Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Report (3rd Day)

15:35

Scottish legislative consent granted, Welsh legislative consent sought. Relevant documents: 28th and 35th Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, before we start the first group, I remind the House, as I did last week, of important guidance on Report, which will, I hope, help proceedings run smoothly.

First, I note paragraph 4.23 of the Companion, which states:

“Debate must be relevant to the Question before the House”.


While debates on the Bill have been important and no doubt interesting, a number of earlier contributions strayed into wider topics not directly relevant to the amendments in the group being debated. I urge all colleagues to follow this guidance so that we can maintain effective scrutiny, while allowing us to make good progress in good time.

Secondly, I remind noble Lords of the Companion guidance in paragraph 8.82:

“Members … pressing or withdrawing an amendment should normally be brief and need not respond to all the points made during the debate, nor revisit points made when moving”


or pressing an amendment. Speeches appear to be getting longer, and if noble Lords were to follow this guidance closely, we would be able to get on in a more timely manner.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, can I clarify that 67 government amendments, I think, came in very late to the Bill? They have therefore not had a Committee stage. I hope he and the Minister will accept that some of those will need Committee, as well as Report, discussions.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

It is Report and all I would say is that, as long as the debate is relevant, we have no problem with that.

Amendment 84

Moved by

[Lord Inglewood]

84: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Gardens Trust to be statutory consultee for planning proposals(1) The Gardens Trust must be considered for planning proposals as a statutory amenity society.(2) All procedures which apply to statutory amenity societies as planning proposal consultees shall apply to the Gardens Trust.(3) Powers conferred to the Secretary of State by the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 may not be exercised to remove the Gardens Trust as a statutory consultee in regard to any planning application.”

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, in rising to move Amendment 84, I ought first to declare my interest. Most unusually, it has been my lot in life to have lived in a listed building, in the midst of a listed park, for all of it. I am also president of Historic Buildings & Places, which used to be known as the Ancient Monuments Society, and a member of the Gardens Trust. Just to give more context to my comments, I am a member of the Bar, a chartered surveyor, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. I point out to Members that, according to many authorities, landscape is probably England’s greatest contribution to 18th-century European culture.

Your Lordships will recall considerable discussion in Committee about the education of planners. This is important because, in addition to what might be described as the core disciplines, there is a huge range of what you could say are very important and perhaps slightly esoteric, more peripheral matters which cannot really be considered part of the core knowledge or syllabus. I am thinking, for example, about listed buildings—we all know there is a crisis in the number of conservation officers in this country—and about manmade planned landscapes, battlefields, theatres, and so on.

The required expertise to deal properly with these things is not widely, easily and quickly available, either necessarily in local authorities or in other public bodies. We know that it is for this reason that a process of consultation with outside expert, specialised and respected organisations is embedded in the system to give access to often specialist, but very relevant, skill and knowledge.

The detailed system for doing this is not identical in each case, but that is not relevant to my argument. For my part, I am especially interested in—among other things in the context of this debate—the work of the Gardens Trust, previously the Garden History Society. Its focus is on manmade planned landscape, which includes public parks, but also the British versions of Versailles and, in a different direction, outstanding domestic gardens. These things can be quite extensive and are a crucial aspect of place, which is now becoming recognised as an important contributor to our general well-being and economic prosperity—something I became very aware of when I was a member of the Northern Powerhouse 11 for six years.

This is a specialist, discrete academic discipline, and the Gardens Trust is at its centre in this country. Many of the places it is concerned with are very fragile. After all, plants die and are easily lost. For example, if any of your Lordships wanted to go to look at Eastbury Park in Dorset—which was one of the great architect Vanbrugh’s most important commissions—they will find that when they get there and look over a farm gate, they will see a green field. It is all gone but it is still the site of it, and all the foundations and everything are there. As Thomas Browne, the 17th-century writer, aptly commented,

“green grass grows where Troy-town stood”.

I should add to what I said about my interest that my home has always been the focus of a listed park for over 300 years. However, due to abandonment and the planting of an epidemic of rhododendrons, supplemented by almost no family records because of disputes and problems with treason, almost all knowledge of everything has been lost. Despite inspections by English Heritage over the years and many other experts visiting the place, the knowledge of the place has more or less completely vanished.

Now, however, its full extent is becoming uncovered again, and it appears to be a large-scale, more or less intact, significant, albeit battered, very rare survival of a complete pre-Capability Brown park from about 1700-10. They are very rare, and it was completely lost. I mention this not to pat myself on the back or to tell noble Lords how perspicacious I may have been, but to make the point that important things do get easily lost and require genuine expertise to be identified and revived.

We all know that the theme of this legislation is growth—goodness knows, we urgently need it—and I support that. As part of this wider process, the Government have issued a consultation on the role of statutory consultees. Unhappily, that consultation appears to have been stained by the triumphalism of a notion of growth at all costs, everywhere, for anything, regardless of everything else—conveniently overlooking that in places such as Cumbria, where I come from, the environment is one of the most important aspects of promoting long-term growth, as I discovered when I chaired the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. If this is destroyed, the goose that lays the golden egg ends up as Christmas dinner. It has happened in many places all round the world, to nobody’s benefit.

The Minister has said on a number of occasions that the value placed on the “non-growth” aspects of the planning system is in no way diminished by the proposed procedural and process changes under way, which seem to be essential and of which, in very general terms, I am a strong supporter. On occasions, though, something else other than growth is more important than growth; otherwise, what is the point of the town and country planning system? The involvement of amenity societies harnesses a great deal of real expertise for more or less no money and takes pressure off some of our overworked and often underresourced public agencies that are having difficulty already in fulfilling their roles. Let us not argue about that point, because it is self-evidently the case now.

The purpose of the amendment is to focus on this general but very real problem in the context of the wider reforms being proposed, specifically in respect of the Gardens Trust, of which I said I am a member, and I know it and support it. I very much hope the Minister can confirm that the importance ascribed to what I might describe—I hope, without any disparagement—as some of the essential fringe disciplines in planning will not be eroded further.

15:45

I hope she can also confirm that the kind of political puff—aspects of which are hugely and vigorously disputed—which has accompanied some of the publicity surrounding the consultation process will not deflect from the proper value placed on the facts and principle-based assessments and inputs of these organisations, which are often provided by those who have retired from serious professional work in this sector and who have a very real knowledge, provided at almost no cost to the public purse at all. They add real expertise to the proper working of a land use and planning policy system in this country.

Finally, I appreciate that my amendment may contain all kinds of drafting and other shortcomings. I am relaxed about any possible criticism of that, but I firmly believe in the underlying argument as part of the core of what the Bill should be about. I very much hope the Minister can confirm this and give comfort to all the volunteers who are making such an important contribution in the wider public interest to the physical future of England and Wales. I beg to move.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak specifically to Amendment 84, to which I have added my name, although I support many of the amendments in this group.

We know how important public green spaces are to communities, and for nature, and that there is widespread public support for their protection. That is why, as I understand it, registered parks and gardens, along with battlefields, were given protection in the town and country planning order 2015. I thank the Gardens Trust for its briefings on this, and the Minister and her office for a helpful meeting and correspondence about it.

At the moment, as my noble friend Lord Inglewood has said, registered parks and gardens are not considered statutory heritage assets, which would make them part of the same process as listed buildings. Instead, they have their own process of consultation, with Historic England as the statutory consultee for battlefields and grade 1 and grade 2* parks and gardens, and the Gardens Trust dealing with grade 2 parks and gardens, which is 65% of them. Importantly, three-quarters of registered public parks are grade 2, so the Gardens Trust is tasked with looking after most of our public parks.

The Gardens Trust appears to do this very efficiently. From its statistics, we see that it was consulted 1,842 times last year, and that 99% of the time it responded within the agreed deadline. It voiced an objection to planning in only 6.6% of its responses. Its government grant for fulfilling this consultee role—for giving bespoke responses to planning inquiries, on time and with expertise—was £43,963.

Clearly, there is no way that anyone else within the planning system could deliver this expertise for less money and with any greater time efficiency, and there is no evidence that it is causing a major blockage to housebuilding. Actually, not having heard of the Gardens Trust before this matter arose, I thank the charity for its service to this country and its public parks.

I understand that the Government are considering removing the Gardens Trust’s statutory consultee role—the slightly bespoke role that was created for registered parks, gardens and battlefields. We all, however, appreciate the work that it does, so this amendment aims to protect this service while making the administrative process simpler. It would put registered parks and gardens into the same planning process as other heritage assets, where there is an existing and well-understood statutory consent process, whereby the Gardens Trust would be the amenity society that would be notified if there were planning proposals that might affect registered parks and gardens, or, importantly, their settings.

The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, has Amendment 109 coming up, which I believe would have a similar effect by commencing Section 102 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, in which this area of planning was already tidied up. That might be an alternative to this amendment. None the less, it would be very helpful if the Minister, in her response to this group, could indicate the Government’s intentions on making best use of the efficient role that the Gardens Trust plays in helping give advice on our much-loved grade 2 parks and gardens and their settings.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 107 in this group—I appreciate that I am jumping a little down the line.

I tabled the amendment because, at the moment, we are removing consultation from the planning process—or removing as much of it as possible—for the sake of efficiency. Sports fields are the most attractive things for a planner to see: a piece of reasonably flat and well-drained land. What better to put a house on? If we are to lose our sports fields, we will lose an asset that keeps on giving.

I thank both Ministers on the Front Bench for meeting me privately to try to convince me that I did not have much to worry about—but for all their courtesy and time, I have failed to be convinced. As I said, it is just so tempting for local authorities—or for anyone else involved—to say, “Let’s put a house on this sports field”. Some are, of course, owned by councils or schools, and schools can get rid of them as they have more independence now.

Can we protect sports fields? If we do not have somewhere to play a sport, that sport dies or becomes unavailable to a particular group. If some sports clubs own their own pitches, they may not own enough space to have a second or a third team. If you get rid of your second or third team, the first team is under threat and thus the existence of the entire club. It is that simple. There is that much pressure. If they do not get people involved every week, those people will do something else—they will leave—and we will lose this asset.

Community sport is one of the best community builders, because members are involved not just in exercise but in a community of its own that feeds into other communities. Let us remember that people who want to make sure that they can play the game will sit on committees and take on the legal responsibility of being a secretary or a treasurer for these groups. Everybody who has run a political party will know that people are just dying to do these roles all the time—are they not? Everybody really wants to have the legal responsibilities and the bank accounts—do they not? People do this willingly—well, they do it—to make sure they can get out there and play the game. These sports facilities allow that to happen. If we take away the defence of sports fields, which allow such a key activity, we will put that under threat.

Not every sports field will disappear overnight but some will—they will be moved and they will not be replaced. My amendment suggests that, if we go ahead with this, something must be put in its place. That is not too much to ask. I would like to vote on the amendment, unless the Government provide some great revelation, in which case I shall say, “Hallelujah!” and sit down.

In this country, these community activities are largely conducted without much government intervention. Private groups get involved and bring their own time and often money, but they need to be supported to allow these activities to take place. I suggest that my amendment—or at least something like it—would not be too much to ensure that something as important as community, grass-roots sports have their pitches defended, to give them a chance to continue to function as they currently do.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 88 in my name. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for their support in adding their names to the amendment.

The amendment very much builds on the amendment just discussed. It simply aims to ensure that spatial development strategies include provision for publicly accessible green and blue spaces for local communities. This would empower planning authorities at the strategic level to make accessible green and blue spaces routine rather than coincidental. Communities currently face a postcode lottery in being able to benefit from access to nature and sports fields. The reasons for access to nature and blue and green spaces in cities are well rehearsed. We know that they provide myriad social, economic and health upsides for people, as well as strengthening urban climate resilience and creating opportunities for wildlife.

In Committee, the Government made it clear that they recognise the importance of blue and green spaces, the benefits they bring and their intent to maximise them in cities, all of which is extremely welcome. However, in all responses in Committee, the Minister concluded that provisions in the National Planning Policy Framework and the yet-to-be-published national development planning policies are sufficient to provide green and blue spaces, therefore making a statutory footing unnecessary. But Peers made the point that it is not just about any green space; it is its accessibility to people that is critical. This is the point that is made in the Government’s own, really quite excellent accessible green space standard, published by Natural England in 2025. In this standard, Natural England—and the Government through it—made the point that it committed to providing access to good-quality blue and green spaces for every citizen within walking distance of their home.

The reality is, however, that without these strong provisions, developers often see the delivery and placement—and it is the placement I really want to emphasise here—of blue and green space as optional, with the voluntary provisions of the green infrastructure framework not leading to consistent delivery of quality spaces in the right places. In fact, Natural England’s own data shows that 87% of the UK population have no accessible local green space within 300 metres of their home.

In many cities, the emerging evidence indicates that the location of new green space provision is occurring, but it is making the inequalities in access to green space worse. Looking at the mapped evidence from the most populated English cities outside London—Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, for example—over the past four years, between 2020 and 2024, and using the most up-to-date land cover information, it is clear that significantly more areas of blue and green space have been created in rich parts of the cities. Up to 9% more have been created in categories 9 and 10 as measured by the index of multiple deprivation—the wealthiest parts—than in areas of high deprivation, categories 1 and 2. This is making already large inequalities in access to green space in these cities even greater. To put it bluntly, without a strategic steer in legislation, developers and local authorities are prioritising, intentionally or unintentionally, the delivery of green space in wealthier areas.

On such an important issue, we need to understand where the results from the Government’s own green infrastructure mapping database support the evidence and show us that the NPPF is actually working to protect and enhance access to green and blue spaces in the right places. I would therefore appreciate it if the Minister could write to me, having asked her team to query this database to examine the change in doorstep, local and neighbourhood standards for green space over the past five years for the most populated cities in the UK: London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. According to the answer, I will then decide whether to bring this back at Third Reading to test the opinion of the House.

I hope the Government agree that this amendment is pragmatically worded: it continues to allow flexibility for local authorities to do what is best for their area and their communities. This simple amendment would cost the Government nothing, but it would provide a clear mechanism to deliver a commitment for accessible green space, ensuring, not least, that the Government’s own priorities for access to green space can be met.

16:00

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 107 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I declare that I am chair of Sport Wales and president of the Local Government Association. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, talked about those who volunteer for sports clubs. It is a tough job, but people do it because they know the impact that it has on people’s lives. It is a very sensible amendment.

We have to accept that we are living in an inactivity crisis. The World Health Organization has said that a third of adults worldwide do not reach the necessary levels of physical activity. Slightly closer to home, the Sport England active survey from last year shows, specifically around young people, that while the levels of participation are stable, without significant and sustained action we are going to hit a much bigger physical activity crisis.

Currently, between 5% and 6% of children have difficulty with movement skills, which impacts their ability to engage in physical activity. About 80% of women in this country are not fit enough to be healthy, which should raise a number of red flags. Playing fields are just part of the jigsaw of physical inactivity and how we should try to tackle it. We have to do everything we can to protect what we have. We also have to understand that we are in a cost of living crisis. Some sport participation has got much harder to be involved in. For a lot of people, this is a really cheap and easy solution for them to be active. If the noble Lord decides to take this to a Division, I will support him.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 118. I am slightly at a loss, because I expected the Conservative Front Bench to do a blinding speech on Amendment 96, to which my amendment is more or less similar. Obviously, I think mine is better because I mention biodiversity, reuse and such things, but I suspect that my amendment, which I had hoped to put to a vote, probably would not beat the Conservative Amendment 96. Both amendments are supported by the Better Planning Coalition as an obvious step forward on improving what we have already.

While I am on my feet, I will just say that I refute the concept of a grey belt. A grey belt is green belt that has been left to rot, and we should be recovering that grey belt and making it green belt again. The green belt is absolutely necessary for our health, as other noble Lords have said.

We need to protect the well-being of land, ecosystems, people, towns and villages, and we really have to remember that this is something—including farmland—that we rely on for ourselves. I am hearing from farmers all over the country that they are losing good farming land. Given climate change, we could potentially face some huge challenges in feeding ourselves, and the loss of farmland will be a disaster. I think my Amendment 118 is a great amendment, but I am prepared not to put it to a vote if Amendment 96 is moved.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendments 95 and 98. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for her support for the protection of good agricultural land. Amendment 95 is a broader application of the principle that was debated and rejected by Government and Liberal Democrat Benches in this House last week. We on these Benches believe that food security is national security and, unlike for this Government, these are not empty words: we intend to put that into practice.

We remain concerned that the principle of protecting the best and most versatile land—grades 1, 2 and 3A—appears to be trampled at will, for not just solar farms under NSIP but other developments. We must do better. This land is responsible for supplying the lowest-cost, highest-quality food produced in our country and is far more productive than weaker grades of land. Building without due consideration on the land that we need to feed us is, frankly, short-sighted.

Amendment 98 asks the Government to report annually on how much of our land is being converted from agriculture to tarmac, steel, photovoltaic panels and concrete, and provides the basis for a more informed national debate on how we treat our productive land. I will not test the will of the House on these amendments. However, I would be most grateful to receive an assurance from the Minister that the Government take this issue as seriously as they should. This was not entirely clear from the response to the debate on solar farms and BMV last week.

I also support of the concept of Amendment 88, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. Well-planned development needs to take into consideration access to green and blue open space, but also how this space can contribute to nature connectivity.

[Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 121 is a vital step towards bringing clarity and scrutiny to the Government’s grey-belt policy. This amendment asks the Secretary of State to publish a clear framework for grey-belt designation within six months of Royal Assent and to lay it before both Houses. Its purpose is straightforward: to ensure that this policy is defined, transparent and subject to oversight. This concept has received remarkably little scrutiny or discussion during the passage of the Bill.

The concept of the grey belt has shifted since it was introduced in the Labour Party’s manifesto. It was first presented as previously developed land and disused car parks—which is largely brownfield land already. Since then, it has expanded in ways that raise serious concerns. Our party is not opposed to using grey-belt land sensibly, but we share the concerns of the Lords Built Environment Committee, which described the rollout as “rushed and incoherent” and unlikely to have

“any significant or lasting impact”

on planning or housing delivery, suggesting that the concept might be “largely redundant”. The current definition includes land in the green belt comprising previously developed land and/or any other land that does not strongly contribute to green-belt purposes.

The Local Government Association and many councillors, including in my home town of Solihull and my former constituency, Redditch, warn that this vague language contributes little and could invite subjective judgments and threaten green-belt protection in places such as Solihull and Redditch, with no other surrounding towns. The entire green belt could be vulnerable. Small housebuilders have warned that it will not help them, especially given under-resourced planning departments.

The risks are clear. Inconsistent criteria and monitoring could lead to uneven treatment and uncertainty. There is no plan to measure progress or success. In short, this policy has shifted without sufficient clarity or scrutiny. My amendment offers Parliament the chance to correct that, and I commend it to the House.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 88, to which I have added my name. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, for all her work on this, and the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for meeting us to talk about this amendment.

Without this amendment putting green and blue spaces on a statutory basis, this will be a planning Bill for the privileged. We have heard evidence from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, this afternoon as to why this might be. There is also further evidence discovered by Wildlife and Countryside Link, which conducted regression model analysis, using official ONS datasets, for first-time buyers by local authority area in 2023. It compared this with the ONS data on the number of adults in each authority who were first-time buyers. First-time buyers are the people who will need green and blue space the most; they will have young families. Wildlife and Countryside Link analysed and mapped the percentage rate for those first-time buyers with in-depth green-space data. It found a direct, statistically significant correlation between lack of green space and higher numbers of first-time buyers. In other words, the first-time buyers are going somewhere because it is cheap: it lacks green space, it lacks amenities, so of course, things are cheaper. That is exactly what this Bill should be resisting.

When we met, the Minister said that she did not like this amendment because it was too prescriptive. She is right that local development plans should decide what green and blue spaces there should be; I do not have a problem with that. However, if there is no statutory requirement for a network of easily accessible green spaces, there will be far fewer of those spaces. This amendment is absolutely in line with Defra’s stated aims, and it would contribute substantially to sustainable urban drainage delivery. It would not tie the hands of local or regional planning authorities; it just points them in the right direction and makes sure they head in that direction. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and his colleagues will bear in mind that swift bricks and other nature-friendly construction methods will not result in more swifts unless the network of green and blue spaces exists to provide food sources.

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 88 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and various other Peers. I also very much support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson about sports fields. I just wanted to make a few points that somehow often do not come up about green spaces.

In 2008, when I worked for the then Mayor of London, Mr Johnson, we started a project called Capital Growth. It was a simple and madly ambitious idea to create 2,012 new community vegetable gardens in London by the time of the Olympic Games. It was a steal entirely from Vancouver, which had done something similar, but we counted each garden as one garden, whereas they counted each plot as a garden, so I think we won. In four years, we created 2,500 gardens, and all of them are still there. Supporting the notion that a lot of these spaces do end up in much more wealthy areas, once communities were given the chance and a tiny bit of money, in fact, 78% of our gardens ended up in the most deprived areas of London, because that is what people wanted. Very many things happened that we did not anticipate. One was that all the local police came and said that the gardens had transformed the area.

To give an example, you would be in a place where there was a high-rise block and an area designed back in the 50s where mums could walk with their babies in the midday sun; but it would be full of needles and beer cans, and people would not go there. They would stay in their tower blocks because they were frightened to come down. However, you took over the space and created a garden, and then, people got pride and came down. It altered things dramatically, and we saw that over and over again. The police were pleased, the doctors were pleased, the community was pleased, and people started to take ownership of their public space.

We set up a system whereby we challenged every borough in London to create 60 spaces. They all rose to the challenge, but my point in supporting the noble Baroness’s amendment is that, if we do not make this happen, nobody has a chance. It is not something that should be the privilege of people with money; this should be accessible to all, not just because it is healthy and makes you eat better. We had wonderful groups selling to local restaurants; we were having barbecues; they were feeding kids. The knock-ons are amazing, so please do not think of it simply in terms of one single thing. The point about plants and gardens and gardening is that it spreads dramatically.

I have one final point before I sit down. I was reading an extraordinary book the other day about heat in urban areas. During the heat dome over the west coast of America, the researcher had measured the heat in the middle-class areas in Portland, Oregon, where there were lots of trees, and in the poorer areas, where there was just concrete. The difference was 20 degrees. So we must have these spaces as the world’s climate changes, because they really work a lot better than practically anything else.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 88 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, to which I have put my name. This is a time of huge opportunity. We are going to be building an unprecedented number of houses and creating 10 new towns, and the value that can be added to that effort by open green spaces and blue spaces, delivering some of the benefits that have already been spoken of around the Chamber, is tremendous. It really is an opportunity we must not miss.

It is true to say that, at the moment, deprived communities do not get as good a deal on this as richer communities, and work that the Woodland Trust has done on tree equity has shown that the poorer communities have far less access to open spaces with trees. These are vital for health, mental health, well-being and air quality; we heard about heat, natural flood risk management and the huge range of things that, apart from allowing people to have room to enjoy open spaces, are also going to be delivered by these open spaces.

16:15

I too thank Ministers for seeing us about this amendment. I can understand a reluctance to be prescriptive at strategic planning level, but that puts a huge burden on the National Planning Policy Framework and reliance on it. I came to the conclusion that the Minister, who was an exemplary leader of her local authority, kicked her local planning authority around the block until it did deliver exceptionally well on many issues, but there are local authorities that do not do that. We have got to be clear that this is a moment in time when we are going to be building all these houses, creating all these new urban settlements, and we really have to grip the issue and have a statutory requirement in the Bill.

I welcome that Defra is going to produce a policy on access, which will come after the publication of the next environmental improvement plan, but by that time the legislative opportunity will have passed, so I think we need really to put the requirement for green and blue space in the Bill.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 107 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Before speaking to it, I have just two brief comments. First, in declaring my interest as chairman of the British Olympic Association from 2005 through to the London Olympic Games in 2012 and being a member of the London Organising Committee for those Olympic and Paralympic Games, I have to say that what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, has said today is absolutely right. The work that she did at the time was exemplary and really important for the success of those Games, and the emphasis on environmental protection and the environmental work that went on in green spaces and the gardens were commendable. I hope that that is taken very much into consideration by the Minister when she comes to reply to that amendment.

I also want to offer the apologies of my noble friend Lady Sater who was two minutes late in arriving for this set of amendments and came from another important meeting. She is passionate about this subject, and has just whispered in my ear that she was strongly supportive of what the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said in her speech, as well as what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said in speaking to Amendment 107, and if he moves that to a vote I am sure she will be supporting him as strongly as I will.

In Committee—and here I take the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Wilson—we concentrated on a number of facts, which are not worthy of repetition because they were so well-made at the time. We looked at the importance of playing fields as crucial for children and young people, and we recognised that, once the playing field is lost to development, it is generally lost for ever. We also looked at the active communities that were supported by playing fields, which can reduce healthcare costs.

To my brief contributions there, I just want to add to the points that were made about Sport England a number of facts which were not before the Committee at that stage, which I hope are taken into consideration by the Minister in her response. The Bill before us threatens to weaken the statutory protection for playing fields by potentially removing Sport England’s role as a statutory consultee on planning applications affecting these spaces.

These changes would reduce independent oversight. Independent oversight is vitally important regarding these playing fields. The change would reduce independent oversight and advocacy for safeguarding playing fields, increasing the risk of their loss to development, especially in areas already underserved for sports provision. If removed, local authorities would not be required to consult Sport England when considering planning applications that affect playing fields, removing a critical safeguard that has protected over 1,000 playing fields in the past year alone. Statements from the chief executive of Sport England emphasise that removing this statutory role would leave a huge hole in the protection system, as Sport England’s involvement in planning has led to improved or safeguarded conditions in 90% of recent cases.

School playing fields are particularly vulnerable. Over half of UK playing fields are within school grounds. The Bill introduces more flexibility for local authorities to sell such land for capital generation. Concerns remain that weakening Sport England’s oversight could make these disposals more likely, and it is for that reason that I support Amendment 107.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 88 and congratulate noble Lords on all the excellent speeches we have heard so far in support of it. The provision of green space is terribly important when building homes. I am in despair to see so many developments of little houses packed tightly together with little or no garden space and no small green spaces in the public areas.

I urge the Minister to dig out the excellent 2020 report, commissioned by her department, Living With Beauty; Promoting Health, Well-being and Sustainable Growth, which inter alia made the point that communities were more likely to approve of new housing if it was of a beautiful design and harmonious with the local architecture. It was written by the urban design expert Nicholas Boys Smith, the founder and chairman of Create Streets. He was also chair of the advisory board of the Government’s Office for Place and is an academician of the Academy of Urbanism.

Chapter 10 is called “Neighbourhoods: create places not just houses” and says:

“the research is remarkably consistent. Most of us prefer places we can walk in, where there is greenery frequently present and where we find the streets and squares beautiful to look at and be in. We prefer places that do not cost the earth but can help us live in harmony with it”.

I urge the Minister to read and implement the report, especially Chapter 11, which is called “Nature: re-green our towns and cities”. I make no apologies for quoting the first few paragraphs of this chapter since it makes the point better and more succinctly than I can. It says:

“Sustainability and beauty are not in conflict. Rather they are in symbiosis. This is true at all three scales of building, place, and settlement and has been evident on our visits. It is also reflected in polling and well-being data. Much of the evidence we received … stressed this point.


‘There is a considerable body of evidence that shows green spaces in rural and urban areas are highly beneficial to health and well-being and also provide space for people to meet. The perception of beauty is an important factor for realising these benefits’.


Put simply, green is good for us, as Natural England argued in their evidence to us. The presence of greenery in the urban environment normally has a positive impact on our mental and our physical health. Street trees seem particularly important. They are associated with cleaner air, slower cars, fewer accidents. They provide shade in hot summers. And, perhaps astonishingly given the complexity of human life, street trees have a measurable effect on human health even taking into account income, age and education.


At all three scales, we therefore believe that it is necessary to ‘re-green’ our lives. It is important not to be naïve, however. Many essentially very poor development proposals attempt to cover up their shortcomings with some token tree planting. A strip of grass or a couple of trees cannot rescue a polluted, ugly and profoundly inhumane place”.


I agree entirely with those words. If we cannot rescue those places that are currently built, at least we should stop building new ones in the future. The London National Park City briefed me a few years ago that its research suggested that people would not walk more than about 250 metres to a park or a green space. Therefore, I say to the Minister, the answer is in these amendments—build the green space into the gardens in the streets and little parks or accessible green space in all housing developments. If people will not go to the parks and green spaces, bring the parks and green spaces to them.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, in speaking in support of Amendment 88 in the name of my noble friend Lady Willis of Summertown, I reiterate in particular the point she made in her introduction to the amendment that if, as we have heard on many occasions, the Government’s view is that this amendment is unnecessary because the matter is covered by the NPPF, please could they show us the workings? Can they demonstrate to us with firm data that the NPPF is indeed working to protect green space in our towns, cities and villages? If we do not have the data, how can we believe what the Government tell us?

We then tend to fall back on anecdotes. We have heard a number of anecdotes already this afternoon, and I will add my own. One of my penances in life is that I support Oxford United. I live in Oxford and, as one of my friends said, when you support Oxford United, you support them through thin and thin. Near the Kassam Stadium—which is in a more deprived part of Oxford, the Blackbird Leys estate—there used to be a very nice little green park. It was small, but it was a bit of greenery where children could run around and kick a ball. Just in the last year or so, that green space has been completely covered wall-to-wall with houses—they are packed in and there is no green space left. Anecdotes like that make us anxious. We do not see where green and blue space is being protected.

I hope that the Minister will respond to my noble friend Lady Willis’s request and, probably not at this moment but in writing, send us all the data that shows that the NPPF is delivering what the Government claim it delivers.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support by noble friend’s Amendment 96, which we will likely hear about in due course. This is really important for the harmonious development of communities and them working well for people. But if we are going to have that then we absolutely need Amendment 88 too. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has just pointed out, if we do not make a clear requirement for green space then it gets swallowed up.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak chiefly to Amendment 121E in my name. It has not been addressed yet, but it is very much a package with two amendments that have already been widely addressed: Amendment 107 on playing fields, from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 88 on blue and green spaces, from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis. These three amendments fit together.

My amendment, which is the same as the one that I tabled in Committee, seeks to ensure that planning authorities take all practicable steps to ensure a sufficiency of play opportunities for children. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, just said, we desperately need playing fields for organised sport and we need green and blue spaces, but somewhere to just kick a ball around is not necessarily a playing field and yet it is a crucial space for children to develop their physical skills—as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, spoke about—and social skills, by getting together to play.

I spoke quite extensively in Committee and I do not intend to repeat everything I said. I will pick up and take forward a couple of points that were raised then. I begin by apologising to the Minister, who made great efforts to reach out and have a meeting with me before Report. I am afraid his emails arrived just beforehand. I was in Ukraine, with limited communications, and it is entirely my fault that that meeting did not happen; I apologise for that. Those were the circumstances.

This is not really my amendment at all. In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, asked where it had come from and I said that it came from Play England. It is worth tracing through this a little. The 2024 manifesto from Play England was the first to call for play sufficiency legislation. In Committee, the Minister referred to the NPPF change that came in December 2024, but, as we have heard from multiple noble Lords, there is no evidence that it is working. Further, that is a policy, which could be changed, which is very different from having it written into law—which is much harder to change—that planning authorities must consider play sufficiency.

As I said in Committee, this was debated quite extensively by the standards of the other place, and there were broad expressions of support. I am afraid that nothing the Minister said in Committee convinced me that there was any argument against this. I note that the noble Lord asked in Committee if I was aware that there is an APPG on Play. I am—I am a member of the APPG on Play, together with eight other Members of your Lordships’ House, including several from the Government Benches, and 32 MPs. By the standards of these things, that makes it a significant all-party group, which is a recognition of the importance in which this issue is held.

A number of noble Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, among them, referred to the Wildlife and Countryside Link study which came out this morning about the lack of green spaces where first-time buyers make their first homes. Of course, many of those first-time buyers may well have or be going to have children, who desperately need these play spaces. I note that the paper edition of the Times this morning put beside that the report from the House of Lords environment committee, which I think is out this morning and which talks about how, if the Government are to build new towns, they need to be built as communities, with infrastructure in place. Part of that infrastructure must be play infrastructure.

I referred in Committee to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and to the fact that Wales and Scotland already have comparable legislation to this. It is worth noting that Wales has the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, which almost demands that you have something like a play sufficiency duty.

16:30

Amendment 121E is out of scope of where we are scheduled to get to tonight. I will listen very carefully to what the Minister says this time. I am open to consideration, but I certainly reserve the right to put it to a vote when we come to it on Wednesday. I believe that it is crucial and very broadly supported.

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and her Amendment 88, to which I added my name. I refer to my interests, including my involvement in Peers for the Planet, and flag to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I chair the Built Environment Select Committee, whose report was in the Times. For those who are interested in it, watch this space. We will have that debate in due course and I look forward to it.

I do not wish to prolong the debate because I think we are coming to the end, but I will raise one point, building on everything that everyone has said so far, about vision and where we ultimately see nature in development. We have covered a lot already, today and in Committee. As was mentioned, the NPPF references aspects, but it is open to interpretation and vague. Again, as we have discussed before and today, there are real issues for some people in the country.

Some may query, and therefore object to, the amendment on the basis of the word “network”. Ultimately, it is for those on the ground to decide what “network” means, be it large or small. It would allow for pragmatism, in an effort to seek to do as much as possible, but, ultimately, it is about having more than one space. Therefore, it is about what more can be done with an entire site, rather than just looking through the lens of trying to do the minimum.

The amendment is not onerous. It is pragmatic. It does not stipulate the quantum of nature that is needed. Both my party and, I think, the Government still honour the concept of the 15-minute walk to nature, but this amendment does not go anywhere near that. Therefore, it is not as onerous and prescriptive.

I have just one final point. It is an anecdote, although I cannot compete with the fine words of the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and her story about the fantastic work she did in London. There is a piece of land near where I live in Surrey. I was driving past it about a year ago and I saw some school kids planting bulbs, in miserable weather. I thought how absolutely amazing it was to see them putting bulbs in on this plot of land.

Last Wednesday, when we sat earlier to debate the Bill, I charged in valiantly to make my train, thinking we were going to have a vote. I walked past the same bit of land. For clarity, it is just a piece of grass, with a few trees and a path through the middle, surrounded by roads and residential properties, with some shops nearby. It is nothing special, but it is special in itself because it is unique and pleasant for those who live nearby—for the dog walkers and the shoppers, it is something to enjoy. I cannot imagine that the upkeep is too onerous but it is enjoyed by those nearby.

As I ran past, I saw those school kids yet again, one year on, planting more bulbs and I thought, “I’ve got to get in; I must get in”, and I sort of smiled as I charged past. Then I thought, “You know what? I’m going to forget the vote”. I backed up and went to speak to those kids. I spoke to someone called Doug from the council who has been involved in that project over the past few years, and I met my own councillor—a Lib Dem, I hasten to add, but we will forget that—called Kirsty, who has been driving this idea with the council and the school kids, getting them involved. A little later, some local businesses came along too.

The point is that this small endeavour showed exactly why, to me, nature is important. Not only is it important from a biodiversity point of view but it brings people together and improves that area, and it brings people of all ages together to do something. That is why I care about nature; that is why we support this amendment. I pay tribute to those behind it.

I was flicking through what was said the last time we debated this. There is no finer quote than from the Minister, who said:

“There is a growing body of evidence illustrating the crucial role that green space plays in supporting healthy and inclusive communities, and we recognise the importance of providing these alongside new homes”.—[Official Report, 9/9/25; col. 1298.]


Therefore, I hope that the Government can find a way through on this issue.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 96 in the name of my noble friend Lady Scott, to which I have added my name and which requires the prioritisation of brownfield and other sites, and to speak to my noble friend’s Amendment 239, to which I have also added my name, about the protection of villages, which I raised in Committee.

On Amendment 96 and brownfield sites, your Lordships know that I spoke about this in Committee. It is a no-brainer, a double win that saves our countryside and green spaces that are rich in nature—we have heard much about the importance of green spaces this afternoon—while improving areas blighted by uncared for, dilapidated and sometimes poisonous brownfield sites in the heart of our communities. The Minister responded in Committee, saying:

“The Government are clear that the first port of call for development should be brownfield land”.—[Official Report, 9/9/25; col. 1457.]


She suggested that the NPPF already covered this point and that my noble friend Lord Jameson’s amendment and mine in Committee were not needed. If this is what the Government support, what is the harm of applying belt and braces and having it spelled out here too? Would it not demonstrate their true commitment to this principle? Either way, it still feels as if there is a long way to go.

I shall reiterate the stats that I shared from the CPRE—I hope your Lordships will forgive me; I have not been able to find more recent ones yet. It reported that in 2022 a record-breaking number of brownfields sites identified for redevelopment were lying dormant, enough for 1.2 million homes on 23,000 sites adding up to 27,000 hectares. The CPRE highlighted that the majority of brownfield sites are in town and city centres, where there is both the need and scope for new homes and regeneration. Indeed, it will also fit with the travel aspect of proposed new subsection (9B) in this amendment.

As many of us have said throughout the progress of this Bill, it is not simply a question of more homes; we need the right homes in the right places. Much current urban brownfield land is known to blight the communities where it exists, leading to poorer socio-economic indicators. It is much better to reuse already developed urban land and buildings, as the carbon emissions are lower per capita than for greenfield development. I understand that for developers there can be a problem that cleaning up land before building can increase costs, but perhaps there is a way that the Government can help with this. Hence, I hope Government will think again on this issue and accept what I consider to be a sensible amendment.

On Amendment 239, I feel passionately about the protection of our villages, their identity and the way of life, and I am delighted that my noble friends decided that they wanted to run this from the Front Bench. Villages and their communities, as I have said before, have been hewn over centuries of rural life and are a key part of the UK’s reputation as a green and pleasant land. This amendment would insert a much-needed protection to match that currently provided to towns under the National Planning Policy Framework and would level the playing field to help preserve the special character of individual and historic villages which would be lost if one village spread into another or if a town spread out into a village.

The practicalities and perhaps unintended consequences of implementing this Bill pose a significant risk that, by opening up development, we will lose those village gems or, in the worst-case scenario, that they become swallowed up in a styleless urban sprawl. In Committee, the Minister argued that villages were already protected by current guidance for local planning authorities on the restriction of village development and by green belt provisions, but surely it is clear from the debate we had that this is not necessarily the case in practice.

I am about to cite some green belt statistics, but it is not simply about that. The Government’s own statistics on the green belt state that around 12.5% of the land area of England is currently designated as green belt, focusing around 16 urban cores. With national parks included, this would take the percentage up to around 37% of land protected by one or more types of protection. Overall, however, there was a decrease in green belt of around 660 hectares between March 2024 and March 2025, the bulk of which was due to six local authorities adopting local plans with changes to the green belt. That is just it: the green belt can be changed. There are large, more rural areas of the country further away from urban centres that do not fall under any protections and could be impacted by newly planned development or new towns under this Government. Such villages should have the same protection currently afforded to towns across the country.

The Government said that an amendment along these lines would limit the ability of local planning authorities to develop sound strategies. I am afraid I disagree. This amendment is about creating guidance or updating current guidance. Local authorities make their decisions using guidance already. This should only aid that process.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments on green spaces, the green belt and playing fields is one of the largest groups of amendments that we will debate today, which reflects how important these issues are held to be in your Lordships’ House.

Wild places have always played an important part in my life. In the past, I have been very involved with promoting outdoor education, so these matters are also important to me personally.

Across this House, I think there is recognition that we need new homes and that the quality of those new homes, the communities they create and the places they become will be dependent on having access to really good green and blue spaces. The impacts of merely being near to good-quality green and blue spaces are still not properly understood, but this is an ever-growing area. Research shows that such access reduces stress, improves overall well-being, increases the level of physical activity, enhances social interaction, gives people a greater sense of community and has direct economic impacts and particular benefits for those in the most deprived sections of our communities.

The Minister has spoken throughout different parts of this debate about how important the new town that she grew up in is. I put it to her that new towns are held in such high regard because they had green and blue spaces designed into them from the start. These are not just nice to have; they are fundamental issues for the well-being of our communities, and they go on to save millions of pounds in unnecessary societal costs from inequality, depression and poor health that result from not having such facilities.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for making an extremely important point about climate change. As our climate heats up, the urban heat island effect causes misery and health impacts, particularly for the poorest, who suffer the most, so the need for green and blue spaces in our towns is growing ever more important.

One statistic that I want to give to the House is that the amount of time our children spend playing outside has declined by 50% in the space of one generation alone. We need to reverse that. We need a cross-sector, strategic approach to these things, and we need to ensure that big housebuilders do not squeeze out these essential requirements for human existence.

Amendment 88 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, my noble friend Lady Miller and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, would require strategic planning authorities to include a network of green and blue spaces in the statement of policies that will relate to the development and use of land in the area. This amendment is one that we very much support; it is also supported by the National Trust and the Better Planning Coalition. It is also vital for our new towns.

16:45

Amendment 107, in the name of my noble friend Lord Addington, has been spoken to very clearly and well. We have lost so many of our school playing fields, so these matters are important.

Amendment 237 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, and my noble friend Lady Miller, would require development corporations to provide green and blue spaces when securing the layout and development of new towns. Again, this is a crucial matter.

Amendment 84 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, seeks to ensure that under planning legislation the Gardens Trust is a statutory consultee regarding planning applications. Again, this is an important matter.

Amendment 118 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, seeks to require local plans prepared by local authorities to apply a sequential approach to the location of development such that brownfield sites, perhaps with low biodiversity, are used. Again, we are generally supportive of this approach.

Amendment 121 from the noble Baroness, Lady Maclean, would require the Secretary of State to publish a framework for the designation of grey belt, while Amendment 95 from the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, is in a similar vein to the one that we had on solar panels and farmland the other day—the noble Lord made that point himself. While we are sympathetic to his amendment, it suffers from that same point of being too prescriptive in its definitions. For that reason, we would struggle with it.

There are a lot of amendments in this important group so, with that, I thank your Lordships.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of the intent behind this important group of amendments, all of which seek to strengthen the Bill’s provisions around green infrastructure, heritage protection, sustainable land use and, importantly, play and sports areas, as in Amendments 170 and 121E.

Amendment 84, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, would recognise the Gardens Trust as a statutory consultee. Historic gardens and designed landscapes are a vital part of our cultural and national heritage, and their protection must not be left to chance. Giving the Gardens Trust formal status in the planning process is a logical and proportionate step, in our opinion.

On Amendment 88, we strongly support the call for a strategic approach to green and blue infrastructure—that is, parks, waterways and green spaces that are publicly accessible and which protect biodiversity and enhance well-being. These provisions would help to ensure that growth does not come at the expense of nature or public access to it. However, this amendment includes “network”, which carries a significant implication from a strategic planning perspective. Once we define these assets as a network, local authorities could be required not only to safeguard individual sites but to consider the functional and spatial connections between those sites. That raises questions of the maintenance, responsibilities and resources required to deliver a genuinely joined-up approach. We therefore could not support the amendment as drafted but there is another amendment, later on in our debates, about new towns. It is a different issue in new towns than it is strategically, which could be across three or even four counties or areas.

There is also clear cross-party consensus behind prioritising brownfield development and protecting our most valuable farmland and greenfield sites. Amendments such as Amendments 95, 96 and 118 rightly push for a sequential, sustainable approach to land use, beginning with sites already in use or disused, and protecting the best and most versatile agricultural land for food production and environmental benefit.

Amendment 96 in my name would require spatial development strategies to prioritise brownfield land and urban densification, and to promote sustainable mixed communities by reducing travel distances between homes, jobs and services. It underpins the widely supported “brownfield first” principle, which already commands public support and political consensus, but it goes further, linking that principle directly to community building, sustainability and the protection of the villages and open spaces that give our places their character. As Conservatives, we are passionate about protecting our green belt and safeguarding the countryside from inappropriate development. This Government have often relied on guidance rather than firm statutory safeguards, leaving too much to shifting policy documents and not enough to clear legal safeguards.

This is about a joined-up approach, encouraging regeneration where infrastructure already exists, reducing needless commuting and making sure that the new development creates mixed, vibrant communities rather than those isolated housing estates we see too often on the edges of our towns. It is about putting what is already in the NPPF—brownfield first, compact growth and protection of the countryside—into statute. I anticipate that the Minister may say, as the Minister said in Committee:

“I agree with the intent behind this amendment; however, it is already comprehensively covered in the National Planning Policy Framework”,—[Official Report, 9/9/25; cols. 1455-56.]


but if we all agree that brownfield first is the right principle, then why leave it only to guidance, which can be changed at will? If it truly is covered, then legislating to secure it should cause no difficulty. If it is not, then this amendment is precisely what is needed.

This is a proportionate and pragmatic step. It strengthens what the Government claim they already believe in, gives local communities greater confidence that brownfield will be prioritised and protects our green belts and villages from unnecessary pressure, and I will be pushing this to a vote when the time comes.

Finally, on Amendment 239, in my name but spoken to by my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger, I do not want to say any more, because she said it all and I do not want to take time repeating it. But this is so important, and again we may divide on this one when the time comes, because this concerns the protection of our villages in this beautiful land.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in this very interesting debate for the very valuable contributions we have heard this afternoon. I have engaged with many noble Lords on these matters in the preceding weeks and our debate has focused on something on which I think we all agree, which is the need to ensure that, as we deliver the housing we need, we recognise the importance of green and blue space, sustainability, heritage and the important uses that allow our communities and the people that constitute them to thrive and succeed.

First, I remind noble Lords of my letter regarding the strength and influence that planning policy bears on the protection of vital green and blue spaces across the country, the power it exerts in practice and the degree of flexibility it allows for sensible choices to be made at a local level. The benefits of green space are not in doubt as far as I can see, for all the reasons set out in our debate. That is why there are such strong protections within the NPPF and in the planning system.

I turn now to the amendments we have debated. Amendment 84, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, seeks to ensure that the Gardens Trust is retained as a statutory consultee for planning proposals and that it is considered as a statutory amenity society. The Government have set out their intention to reform the system of statutory consultation. We want a streamlined, effective system of consultation that avoids uncertainty and delay. We will shortly consult on these reforms, including on the impacts of removing the Gardens Trust as a statutory consultee. Historic England already holds statutory responsibilities for higher-graded parks and gardens, so this consultation will help us to deliver a streamlined system and address duplication.

As part of our consultation, we will be very keen to test mitigations to ensure they continue to play a valuable role in protecting our heritage. Planning policy remains key. Registered parks and gardens are defined as designated heritage assets, and they will remain subject to the strong heritage policies protecting these assets in the National Planning Policy Framework. These policies require local planning authorities to carefully consider the impact of a development proposal on a designated heritage asset, and, if the development proposal would cause substantial harm, to refuse such applications.

I note the noble Lord’s proposal about amenity society status with great interest. Amenity societies are not subject to the full requirements of statutory consultation but are notified of relevant development. The Government really value the work of amenity societies, and I will add my own anecdote here about the level of volunteering. I was at our local community awards on Saturday, and I was delighted to see our amazing green space volunteers—across our gardens, green spaces and parks—getting awards. These kinds of volunteers who look after our green spaces—whether in committee rooms or out in the parks themselves—are incredibly valued, as are those who enable and encourage sport and physical activity, which we will come to later. I pay tribute to those who won those local awards on Saturday.

The Government are keen to explore whether this model would be suitable for certain types of development through our consultation. We believe there is an important, ongoing role for the Gardens Trust, working with local authorities and developers. No decision will be made until we have fully considered the feedback on potential impacts from the consultation. My department will continue to engage with the Gardens Trust to understand the impacts of these proposals over the coming months.

The noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, has tabled Amendment 88, and I thank her for our meeting last week to discuss the importance of networks of green and blue spaces to communities all around the country. I was very grateful for the information and research that she provided both to me and to officials from my department.

The NPPF, which will guide the development of new spatial development strategies, already highlights the need for plans to support healthy communities. I agree with the noble Baroness about equality in the provision of green space. I am grateful to her for agreeing to share the research she talked about, and I am happy to respond in writing to her on that.

I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, on the amazing work she did during the London Olympics. When I was on one of my visits, I went to see a fantastic project on balcony gardens in Walthamstow, which has also invigorated that community. In my own area, we started a community orchard project. I completely understand the benefits of these types of projects.

Strategic planning authorities already have the ability to set policies that reflect the value of these spaces. Under new Section 12D(4)(c), a spatial development strategy may specify infrastructure that promotes or improves the social or environmental well-being of an area; this could include networks of green and blue spaces.

We should also remember that strategic development strategies will not be site-specific; instead, they will relate to broad locations. Some of the noble Lords who have had meetings with me will be aware that my noble friend Lady Hayman, the Defra Minister, is currently working on a comprehensive access strategy, which will come forward from Defra, to indicate how that meshes in with the planning process. While an SDS may consider green and blue networks at the strategic level, detailed site-specific matters relating to them are likely to be best dealt with through local plans.

Amendment 95 seeks to protect best and most versatile land, and Amendments 96 and 118 seek to encourage a brownfield first principle. I absolutely agree that we need to protect our best agricultural land. To that end, strategic authorities will need to have regard to ensuring consistency with national policy when preparing their spatial development strategies. The NPPF is clear that authorities should make best use of brownfield land before considering development on other types of land, including agricultural. Planning policy recognises the economic and other benefits of best and most versatile agricultural land, and if development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, areas of poorer-quality land—not in the top three grades that the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, mentioned—should be prioritised. Furthermore, the forthcoming land use framework will set out the evidence and tools needed to protect our most productive agricultural land and identify areas with the biggest potential for nature recovery.

17:00

While I completely support the underlying objective of Amendments 96 and 118, a legal duty to allocate brownfield land before greenfield land in local plans would represent an overly rigid approach. It could mean that councils are forced to allocate poorly located or unviable brownfield sites before well-located greenfield sites. The Government have now proposed options for a brownfield passport to help ensure that the default answer to suitable proposals is yes. We are now considering the views received to decide what further action could be taken to support development of brownfield land, including as part of further reforms to national planning policy.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, made some comments about green-belt policy; I believe she said we have lost 600 hectares of green-belt land between 2024 and 2025 as a result of six local plans. The green belt continues to protect around 12.5% of England from inappropriate development. None of the six local plans that released green-belt land was examined under the revised 2024 National Planning Policy Framework, which is implementing our green-belt reforms. I hope that is helpful.

Amendment 98, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament an annual report on the amount of land proposed for change of use through a spatial development strategy. It is essential that the planning system is transparent and that the public understand the effects of planning decisions in their area. As I mentioned in Committee, the Government already publish a range of statistics on planning and land use in England, including annual statistics on the extent of land designated as green belt and quarterly statistics about the number of planning applications made and permissions granted. The formal allocation of sites will remain the preserve of local plans, which will include working out the precise boundaries, site area and capacity for development. It would be impractical to calculate the amount of land that any spatial development strategy is proposing for change of use and report on it.

Amendments 107 and 121E were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I am grateful to the noble Lord for our meeting, where we discussed this matter in great detail. We recognise the important contribution that playing fields, pitches and play spaces make to improving the health and well-being of our communities. That is why these important assets have such strong protections through existing planning policy and guidance.

On the comment about trees from the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I checked today that the benefits of trees in the street scene are specifically mentioned in the National Planning Policy Framework. I hope that reassures him.

As I explained at our meeting and in previous debates, the NPPF sets out that planning policies should be based on robust and up-to-date assessments of the need for open space, sport and recreation facilities and opportunities for new provision. This includes formal and informal places for children’s play, including playing fields and pitches. The framework also sets out strong protections for existing playing fields, where they may be threatened by development, and the policy is very clear: playing fields can be built upon only if they are no longer needed by the community, if equivalent or better provision will be delivered elsewhere, or if the development proposed is for alternative sports and recreational provision, the benefits of which clearly outweigh the loss of the current or former use. While existing policy protections are strong, we are considering what more we can do in this area as we prepare a new set of national planning policies for decision-making, on which we intend to consult this year.

Further advice on play spaces is set out in the national design guidance, which the Government are in the process of updating. New guidance is expected to be published later this year. Spaces for sport, play and recreation are being reviewed as part of this update.

On the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, about new towns, I direct them to principle 5 of the report of the New Towns Taskforce, which says very clearly that:

“New towns should be healthy and safe places which promote active lives for residents, with easily accessible green spaces and recreational facilities”.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned Sport England. We are consulting on those statutory consultees, but any organisation can continue to contribute to planning application debates.

Additionally, to find solutions to the issues facing parks and green spaces, including improving play areas, the Government have established the parks working group with local authorities and industry specialists. Furthermore, our Pride in Place Impact Fund is providing £150 million of funding to up to 95 places to support the development of shared spaces, revitalise local high streets and improve the public realm. This can include funding upgrades to public spaces such as parks and playgrounds.

To the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, about footballing vistas, I am lucky enough to be a supporter of Stevenage FC, which is opposite the most fabulous Fairlands Valley lakes park—where I like to think that the kicking around of a ball that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned may have resulted in the players who were eventually destined for the Lamex Stadium and second place in League One.

While we share the same objective here, we do not believe it is the right approach to address these matters through legislation, but instead through planning policy and guidance.

I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Maclean and Lady Scott of Bybrook, for their Amendments 121 and 239 on the Government’s green-belt reforms, including protection of villages. Amendment 121 seeks to require the Secretary of State to publish a framework that sets the criteria by which land should be designated as green belt, and to set out a definition of grey belt and how green belt should be monitored. We believe this amendment to be unnecessary, as our revised framework is already clear on how grey belt should be defined, with accompanying guidance setting out the considerations for decision-makers in identifying grey-belt land. It is also clear on the circumstances in which green belt should be established, altered or reviewed. The most recent changes to the framework were subject to extensive consultation, and we made changes in response to the points raised. As green belt is identified and amended within local plans, it is right that green-belt policy be set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

Regarding Amendment 239, neither our green-belt reforms nor our updated green-belt guidance makes any change to the green-belt purposes, which seek to prevent the merging of towns and safeguard the setting and special character of historic towns. Neither do they remove appropriate and relevant green-belt protections from land around villages. The framework states plainly that green-belt land, including land in or near villages which contributes strongly to the relevant purposes, should not be identified as grey belt.

There may be other reasons to restrict or manage development in villages, including those not in the green belt, but neither the Bill nor our policy reforms precludes local authorities from considering matters such as the character of a village, or the location, scale and style of development, where relevant in a planning determination.

For the reasons I have set out—probably a bit too extensively, for which I apologise, but I needed to cover all the points in the debate—I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to think that my amendment has led to such a wide discussion that has shown more or less complete unanimity across the House about the importance of green space in place-making in this country. Where we can get unanimity like that, there is the potential to make progress.

I thank the Minister for her remarks on the Gardens Trust; as the saying goes, I shall think on them.

As I was sitting in my place, I thought that what we are all trying to do is to change policies and law. However, are we not perhaps creating a hydra that will make it, in general terms, more difficult for the planning process to work well? At the end of the day, planning is about physical specifics, not abstract generalities. The key to establishing whether this debate has been worth while will be seeing whether the country is a better place because of it. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 84 withdrawn.

Amendment 85 not moved.

Amendment 86

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

86: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Promotion of distributed water supply(1) When exercising functions under this Act in relation to planning applications, local planning authorities must have regard to how a proposed development could implement distributed water infrastructures and technologies for development-scale water reuse.(2) When discharging the duty in subsection (1), planning authorities must seek to secure, where viable and appropriate, the incorporation of —(a) distributed water storage solutions for individual buildings, and (b) shared water storage infrastructure at community and development scale,into developments seeking planning permission.(3) The water storage technology in section (2) includes but is not limited to—(a) distributed schemes for local storage and supply of rainwater and surface water,(b) rainwater harvesting of the largest sizes possible relative to building size, occupancy, and current and projected future water consumption,(c) greywater and blackwater recycling, and(d) water storage systems operated, co-managed or co-owned by local communities.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, requires planning authorities to support the inclusion of distributed and alternative water storage infrastructure projects in developments. This is to ensure the sustainable harvesting, use, or distribution of fit-for-purpose water by residents, communities, government services, and private businesses to reduce additional demand on catchment water resources and mitigate flood risk and water pollution.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this amendment was debated last week, but I would like to remind the House what it was about. Basically, it is about not losing—[Interruption.] Am I not allowed to say that? The Whip is shaking his head at me. I will rattle on until he stands up and shouts. In essence, this is about the recovery of storm-water, surface water and flood-water that otherwise rushes into our systems and is then totally gone. What we could do is catch that water and use it—instead of using extremely expensive tap-water—to wash cars, fill up paddling pools and so on.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I say to the noble Baroness that we debated this amendment last week. The Front Bench does not have the right of reply at this stage. We ask her whether she is pushing the amendment to a vote or withdrawing.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I thank the noble Lord the Whip. I would like to test the opinion of the House on this incredibly important issue.

17:11

Division 1

Ayes: 84

Noes: 185

17:21

Amendment 87

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

87: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Planning decisions: consideration of an EDPIn section 70 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (determination of applications: general considerations), after paragraph (2)(aa) insert—“(ab) any Environmental Delivery Plan made under the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, so far as material to the application,”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that when making a planning decision, the local planning authority must take into account any EDP applying to the land in question.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment is about consideration of an EDP by a local council. As I referred to on a previous group of amendments including an amendment in my name, because we have not gone to the full consideration of an EDP, it is not my intention to press this amendment later. This is effectively giving substance to what the chief executive of Natural England said to the Commons Committee considering this Bill, which was that if a council was not content with how an EDP was delivering, it would not have to give planning permission, but that is not expressed anywhere else in the Bill. That said, as we are yet to get properly to Part 3, I will reserve my judgment about whether to return to this another time. I beg to move.

[Lord Banner (Con)]

I shall speak to Amendments 163A and 163B, tabled in my name. These seek to ensure that the nature restoration fund is properly aligned with the planning process and, in particular, that it is capable of supporting the larger and more complex developments. It is my view that the current drafting of Clause 66 risks preventing some of the larger, more complicated schemes from using an environmental delivery plan. These kinds of larger, more complicated developments often evolve after the development has started. We will hear more about this on Hillside, at whatever ungodly hour we get to it. For example, outline permission may be granted, but a developer may subsequently seek to change the planning conditions attached to the permission. There may be amendments to other aspects of the development under Section 96A or otherwise. It may also be the case that larger developments need to apply for retrospective planning permission after development has commenced to regularise the development when it has been built differently to the permission.

In its current form, Clause 66 allows developers to request to use an EDP only before development has commenced—a single snapshot in time. While I can understand why it was drafted in that way, inadvertently, it seems to me, it risks limiting the NRF by failing to accommodate the possibility of ever-evolving development schemes. If the Government are going to deliver their growth and housing targets, I assume that they would want to ensure that the NRF could support the full range of development projects, particularly given that the larger ones tend to have the greatest tendency to evolve during their often decades-long and certainly years-long lifetimes.

Amendment 163A would not require Natural England to accept such a development but would allow the design of EDPs to accommodate these scenarios where appropriate. Amendment 163B similarly does not require Natural England to accept a request from a promoter of such development to pay the levy, but it makes clear that deciding whether to accept it is guided by the Secretary of State’s policy on the matter. I encourage the Government to consider this amendment in the spirit in which it is tabled, to ensure the proper functioning of legislation and help the nature restoration fund to navigate the complexities of the planning system.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, in this group of amendments on the EDP consultation process, we are broadly in support of Amendment 87, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. We appreciate Amendments 163 and 163B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Banner, but we have rather more care in relation to these and will ask some questions about them.

Amendment 87 strikes us as a sensible and necessary clarification, seeking to require local planning authorities to have regard to an EDP relevant to the land in question. It closes an important procedural loop between the Bill’s new environmental mechanisms and the Town and Country Planning Act. I will move on to the other amendments, as I do not think that Amendment 87 will be pushed to a vote.

With Amendment 163A, we are entering more complex territory. Having listened to the noble Lord’s speech, I know that his amendment is intended in relation only to large developments. However, this amendment seeks to allow developers to use an EDP after development has commenced. This is a fundamental change to how the Bill was originally drafted. Although this amendment and the next one are short, they would have profound impacts on the nature of the Bill and the reasoning behind it. Given the late stage that we find ourselves in, it is worth treating these amendments with a degree of cautious scepticism. I have a number of questions on these amendments, particularly as I understand that the Minister might be intending to support them to some extent.

I understand the reasoning behind them. Projects evolve, impacts manifest late in the process and developers may wish to regularise matters through this pathway. Indeed, in principle, a degree of flexibility can be helpful for all concerned in the planning process. This could also help to speed things up, which is one of the core intentions of the Bill. However, flexibility, if poorly secured and accounted for, risks turning things instead into loopholes and could give the Government much more direct power and say over matters of importance. EDPs were created precisely to ensure that environmental protection is front-loaded, assessed, integrated and approved before the first spade hits the ground. If we are now to permit post-commencement plans, we are blurring that critical line. The Government clearly set that out in the original drafting of the Bill, so this is a very fundamental change.

Might this invite retrospective justification of impacts that should have been avoided or evaluated in advance, and what is the mechanism that will stop deliberate misuse of this new clause should a developer be so minded to do that? How will post-commencement EDPs preserve the same environmental rigour as those agreed at the outset of the drafting of this Bill? What safeguards will ensure that the flexibility serves better compliance, not convenient regularisation after the fact? How will this affect the deterrent from starting work without proper authorisation? The credibility of EDPs and public trust depend on certainty that environmental obligations cannot be adjusted once the bulldozers roll in. This could increase uncertainty for developers themselves. For all the talk of streamlining, shifting assessments mid-project can introduce delay, legal risk and even greater reputational exposure.

17:30

What assurances can the Minister offer that such changes will not paradoxically lengthen timeframes and make further complications? Amendment 163B takes us a step further down this new road of divergence by requiring Natural England to have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State when deciding whether to accept a post-commencement request. On one reading, that offers consistency and greater ministerial oversight and control, but on another, perhaps more troubling, reading, it introduces a political lever over which the Government can exert pressure, which could impact the ability to have independent ecological assessments. Is it right that the Government are given these new powers, and what effective challenge would there be to them should they be agreed? What grounds, or hoops, would these powers need to go through before they are given?

The arguments that Natural England is independent and yet the Government are giving it direction cannot both be true. The Government originally set this Bill out with Natural England being independent, so where is the logic to flipping that fundamentally on its head? How would the independence of Natural England be protected under this arrangement if it is agreed? What, if any, real independence would exist, were this new arrangement to be put in place? Where would Natural England stand in relation to the Government? It seems like the Government are not only setting the homework task but are also the sole person marking that homework as well.

If it did happen, would it be transparent and would it be subject to any parliamentary scrutiny? It is really important that these decisions are published and that they are open. Natural England must continue to exercise professional discretion based on evidence and on statutory duty, not on ministerial pressure or preference. Environmental regulations lose their legitimacy the moment that scientific judgment is replaced by a possible political judgment. If the Government were minded to allow post-commencement EDPs at all, then surely we need stronger guarantees of transparency, clear eligibility thresholds, independent verification and public reporting of any decisions. Without that, such an innovation risks eroding confidence both in the system and in its underlying environmental purpose.

With those questions, I seek some clarification from the Minister, but these are fundamental changes that flip key parts of this element of the Bill on its head. They are introduced at a very late stage, and they raise a number of issues of concern.

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will not make extensive comments on my noble friend Lady Coffey’s Amendment 87, as we will return to EDPs in future groups on Report. However, this amendment does have merit in that EDPs should be a relevant matter for making planning decisions.

My noble friend Lord Banner has expertly introduced Amendments 163A and 163B, and I have nothing to add except my support. I very much look forward to the response from the Minister.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for Amendment 87, which would require decision-makers to take account of the environmental delivery plans when making a planning decision under the Town and Country Planning Act. I agree, of course, that it is crucial that EDPs are integrated into the planning system. I hope I can provide the noble Baroness with the necessary assurance that her amendment is not necessary.

At its heart, an EDP enables a developer to discharge a relevant environmental obligation by making a commitment to pay the appropriate nature restoration levy. Once this commitment is made, the legislation removes the requirement to consider that specific environmental impact as part of any wider assessment, as the impact will be materially outweighed by the actions taken under the EDP. Therefore, while the planning decision-maker will need to consider a wide variety of matters when making individual planning decisions, it is not necessary for the decision-maker to consider the EDP itself. I therefore hope that, with this explanation, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

I turn now to Amendments 163A and 163B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Banner, which would help ensure that the nature restoration fund works effectively for large-scale development. It has always been our intention that Part 3 of the Bill should support development as much as possible. As we have repeatedly said, the nature restoration fund will benefit both development and nature. Therefore, we want to maximise its scope and consequently the benefits it will deliver. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Banner, for tabling his amendments and I have looked at them very closely. As has been pointed out, the restriction in Clause 66 may in fact preclude a proportion of development from being able to come within scope of an EDP at all. Where, as is often the case, a large development needs to vary planning permission, for example, or apply for retrospective planning permission following changes outside of the developer’s control, we need to ensure the NRF can support such development, as failing to do so could significantly reduce the ability of the NRF to deliver the win-win that we all want to see for nature and for development.

While, of course, there will be complexities in how to manage large and complex development, this can be addressed through the design of EDPs and supported with government guidance. As with any development, it will be for Natural England to consider requests, having regard to that guidance. I hope I can reassure the noble Earl that this is not a way of skirting around the planning procedures in any way whatsoever; this is about access to the nature restoration fund, so all of the normal things that apply to planning permission would still apply—this is just about providing that access to the NRF once the development has started. With that explanation, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Banner, for tabling the amendments, for all the work he has done on this and for the meetings I had with him on it. I hope the House will join the Government in supporting his amendments.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 87 withdrawn.

Amendment 87A not moved.

Amendment 87B

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

87B: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Planning permission: biodiversity information(1) The Secretary of State must, by regulations made by statutory instrument, require all biodiversity information generated in the course of a planning application to be submitted, free of charges and restrictions on use, to the local environmental record centre for the area in which planning permission is requested, in the format required by that organisation.(2) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is to ensure that biodiversity information generated in the course of planning activities is contributed to the national store of such knowledge.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, in the course of the planning system, we gather a great deal of high-quality biodiversity data. By and large, we then throw it away. We should not be doing this. We should be keeping it, making sure it is accessible, so that we can really plot what we are doing in 30 by 30 and in our campaign to restore nature to this country. It is ridiculous that we throw it away.

The Minister very kindly wrote me a letter after Committee saying, among other things, that when discharging the biodiversity gain condition, applicants can choose to share their data with local environmental records centres, and many are already choosing to do so. I organised a ring-round; it is not happening—it is not true—so we must have some very clear regulation that this data should not be lost. If this cannot be done in this Bill, then please may I sit down with the Minister in preparation for the next planning Bill? This cannot go on. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 87BA. The most important vehicle for nature recovery in this country is via the local nature recovery strategies being developed by the 48 local authorities in charge. One can design a recovery strategy only if one knows what is there in the first place, or rather what is not there, what is lacking and needs to be recovered. My noble friend’s amendment is wise and right, but I would urge the Government to go further, since many organisations collect species information, often working collaboratively to pool data and make it available for research and conservation purposes.

The primary network for this collaboration is the National Biodiversity Network, the NBN, which brings together government bodies, charities, volunteer-led recording schemes, data aggregators and networks. The NBN is a charity that oversees the UK-wide partnership for gathering and sharing biodiversity data.

Then we have the Biological Records Centre, the BRC, which was established in 1964. The BRC co-ordinates and supports wildlife recording schemes and societies across the UK, working with volunteer recorders. It manages the online recording tools called iRecord and iNaturalistUK, and its data is published on the NBN Atlas.

Then we come to the local environmental records centres, the LERCs, the organisation mentioned in my noble friend’s amendment. Natural England has divided England into 159 distinct national character areas, or NCAs. Each NCA is defined by a unique combination of natural and human factors, including landscape, biodiversity, geodiversity—that is geology and land forms—history, and cultural and economic activity.

That information is invaluable in helping authorities develop their LNRS but so is all available data, government and private. My noble friend’s amendment asks that the biodiversity information collected in the course of a planning application should be given to the LERCS—I would add that it should be given to the NBN and the BRC also. We cannot have enough data available for decision-making.

Where I depart from my noble friend’s amendment is that he wants to make it compulsory and legal; I would hope that is not necessary and that exhortation from the Government to the local authorities would ensure that this information is sent to the three organisations we have mentioned in our amendments.

I hope that they will not use the excuse that this is all confidential in the planning application and they cannot send it. That is nonsense; it should not be deemed confidential, and it should be passed on to those organisations. If the Secretary of State wants another new slogan in addition to “Build, baby, build”, I would suggest “Data, baby, data, data, data”.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name in this group, starting with Amendment 87FB. These are about bats, which I will come on to in a minute.

In the meantime, I would like to say that His Majesty’s Government have made a number of statements complaining about the obstructive planning laws which impede building. The Government are to be applauded in taking this sensible viewpoint, and I am very happy to help them by putting down these amendments, which will, I hope, alleviate one of the expensive and absurd difficulties that come in the way of those seeking to build. As I said at Second Reading, bats are an example of good intention being taken over by those concerned with the implementation of the legislation extending their remit to an absurd degree.

I quoted at Second Reading the £100 million bat tunnel—as my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out at the time, that is 10 doors to this House. There was also my own case of having a house demolished, which the bat people had confirmed was bat-free. Nevertheless, they insisted on each tile being removed one by one, which meant I had to employ six people for four weeks, removing tiles one by one for inspection by a bat person. This cost £30,000, as opposed to one man and a machine taking half a day, which would have cost £500.

The legislation initiated under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 goes through Natural England to the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management which sets the competency standards and that inspectors are registered with them. It has become an industry of its own. Local authorities, in order to avoid criticism for not complying with the Wildlife and Countryside Act, go for the easy life and automatically demand an inspection for bats even where it may not be a sensible or reasonable request. This is then carried out by the registered bat inspectors, which would be fine, but it is abused, as in my case, where, with no evidence of bats, an extra £30,000 had to be paid to confirm their inspection.

I recently came across the case of a young couple wishing to alter their attic to add needed extra accommodation. They were required by the local authority to have a preliminary bat inspection at a cost of £1,000. Without this inspection, the local authority would not permit them to even apply for planning consent, which might not have been granted. Why could they not put in for planning and, if it was approved, carry out a survey where at least they would be putting some money towards something positive?

Amendments 203B, 203C and 87FC seek to ensure that there is some comeback to unreasonable requests so that the system is not allowed to run wild, as it does at the present time. My Amendment 87FB would enable some form of discipline to be imposed on local authorities in respect of the demands for bat inspections. This is in line with government policy. It would assist in the development of housing, which the Government are keen on.

It gives me great pleasure to assist His Majesty’s Government by introducing what I hope will be a first step in implementing their expressed wish to bring some kind of sense to the planning process.

17:45

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 87B in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. My noble friend is calling for better recording and storage of biodiversity information, which is a noble aim. We agree with him that increasing our understanding of biodiversity in the UK is a good thing. We would support measures from government to support this, so can the Minister please outline some of the steps Ministers are taking to record biodiversity?

Amendments 87FB, 87FC, 203B and 203C in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising combine to form a constructive proposal for ensuring that bats are appropriately and pragmatically protected, while removing the time and cost burden on everyone in society from the unnecessarily prescriptive and arduous regulations that we currently suffer. Bat protections are a significant hindrance to everything, from loft conversions and roof repairs through to the largest developments.

My noble friend is not suggesting that protection for those species of bats that are endangered or rare in the UK should be weakened, simply that protections should focus on those. We need to accept that our activities are going to have some impact on nature and ensure that our response to that is proportionate. Bats in buildings are an unusual issue in that they do little or no harm to the buildings or inhabitants and are creating their own dependence on our activities. The fact that we provide this habitat should not be a cause for inappropriate encumbrance on the property owner for doing so. We are creating a perverse incentive to remove that habitat for bats wherever possible in order to ensure that we have reasonable freedom to enjoy our property. Surely that is not the outcome we want or desire for bats themselves. I hope the Minister is grateful for my noble friend’s constructive amendments, and I look forward to her reply.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for moving Amendment 87B, which would require all biodiversity information generated during a planning application to be submitted free of charge to local environmental record centres. I was very pleased to be able to provide the noble Lord with further information on this matter during Recess.

I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for Amendment 87BA, which clarifies this amendment to require all biodiversity information generated during a planning application to be submitted to the National Biodiversity Network and the Biological Records Centre, in addition to local environmental record centres. The Government fully recognise the importance of robust biodiversity data in planning applications, although the idea of having a new slogan, “Data, baby, data”, would mean I might have to get a new hat with that on it, which may not be such a good idea.

Although we share the intention of improving access to biodiversity data, we do not believe the amendment is necessary. The statutory framework under the Environment Act 2021 already requires developers to provide a baseline assessment of biodiversity value using the statutory metric published by the Secretary of State. This ensures consistency and transparency without prescribing how data should be shared or stored. When discharging the biodiversity gain condition, applicants can choose to share their data with local environmental record centres, and many are already choosing to do so—I will come to the noble Lord’s point about how many in a moment.

Introducing a legal requirement to submit data would add administrative burdens and technical requirements without improving biodiversity outcomes. However, I will take back to officials the noble Lord’s point that this is not happening as intended to consider what further encouragement we might give to help speed that data on its way. For these reasons, I hope that the noble Lords will not press their amendments.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howard, for Amendments 87FB and 87FC, and for his concern in supporting the Government in what we are trying to do; I am grateful for that. Those amendments concern bat inspections during planning applications and the quality of those inspections. I also thank him for Amendments 203B and 203C, which concern legal protections for bats in planning decisions. The Government are committed to protecting our most precious species and upholding our international obligations towards the environment, including bats. However, we recognise that people can experience the kinds of costs and delays that the noble Lord has outlined associated with the existing system of bat protections, such as survey requirements.

The Government recognise that measures to protect bats should be efficient and proportionate. That is why we have already begun work to improve the bat surveying processes. Natural England’s earned recognition scheme for bat licences provides a streamlined route to securing a licence. Under this scheme, appropriately qualified bat ecologists with membership of an approved professional body can act more independently of Natural England. Through earned recognition, permissions are secured on average three to four times more quickly, and it also aims to improve survey quality to deliver better outcomes for bats. We are expanding this scheme.

In line with recommendations from the Corry review, Natural England has already updated its standing advice for local planning authorities on bats to remove complexity and duplication. In November, Natural England will publish a bat regulation reform road map, which will set out further plans to work more closely with planning authorities and to streamline licensing—for instance, expanding its pre-application advice offer, which can expedite planning applications and avoid unexpected surveys, as well as developing pilots to test quicker and cheaper survey options.

The Government are already acting on this issue. The additional reviews and regulations that the noble Lord’s Amendments 87FB and 87FC would require are therefore unnecessary and would create significant new bureaucracy. Furthermore, Amendments 203B and 203C would result in likely non-compliance with international law, including the Bern convention. Given the explanations I have set out, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.

Amendment 87BA (to Amendment 87B) not moved.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. I shall not drop this issue but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 87B withdrawn.

Amendment 87C had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Amendment 87D

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

87D: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Permitted development and demolition: assets of community value(1) The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 (S.I. 2015/596) is amended as follows.(2) In paragraph B.1 of Part 11 of Schedule 2 (permitted development rights: heritage and demolition), after sub-paragraph (e) insert—“(f) the building is designated as an asset of community value under the Localism Act 2011.”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that buildings which have been designated as assets of community value cannot be demolished through permitted development rights.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that currently, an owner of a building has permitted development rights to demolish it unless it is a pub, live music venue, theatre or concert hall. I wish to add assets of community value to that list of exemptions, so I beg to move this amendment and wish to test the opinion of the House.

17:53

Division 2

Ayes: 243

Noes: 157

18:04

Amendments 87E and 87F not moved.

Amendment 87FA

Moved by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

87FA: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Applications for development consent: consultation for water and sewerage undertakers(1) The Planning Act 2008 is amended as follows.(2) In subsection (1) of section 42 (duty to consult), after paragraph (aa) insert—“(ab) water and sewerage undertakers,””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that water and sewerage undertakings are consulted by applicants for a development consent order in the same way as the Environment Agency currently is.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak briefly to this short but perfectly formed amendment. I hope to extract a commitment from the Minister and the Government on the question of making water and sewerage undertakings statutory consultees on a development consent order, as the Environment Agency currently is.

Things have changed since Committee, and there is a reason why I have tabled this amendment on Report. We have already had the report from the Cunliffe review, commissioned by Defra, which now has a new Secretary of State. Recommendation 72 of the Cunliffe report states:

“The role of water companies in the planning process in England should be strengthened to ensure they have sufficient sight and influence over upcoming developments”.


The report goes on to say that the Cunliffe review believes that water companies should have a clear ability

“to comment on planning applications above a certain threshold in England”.

The review is asking the Government to consider making water companies statutory consultees or to introduce a requirement to notify, and I am hoping that the Government will confirm this. This would ensure that water companies can deploy site-specific technical advice and avoid delays. It would also save the Government time. For example, if it was inappropriate to build a major development of, say, 300 new houses in an area of water stress, making water companies statutory consultees would expedite the planning application.

On 13 October, the Environmental Audit Committee published its report on flood resilience in England, which made a similar recommendation. Recommendation 25 of the report states:

“The Government should initiate consultation on statutory requirements for assessing the cumulative impact of development on flood risk within local and regional plans by the end of 2025”.


It goes on to say that

“water companies should be made statutory consultees on major planning applications”.

The Cunliffe review was set up at the behest of the Government, so I presume that they will follow the recommendations in its report. The Environmental Audit Committee’s report looks at how the current system is failing to prepare residents in this country for future flooding.

With those few remarks, I hope this evening to extract a commitment from the Minister that the Government will proceed on this as a matter of urgency and that we will see it as part of the Bill. If they wish to bring forward an amendment of their own, that would be ideal. I beg to move.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches support this amendment, which seeks to ensure that water and sewerage undertakers are formally consulted by applicants for a development consent order. The amendment is similar to the Environment Agency system and would help to avoid significant problems downstream.

Far too often, we have seen developments progress without any consideration of water supply, drainage or wastewater infrastructure, leading to unnecessary strain, additional cost and, of course, the human consequence of flood risk, which is worst of all. By ensuring that the relevant utilities are engaged early in the process, the amendment would promote better planning and ultimately save time, money and, above all, anguish for so many people.

The amendment aligns with some of the longstanding commitments we have worked on together in some of the APPGs. We look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on this amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, although I appreciate the spirit in which this amendment is brought forward and the specific issues it raises, it would introduce a level of prescription that may not be necessary. The planning system already provides mechanisms for consultation with relevant bodies, and it is important that we maintain a balance between thorough engagement and procedural efficiencies. We must be cautious not to overextend statutory requirements in ways that could complicate or even delay the development consent process. Flexibility and proportionality are key. As ever, my noble friend Lady McIntosh raises important issues. We look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 87FA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, seeks to ensure that water and sewerage undertakers are consulted by applicants for development consent orders. I begin by acknowledging her long-standing interest in ensuring that infrastructure development is undertaken responsibly, with due regard to environmental and public health concerns.

The importance of early engagement with key stakeholders in the planning process is definitely not in dispute. Indeed, the Government remain firmly committed to ensuring that meaningful engagement takes place at the formative stages of project development and where stakeholders are able to meaningfully influence, where appropriate.

As has been made clear in the other place by my honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Planning, the Government have already taken steps to streamline the statutory consultation process under the Planning Act. Section 42, which this amendment seeks to modify, will be repealed via Clause 4. This reflects a broader concern that the statutory requirements for pre-application consultation were not functioning as intended, leading to delays, excessive rounds of engagement and an ever-growing volume of documentation.

That said, I want to reassure noble Lords that this does not mean that issues relevant to stakeholders will be ignored—quite the contrary. Under the Bill, the Secretary of State will issue guidance to assist applicants with the steps they might take in relation to submitting an application. The Government acknowledge that stakeholders play a vital role in safeguarding public health and environmental standards, and the importance of their input and engagement will be made clear in guidance. The guidance will include expectations of who the applicant should consider engaging with and would positively contribute to a scheme focused on delivering the best outcomes for projects, and its impact on the environment and communities. This may include engaging with relevant statutory undertakers, such as water and sewerage undertakers, where it is beneficial to do so.

To be clear, the removal of statutory consultation at the pre-application stage does not remove various organisations’ ability to actively participate and influence an application through registering as an interested party. Statutory bodies will still be notified if an application is accepted and will be provided with the opportunity to make representations under Section 56 of the Planning Act 2008.

This amendment risks re-adding statutory complexity after the Government have responded to calls to simplify the system through Clause 4, which repeals statutory pre-application consultation. This has already been agreed and is not under debate.

In this context, although I appreciate the noble Baroness’s intention to strengthen the role of water and sewerage undertakers in the planning process, I must respectfully resist the amendment in the light of the planned changes to pre-application consultation associated with applications for development consent. I hope that, with these assurances and noting the inconsistency with Clause 4, the noble Baroness will consider withdrawing her amendment.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken and in particular for the support from the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. I omitted to declare my interests: I am co-chair of the Water APPG and an officer of the Flooding and Flooded Communities APPG.

I am a little disheartened by the Minister’s response because it sounds like a retrograde step, and one that is not in keeping either with the conclusions set out in the cross-party Environmental Audit Committee’s report or with the Cunliffe report. The Water APPG met Sir Jon Cunliffe last week, and he is under the clear understanding that a water Bill—not a water bill as in water rates but another piece of legislation—will be coming down the track to implement many of his recommendations. I will watch this very carefully and consider how to proceed. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 87FA withdrawn.

Amendments 87FB and 87FC not moved.

18:15

Amendment 87FD

Moved by

[Baroness Pinnock]

87FD: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Planning permission: Responsible Actors Scheme members(1) No member of the Responsible Actors Scheme may be granted planning permission or carry out major development of land in England through any agent or contractor or any other person acting for or on their behalf until the Secretary of State has revised the Scheme to ensure that—(a) all buildings developed by Responsible Actors Scheme members with relevant defects are remediated at no cost to leaseholders or commonhold unit owners, and(b) where a relevant defect arises from a failure to comply with building regulations or relevant approved documents in force at the time of the construction of a building by a Responsible Actors Scheme member, that defect must be corrected by remediating the building to current building regulations.(2) In this section—“building” means a self-contained building, or self-contained part of a building, in England that contains at least two dwellings;“major development” has the meaning given by article 2 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 (S.I. 2015/595);“member of the Responsible Actors Scheme” means a member of the Scheme established under The Building Safety (Responsible Actors Scheme and Prohibitions) Regulations 2023 (S.I. 2023/753);“relevant defect” has the same means as in section 120 of the Building Safety Act 2022.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new clause prevents members of the Responsible Actors Scheme (the UK’s large developers) from applying for or undertaking major development until the Secretary of State has revised the Scheme to ensure that all unsafe blocks of flats are remediated.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the purpose of tabling this amendment is twofold. First, it is to shine a beacon of light on a building scandal that has recently fallen out of the national spotlight. Secondly, it is to urge the Government to use this Bill to exert further pressure on those who caused the Grenfell Tower tragedy, where, I remind the House, 72 people lost their lives.

This amendment is not about pointing the finger of blame at this or past Governments. It is about seeking to put more pressure on those who created the conditions in which people died and which many leaseholders now have to endure, consequent on building safety failure.

What are the facts? The MHCLG estimates—I note that there is no current definitive figure—that between 5,900 and 9,000 buildings over 11 metres have unsafe cladding. This means that over a quarter of a million individual flats and perhaps nearly half a million people are affected, and that is just for those blocks over 11 metres, which are the subject of the Building Safety Act.

According to government figures for August this year, 1,927 blocks have had their remediation completed and a further 750 have started, but that leaves many thousands of leaseholders in limbo. I accept that the Government have attempted to improve this position with the remediation acceleration plan, alongside a promise for a remediation Bill. Can the Minister tell the House when that Bill is likely to be introduced?

The action plan commits to completing all remediation of blocks over 11 metres by 2029. That is a full 12 years after the Grenfell Tower fire. Meanwhile, leaseholders are paying the price for a situation that in no part is of their making. They are paying for it in extortionate insurance bills, in ever-rising service charges, and in knowing that they have no way out as their flats do not sell. For some, this has had very tragic consequences. The mother of one of those who ended their life as a direct result of this enormously stressful situation is sitting in the Gallery today and listening to this debate.

This Bill is an opportunity further to address the building safety scandal by putting more pressure on those who created these dangerous living conditions. Amendment 87FD in my name and co-signed by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, seeks to require that construction companies that have signed up to the responsible actors scheme agree to the full remediation of all buildings—that includes those under 11 metres—before they are able to proceed with further major developments. This must be achieved at no cost to leaseholders. For those living in blocks of under 11 metres, currently the costs fall on them, despite their not having created the building scandal in any way. The major housebuilders are well able to afford to pay for the crisis they created, with annual operating profits being in the high hundreds of millions of pounds.

The noble Lord Young of Cookham wished to speak in support of this amendment, but, unfortunately, he is currently speaking in Grand Committee. He has asked me to say that he is in complete support of the amendment and will vote in the Lobby in support of it if a vote is called. I look forward to the Minister’s response, but if I am not satisfied that more can be extracted from those who created the crisis that is putting lives at risk, I will test the opinion of the House. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, to which I have added my name. We have both spent many years trying to persuade the Government that a clearer and more comprehensive solution is needed to protect everyone affected by the building safety crisis. Noble Lords will know of my professional insights into this matter as a chartered surveyor and of my previous attempts to get fair treatment for innocent homeowners. .

I continue to receive mail from home owners, small investors, property managers and conveyancers who are utterly dismayed at the complexity, uncertainty and capricious nature of the funding under government schemes, which involve matters of building height, cladding combustibility and unseen and previously unknowable compartmentation issues, with funding applying differentially to various classes of ownership or being dependent on the freeholder’s assets, plus identification of the person responsible and whether that person has effective agency in relation to remediation. In addition, there are two parallel standards of remediation at work.

Some noble Lords will recall that during the deliberations on the Building Safety Bill, I convened a briefing for Peers. We were addressed by the late Amanda Walker, to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, was, I think, making reference. She told us how her life and world had been turned upside down. Her experience fits entirely with what others have told me of a living hell of unsellable property, unaffordable interim safety costs, insurance hikes and unknowable liabilities going forward—in short, what they thought was a safe and secure home being turned into a financial prison—and of the stress, ruined lives and total inequality of the exclusions from protection.

I joined Amanda’s mother and brother earlier today in a meeting with Minister Samantha Dixon. She gave the impression of listening very carefully to what we said. Mrs Walker’s recent email, which I paraphrase, says this: “My precious daughter was a very ardent campaigner on behalf of thousands of leaseholders who suffered because of loopholes in the Building Safety Act. This amendment”—she is referring to the amendment before us now—“will not help her but may help many others. The anxiety levels in so many people were painful to watch, and in my view ruined many lives”.

As the Minister knows, around 1.7 million leaseholders do not have full or even, in some cases, partial protection from the costs of remediating unsafe buildings. Those living in buildings below 11 metres have no protection at all, as the noble Baroness pointed out. Enfranchised leaseholders and those owning more than three properties are liable for any non-cladding remediation costs. Other leaseholders may have to contribute up to £15,000 to cover non-cladding costs—depending on the wealth of their freeholder, if you please. All these people are completely innocent of the causes that led to defects in their building, not just cladding but basic disregard of the building regulations in force at the time of construction.

The assumption is that lower rise buildings are safe because it is easier to mitigate risks, to escape from them and for fire and rescue services to attend to emergencies, but we do not actually know that they are safe. The proportionate standard under PAS 9980, which is the remediation standard frequently used, admits that spread of fire may be more rapid given the greater prevalence of combustible materials in the construction, and the capacity of many construction products to generate impenetrable choking smoke when burning, impeding escape. And who pays for any mitigation? Ultimately, it is the leaseholders.

According to the National Fire Chiefs Council, the current Building Safety Act’s three-tier approach—fully protected, partial or capped protection, and totally unprotected— is delaying remediation and leaving leaseholders in limbo. That funding is fragmented, and occupiers are left in unsafe buildings or are among the growing number, currently totalling more than 14,000, of those mandatorily evacuated, sometimes having to leave very modern buildings. The National Audit Office has found that the PAS 9980 risk-based approach to remediation is a cause of delays as different stakeholders argue over what constitutes “proportionate” remediation and “tolerable” risk, both of which terms appear in that document. Some 52 flat developers have signed up to the responsible actors scheme. Their remediation responsibility is to this proportionate standard only—never mind failure to build to the relevant building standards applicable at the time of construction.

Markets need transparency, and the Government need to be upfront about the general quality of buildings and building regulation compliance over past 30 years. It has long been an offence not to comply with building regulations. Market sentiment depends on clarity, but beyond the scope of the Government’s remediation portfolio, it is unclear what the reality actually is. So long as this doubt sloshes around the market, the insurance and lending sectors and, indeed, purchaser keenness, will remain febrile. All these may predispose a wider malaise the longer this persists, particularly in the lending markets, where the impact of new solvency regulations means that such uncertainties will have to be factored into securitisation risks, loan book management and consumer costs.

For evidence of the effects today, I point to flagging new flat construction, rising costs, schemes being mothballed and softening sales markets. Wagging fingers at insurers will not get rid of risk awareness and sentiment. Once you understand that something is a risk, it is there for ever. While I understand why the Government might not want to garner a lot of non-compliance data, if, despite consumers’ and the markets’ need to know, they choose not to do so, what I set out is the inevitable outcome, with implications for urban redevelopment and densification, homebuilding targets and, ultimately, stable communities.

This amendment would sweep up all building types, all tenures, and both cladding and non-cladding defects. It would tighten standards and encompass product manufacturers. Any planning delays under the amendment would be no more than the minimum necessary to process regulations immediately on Royal Assent, and I believe very few projects would be held up in practice. If the Government agree the principle that innocent people should not foot the bill for bad building practices or even for preserving the Government’s own policy objectives, they need at least to indicate to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that they propose to take this forward with serious intent. This amendment would give the Secretary of State the tools to do this and to end the two-tier remediation standard, the basic inequity and uncertainty of the current protections, and the market disruption that has accompanied them.

18:30

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 87FD, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to prevent larger developers applying for or undertaking major developments until the Secretary of State has revised the responsible actors scheme to ensure that all unsafe blocks of flats are remediated. We urgently need the remediation of unsafe blocks of flats. We recently debated this in Grand Committee, and we sought and received assurances from the Minister that remediation work will be completed as per the Government’s deadlines of 2029 and 2031. We on this side of the House are committed to holding the Government to account on delivering this remediation, but with a housing crisis and over 350,000 people living in temporary accommodation, we also need to build the safe homes we desperately need.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for raising these important issues with their Amendment 87FD on the remediation of buildings by developers and I pay tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for their tireless support for residents since the Grenfell Tower tragedy. I understand that the amendment is intended to protect residents and leaseholders. Unfortunately, its effect would be to slow remediation and risk stopping essential housebuilding.

I can reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that there has been no relaxing of the Government’s determination to deal with the significant remediation actions outstanding from Grenfell. I spoke to my honourable friend Minister Dixon just last week. She has now picked up the urgent action needed to accelerate remediation. She has already visited the Grenfell site, and I am pleased to hear that she has met Mrs Walker and other members of the Grenfell community. I know she takes her responsibility extremely seriously and she will continue the work of Minister Norris in dealing with this as quickly as possible. There will be a further opportunity in the very near future for this House to debate the issues of building safety and remediation, including their interaction with this Government’s bold ambitions on housing supply.

Amendment 87FD is intended to prevent members of the responsible actors scheme receiving new planning permissions or building new housing developments until the Government make fundamental changes to the scheme to require developers to remediate additional types of defect and apply a different approach to the remediation of external walls. In practice, this would mean that over 40 of the largest housebuilders in England would have to stop building new homes until the Government made changes to an essential remediation scheme that we assess would delay and undermine progress.

This landmark Bill is intended to get Britain building again, unleash economic growth and deliver on the promise of national renewal. It is critical in helping the Government to achieve the ambitious plan for change milestone of building 1.5 million safe and decent homes in England during the current Parliament. It is simply not compatible with the aims of the Bill to include a measure which would stop the largest housebuilders in this country building new homes. It would lead to major market uncertainty and disruption. Nor would the proposed changes to the responsible actors scheme serve the interests of residents and leaseholders, as they would delay remediation of their buildings for years.

Over 50 major developers have signed developer remediation contracts with the Government and committed to fix life-critical fire safety defects in over 2,370 buildings, at a cost of approximately £4.7 billion. This is supported by the statutory responsible actors scheme, which enables the Secretary of State to impose severe commercial consequences on any eligible developer who fails to follow through on their remediation obligations. Since signing the contracts, developers have assessed over 90% of relevant buildings and have started or completed works on 44% of buildings known to require works. This amendment would require fundamental changes in the responsible actors scheme by requiring developers to identify a different set of defects and require remediation to a different standard. Attempting to make those changes to the statutory scheme would undermine the remediation contracts that developers have signed with government. The result would be disastrous for residents and leaseholders, leading to long delays, operational and legal confusion, and uncertainty. Essential works to protect people could be set back by years.

The current approach to remediation under the developer remediation contract is proportionate and appropriate and uses PAS 9980, the same standard for external wall remediation as the Government’s wider remediation programme. The PAS 9980 standard is used for external wall system remediation because we are focused on mitigating risks to life safety, taking an evidence-based and proportionate approach. External wall remediation is assessed based on a fire risk appraisal of external walls which suggests remedial work or mitigation to improve a building’s risk rating through a holistic and fact-based assessment of its construction. Removal of combustible materials is often recommended but is not always necessary, including when other mitigating measures are taken. This proportionate approach to cladding remediation aims to manage fire risks and make sure that residents are safe, while preventing the kind of unnecessary works that can also be incredibly disruptive for residents.

To pick up the points made by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about insurance, we are clear that more needs to be done to protect leaseholders from very high insurance premiums. The fire safety reinsurance facility led by the Association of British Insurers and reinsurance broker McGill and Partners launched in April 2024. The facility aims to increase capacity in the market and may reduce high premiums for some of the most affected multi-occupancy buildings with fire safety issues. The facility has been renewed for a second year and is a viable option for building owners trying to find the best deal for their residents. In the first 12 months, over 760 buildings have been supported by the facility and now more buildings may benefit from the cover available, as the claims limit has increased to £75 million. In the remediation acceleration plan announced, we would work with the insurance industry to consider options for possible government support. We are currently engaging with industry and will provide an update on all this in due course.

This amendment has raised important technical issues about the remediation process. We cannot do full justice to them tonight, but there will be further opportunities for this House to debate the remediation of buildings at much greater length during the passage of the upcoming remediation Bill. I look forward to that opportunity. What is already clear, however, is that the amendment we are looking at tonight would undermine the core purpose of the Bill by greatly delaying work to remediate buildings, as well as putting at serious risk critical work to build new homes. Given these very serious concerns, I urge noble Lords to withdraw this amendment.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I thank the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the Conservative Front Bench for taking part in this debate, but I am thoroughly disappointed by the remarks of the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson. It is not an either/or. How can it be an either/or? According to the Minister’s response, either we enable housebuilders to build more homes or we accelerate even further the remediation of flats that are in a dangerous condition. It should not be either/or; it should be both/and. There is capacity within the housebuilding industry to do that.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I think I made it clear that the danger in the amendment is in doing just what the noble Baroness has spoken against. We want to move the remediation acceleration forward as quickly as possible, at the same time as building new homes. The danger with this amendment is that it slows the whole thing down and means that neither the remediation nor the building of new homes gets done quickly.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

Unfortunately, I do not accept the Minister’s argument because, under the Government’s own remediation acceleration scheme, it will take another six or seven years for people to have their homes made safe. How is that right? We heard the compelling arguments from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about the 1.7 million leaseholders who will be required to pay many thousands of pounds to make their own homes safe when it is not their fault. It is not acceptable that we are still here, all these years after that awful fire at Grenfell Tower, trying to debate yet again what is going on.

[Lord Gove (Con)]

My Lords, I am hugely in sympathy with the noble Baroness in her aim but, as the author when I was in ministerial office of the responsible actors scheme, which was stoutly resisted by housing developers, I had to strike a balance between putting the squeeze on them—by making it clear that unless they acted to remediate, they would receive no planning permission whatever—and making sure that they could continue to build the houses we need. Have the noble Baroness and the supporters of this amendment looked at what the impact on the balance sheets of individual housebuilders might be, and what impact that would have on our current rate of buildout? Also, is it not the case that many of those who do not qualify at the moment for support for remediation—the so-called non-qualifying leaseholders—are people with extensive property portfolios? A line has to be drawn somewhere to ensure that those with significant wealth do not benefit, while those who do need support receive it.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Gove, for his intervention. He is right that when the scheme was established, it was on the basis of squeezing the housebuilders as far as they could go. However, if I remember the figure correctly, one of the major housebuilders has made an operating profit in the last year of £870 million. Call me a curmudgeon if you like, but if some of that could be used to fund making the dangerous flats they built safe for people to live in, I think that is not a bad call.

We have had the argument but I am not content with the answers I have got, so I wish to test the opinion of the House. I hope that those on the Conservative Benches will support those who have spoken strong and hard in favour of remediation schemes, and in favour of leaseholders, through the Lobby.

18:43

Division 3

Ayes: 83

Noes: 157

18:54

Clause 52: Spatial development strategies

Amendment 87G

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

87G: Clause 52, page 70, line 38, at end insert “, or where the area of a spatial development strategy contains any part of a national park authority.”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure coherent planning through extending the Secretary of State’s powers to establish a joint committee of authorities where a national park is present in the spatial development strategy area.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for writing to me on my amendment in Committee. I apologise for revisiting this question, but I really think we need to be clear about this. The idea that national park authorities should be in some way a subsidiary and junior part of this process is something that I really feel will not work.

National park authorities are sole local planning authorities for almost 10% of England. They are statutory local planning authorities, charged with balancing development and economic growth. They operate across local authority boundaries and routinely co-ordinate with multiple councils, agencies and communities. In short, they already do strategic planning. The idea that the new spatial development strategies should in some way be senior, should start to completely alter the planning process within the national park so that it becomes subsidiary, is something that really goes against the purpose of national parks, as I understand it. Yet, as things stand, the Bill gives national park authorities a limited role in shaping spatial development strategies: they will be informed after the event rather than engaged from the outset, and I cannot see how that leads to good planning.

Under the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, national park authorities were recognised as key partners in preparing regional spatial strategies. That statutory status worked well. It gave clarity and accountability without burdening national parks with inappropriate new powers or undue weight. It is precisely that kind of formal consultative and advisory role that I would like to see the Government restoring in the Bill. Spatial development strategies created in partnership with national parks are far more likely to be better balanced and more coherent, to engage with growth in all its guises and to be more deliverable. I therefore urge the Minister to rethink government policy on this matter. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for this amendment. I apologise for not being able to take part in Committee, due to hip surgery. I welcome the inclusion of spatial development strategies as a particularly useful tool for ensuring that larger areas participate in planning for the future. They remind me of the regional development strategies previously in place during my days on the South West of England RDA. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they left much to be desired, but they were a step in the right direction.

When looking at spatial planning on a more holistic basis, it is important to ensure that all those organisations with an interest are consulted. This includes the national parks, which are guardians of environmentally sensitive land across the country. I lived in Somerset for over 50 years and regularly visited Exmoor and Dartmoor National Parks. Without proper environmental planning, both these parks would be the poorer, and species often depleted. I now live on the edge of the South Downs National Park and, again, I am extremely concerned that those who manage and look after their beautiful area should have a say in the spatial planning that affects them.

I know from my frequent visits to the Peak District—my husband comes from Derbyshire—that millions of visitors come to the national parks; many of them are overseas visitors. The parks are a vital part of the recreational activities for those who visit, especially for residents of nearby cities and urban constrained areas. The balance between ensuring free access and enjoyment for all visitors who contribute to the green economy and ensuring the survival of the environment and the species that depend on the parks for their survival is vital. Each park will have its own ecosystem, whether that be based on open moorland, peatland, ancient woodland or marshland. Each will have animal and insect species that are indigenous to their area, and the plant life that sustains them. It is therefore vital that the national parks should, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, indicated, have a seat at the spatial planning table. At a time when species that the countryside supports are in devastating decline, it is unthinkable for the voice of local national parks not to be heard. I fully support Amendment 87G.

19:00

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my noble friend Lord Lucas’s Amendment 87G. In doing so, I draw the House’s attention to my declaration of interests, in particular as a landowner in the Dartmoor National Park.

My noble friend is right to say that national park authorities should be considered fully in the planning process to underpin the importance of protecting national parks. I would be most grateful if the Minister could be very clear on the current role of national parks in the planning process, and I hope she can reassure my noble friends that will continue to be the case in spatial development strategies. I look forward to hearing her reply.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 87G tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State can establish strategic planning boards in areas that include a national park. As I explained in Committee, an SDS area is defined in new Section 12A which the Bill will insert into the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 as the area of the strategic planning authority preparing the spatial development strategy. The strategy area encompasses all local authorities, including local planning authorities, such as national park authorities. Therefore, the Secretary of State could already use the power in new Section 12B to establish a strategic planning board covering an area with a national park or part of a national park.

In response to the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, about the role of the national park authorities, I say that while national park authorities will not sit on boards, they will have a very important role to play in the preparation of spatial development strategies. We will expect boards and other authorities with national parks in their areas to engage closely with national park authorities to ensure these valued areas remain protected. National park authorities will continue to prepare local plans for their areas which will set out policies on the use and development of land. There is no change to the role of the national park authorities in preparing those local plans for their areas.

The strategic planning boards will be established through statutory instruments after the Bill receives Royal Assent. The constituent authorities will be formally consulted on the draft statutory instruments ahead of them coming into force, as is required by new Section 12B(4).

With these explanations, I hope the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I see I have not won the argument, so I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 87G withdrawn.

Amendment 88 not moved.

Amendment 89

Moved by

[Lord Best]

89: Clause 52, page 73, line 11, at end insert—
“(4A) A spatial development strategy must meet the needs of older and disabled people, through a requirement for new homes to meet the Building Regulations Part M4(2) accessible and adaptable standard or the Part M4(3) wheelchair user dwelling standard, as set out in Schedule 1 to the Building Regulations 2010 (S.I. 2010/2214).”Member's explanatory statement
The amendment introduces a requirement for all new homes to comply with the Part M4(2) accessible and adaptable standard, as defined in the Building Regulations 2010, or the higher M4(3) wheelchair user dwelling standard. The amendment aims to ensure that all new housing is inclusive, age-friendly, and suitable for people with varying mobility needs.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 89 and to speak to Amendment 97, which both cover the content of the new spatial development strategies introduced by this Bill.

I was very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who moved these amendments in my absence after 2 am during the Committee stage of the Bill. At that time of the night, I do not think full justice could be done to the two amendments which I brought back in this group, again with the support from the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornhill and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lords, Lord Carlile of Berriew and Lord Young of Cookham.

Amendment 89 would lead to spatial development strategies requiring all new homes to meet Part M4(2) or M4(3) of the building regulations. These building regulations cover accessibility for all new homes—for example, wider doorways and better planned bathrooms—with some of the homes provided at the highest standard necessary for wheelchair users. The campaign for improved accessibility has been led by Habinteg and by the Centre for Ageing Better, supported by the HoME coalition—Housing Made for Everyone. They have championed the need for the 1.5 million new homes planned for this Parliament to be accessible and adaptable, both to meet the very real current needs of 11.6 million people with disabilities of all ages and to create more satisfactory homes—lifetime homes—for all occupiers.

The good news is that the battle for adoption of these building regulations standards was won three years ago when the then Government committed to mandating M4(2) for all new homes, but the bad news is that this commitment has not yet been delivered. There was talk of further technical consultation, but this seems unnecessary now that several authorities have voluntarily adopted M4(2) without encountering problems. If Ministers worry that the higher standard could impede the achievement of the Government’s housing target, it is worth noting that the campaign for all new homes to meet M4(2) and M4(3) simply means more careful design rather than any noticeable increase in cost. This has been demonstrated over many years in London, where the higher standards were introduced a decade ago, but every month that passes, more new homes are built elsewhere that fail to meet accessibility standards, and many of them will require expensive retrofitting later.

In February last year, the Minister asked the then Minister what the likely cost to the public purse would be from the necessity for future adaptations of homes because these improved standards were not built in. She drew attention to increased care costs that will result from

“a lack of the decent, accessible homes”—[Official Report, 5/2/24; col. 1446.]

that, she said, the then Government knew to be needed.

I feel sure the leadership on both the Government and the Opposition Benches will not have changed their minds; no U-turns have been announced. Rather, all concerned have been waiting for the right moment to mandate the long-awaited M4(2) and M4(3). This amendment takes advantage of the opportunity to achieve this by including these standards in all the new spatial development strategies.

The housebuilding industry is already well prepared for this improved accessibility standard, having expected it for some time. Housebuilders have their revised house plans ready to go. From the Dispatch Box, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, told the Bill Committee that

“we will soon outline our approach to accessible new-build housing”.—[Official Report, 9/9/25; col. 1436.]

I note the word “soon”.

Successive Governments have pledged to change the building regulations and make M4(2) standard, but we have waited in vain so far. The prize remains: if new homes met this standard, there would be payback in reducing numbers of people who cannot be discharged from hospital, in helping those using wheelchairs to have a place of their own, and in making it easier for many older people with mobility problems to get around in their own homes. Can we now take the opportunity before us to make hundreds of thousands of new homes properly accessible at last?

I turn to Amendment 97, with the same cross-party support as for Amendment 89. This amendment would place a requirement on a strategic planning authority when it prepared its spatial development strategy to have regard to the housing needs of our ageing population. This amendment was also moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, in Committee, and I am most grateful to her.

The ministerial response in Committee suggested that national guidance should enable spatial development strategies to incorporate this element, but the reality is that for many years, despite general guidance from government, the housing needs of our ageing population have frequently been ignored in planning policies. Precious few local authorities have undertaken full assessments of the housing needs of older people, followed by provision in their local plans, where these plans exist.

I fear this blindness to the importance of planning for older people’s needs may now be replicated at the level of the strategic planning authority. Conversely, since local plans will have to be in conformity with the new spatial development strategies, if the strategies require recognition of the housing needs of older people, this will translate into local plans too.

With no change, supply of accommodation specifically for older people will struggle to reach even the 7,000 to 8,000 new homes per annum of recent years, despite the governmental older people’s housing taskforce estimating that over 30,000 new homes per annum are needed. The APPG on Housing and Care for Older People—I declare my interest as co-chair of that APPG—has recommended that local planning authorities should plan for 10% of new homes supply to be specifically for older people. This amendment would encourage this approach when spatial development strategies were being prepared.

Building homes for older age groups may look like a distraction from meeting the acute needs of young families, but by providing for the older generation, they can right-size to somewhere better for their own health and well-being and release a much-needed home for the next generation. In the social sector, with its ageing tenant population, the building of fully accessible, affordable developments for older people is very likely to mean that precious social rented council and housing association homes immediately become available. This housing for families directly addresses problems of homelessness, saving both families and councils the outrageous costs of temporary accommodation and rescuing families living in grossly overcrowded conditions. Meanwhile, in the owner-occupied sector, one elderly home owner moving to a new retirement apartment can stimulate a chain effect that provides a more suitable home for a long line of movers, leading to a first-time buyer starting on the home ownership ladder. Housing for older people has a multiplier effect that hugely increases its value.

Moreover, the Government have a target of building 1.5 million homes this Parliament; if planners demanded a stream of housing specifically for older people, the buildout of major new developments would be accelerated by enabling parallel construction on the site for the two separate markets. Adding the building of new homes for older people in simultaneous construction means the Government will hit their ambitious housebuilding target sooner.

I am optimistic that there is understanding within government of the need to assess and cater for our ageing population. Hopefully, the forthcoming national housing strategy has something positive to say on this issue. The Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook, recently replied encouragingly to a Question on this matter. I hope that the Minister can provide some reassuring news on the guidance that is due on this very important theme. I beg to move Amendment 89.

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 91 in my name, which would insert a new subsection in Clause 52, “Spatial development strategies”, which amends the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004.

According to the House of Commons Library paper on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, LURB was meant to introduce

“a statutory requirement for LPAs to prepare design codes, in which they set out design requirements for developments in their area”,

but this has not been commenced. At the moment, there is no requirement for a spatial development strategy that specifies an amount or distribution of housing or affordable housing to include a design code for the specified housing development. This seemed an opportune moment to kick-start this part of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 into process.

In Committee, I shared Churchill’s quote:

“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us”.—[Official Report, Commons, 28/10/1943; col. 403.]


Design is so important. Buildings can be beautiful or ugly; they can enhance communities or destroy them. We need quality homes that are sustainable and that, in 200 or 300 years, people will still think are beautiful. Thus, upholding architectural standards and considering aesthetic standards is essential. Our environment has a dramatic impact on our lives, affecting our outlook, our well-being and, most importantly, our mental and general health.

This amendment seeks to rectify these issues by including a design vision into the spatial development strategy. It is vital for high-quality design to be prioritised in the strategic planning process to ensure that new developments meet the practical and visual needs of residents and enhance communities. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, stated in Committee that,

“National planning policy already makes it clear that poor-quality design should not be allowed. Yet the general quality and design standard of much volume housebuilding in this country continues to be poor”.—[Official Report, 9/9/25; col. 1328.]


While there was lots of discussion about the variety of initiatives and more reviews to come, the Government failed to give an adequate response in Committee on why this section of the LURB has not yet been commenced.

19:15

My noble friend Lady Scott, when referencing the LURB in a debate on housing for young people in this House last March, stated:

“The duty introduced through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act for all local councils to produce a design code at the spatial scale of their authority area will give design codes significant weight when planning applications are determined, and the establishment of the Office for Place will support the creation of healthy, beautiful places. This Government will not compromise on quality and beauty”.—[Official Report, 14/3/24; col. 2237.]

Will this Labour Government also please commit to not compromising on quality and beauty and accept this amendment? It is not good enough just to build more houses; they need to be designed well, practical and sustainable.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 112. I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Pinnock for pitching in on the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, in the wee small hours as I attempted to get my last train. I was very pleased to support both of the noble Lord’s amendments. I know from experience that housing for older people is still the Cinderella of the sector. I also publicly thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his persistence on the issue to improve homes as we age. Never before has the need for building standard M4(2) been more necessary. It is very short-sighted of successive Governments not to grasp this nettle, because retrofitting, as has been said, is difficult and expensive. I would therefore quote the chant “Why are we waiting?”, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Amendment 91, from the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, recognises the need for design in spatial development strategies, so I hope that she will support my amendment in the next group.

On Amendment 112, which I also submitted in Committee, I am very pleased to say that we have had some productive meetings with the Minister, who has been generous, as ever, with her time. I truly believe that she understands the key issues, and I hope that she will be able to give us some assurance that the requirements within this amendment can be taken forward somehow. I look forward to her response.

Amendment 112 is a fairly simple amendment, brought to us from Centrepoint, the amazing charity for young homeless people. It is basically saying that, where a particular housing type is being set up for homeless youngsters, it should be permissible to deviate from the nationally described space standards so that the finances stack up and the total model works. Put simply, this new model, which is being called stepping-stone accommodation, provides for smaller accommodation than what would be prescribed, but it is very much more than okay for youngsters leaving care, those who have been sofa surfing or those who are trying to get off the streets. It is their own home, with their own front door. I waxed lyrical about the quality of this accommodation from my visit, and I will not repeat myself. However, it is important to say that it was designed with young people and that they love living there.

The Minister said, in her response to me, that councils, in their plans, can already do this; it is permissible. She is right, and while it is acknowledged that nationally described space standards are not in themselves mandatory, the practical reality has proved to be rather different. Local planning authorities, as a matter of course, look to these standards as the primary point of reference when formulating policy. Consequently, where discretion is left to local interpretation, planning determinations become protracted, frequently extending over a number of years. In Committee, I described cases that involved anything between two and four years of additional time and costs for these charities, which can ill afford to have to pay that extra money.

These are not isolated occurrences. Rather, they reveal a systemic problem in which essential provision for vulnerable young people is stalled by prolonged and often unnecessary debate over standards.

This amendment would allow planning officers and committees to move these applications forward, at speed and with confidence. Estimates indicate that as many as 30,000 of these homes will be required in England alone. It is for this reason that the amendment remains indispensable. By establishing a clear and immediate exemption, it would provide certainty to local authorities, prevent unnecessary obstruction and expedite the delivery of much-needed accommodation.

We hope that the Minister can give Centrepoint and other homelessness charities—which are watching this—some real incentive to continue their excellent work and feel confident when approaching council officers for the exemption from the prescribed national space standards, and to be listened to and supported for this very specific and narrow course. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I want to make a quick point. If you are trying to build a lot of houses, you have to sell them. The rate of sale determines the rate of building: if you do not sell the houses, the builder goes bankrupt because houses are very expensive to build. As a result, it would open up the market much wider if we incorporated these standards for access, because more people would be in the market who could buy them. It must help the rate of sales, because there is a bigger market. Why not do it? I cannot see why not. We are assured that it does not cost any more to do it, so it seems silly not to.

On smaller houses, people who travel live in caravans and motor homes and are very happy doing that. Why are we trying to be so prescriptive about the size of houses? If you build a house of a size that is going to sell, why not?

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, not for the first time in this House, I will strike a slightly contrary note. I believe Amendment 89 is well intentioned but goes a bit too far in calling for all housing to meet the standards set out in M4(2) and M4(3).

M4(2) sets a standard for new homes to be accessible and adaptable, meaning they are designed to be easily adapted for future needs, such as those of an elderly person or those with a temporary disability. It is not a standard for full wheelchair accessibility, which is covered in the much more stringent M4(3) standard. M4(2) requires the dwelling to have features such as the provision for a future stairlift or lift, and may require certain features such as low-level windows.

The regulations were naive in believing that one could build homes that could be easily adapted for wheelchair users. All of us on all sides happily voted these through. It is like motherhood and apple pie: we thought we were doing something helpful for the disabled, and I do not think we took into account the practicalities and the cost. I simply do not believe that you can build these homes to be easily converted for the disabled at the same cost as current homes.

It is not just a matter of level access; it is a whole host of different features. You need wider doors everywhere. Kitchens may have to be ripped out and built at a much lower level for wheelchair users. You cannot have any wall cabinets; there will never be enough space in a kitchen designed for wheelchair users.

As for bathrooms, it is not just a matter of extra grab handles; the whole bathroom needs to be twice to three times the size to fit a wheelchair user. If a wheelchair user is not ambulatory at all and has to be stuck in the wheelchair, you need an absolutely level access shower. That means ripping out the standard shower and putting in a flat one when you might not have the drainage to do it. These are just some of the practical problems I see day to day if one tries to design that in at the beginning. As for space to install a lift—forget it. That would require a massive redesign at potentially enormous cost.

The point is that there are an estimated 1.2 million wheelchair users in the UK. This number includes permanent users and the 400,000 ambulatory users, which includes people like me who can walk a bit, provided we have our chariot wheelchair to help us. Wheelchair users make up roughly 11% of the disabled population. That is why I think it is over the top to call for all housing to be suitable or adapted for wheelchair users when only 11% of the population needs it. Perhaps local authorities should be under an obligation to deliver 15% of wheelchair-accessible or adaptable housing in all new buildings.

Turning briefly to the housing needs of an older generation, I have a simple, one-word solution: bungalows, either detached, semi-detached or even a single-storey terrace. It is believed that about 2 million bungalows were built in the last century, before builders stopped building them, since they take up more space and they can now cram a dozen rabbit hutches of about three storeys high into the same space taken up by one bungalow. In 1987, there were 26,000 new bungalows registered. In 2017, there were only 2,210.

I do not have a solution to that. If builders will not build them, I am loathe to demand that there should be a compulsory quota. Perhaps another slogan for the Secretary of State, in addition to “Build, baby, build”, should be “Bring back bungalows”.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 89 and 97, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, would mean that the homes we build must reflect the needs of our population. In an ageing society and one where the nature of disability is changing, this becomes ever more urgent. Accessibility and adaptability are not luxuries; they are the foundations of a fair and future-proof housing system. We are therefore grateful to the noble Lord for bringing back this important debate on Report and thank him for his tireless work on these issues.

On Amendment 91, tabled by my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger, more homes are important—of course they are—but homes that respect local character, reflect vernacular and are, quite frankly, pleasant to look at are important too. Having scrapped the Office for Place and having not implemented the LURA requirements for design statements alongside local plans in local planning authorities, the Government appear to be riding roughshod over the very principles of good design and placemaking that Parliament sought to embed in legislation.

What are the Government going to do to uphold and protect the principles of design quality, to ensure that places we build are not only affordable and efficient but beautiful, sustainable and built to last? I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, shares this sentiment. She will speak to her Amendment 92 in the next group, which seeks to strengthen the same call.

On Amendment 112, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, as we said in Committee, stepping-stone accommodation is an idea with real potential and one that speaks to a compassionate and practical approach to housing need. But, as ever in this House, we must balance principle with practice. I support wholeheartedly the spirit of this amendment, but I sound a note of caution. Our existing space standards were developed for good reason. They exist to prevent a return to poor-quality housing—the rabbit hutch flats of the past—homes that compromise health, dignity and long-term liveability.

If we are to disapply or adapt such standards in specific cases, we need to do so with clear safeguards in place. The noble Baroness has helpfully proposed a specific minimum size and has begun to flesh out the practicalities of this proposal—that is a constructive way forward. But before we enshrine such figures in legislation, there should be a proper consultation both with the sector and, crucially, with those we seek to serve.

Stepping-stone accommodation could play a valuable role in tackling housing need, but it must be done right. It must offer dignity, not just a stopgap. Above all, it must serve the people it is designed to help, not simply the pressures we have in the system at this time.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for tabling these amendments relating to housing design, accessibility and homelessness solutions.

Amendment 89 would require spatial development strategies to ensure that new housing meets the needs of older and disabled people. While I cannot pre-empt the forthcoming national housing strategy, I am sure the Minister in the other place has listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others, on the growing importance of ensuring we provide sufficient suitable housing for older people and those with disabilities. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, that I do not know about bungalows, but at this rate I am going to be given a whole wardrobe of hats to wear, which I look forward to.

The Government firmly believe that providing suitable housing for older adults and people with disabilities is essential to supporting their safety and independence. However, I do not agree that the noble Lord’s amendment is needed to achieve that outcome. Local planning authorities already have the tools to support the delivery of homes that are accessible and adaptable. The National Planning Policy Framework sets out that authorities should assess the size, type and tenure of housing required by different groups—including older and disabled people—and set clear policies to address these needs. That is why I spoke earlier about having a sufficient quantity of housing, and local authorities are best placed to assess that need.

Authorities can also apply enhanced technical standards from the building regulations through planning conditions. Where there is clear evidence of local demand, authorities are expected to use these standards to help ensure a sufficient supply of accessible homes. That may include specifying the proportion of new housing built to M4(2) and M4(3) standards. The Bill also already enables strategic planning authorities to address this issue, where it is considered to be of strategic importance to the area. I therefore ask that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.

19:30

Amendment 91, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger, seeks to ensure that new housing development planned through a spatial development strategy is well designed. The Government want to see a step change in housing delivery, but I hope that we have made it very clear that that does not mean units at any cost, and we must ensure that the homes and places that are built are high-quality, attractive and sustainable. We are committed to providing a planning system that creates well-designed development and recognises the role of local design codes in achieving that. A clear framework already exists through the NPPF and the National Model Design Code for local planning authorities to prepare design codes at the most appropriate level, to provide maximum clarity about design expectations for development.

To answer the noble Baroness’s question about provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 on authority-wide design codes and when they will be commenced, as part of the 2024 consultation on the NPPF, we asked whether local authority design codes should focus on locations where there is the greatest scope for change—for example, increased densities and new, large-scale development—rather than setting design requirements that apply district-wide.

We will keep under review the provisions contained in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act on authority-wide design codes and national policy and guidance on design in relation to how the use of localised design codes and other design tools, including master plans and design guides, can be embedded as part of the plan-making process. We will use the feedback from the consultation to inform future decisions. In the meantime, local authorities should continue to consider, through their coding process and by engaging with communities, the scale and issues that their design code should cover, to most effectively support the vision for their place and planning decision-making. This may be an authority-wide code. The Bill also already allows for design matters to be addressed by SDSs where they are considered to be of strategic importance to the area.

The Office for Place was mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson and Lady Scott. On 12 November 2024, it was announced that the Office for Place would be closed down and that the expertise of its staff would be redeployed within the department. In the Written Ministerial Statement, the Housing Minister made it clear that he wanted design and place-making to be a fully integrated consideration in wider planning reforms, including support to local and strategic planning authorities.

Furthermore, to support local authorities to elevate design quality in their areas, we will publish updated national design guidance later this year.

Amendment 97, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Best, seeks to ensure that strategic planning authorities reflect the needs of older people. As I have set out, I agree with the noble Lord that the housing needs of older people should be considered when preparing spatial development strategies, but I do not see a need for the Bill to be amended to achieve that outcome. The Bill already requires strategic planning authorities to have regard to the need to ensure that their spatial development strategy is consistent with current national policy, which contains clear expectations on assessing and reflecting the housing needs of older and disabled people.

Turning to Amendment 112, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, for raising the important issue of exempting local planning authorities from applying space standards on local planning applications concerning the delivery of “stepping stone” accommodation. I was very grateful to the noble Baroness for bringing a Centrepoint representative to meet me. The organisation is doing vital work in supporting young people at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness, and it was great to meet its representative to learn about how it is implementing its plans.

Homelessness is far too high, and this Government have committed to delivering long-term solutions. We are developing a cross-government strategy to get back on track to end all forms of homelessness. We continue to engage with the youth homelessness sector to ensure that the strategy meets the needs of young people. The funding for homelessness services, which was outlined previously, also includes continued funding for 650 units for young people at risk of homelessness or rough sleeping, alongside accompanying support services, through the single homelessness accommodation programme. My own area has benefited from that fund as it delivered the kind of accommodation that the noble Baroness referred to.

As noble Lords know, we must build more homes in order to tackle the root causes of homelessness. The Bill underpins our commitment to deliver 1.5 million homes over this Parliament, and we have confirmed a new 10-year £39 billion social and affordable homes programme. The current planning framework already allows local planning authorities to do what this amendment seeks to achieve. Each planning application is judged on its own individual merit, and the weight given to competing material considerations is a matter for the local planning authority. For example, it could be that an authority considers the need for a particular type of housing tenure to outweigh local policy around space standards, when considering all relevant material considerations. We should leave that choice and decision in the hands of local authorities for the reason that the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, gave: it is important that we do not undermine the wider picture in relation to space standards.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

I absolutely understand those points; as a localism person, obviously I agree with that. However, the key issue is that planning officers are playing “safety first”. Their immediate response is, “No”, for the reasons that the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, set out earlier. Is there any way we can strengthen the guidance to refer to “stepping stone” accommodation as something that the Government might look favourably on or permit? The current experience is that planning officers are hitting a brick wall each time. I totally understand why it cannot be in the Bill, but I do not see why we cannot put something into guidance that strengthens their arm when they sit down at the first meeting to discuss the matter.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for making those points. The best thing might be to have another meeting outside the Chamber to discuss what we might do. I understand the point she is making; perhaps planning officers are being overly cautious because they do not recognise that they already have such a power. I am happy to meet her outside the Chamber to discuss how we might move forward on that issue. I am very keen that this does not go into the Bill, because if it did, it would risk undermining the work that has been done over many years to improve the space standards that we already have for our homes. They were hard fought for and hard won, so I do not want this proposed provision to undermine them.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the support, including from the Minister, both for the extension of M4(2) standards to all homes and for a handful of them to be for full-wheelchair use, such as the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, spoke of.

I say to the noble Lord, however, that we are not talking about ripping out kitchens or showers but about putting in showers or other amenities that work for everybody. This is about having accessible standards for new builds only; this is not about retrofitting existing properties. Just a minority will comply with the M4(3)—full wheelchair—standards, but all homes would be built at least to M4(2). I have been responsible for building a large number of these homes and the use of these standards has not broken the bank, so I know that it is possible. I am grateful for the support for this happening.

The Minister said that the national housing strategy may say something about both accessible housing and housing for older people. I look forward to seeing that and hope that it is entirely positive. At this point, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 89 withdrawn.

19:40

Consideration on Report adjourned until not before 8.19 pm