Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the compatibility of proposed planning reforms with measures contained in the Environment Bill.

The planning system has a vital role to play in enabling the delivery of housing and to support sustainable economic growth and renewal, and we want to see better planning for nature, in a way that’s more efficient as well as effective. In March, the government signalled its intention to modernise our planning system, ensuring it supports the delivery of homes that local people need and creates more beautiful and greener communities.

Since then, we have developed a number of planning regulation easements to support businesses to operate through Covid-19, such as enabling restaurants, cafes and pubs to offer a takeaway and delivery service and removing specific publicity requirements for planning applications. We have recently introduced a Bill to parliament with further measures to help businesses to resume and to support economic recovery, and will continue to work across government to investigate options for broader regulatory reform to support sustainable economic growth and renewal, and to protect and conserve our environment.