero carbon standards. Does she think it is appropriate to constrain the Minister to bringing forward building regulations within the short period of six months? Would that take longer? Not all of us have the same detailed and intricate knowledge of the standards that would be required, although I understand a great deal about building regulations.

[Ellie Chowns]

In fairness, I did not draft the new clause. I recognise that it says six months, but as the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington spoke about so eloquently, we had proposals for net zero carbon building standards on the table 10 years ago. This has been in development for 20 years. The sector itself is way ahead of Government on this. A huge amount of work has been done by the Low Energy Transformation Initiative, the Royal Institute of British Architects and all sorts of organisations to develop zero carbon building standards.

Although bringing regulations forward within six months is arguably ambitious, it is not that the work is not available. The missing thing is political will, and political will can be found, as we have seen—we have passed a bill in less than 24 hours in this House within the last few weeks. Where there is political will, things can be done quickly. This is not an unreasonable proposal in this legislation. All the technical work is there; it is political will that is missing to bring forward a zero carbon standard for new homes. I could not more warmly welcome this new clause.