Planning and Infrastructure Bill (Second sitting)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Committee stage
Thursday 24th April 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Ellie Chowns]

Q On the first part of my question, what do you think the purpose of planning should be?

Faraz Baber: Planning is there to help, for want of a better phrase, with the placemaking and the delivery, and to ensure that there are guidelines for how plan making should take place. It is there to ensure that the various levers associated with the plan-making process and the development process are understood. Planning is the guardian that ensures that sustainable development can come forward.

Victoria Hills: One of the most important questions that anybody—elected leaders or executive leaders—can ask is “Why?” Why are we doing it? What is it all about? What is the purpose of this Bill? What is the purpose of planning? That is why we think it is essential, within the realms of this Bill, that a public purpose of planning is stated up front. You do not have to take our word for it. Our research published yesterday shows that the vast majority of the public do not have a clue what planning is. They do not know what it is for, and if you are going to drive through a major reform programme for planning, the likes of which we have not seen for 15 years, it might be a good idea if we are very clear on what the purpose of planning is.

For us, the purpose is really clear; at a strategic level, it is about the long-term public interest, the common good and the future wellbeing of communities. You need to be open and honest with the public up front that all this change that is coming in planning and infrastructure is actually for the long-term common good. Some of it people may not like in the short term, but we are talking about the long-term common good— delivering on climate, delivering on sustainable development goals and delivering for communities. We think it is really important that the opportunity is not missed, not only to help inform the public and everybody else who needs to know what the purpose of planning is but to provide that north star, that guiding star, as to the why. Why are we doing this? What purpose does it have?

Thank you for your question. We are absolutely clear that having a public purpose of planning is really important for this legislation, and we will continue to make that case.

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

Q I have two quick questions: one on planning decisions for Victoria and one on development corporations for Hugh. Victoria, you will know that at the moment individual local planning authorities have schemes of delegation. It would be great to get your take on how effective they are. What variation do we see out there? What principles should inform the national scheme of delegation that we intend to introduce via the Bill?

Hugh—the Bill provides a clearer, more flexible and more robust framework for the operation of development corporations. You know that it is clearly our view that they have to do a lot of work in the coming years to drive the kind of delivery we need and the types of development we want to see come forward. What is your assessment of how effective those development corporation powers are to support development and regeneration?

Victoria Hills: One thing we know about from our members, but also from those people who are actually in the business of building things—of course, that is really what is important if you want to see some growth coming—is consistency. You asked about the variation. Some councils have fantastic schemes of delegation and it is very clear what is and is not going to committee, but other councils have a slightly more grey scheme of delegation—let’s call it that—whereby things can pop up in committee on the basis of an individual issue or individual councillor.

The opportunity afforded to us by the Bill is for some consistency through a national scheme of delegation. We have in place some very robust processes that look at the business of development, through the local plan process. It goes to not one but two public inquiries, through the Government’s inspectorate, and then back to the community. What we recognise is that if you have had some very robust considerations of the principles of development and you have good development prescribed by, for example, a design code that says, “This is what good development looks like here”—so we have worked out what we want, where it is going and what it looks like—it is perfectly possible that suitably qualified chief planning officers can work out whether something is in conformity with a plan. We therefore welcome the opportunity to clarify that through a national scheme of delegation.

This is not to take away anybody’s democratic mandate to have their say. Of course, there are all sorts of opportunities to have that say in the local plan process, but if we are to move to a national scheme of delegation, we would want a statutory chief planning officer who has that statutory wraparound and has the appropriate level of competency and gravitas to be able to drive forward that change, because it will be a change for some authorities. For some, it will not be a change at all, but taking forward that innovation via a national scheme of delegation will require that statutory post, so that those decisions cannot be challenged, because they will be made in a professionally competent way.

Hugh Ellis: I think development corporations are essential if we are going to achieve this mission. You would expect the TCPA to say that, because we are inheritors of the new towns programme. The interesting thing about them is that, for the first time, they bolt together strategy and delivery. The existing town and country planning system is often blamed for not delivering homes, but it has no power to build them.

The development corporation solves that problem by creating a delivery arm that can effectively deliver homes, as we saw with the new towns programme, which housed 2.8 million people in 32 places in less than 20 years of designation, and it also paid for itself—it is an extraordinary model. The measures in the Bill to modernise overall duties on development corporations are really welcome. I assume you do not want me to talk about compulsory purchase orders right now, but hope value and CPOs are critical accompanying ideas in the reform package that go with that. In the long run, I think that they will become critical.

Obviously, the new towns taskforce has to decide what it wants on policy. The challenge that we face with them is legitimacy, and there is still work to do in making sure that there is a Rolls-Royce process of getting public consent for this new generation of places. However, the outcome is such an opportunity to generate places that genuinely enhance people’s health, deal with the climate crisis and provide high levels of affordability. What a contrast that is with what we have delivered through town and country planning at local plan level, which is a lot of the bolt-on, car-dependent development. Frankly, as a planner, I find that shameful. The opportunity with development corporations is there and I hope that the Government seize it.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Q Clause 46 is about delegating decisions away from elected councillors, which is something that the Liberal Democrats oppose. This is directed to Dr Hugh Ellis, but the others may wish to jump in. I am a planner, you are a planner; perhaps all these decisions should be taken by planners. Would you like to respond?

Hugh Ellis: I will be honest: as a planner, I am really worried about it. The one difficult thing is that you cannot build without consent, and I think governance in planning is really important. Environmental governance in general is important. I am sceptical about the degree to which this is a really big problem. I can see evidence coming through to suggest that delegation rates for normal applications that you can decide locally are very high already.

I made this point earlier on, but what worries me more than anything else is that if you sideline the opportunity that the public currently have to be represented at committee, the appearance—if not the intent—is that you are excluding people. In periods of change, you have to lean into consultation, participation and democratic accountability. You must accept that while it is not a veto, because you as parliamentarians may wish to decide that the development proceeds, it is either democracy or it is not.

For us, the idea of democratic planning is so central, and it was so important in 1947. That Government had a choice: it had proposed a Land Board, which could have made all the planning decisions centrally, but it gave those decisions to local government on the basis that people locally understand decision making best. My own experience is that people are a solution, not a problem. Wherever I go, I find people who know detail about development and can improve it, particularly on flood risk, and they want to contribute.

I do not accept that there is an anti-development lobby everywhere, and there certainly is not in my community. Instead, there are people concerned about quality, affordability and service provision, and their voice should be heard. The Bill could create the impression, even if it is not the intent, that there is a non-respectful conversation going on. Finally, as a planner, I would never want to be in the firing line for taking a decision on a major housing scheme that is ultimately a matter of politics, and should always be so.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds]

Q I would like to ask you both about the interaction between green-belt and farming areas. In a constituency such as mine, which is on the edge of London, as well as a lot of edge-of-city constituencies, there is land that is both in the green belt and farmland. That has significant implications for the landowner because the hope value is significantly higher than farmland might be elsewhere, but it also needs additional protection because it is ancillary to the existence of the city. It sometimes provides a source of food and leisure, as well as the environmental benefits of it being a green space.

I am interested in your view on whether the Bill sufficiently addresses the balance between green belt and agricultural use. What improvements would you want to see on compulsory purchase processes to ensure that landowners in those locations have appropriate recourse? Also, where it is clear that the land in question provides a broader public benefit, as opposed to simply being a business standing on its own, how can we ensure that the broader public benefit can be accounted for in the reckoning up of the value of that land?

Rachel Hallos: It is almost like having ransom strips next to urban conurbations. That green belt gets sucked into that urban conurbation and, all of a sudden, it becomes a brown belt—I think “grey belt” was also considered at one stage. The reality is, when you are in that situation—I can completely understand, although some of my members would not; that is the leadership role that we have to take—that that land is of national benefit through development. That is because it increases the size of the town, the infrastructure—the whole thing. On what the Bill needs to do, again it goes back to doing the number crunching. What is the long-term benefit of this?

We also have to remember that when we compulsorily purchase land from a farmer who is running their business and living there, they have every right to make a decision to restart their business elsewhere. What if the land value goes up and they are being paid just the flat agricultural rate? Everybody wants that land, because guess what? Everybody wants land right now. Everybody wants land for everything, so land prices are creeping up anyway. There is then artificial inflation of the land price in that area because everybody is after it.

That bit also needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to recompensing anybody who has land taken away from them. It is a complicated formula, but the Bill really does need to look at that if we are to go anywhere near rebuilding confidence and trust between the agricultural community and Government. Especially if we put it in the package of everything else that is going on, we are very much in danger of having it go “bang” again. This has to stop. We all have to get on with life. We all have to get on with what we do—produce food, infrastructure or growth for the country.

Paul Miner: Green belt is a planning policy, but as you have rightly pointed out, green-belt land often has a wide range of public benefits and meanings for people who live in the towns and cities that the green belts surround. We strongly support the Bill’s provision for spatial development strategies, because you need effective strategic planning in order for green-belt policy to work effectively.

Also, from our perspective, we should not just be looking at how the planning policy should work. If we accept that the vast majority of green-belt land will not become grey belt in the future but will remain designated green belts, we need to think about how we can better manage that land. That is why it is really important that in spatial development strategies and in the Government’s land use framework, we have policies for improving the management of green-belt land. Until now, green-belt land has been relatively poorly served by successive Governments’ environmental land management schemes. There is relatively low take-up in green-belt areas. We urge the Government, as part of the land use framework but also with spatial development strategies, to seek to improve the quality of green belts for nature and for climate.

Rachel Hallos: May I add one last thing to that? Sorry to be rude. When it comes to the spatial development strategies, LNRSs and all the different things that are going on and are being consulted on at the moment, there is no legal requirement to consult the land manager. That worries me. It is just wrong.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Rachel, may I press you on CPOs, because you have raised some very stark and serious concerns? Could you outline for the Committee what you understand the CPO reforms in the Bill to do? Specifically, could I ask whether you accept that we are, through the Bill, not changing the core principles of compulsory purchase and that, when it comes to removing hope value by directions, the Bill will merely extend an existing power, introduced by the previous Government, to town and parish councils? What is the great fear about what we are doing on CPOs through this legislation?

Rachel Hallos: It is bigger than just this Bill on CPOs. There is a mistrust. There is a concern that people are not taking food production or agriculture seriously. This is what it is encapsulated in, but the CPO element for me is that people have felt the pain of badly delivered CPOs, through High Speed 2 in particular; other things have gone on in this country. That has lingered really heavily, so when you start mentioning compulsory purchase to any land manager or landowner, it sends shivers down their spine.

We are concerned that disregarding a hope value puts landowners and farmers in that tailspin again, so where do we go from here? How do we deal with this? We have found that especially with our members and HS2—I will keep referring to HS2 because it has been an absolute nightmare, and it is still a nightmare. They are still waiting for the final, agreed payment in many cases, so that they can start getting on with their life. That is the concern when it comes to the hope value.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q If I have understood you correctly, there is a general dislike of CPO, and a general objection to the powers introduced by the previous Government’s Bill, but nothing very specific about what is in this legislation.

Rachel Hallos: It is the fact that there is potential they will not get paid the true value of that land or that farm—that is the concern.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q In some cases, they will get paid an astronomical value.

Rachel Hallos: Ultimately, it is a person’s life and livelihood. They are going to get paid only the basic agricultural value, out of no fault of their own, and they have to start up elsewhere. This is not going to happen just once or twice; if we follow the huge infrastructure plans that we all know the country needs—we accept as a union that we need to grow—this will inflate land prices elsewhere, as people choose to continue their livelihoods elsewhere and go looking for that land. That is the difference.

[Matthew Pennycook]

That is very useful. Thank you.

[Paul Holmes]

I will come back again, although I know you are under the cosh at the moment.

Rachel Hallos: It’s fine; that is why I am here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes]

Yes.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Nationally significant infrastructure projects, which I do not think you have chosen to talk about.

Councillor Hug: No—they are coming through very quickly. From a local authority perspective, I think the point is making sure that, if they are not formal consultees, there is some other mechanism for local authorities and others to feed into the process in a structured way to make sure that their voices are heard, even if formal statutory consultees are being reformed.

[Paul Holmes]

We are removing statutory consultees.

Councillor Hug: There is significant concern about that removal. That process is how you identify some of the specific issues on the ground that need significant further investigation. I do not think you will save any time by removing that, because the investigation will turn up at the planning stage. You will just delay planning, because these will be areas around statutory consultees. What it will do is give the public the impression that things are just being rubber stamped and railroaded through. That will be catastrophic. NSIPs are such contested spaces already. We have to give people the chance to raise concerns to identify issues on the ground at local level that need further work and further attention. If we do not do that, people will lose all faith in that process, and they are already sceptical enough.

Councillor Clewer: I have the same concerns. NSIPs are decided by the Secretary of State. I have five in my district at the moment, including battery farms, solar farms and a reservoir. It is not about objection—consultation can bring forth some really good ideas, some solutions and some changes. It is massively important. For instance, even if there will be an impact on your community, the community benefit could be discussed right at the start. All sorts of improvements could be put in place through consultation before it gets to the formal stage. It is also about the appearance of removing that consultation. At a time when LGR devolution is meant to be bringing decentralisation, to just say that this is all going to be decided centrally is not a good picture.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Could I ask you about the reforms in the Bill relating to planning decisions, and specifically our intention to take powers to introduce a national scheme of delegation? How do you think that could be best designed? What are the types of applications that you think should always be taken by planning committees, and which types of applications could be appropriately delegated to expert planning officers?

Councillor Wright: For a start, the vast majority of planning permissions or planning applications are already decided by officers anyway in many councils—something like 97% in my authority were decided—so what exactly do you think we are now going to pass when under more pressure?

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q We heard earlier from the RTPI about the variation in the quality and effectiveness of schemes of delegation at a local level.

Councillor Wright: With regard to a national scheme, if it was advisory not mandatory—if there was some general advice out there that could be given as guidance —that would be better than mandating. What could be mandated for one area, when you look at super-urban areas compared with rural areas, might not be exactly the same sort of decision making that you are looking for.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q The Bill will mandate it, so I am asking you what you think is the most effective design for the national scheme of delegation that we intend to introduce. It is perfectly fine if you do not want it, but I am trying to get to that, given that we are intending to introduce it.

Councillor Hug: I think there should be a common core. I am not quite sure how the mayoralties and others will feed into responding to particular issues around the urban and rural geographies. I think there should be a basic common core to this. Looking at how it might operate, again, I am coming from an authority that has only 3% going to committees—all told, it is about 1.4%, if you include all the advertising and listed building concerns that get through. A very small amount go through, so there is a lot of good practice happening already.

In terms of how that works, one of the things that we want to ensure that we do not lose is the ability, for example if a scheme is likely to be rejected by officers, to put that to a committee that might come to a more pragmatic decision than just a rigid response based on policy. There are some other things, such as we want to ensure that there are opportunities for councils to go beyond the scheme of delegations; if there was a nationally set thing, you want to make sure that it is not just a cap on what is delegated.

I think that some flexibility around urban and rural, and working with local authorities about the design of the specific scheme, would be good. It is clear that they will want as much guidance as possible about the types of things that the Government are wanting to see happen. Obviously, from our perspective we understand the point about the centrality of getting the local plans and making them as robust as possible to give people clarity about what goes on in future.

The challenge comes when quite a lot of schemes come forward that are not in full compliance with policy, because the real world is messy and things have to be traded off against each other. The question is basically to what extent can those trade-offs be dealt with at office level versus at committee. That is why we want to get into the details of that with you, to make it work effectively.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q I should say that we are formally consulting about this matter alongside the Bill, but it is useful to draw out what you think in design terms.

Councillor Clewer: I have a couple of points to add. There are elements in what you are proposing that I would welcome. On mandatory training, goodness knows why we do not have that already—it is desperately needed. I am not sure that Richard would entirely agree, but when it comes to local plan allocated sites, I struggle with the idea that they could come to committee to then be refused. I think there is a benefit in committees or someone looking at elements of design and whether 106s are being carried out appropriately, but once something has gone through a local plan, I think we have to be careful about where committees step in.

To give an example of where I think you have to be incredibly careful with this, I took a planning application to committee last week for a listed building where someone wanted to cut and raise a beam by 10 inches. They had had a stroke, and they were in a position where they were literally having to live in a conservatory. Officers had said no. I got that application to a committee so that the beam could be raised to allow a stairlift to go in—when the person leaves the beam could be lowered—and the committee almost unanimously approved it.

We had the ability at an incredibly basic level to give someone the dignity of being able to get to their bathroom through a planning system where the harm was conceived by everyone as minimal. We cannot lose that ability to resolve those local and micro issues in a really local way. Finding the balance there is going to be challenging. Too much permitted development, too many automatics, will prevent us from being able to do that. I am sure we could all give further examples of where we have needed to use that ability to deal with things, very often with refusals, to enable them to be granted.

On the flipside, sometimes it is fair to say that members will get something that is recommended for approval and call to committee because they do not like it. I think we have to be able to justify on good planning grounds why on earth we are calling something to committee. If we do not have them I have no problem with officers turning round and saying, “I am sorry; you haven’t got planning grounds,” but it is about finding the right balance.

Councillor Wright: With regard to local plans and to what Richard has just referred to there, we have already instigated that in our authority you have to give planning reasons for bringing something to the planning committee. You might consider that you could just delegate a decision on a local plan allocated piece of land, but some of those could be of considerable size; they could be for a sustainable urban extension, for instance, so you cannot just act on the principle that because it is in the plan it does not need to be at committee.

We are makers of place: we build homes, not houses. We do not want to see officers suddenly having to make a delegated decision on how many houses go on a piece of land based on how the developer wants to bring it forward. The master planning, the design coding and all those issues need to be taken into consideration. It should not be left to officers who will end up getting the same grief that members get, but as unelected officers.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q If I have understood you, I do not think we are suggesting that. We want the most important, most significant major applications to come to committee. Given the examples we have given before, should every reserved matters application come before a committee?

Councillor Clewer: No.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Should every small site application come before a committee?

Councillor Hug: No. We had a thing where someone in a public report was saying we had only built x number of houses, but the reality was that far more homes had gone through under delegated authority than had actually gone to committee, so we were being wronged by the fact we had done that process.

Councillor Clewer: But there may be some specific circumstance that creates a nuanced judgment where it absolutely should go to committee. And please do not just talk about the big projects; it is those small ones that are deeply personal to people where national policy says no, but circumstance actually says that you can get round national policy.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I take the point about the nuance. That is helpful—thank you.

[Gideon Amos]

Q As a former councillor whose wife is a current councillor, I know the struggles and challenges. You have made a powerful case about the importance of councillors and the public acceptance of the decisions that you are talking about, and you have highlighted approvals where the recommendation has been refusal. As Liberal Democrats we oppose the clause completely, but if the Government insist on it, would you want to see in the Bill some qualification of the power of central Government to write your delegation agreements to your officers, because at the moment the regulations that could be laid are completely unqualified?

Councillor Hug: As the Minister pointed out, the consultation is going on in parallel with the Bill. Hopefully we can make this national scheme of delegation work, provided that there is a degree of flexibility built into it. I hope that working between local government and national Government can help to resolve some of those issues at pace. Obviously some things may need to be specified, but we are hopeful that that kind of engagement can help to resolve some of the issues.

Councillor Clewer: If in the scheme of delegation we see guidelines around how a scheme of delegation should work, I am not sure that that would concern me hugely. If they are prescriptive rather than guidelines, we will fall into the problem that you will create cases where you need to get round them but you cannot.

This is a simplistic example—I will get into trouble now with the New Forest national park authority—but we allow parish councils there to call things into committee. I think that that is crazy. It ends up with all sorts of things coming to committee that should never go near them. I would love a delegation that said that they cannot do that, on a personal level. There are elements where I think Government guidance would be really helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes]

Q Thank you, Catherine. The Minister and I have regularly been on Committees in the House where we—the Conservative party—agree with the Government’s proposals over planning fees. We have been on many Committees together where we have not contested those. Could you elaborate on how helpful you think the Government’s proposals on ring-fencing and planning fees are, how prescriptive you find them and whether they could be improved?

Could you also outline how you think the proposal could help the speediness of planning applications, but also have a greater impact on local government’s workforce challenges in recruiting and holding on to planning experts? Do you think the legislation will allow local authorities to have enough funding to keep town planners in local authority town halls and not going off to private companies?

Catherine Howard: The way the legislation is drafted, it looks to me like it is highly prescriptive and will be very effective at ringfencing. It talks about the need to secure that the income from the fees or charges is applied towards the carrying out of the functions that are listed. Those are functions such as dealing with planning applications, certificates of lawfulness, tree applications and listed buildings. There are things it does not deal with—that is presumably deliberate—such as general enforcement and plan making. It seems to me that, the way it is drafted, you could not use the money from all of those developer application fees and just apply it to plan making and those kind of functions. If that is the intention, that is what it appears to achieve.

Regarding recruitment, I know that fee recovery has been put into law in a number of different planning regimes. I am more of a specialist in the national infrastructure regime, where those provisions have been added quite liberally. It will be interesting to see how effective a pay-as-you-go system is. My concern still, in terms of how effective that will be at recruitment and retention, is that I do not know how much flexibility statutory authorities will have to set public pay scales. I would have thought—I am not an expert in this area—that if you want to attract and keep people who are otherwise tempted to go off to the private sector where pay seems to be higher, particularly with supply and demand the way that it is, you will need to make the applicable pay scales higher.

I am not sure that the fees that are attracted by a developer can just be used to give people bonuses or higher salaries within the private sector. That is my concern. If the fees can somehow be used to recruit and retain more people within planning authorities, that must be a good thing. It seems to me that there has been more of a drain of talent out of the local authorities and all of the public sector authorities and regulators post Covid in particular, now that people can work from home. Some of the benefits of working with slightly more flexibility, which the public sector was always better at than the private sector, have slightly gone. I imagine there is more of an inducement for people to move across if they are being offered more money, so I recognise the problem.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Thank you, Catherine, for giving up your time this afternoon. I have two questions on the NSIP regime and development consent orders, which is your specialism. First, you will have seen that the Government tabled a series of amendments yesterday to remove the statutory requirement to consult as part of the pre-application stage. Could you give us your sense of the impact you think that will have on the speed of the consenting process overall? What do you broadly expect applicants to do now that those requirements have been removed, but new statutory guidance will be introduced setting out what we expect? Is it a mature enough system now that we can expect most applicants to still consult and engage meaningfully, and what are the incentives at play there to ensure that they will?

Secondly, on the broad ambition to provide for a faster and more certain consenting NSIP process, do you think there is anything that we are missing here that we should still look at?

Catherine Howard: I hugely welcome the change that was made yesterday, in terms of speeding up and cutting out unnecessary bureaucracy that helped no one, except for helping professionals like me to spend more time and gain more fees out of our clients. There is, as we just talked about, a lack of enough professionals in the whole industry to staff the system. The Government’s ambition is to triple the rate of DCO consenting to get 150 DCOs through in this Parliament. We cannot magic up more comms consultants, lawyers, environmental impact assessment consultants and planning consultants in that period, so we desperately need a way to apply those professionals most efficiently in a really focused way across all the projects we need.

I have seen it in my career, having consented a number of projects since 2008, when the regime came in. Without the law changing at all, custom and practice has built up gold plating and precedent to slow the system down hugely. That is particularly true for the pre-app process, which I think the Government’s stats say has gone from an average of 14 months in 2008 to 27 months a few years ago—I suspect it is even longer now. I have seen more and more rounds of consultation on small changes. I have seen developers not putting through other changes that would be really beneficial and that communities or statutory consultees want, because they would have to have a three, four or six-month delay to do more consultation on the change.

I think the cart is before the horse. It has become a very clunky and bureaucratic legalistic process, rather than what planning should be and is in all other regimes—town and country planning, and even hybrid bills—where you have more latitude to change your mind, do some lighter-touch consultation if appropriate and do some focused consultation with the key statutory consultees on the key issues, rather than producing these huge preliminary environmental information reports, which are incredibly daunting and time-consuming for everyone to read. The public sector, local authorities, regulators and the public are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information that is put out there, which is ultimately just a form of legal box-ticking without the laser focus that you really need on key issues, so I hugely welcome the change.

I was with an international investor yesterday who is interested in investing in a big portfolio of solar projects in the UK that have not yet been consented, and I was asked to explain the regime. The pre-app is always something I feel I have to apologise for and explain, and give the best story about how quick it might be, but it was great yesterday. They really welcome this change. I can see it being highly beneficial for investors who can shop around Europe and elsewhere, in terms of bringing development here.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Is there anything we are missing, broadly on speeding up and making more certain the NSIP process?

Catherine Howard: Perhaps some guidance to the Planning Inspectorate about how to run the examinations with slightly more focus than we have seen. There has been a drift towards more questions and more rabbit holes, and we do not have time for this or enough professionals in the industry. That does not seem to benefit the consenting system, which has also slowed down, become a bit less focused and become more bureaucratic. I would welcome anything that we can do to encourage the examination process to be more focused—possibly shorter, but certainly less labour-intensive, unless there is a purpose to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Holmes]

Q Fine. One very quick question; I am afraid it is to you again, Mr Benwell. I apologise to the other witnesses; it is no reflection at all on your character or expertise. I hope you do not think I am being cheeky by asking this, but a lot of today’s questions from myself, my colleagues and Liberal Democrat colleagues on the Committee have been about the resourcing and the ability of Natural England to undertake the responsibilities that the Secretary of State is proposing.

Given your previous role within the Department, working with a Secretary of State, and given your expertise from your current role, do you think that in its current guise Natural England is capable of undertaking the responsibilities outlined in the legislation? Are you worried about the resourcing of that organisation going forward, considering that it will have quite new, detailed and complicated responsibilities?

Richard Benwell: There is no doubt that Natural England will need a significant uplift in resourcing to enable it to do this job properly. Natural England was subject to some pretty serious cuts over the last decade, and the last settlement was not very positive for Natural England either, with more job losses coming. When you look into the statistics of Natural England’s funding, some of the increases in recent years have been on capital fund rather than day-to-day spend on the kind of experts we need to do this work out on the ground. Part of the problem sometimes, with the risk aversion surrounding the current incarnation of the habitats regulations, is the lack of expertise from advisers, to give it the confidence to go out and suggest where strategic solutions can happen and to implement the law well.

Natural England will definitely need a boost. It is worth noting that it is not even able to fulfil all its current duties to the standard that we would expect. Only half of sites of special scientific interest have been visited in something like the last decade, and Natural England is already having to focus its work on statutory advice for planning applications. It will need more of that expertise, but we have confidence in the organisation and its leadership. We hope that the Government will properly resource Natural England and other agencies to help to make this work if it goes ahead, as amended.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q Thank you all for coming to give evidence. This is a question for Richard, but I am sure the other two witnesses have views, assuming that you share some of the concerns that have just been outlined.

Richard, you will know that we do not accept that development has to come at the expense of nature. We are very much targeting a win-win solution when it comes to development and the environment. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I have had a huge amount of engagement with you and others in the sector to try to develop a solution that achieves that. I therefore want to drill into some of the concerns you have outlined, in two ways.

First, on the introduction, you welcomed the

“legal guarantee that the Nature Restoration Fund must not only compensate for damage but actually benefit protected wildlife.”

But the claim today is that the Bill leaves us open to regression. Could you elaborate on how those two square together?

Secondly, you have just said that you have confidence in Natural England and its leadership. Marian Spain, the chief executive officer, gave evidence earlier today. She said that the Bill effectively maintains the mitigation hierarchy, but you have just said that the Bill undermines the mitigation hierarchy. Can you clarify why you have a difference of opinion with Marian on that particular issue?

Richard Benwell: Of course. On the first question, we were grateful for engagement ahead of the Bill’s publication, and we were really pleased to hear your aspirations to achieve a win-win. The question is whether the overall improvement test in clause 55(4) does what it is meant to do.

The legal drafting suggests that a Secretary of State can agree an environmental delivery plan only if he is satisfied that the benefits for a protected feature “are likely” to outweigh the harm to that protected feature. That comes some way short of the high bar of legal certainty that is expected in the current habitats regulations.

If you dig further into the Bill, you find that once an environmental delivery plan is in place, if there is evidence that it is not meeting the standards expected, it is up to the Secretary of State whether to withdraw the EDP and then only to take measures that he considers appropriate to remediate for any shortfall in environmental benefits that are supposed to be derived from the measures in the Bill.

Both of those points leave far more leeway for a Secretary of State to undercut nature restoration compared with the current situation, especially when it can happen up to 10 years after the initial harm to nature. We have all heard of circumstances where promised offsets for supposed harm to nature never materialise or die a couple of years down the line.

We think this can be fixed. We think that if you were to strengthen that requirement so that it matches the kind of legal certainty that we see in the habitats regulations, you would be in a much better position. On the positive side of the scale, if that promise to outweigh harm were a more substantive requirement to go beyond just about offsetting into real nature restoration, you start to get to the territory where this really could be a win-win.

We know you will be advised by Government lawyers to minimise risk. That is what always happens, which is why Governments like to have these subjective tests. But as it stands, the level of certainty of environmental benefit that is required of an EDP up front, and that is then required of proof of delivery along the way, is less than under the current law.

[Matthew Pennycook]

That is a very clear elaboration. On the Natural England point—on the mitigation hierarchy?

Richard Benwell: As it stands, before a development that would have adverse effects on a protected site can go ahead, it is necessary, first, to try to avoid those harms, then to reduce those harms and only then, once all those steps have been gone through, if a project is of overriding public interest, can it go ahead with compensation in place. The Bill essentially short-circuits that process.

In clause 50, there is a provision that makes it explicit that the compensatory measures set out in an EDP do not need to apply to the particular features and the particular site that is affected by a development. Once a developer has paid their levy, they can essentially disregard the provisions that are in the habitats regulations at the moment, and go straight to development. Of course, that is something we could also fix in the Bill by requiring Natural England to have confidence that development applications have sought to avoid harm before they go ahead. I think there would still be substantial and material benefits for developers from the simplicity of the process and their legal confidence, even if that requirement to avoid harm were put back in.

We know there would need to be flexibility, such as on the phasing of benefits versus time, but you could still have this important principle that you should not go straight to squishing the ancient woodland, or make it easy to splat the species. You need to make sure that you try to avoid that harm first, before the development goes ahead.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q I want to be really clear, because this is important, given what we are asking Natural England to do. Without causing any tension between you and Marian Spain, do you disagree that, as she put it, “the Bill effectively maintains the mitigation hierarchy”?

Richard Benwell: Yes, certainly at the project level. There is more of a requirement for Natural England to consider some of those circumstances at the EDP level. When it comes to specific projects, where it is all-important for the particular site or species, we think it is short-circuited. We will check in with Marian on that afterwards.

[The Chair]

We can possibly get two more colleagues in, so let’s be succinct with our questions and answers.