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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Protecting Built Heritage
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
We will begin with the Select Committee statement. Jo Platt will speak on the publication of the third report of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, “Protecting built heritage”, HC 144, for up to 10 minutes, during which time no interventions will be taken. At the conclusion of this statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement and call Jo Platt to respond to them in turn. Questions should be brief and Members may ask only one question each.
I call Jo Platt to give the statement on behalf of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Jo Platt (Leigh and Atherton) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Sir Desmond. I am pleased to be here to present the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s report “Protecting built heritage” and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement. I also thank the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), for handing on the baton to a fellow Committee member.
The Committee launched its inquiry into the state of our built heritage back in December 2024. Over 12 months, we held five sessions, heard from 26 witnesses and received 113 pieces of written evidence. We also visited the National Gallery, the Southbank Centre, Buckingham Palace and V&A East Storehouse. I thank all those who gave evidence and welcomed us on visits. Our report, published on Monday, is the product of extensive evidence from heritage organisations, local authorities, faith groups, businesses, community organisations and individuals from across the country.
This inquiry is particularly important to me. Before returning to Parliament, I oversaw Leigh Spinners Mill, a grade II* listed former cotton mill in the heart of Leigh in my constituency. There I saw at first hand both the challenges and the opportunities that come with preserving historic buildings. I was involved in efforts to restore and repurpose the site so that it could support heritage, enterprise, arts and culture while serving our great community. That experience reinforced my belief that our historic buildings are not simply reminders of the past, but assets that can contribute to our future prosperity and wellbeing. Built by previous generations with confidence in the future of their towns, they should continue to be valued, preserved and invested in as part of our future.
That is one of the central messages of this report. Built heritage plays a vital role in the identity of our towns, villages and cities. Historic buildings support tourism, provide community spaces, create opportunities for economic growth and contribute to a sense of place and belonging. However, we heard concerning evidence that many of these assets are under growing pressure from rising costs, workforce shortages and a planning system that is too often inconsistent and difficult to navigate.
Yet alongside those challenges lies a tremendous opportunity. Historic England estimates that up to 670,000 homes could be created through the reuse of vacant or underused historic buildings. That is almost half of the Government’s 1.5 million homes target. We were struck by an initiative in Italy where homes can be sold for as little as €1, so long as they are neglected heritage assets that are successfully transformed into homes. We should demonstrate similar ambition. Too often, policy treats reuse as an afterthought rather than a priority. Our report argues that that must change. We therefore recommended the development of a national “heritage-to-housing” approach, and a broader strategy that puts the reuse and adaptation of existing buildings at the heart of regeneration policy.
We also believe that there is merit in establishing a dedicated programme to support the repurposing of underused town centre and high street buildings, helping local authorities to unlock opportunities for housing and economic development. Our Committee also found that a one-size-fits-all approach to high street regeneration does not work. Communities face different challenges and opportunities. We therefore recommend better tools and frameworks to help local authorities to identify the interventions that are most likely to succeed in their area, and to ensure that investment is targeted effectively.
The Committee also heard consistent concerns about the operation of the planning system. Owners, developers and community organisations told us that lengthy waits for planning and listed building consent can discourage investment and delay projects that would otherwise bring historic buildings back into use. We heard evidence that many listed building consent applications are ultimately approved, but decisions are often delayed, creating uncertainty and additional costs. Although recent reforms are welcome, the Government must go further to streamline processes, encourage the wider use of the local listed building consent orders, strengthen conservation capacity in local authorities and promote earlier engagement between applicants and planning authorities.
Financial barriers remain a major obstacle to the preservation of built heritage. Witnesses repeatedly highlighted the fact that the current VAT regime often makes repairing and reusing existing buildings more expensive than demolishing them and starting again. While works on residential buildings and some conversions are zero-rated for VAT, owners of listed buildings are still required to pay VAT at 20% on construction and alteration works. We found that that creates a difficult incentive that runs counter to heritage protection and wider environmental objectives. We also heard of the pressures that that regime places on historic high streets and the businesses that occupy heritage buildings. We therefore urge the Government to review and reform that tax framework so that it better supports retrofit and reuse, conservation and the future of our high streets.
We also heard compelling evidence about the challenges facing churches and other listed places of worship. England has over 370,000 listed buildings, almost 15,000 of which are churches and religious buildings. Many are not only important heritage assets but vital community spaces, providing support, activities and services far beyond their primary religious function. However, many of those buildings face significant financial pressures. Witnesses raised concerns about the reduction in support previously available through the listed places of worship grant scheme, and the potential impact of its replacement with a new grant scheme, the places of worship renewal fund.
Although targeting funding at areas facing the greatest challenge is an understandable objective, we concluded that there is a real risk that places of worship of exceptional historic and architectural significance could be disadvantaged if heritage value is not given sufficient weight. We therefore call on the Government to ensure that the new funding arrangements provide adequate support for repair and conservation works and properly recognise the national and local importance of those irreplaceable buildings. The loss of an historic church is not simply the loss of a place of worship; it is often the loss of a key part of a community’s history, identity and shared heritage.
The future of built heritage depends on people. One major risk identified in our inquiry was the shortage of specialist skills across the sector. From traditional crafts and conservation skills to planning, expertise and heritage management, there is an urgent need to attract and train the next generation. I was particularly impressed by an innovative heritage skills programme in the north-west, offered by the Hopwood Foundation and implemented at His Majesty’s Prison Thorn Cross, which can create pathways into employment while helping to address workforce shortages. The Government should build on those successes and work with the sector to expand opportunities for training and careers.
We also heard that many small and specialist heritage buildings struggle to make full use of existing arrangements, despite being responsible for passing on many of the traditional skills that the sector relies on. Greater flexibility in the apprenticeship system would allow businesses to pool apprentices, share training costs and collaborate more effectively. If we are serious about safeguarding our built heritage, we must ensure that the next generation of stonemasons, joiners, roofers, conservators and heritage specialists have clear pathways into these careers.
Ultimately, our report makes a simple argument. Heritage should not be viewed as a constraint on growth; it should be recognised as an enabler of growth. The Government now have an opportunity to adopt a more ambitious approach that will secure both the protection and potential of our built heritage for generations to come.
Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)
My constituency has loads of fantastic built heritage, including Knaresborough House, Knaresborough castle, Starbeck Baths and much more. I really enjoyed reading the report and noted the recommendation about safe harbour, where trusted bodies could temporarily take control of at-risk assets to stabilise them. The report does not mention town councils such as Knaresborough town council or Harrogate town council. Does the hon. Lady agree that they would be best placed to look after some of our much-loved built heritage?
Jo Platt
The hon. Member is absolutely right to mention councils and local authorities, which are trying to do so much work in the country. The report points out that every place will be different; it is about pulling on the expertise of local authorities and town councils to find what fits within particular areas. The hon. Gentleman has made a good point, and it is now up to the Government to read the report and look at best practice throughout the UK.
David Williams (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for presenting this excellent report. In Stoke-on-Trent, we have declared a heritage emergency, but the restoration of our historic buildings is repeatedly held back by fragmented funding and the need to negotiate separately with numerous funding bodies. Does she agree that the Government should bring together the main Departments and heritage funders around one table in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, so that we can turn our beautiful yet endangered buildings into engines of regeneration?
Jo Platt
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which goes back to the previous question. The report has highlighted schemes that have worked for particular areas, such as the community ownership fund and heritage action zones, something we had in my area. These things pull on the expertise of partners, including local authorities and the community, by getting them around the table. Getting everyone around the table to make sure that funding goes where it is needed is an important factor that we are trying to lead on with this report.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
I commend the hon. Lady for her clear and excellent presentation of this report. Sadly, there is not time for me to list all the very many great heritage assets in East Hampshire. The hon. Lady talked about the importance of heritage to tourism and the possibility of using some underused heritage assets for housing. Does she think there is also a case to be made for looking at how we can best use some of those assets for hotel and holiday accommodation?
Jo Platt
The right hon. Gentleman is a great contributor to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and it is an honour to sit alongside him there. I agree that there is significant scope for heritage buildings to play a bigger role in providing such things as hotel accommodation. One of our findings was that the best way to protect many historic buildings is to ensure that they remain occupied, economically viable and actively used. The report focuses on a reuse-first approach, rather than a housing-only approach. Where hotel accommodation can provide a sustainable future for historic buildings, it can support tourism and create local jobs and is an excellent way of bringing our heritage back into use.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
I echo the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), my fellow Committee member, in praising my hon. Friend for doing such a brilliant job of presenting this report on behalf of all of us on the Committee. I also thank the excellent Committee staff, who helped me when I had to speak at the Night Time Economy Summit in Liverpool in February. There was a panel on this very subject—protecting heritage buildings— in a city that had UNESCO world heritage site status between 2004 and 2021. My question is really about the changing nature of these things; Liverpool’s status was taken away when the new Everton stadium spoilt the skyline.
How can we future-proof some of these things? The Committee staff helped me with my remarks at that Liverpool conference, where my right hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham), my hon. Friend’s new constituency neighbour and the future Prime Minister, also spoke, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), the former Deputy Prime Minister. I was being lobbied at the summit, and the point being made to me was that the United Nations also has something called intangible cultural heritage: stuff like human traditions and practices—
Dr Huq
My question requires a lot of context, Sir Desmond. I am springing it on my hon. Friend, so I do not want to just say, “Do you approve of this?”; I need to explain. Sorry—I am getting to the point.
Does my hon. Friend agree that there could be a way of knitting together heritage buildings and the intangible cultural aspects of value? For example, what about Wigan Casino and Northern Soul music? Could we find a way of mixing up the two?
Jo Platt
It is also an honour to sit alongside my hon. Friend on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. She makes an important point, one that I referred to in my earlier remarks. The mill that I worked on was used for cultural and creative value, and there is a bit in the report about how we can connect those up. The report sparks the conversation about what fits in our individual towns, villages and cities. I look forward to working alongside her to continue that conversation.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Lady and her Select Committee for their many positive recommendations when it comes to the repair and conservation of shared heritage. Previous schemes have retained and restored churches and other shared heritage across the Province of Northern Ireland, including in my constituency. The listed places of worship grant scheme can do so much more. What discussions has the Select Committee had with the Northern Ireland Assembly to develop and deliver that much valued and important scheme?
Jo Platt
That was a major part of the report and the inquiry. I have visited two derelict churches over the last few weeks, including Sacred Heart only last week. We know that places of worship are among the most significant heritage assets in our communities. The Committee heard concerns about funding pressures and the impact of changes to the grant scheme. The Government have decided to replace the scheme with a new fund that prioritises areas in most need. However, there is a risk that that could disadvantage churches of real historical significance, as the report highlights. The Government need to make sure that funding is at least as generous under the new scheme as under the old one, and that religious buildings are continually prioritised.
Backbench Business
National Planning Policy Framework
(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the impact of changes to the National Planning Policy Framework.
I am pleased to see you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I am grateful for the time to introduce this debate on the impact of the changes to the national planning policy framework. I called for this debate following a decision affecting the village of Yatton in the north of the Wells and Mendip Hills constituency, with 190 homes set to be built on a site known as Rectory Farm, Yatton Batch. Yatton Batch is in flood zone 3a, which is the highest level of risk, according to the Environment Agency. The consequences of this decision affect not just the people of Yatton, as I believe it sets a precedent for every other community living with flood risk across this country.
I will give the Minister some context to the geography of my constituency, which matters enormously. Wells and Mendip Hills falls roughly in two parts. One part comprises the limestone Mendip hills and the rest, the majority of the constituency, is wetlands and coastal plains: the Somerset levels and the North Somerset levels. Fifty-one per cent of my constituency is less than 20 metres above sea level.
I will send the Minister a map, on which he will see that the Somerset levels are a man-made landscape. The monks, led by the Abbot of Glastonbury, drained the land hundreds of years ago by digging what locally we call “rhynes”, which is why the map shows the waterways as straight lines in my part of the world. It does not take a PhD in geography to work out that low-lying coastal wetlands are prone to flooding. It has taken centuries of careful management and regular maintenance of the local waterways to keep this land habitable at all.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
On the subject of keeping land habitable, the hon. Lady will be familiar with the fact that the Lincolnshire fens, and particularly South Holland and The Deepings, are entirely flat, without even the undulation equivalent to the Mendip hills. Our land is drained, and much of it is reclaimed from the sea, yet there are perpetual attempts to put critical infrastructure on it, including solar, pylons and suchlike. That is incompatible, and those things cannot be reconciled. I entirely endorse what the hon. Lady says about the character of the land, its propensity to flood and what we should do with it.
Tessa Munt
I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point. I will suggest to the Minister that, if he wishes to pursue a policy of building on land that will almost certainly flood, we need to put those buildings on stilts. That is not impossible, and there is certainly one very beautiful house on the levels that sits on stilts.
Yatton, the village subject to the decision, sits within the North Somerset levels, barely 2 km from the Bristol channel. On Friday 12 June, the High Court handed down its judgment permitting the development of 190 homes in this flood-prone area, on a site that failed the flood risk sequential test. The judgment follows the NPPF exactly, as the judge had to, and prioritised building homes over protection from flooding. It imperils not only the new homes—I should explain that the judge said that homeowners threatened by flooding had sufficient time to vacate their houses before the floodwater reached them—but the homes and businesses in and around the Yatton site. The impact of flooding does not disappear just because people can get away safely. This is about property as well as people. The damage to wellbeing and mental health takes its toll on those affected, as does the damage to property, which can take months and sometimes years to remedy and replace.
I would not want the Minister to think that this is a case of nimbyism and anti-development sentiment by those in rural areas. My Lib Dem colleagues and I agree with the Government’s desire to meet the huge need for housing across the country. There are 12,800 people on the Homefinder list in Somerset, which covers 66% of my patch, and a similar proportion on the North Somerset list.
I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on flooding and flooded communities. Many of our discussions centre on the Flood Re scheme, which was a great initiative that meant insurers could cover flooding claims and the premiums for home insurance in high flood risk areas were not astronomical. The scheme comes to an end in 2039, and the Government have been very clear that it will not be extended. As set out in legislation, homes built after 2009 are not covered by the scheme. As we get closer to that 2039 date, more and more homes built in high flood risk areas are not covered by the scheme and so risk becoming uninsurable and consequently unmortgageable. The consequences for developers and those who have already bought the homes will be awful. And the Yatton decision compounds the problems with the NPPF in allowing the need for home building to override common sense.
To press the point, it is very likely that residents of new homes built on floodplains, such as those in Yatton, will face flooding damage in the coming years. Not only will they not be able to make an insurance claim, but any new buyers will likely struggle to access a mortgage. Residents may well end up trapped, unable to sell a home that might cost them thousands of pounds in repairs every winter. The Minister knows the weather experts say that what we are experiencing now is the most stable weather that we are ever going to see.
I mentioned that the current neighbours would also be affected due to the simple fact that the floodwater must go somewhere. If developers choose to build up the land on which they wish to develop, the floodwater may well not hit those homes precisely, but will cause the existing homes and businesses in the area to be flooded more greatly. I have a lovely set of photographs of the land I am speaking about, which I will send to the Minister, showing exactly how it floods every year.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for the ambition she has put forward. Does she not agree that there is a risk of severe regulatory divergence? If the English planning system undergoes massive deregulation and introduces a faster, rules-based yes by default to major projects, capital will do what it always does and flow through the path of least resistance. The Government and the Minister need to ensure that the possibility she outlines for her constituents does not happen elsewhere.
Tessa Munt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The point I would like to make to the Minister is that, if developers choose to raise the level of the land on which they wish to build, we make a complete mockery of the Environment Agency’s work in relation to the LiDAR data that it uses to measure flood risk. There will be little pockets that are no longer in flood zone 3a, for example, but everybody else is then in a more problematic area for flooding. The current neighbours would be affected, because floodwater has to go somewhere. In the event of flooding, if the properties are lifted above sea level by raising the land, the displaced water goes straight into existing homes and businesses.
The Association of British Insurers has been clear that, while it supports the Government’s ambition to deliver 1.5 million homes, it has serious concerns about allowing developers to bypass the flood risk sequential test in areas at high risk of surface water flooding, which is precisely the kind of decision we have seen play out in Yatton. The scale of the risk to which it points is sobering.
The Environment Agency’s national assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk shows that 6.3 million homes in England are already at risk of flooding, 4.6 million of them from surface water alone. In just the first quarter of this year, insurers paid out £846 million in property claims, with the average weather-related claim reaching £6,040—the highest first quarter figure on record. Subsidence claims, often linked to the same extreme weather, rose 9% year on year to £17,820. Research commissioned by Aviva suggests that 11% of new homes built between 2022 and 2024 are already at risk of flooding, and that figure is projected to rise to one in seven by 2050, once climate change is factored in.
That is why I believe the Association of British Insurers, together with UK Finance and flood campaigners, has written directly to the Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and for Housing, Communities and Local Government to raise the alarm. The message is simple: rather than weakening the sequential test, the Government should mandate sustainable drainage systems, finally implementing schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. That legislation has been in the ether, unimplemented, for nearly 16 years. It is telling that 66% of the public already say that they do not believe the country or their local area is prepared for future flooding. Ignoring the industry that pays out when floods happen is really not the way to change people’s minds.
I put it to the Minister that Somerset council is required to deliver 75,000 new homes in the next 20 years, and I believe that North Somerset has to produce nearly 25,000 new homes in the next 15 years. To repeat something that one of my colleagues on Somerset council says, it has taken since the dawn of time for the population of the Somerset council area—not including the North Somerset council area—to reach 560,000. I am keen to know why the Minister and his Government believe that the population will grow by more than 75,000 people in the next 20 years. That is a 13% increase, when it has taken centuries to get to 560,000. It is a ridiculous population increase, and it is not realistic in the slightest. For context, the Office for National Statistics projects that the entire population of the United Kingdom will grow from around 70 million to around 72 million over the same period—a rise of just 2.8%.
I am the first to recognise that Wells and Mendip Hills is a lovely place to live—actually the best—but, even allowing for that huge appeal, I struggle to understand why the Government believe that such a disproportionately rural area will see growth at almost five times the national rate. The NPPF changes will affect much more than just flood risk—our area and its green spaces will be under pressure.
It seems especially disproportionate when I look at Bristol, my local city, which I love dearly. Its population is projected to grow by about 10%, which is again above the national average. It seems that those in Somerset and North Somerset will be asked to take a huge number of new residents. I do not know where they are coming from, and I cannot quite see how the Government have come to those figures. I would be grateful if the Minister could write to me on how his team has come to that assumption.
The last matter I would like to raise is that farmers run factories. Those factories are the agricultural land—it is just that we do not have roofs on them. That is no different from any other part of the country that has some sort of manufacturing. Farmers use fields, and they do not have roofs, so it is quite hard for people to spot the fact that they are food factories. In the interests of an honest debate, I acknowledge that many in the farming community welcome what is set out in the new NPPF, but that comes with real caveats. It is worth the House hearing what they are.
A lot of our greenhouses are more than 40 years old and in urgent need of modernisation, yet large glasshouse developments are still routinely treated as major infrastructure projects, which triggers huge delays that again undermine our domestic food production. My colleagues will need no second invitation on this point: food security is national security. I am really glad that the Government recognised that in February. Ensuring that our farmers can produce the food this country needs is of critical importance in what is a very unstable world.
Will the Minister consider the points that I have made and write to me about the population figures? I want to make absolutely certain that he does not misunderstand me; this is not a sentimental case for nature and green spaces. It is very realistic damage that is happening to Somerset.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
Order. I impose a four-minute time limit on speeches.
Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on council and social housing. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) on securing this very important debate.
On a personal basis, a debate on national planning policy feels like a very fitting bookend to the outgoing Administration. The issue of what gets built where defines our daily lives like no other issue, and I have found my first two years in this place defined by those debates. Without wanting to cast myself as a latter-day Cassandra, I shared early on my view that, try though Ministers might, there would be no appeasing the developer lobby—no amount of deregulation will ever satisfy them—and so it has proven, with the clamour for relaxed fire safety standards and the weakening of environmental policies, and for there to be less opportunity for ordinary people to influence decisions in the planning system, as loud as ever.
However, my views on the subject have changed. Today, I am not joining this debate to raise a series of detailed concerns about the latest redrafting of the NPPF—although I do still have such concerns, especially in relation to possible changes to the sequential test on surface water flooding and limits being imposed on local authorities to pursue more ambitious policies on climate and nature restoration. The point I really want to make today is that I believe we have reached a point where national planning policy is completely broken and the NPPF is beyond reform. After decades of deregulation, the genius of Labour’s post-war democratic settlement has been degraded and reduced to a system of fiendishly complex processes, combined with overwhelmingly negative outcomes, which, for all the world, seems to have been designed by an evil genius to drive all those involved mad.
When Lewis Silkin created the planning system that rebuilt this country from the ashes of world war two, he described the distinctly Labour vision for a policy that would meet “actual needs, democratically expressed.” Yet what the NPPF has achieved for years—I am afraid the latest iteration will be little different—is almost the precise opposite of Silkin’s idealism. Pretty much ever since the first version of the NPPF in 2012, what we have seen is the proliferation of speculative development across the country, with democratically produced local plans ridden roughshod over and housing built first and foremost for profit, not for people.
In fact, a national planning policy framework is not even an accurate name for what we have. There can be no plan-led system when national policy introduces the overwhelming likelihood of caveats to local plans through an ever stronger and equally inaccurately named presumption in favour of sustainable development, which in reality functions as a passport to permission for all but the very worst speculative schemes. This is not planning in any reasonable sense of the word—it is merely reacting.
Under the NPPF system, more and more of the initiative, the influence and the advantage lies with the vested interests of land promoters and major developers, whose private profit will never accord with the public good. And thus we have a national system in which the notion of affordable housing is a running joke, and in which the environment that politicians so often protest their love for is repeatedly trashed as a secondary matter compared to the unequally distributed benefits of growth. It is a national planning policy framework that overwhelmingly produces outcomes that lock us into car-dependent, unsustainable lifestyles, with polluted air that chokes the lungs of our children and costs the NHS billions, and utterly fails to secure public consent for the development we very desperately require to meet the needs of those stuck in temporary accommodation and in cramped, crowded and unsanitary conditions.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I apologise to the Minister; I am hopping between two different debates in two different Chambers. I told my constituents that I would make this point about planning policy in my area, which has fought for decades to protect the green belt. The introduction of the concept of the grey belt means that developers are now turning green belt into grey belt by dumping, cutting down trees and despoiling the area, and then applying for planning permission for development. The concept of grey belt has undermined all that we have spent decades campaigning for.
Chris Hinchliff
I agree with those concerns. As I understand it, many of the applications for grey belt are in fact on greenfield sites, and that needs to be addressed.
For all its labyrinthine processes, the NPPF makes a mockery of local democracy, which breeds disillusion and contempt for politics in this country. The system we have created through the NPPF traps communities in a never-ending cycle of adversarial confrontations with corporations that see our local landscapes as easy pickings and cream off much of the wealth of new developments, while leaving the public to carry the majority of the costs. The section 106 mechanism they rely on is not only obscure, but demonstrably incapable of securing the investment in the infrastructure—GPs, schools, sports grounds and public transport—necessary to keep pace with population growth, when hundreds of new houses are bolted on to towns that have already seen almost all their facilities closed.
The housing the NPPF produces is often both miserabilist and identikit. It is seemingly designed to erase local identity and shorn of local traditions, with no space for community and with a built environment that is best described as unhappiness given physical form. All in all, the damage that successive iterations of the NPPF have done to our country is difficult to forgive. Now is the time to consign the NPPF to the dustbin of history where it belongs and start afresh instead of making further amendments.
The one positive note I can strike is that it is not difficult to imagine something far, far better. We need to return to Labour’s democratic principles, stop treating the public as a problem to be silenced and embrace them as a source of optimistic solutions for meeting the needs of the future. It is time to replace the constant nonsense that traduces our constituents as nimbys, and to put power in their hands so that they can decide where and how to meet the housing needs of their communities in a way that expresses their hopes and priorities for the future. It is time to bring back architects in every local planning authority, working with each community to shape plans for future development on an appropriate scale for each settlement, and with a renaissance in the local vernacular that strengthens and reinvigorates the culture and identity of each unique town, village and city. In short, it is time to ditch the NPPF and build a new system that puts power in the hands of the people and allows planners to genuinely plan with communities.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt). I will try to cover four aspects of the NPPF in just short of four minutes. The first is what the NPPF says on intentional unauthorised development. I welcome the move towards stronger wording in that area. I should stress that I am not talking about a house extension or somebody accidentally not complying with regulations, but entire new dwellings and wilful non-compliance. I welcome the move from material consideration, as it is known, to substantial weight, but I fear it does not go far enough. As I said in my submission to the consultation, it should be set out very clearly that
“wilfully ignoring planning consent requirements will not result in retrospective planning permissions being granted”,
and that this cannot in normal circumstances be overridden by personal circumstance arguments. Other things could be done in support, such as making sure that stop notices are easier to issue, and restrictions on things like delivery of construction materials and mobile homes to unlawful sites.
The Minister and I have discussed the NPPF housing formula many times across this Floor. He is a very diligent Minister and, although he always robustly defends the Government line, which is kind of annoying, he always does it with great courtesy. I thank him for that. The problem is that this formula has meant a massive increase in housing numbers for the countryside. It is not a north-south thing; it is an urban to countryside shift. Whereas the numbers have gone up by 50% for the country overall, in East Hampshire they have doubled. When that happens overnight, no one has a five-year land supply that can deal with it, so we get speculative developments.
That has been brought into sharp relief by the issue of water supply, which has particularly come to prominence since South East Water’s submission to the Basingstoke and Deane local plan. The Basingstoke area that it talks about—zone 4, as it is known—extends to Alton and around my constituency. The Environment Agency has stopped the extension of the abstraction licence at Greywell Fen because of the degradation of that globally rare site of special scientific interest. I met South East Water recently to discuss this. There are questions outstanding, particularly regarding parts of my constituency. Clearly, action should have happened before now, but a doubling of the housing target hugely exacerbates the issue. Large- scale development should not go ahead unless and until this issue is resolved.
Jim Shannon
I commend the right hon. Gentleman on his speech. I know that the Minister is not responsible for my constituency across the water, but does the right hon. Gentleman feel that recommendations and good things learned on the mainland should be shared with us back home to ensure that we do not have the same problems that seem to be repeating over and over again here?
Damian Hinds
I agree. There is no practical limit on what we can learn from one another in the home nations of the United Kingdom.
I want to come on to what is known as policy L3, which concerns the minimum density requirements for areas around train stations. I have written about this in my submission to the consultation. I fear that a policy that is, on the face of it, sensible—“Let’s have people living close to train stations where they can commute to work or whatever it might be”—is really designed for urban town areas. But it will also have an impact on market towns in places like East Hampshire and in villages that just happen to have a train station. The sorts of densities discussed in the NPPF would be wholly inappropriate for market towns like Alton in East Hampshire and rural villages like Bentley or Rowland’s Castle.
Finally, I want to address how the NPPF interacts with local government reorganisation. I am totally opposed to the Government’s top-down reorganisation of Hampshire local government for multiple reasons, including the fact that it splits up an area with an identity—namely, East Hampshire. It puts the lower parts into a new Portsmouth super-council area and the rest of East Hampshire into this vast new Mid Hants unitary. Local plans have been built around existing district council geographies. For councils that are part-way through the process and about to have this enormous reorganisation thrust upon them, what is the guidance from the Government on how they should proceed?
Olly Glover (Didcot and Wantage) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing a debate on this important topic very much in the spirit of end-of-term relaxation.
I want to start with some of the positives of the new draft NPPF. My district councils locally have welcomed its structure, usability and the good aim, at least, of a more streamlined planning system and reduction of duplication. They also welcome the separation of plan making and decision-making guidance. Overall, the aim of speeding up the plan-making process to 13 months is welcome. Local plans take many years to be produced and involve a huge amount of resource. I am certainly interested to hear from the Minister whether he feels that the Planning Inspectorate has the resources to cope with an increase in the number of plans to examine and assess. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) made a very important point about the implications of local government reorganisation.
Significant concerns remain about how the Government seem to be moving away from local decision making and community empowerment. As this new scheme of delegation will reduce the input of elected councillors in planning decisions, involving communities and needs specific to local geography become even more important, yet there are concerns that spatial development strategies will be agreed to far away from communities.
More could be done to clarify the planning system and permissions for houses in multiple occupation. Such properties are often associated with parking and waste issues and, unlike larger HMOs, they may not be subject to requirements on parking provision, room sizes or amenity space, potentially resulting in poorer living conditions. Requiring planning permission for all HMOs for a single use class could help address those issues by ensuring consistent standards.
The environment is a big concern. The NPPF has insufficient focus on our climate and environmental obligations, and certainly not enough on flood and extreme temperature resilience and standards for homes. As highlighted by Wildlife and Countryside Link, the draft NPPF would limit local ambition and powers by preventing local planning authorities from requiring biodiversity net gain above the statutory 10% minimum. That seems like a retrograde step.
Finally, my biggest concern is one I have raised with the Minister many times and in many different forums: the Government’s ambitious housing targets are not being supported by the same focus on the infrastructure and public services that will be needed, which makes it harder to get local communities invested in the importance of more housing. In Oxfordshire, where the rate of housing growth has been extremely fast, the challenge is ensuring that infrastructure such as doctors, schools, public transport and affordable housing is available to support our growing population.
Development should remain plan-led and be guided by evidence of local need, not by market forces alone. That is my biggest concern about both Government policy in general and the NPPF in particular. I hope the Minister will add to his previous comments on what the Government will do to ensure that our house building targets and population growth are supported by infra- structure and public services.
Brian Mathew (Melksham and Devizes) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this important debate. Planning and local development is one of the most commonly raised issues in my email inbox, as I am sure is the case for many others in the room.
First, I would like to make it clear that I am completely aware of the dire need for housing in this country. Many young people have expressed to me their fears that they will never get a foot on the property ladder, or that they are having to move away from the communities they know and love to find affordable places to rent. Affordable housing is a need, not a luxury.
However, new homes do not need to come at the cost of the community that is already there, and nor should they be placed on flood plains. Local people and local elected officials should have a role in deciding the future of their area, because they best understand it. When local people are given the opportunity to help shape their future, it can be a roaring success. In the village of Holt, in my constituency, a neighbourhood plan shaped the development of a derelict, unused tannery site into an award-winning mixed-use development, combining homes and new commercial space, while still preserving the village’s distinct character and acknowledging its history. Meanwhile, in Seend, near Devizes, the village’s community land trust has delivered affordable homes for local residents, built to the highest passive house standards of energy efficiency. That demonstrates what rural communities can achieve by working with partners, such as local councils and Homes England, for the benefit of residents and the environment.
Although there is a lot of good in the framework, I am particularly concerned that it fails to commit to new homes being zero-carbon or held to the highest energy efficiency standards, as was shown to be possible by the development in Seend. It also contains no clear commitment to deliver actually affordable homes, and it risks encouraging more executive housing to make more money for developers, while failing to tackle the housing crisis.
I welcome the proposed presumption in favour of development near railway stations. Transport-oriented development is precisely the kind of planning approach needed to move away from car-dependent housing estates located far from town centres.
Tessa Munt
It is a very good idea to have development near railway stations. However, I have another application on the horizon in Yatton, which is the village I was discussing earlier, that involves a plan to build on the railway station car park. Does my hon. Friend think that that is a good idea?
Brian Mathew
It does sound most odd, if I may say so.
That principle lies at the heart of the Bath and Wiltshire metro proposal, which I support. It has the potential to unlock brownfield regeneration in Melksham town centre, revitalise the riverside and strengthen the high street through sustainable, rail-connected growth. However, if that ambition is to be realised, local areas must have access to the resources needed to develop robust transport business cases, masterplans and infra- structure programmes. I am therefore concerned that the removal of funding for sub-national transport bodies risks creating a significant obstacle to the station upgrades, service improvements and strategic transport planning required to support the housing and regeneration opportunities that the policy seeks to encourage. Without adequate investment in the transport network itself, the benefits of transport-oriented development may be difficult to deliver in much of the country.
John Milne (Horsham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. First, I thank the Minister for his assistance in progressing the local plan in my constituency. Horsham faced a unique problem with water neutrality, which the previous Government showed no sign of ever grappling with, and I am grateful for his personal involvement in that.
However, when it comes to the national house building strategy, I have to be critical. Difficulty with obtaining planning permission is only one, and no longer even the most important, of the many obstacles to house building, so why do we obsess over it to the exclusion of all else? Local targets are set through a compulsory process called the standard method, under which an area that has high local house prices, but only modest local wages, will have steeper housing targets. That formula is a terrible way to assess local housing need in practice, but its worst aspect is how it destroys local authorities’ negotiating power against developers.
Like most planning authorities, Horsham district council builds very few council houses directly, so the vast majority of its new housing stock must come from private developers. Developers are not stupid; they know that if a council has a target to build 1,800 homes each and every year—a target that Horsham may face—it will have to say yes to practically every site put in front of it, no matter whether a site was rejected the year before. Try explaining that to residents.
Developers with options for the land bid against each other, with a price based on the highest possible outcome, but achieving that price means them having to build zero social rent homes and lots of highly priced, executive homes. That is a bizarre case of competition only ever driving prices up, not down. Incredibly, in Horsham, we would be better off if we negotiated a monopoly for a single company to develop the whole district. That is why we have the paradox of having a chronic housing shortage at the same time as 1.5 million unbuilt houses with planning permission.
Meanwhile, as collateral damage in this process, we are ripping apart local democracy. Councils are forced, with zero local consent, to approve sites that are deficient in transport and water supply and that are mostly on greenfield sites. Local authorities have to take the word of statutory consultees as gospel; even where authorities know perfectly well that land will flood, if the Environment Agency says it will not, that is the end of it.
I know that the Minister is committed to solving the national housing problem, and I wholeheartedly support him in that, but the current situation is all sacrifice with no benefit. The sites we approve today will sit on the housing market like a dead-weight for years to come. High land prices are being locked in for wasteful schemes that take up three times the land that they need to. We need a reset, so I hope the Minister will agree to meet me to consider alternative solutions.
Alex Brewer (North East Hampshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this debate.
It is clearly essential to build homes. One reason why I am sitting in this place is my work to support victims of domestic abuse. For those, often with children, who are on a six-month stay in a refuge while fleeing the most dreadful violence, a secure home is the first step towards a new, safe future. However, the Government have introduced no targets for council or social housing, despite the Liberal Democrats making many calls for them to do so. The dreadful shortage left as the legacy of successive Conservative Governments is, at the very least, not being remedied by this Labour Government. That problem needs fixing, and the NPPF changes not only do not address it, but open up a raft of other problems.
The Conservative Administrations that previously ran Hart district council and Basingstoke and Deane borough council failed to produce local plans. That left those areas subject to speculative development granted on appeal, resulting in the building of large housing estates on the edges of our towns and villages, with no accompanying infrastructure. To make the best of a bad situation, the Liberal Democrats on Hart district council introduced a local plan, which, crucially, meant that houses were built sustainably on brownfield land. When the Lib Dems took joint control of Basingstoke and Deane borough council, a local plan was prioritised and progressed.
However, this Government’s new housing targets have rendered those new plans all but redundant. Those council areas are now easy targets for entirely inappropriate housing developments. When the balance tips in favour of appeal, it is not the people but the developers who benefit. In Basingstoke and Deane, planning permission for around 6,000 new homes has already been granted. In Hart, the major developer working on the biggest housing project has slowed down building: instead of building and selling 200 houses at a time, it is now building 50 to protect its profits. The new houses are no more affordable—in fact, properties in North East Hampshire are some of the most expensive outside London—but under the Government’s housing policies, developers are being allowed to land-bank: to push through application after application, despite the lack of infrastructure, and to hold on to land for years or decades as it increases in value.
Applications come in for a raft of inappropriate places, and all the while, there is no statutory consultee for our most important resource. Water is out biggest concern, and it is absent from the Government’s plans. South East Water, which supplies fresh water to most of North East Hampshire, produced a five-year plan in autumn 2024 that is largely a work of fiction, citing a new pipeline that would supply new and existing homes that would come online in spring 2025. Nobody believed that that could be completed in six months, but Ofwat has no powers to compel South East Water to publish a plan that is in any way based in reality.
The consequences of this regulatory and legislative failure sit with local people and the environment. Failure to supply local fresh water has obvious consequences, but the environment also suffers. We have heard already about how the Environment Agency has cancelled the supply of water in Greywell, yet South East Water continues to abstract from the site.
Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this debate.
My constituency is large and rural, containing the towns of Thornbury, Yate and Chipping Sodbury, as well as numerous villages and hamlets, and stretches from the internationally designated Severn estuary all the way to the Cotswold escarpment. A large part of the countryside that surrounds those communities is designated green belt, with all the protections that that used to bring, but now that protection is under threat.
Before I go further, I will provide some context. Under the current administration, South Gloucestershire council recognises the need for new housing and has developed a plan to deliver its housing need, which recently went through its examination in public. More than that, the council recognises the importance of homes for social rent and has been punching above its weight in their provision. With around 0.6% of the population of England outside London, it delivered 1.6% of total new social rent completions last year.
However, there is an implicit deal with local people in that local plan, which delivers homes while protecting the remaining countryside from speculative development. The Government’s grey belt policy fundamentally threatens that. Green belt land will now be parcelled up into cells for assessment, and it will be difficult to show an individual cell’s contribution.
The changes to the framework around the grey belt essentially make purposes C and E void, and particularly C, which protects countryside from encroachment. The danger is that pockets of land will be considered in isolation and be judged only to contribute to purpose C. Indeed, the 2022 West of England combined authority report, in the local plan evidence, showed that the primary reason for just about all the land in the local green belt is purpose C.
However, the cumulative impact of developing those pockets of land would degrade the green belt as a whole. Some of our green belt is very narrow, and it will only become more so if this is allowed to happen. Our towns and villages will slowly be swallowed up by Bristol, and the distinctiveness of our communities will be lost. My constituents do not want that, and I suspect that the good people of Bristol do not want it either, although some hon. Members may think otherwise.
The Government rightly want to speed up housing delivery, but indiscriminate housing built by big developers with no regard for the environment or the people living nearby is not the answer. Ironically, far from increasing the speed of housing delivery, as the Government claim it will, in my area the grey belt changes the level of risk, creating more delays by distracting planning officers from the planned sites and from the Government’s new town proposal. Time will be wasted arguing with speculative developers about what constitutes grey belt, when it could be spent delivering local housing need through the local plan.
I urge the Minister to listen to hon. Members across the Chamber, who are rightly raising concerns, and to advise the new Cabinet and the incoming Prime Minister that rural voices must be heard, and the NPPF revisited.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) on securing the debate, and all other Members for their excellent contributions, which I strongly endorse. I particularly wish to highlight the contribution of the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff), which I hope was a bid to catapult him into becoming Secretary of State under the new regime—I would certainly strongly support the approach he is taking.
A lot of people have referred to the inequity and inappropriateness of the way in which the Government have introduced national targets and the manner in which they have imposed them, through the national planning policy framework. It certainly reinforces the weakness of the whole system, because it is based on a delusion that private developers will collude with the Government in driving down the price of their finished product.
During my nine-year sabbatical from this place, I was chief executive of a registered social landlord—a community land trust—and tried to deliver in those circumstances, so I am certainly aware of the difficulties in trying to meet the need for affordable homes. My primary point is that the national planning policy framework has fundamentally weakened the rural exception policy, which was introduced in the early ’90s under planning policy guidance 3. That was the first time that planning had switched in principle from “planning use” to “user”, and took the user into account so it was meeting local housing need. That has been productive in a number of areas, especially in Cornwall, where it has for many years been the primary source for the delivery of affordable homes within the duchy.
The problem is that because of the way in which the framework has been brought in and because local authorities can no longer demonstrate that they can meet their five-year land supply, all areas that previously could be designated as rural exception sites to meet affordable housing needs can no longer be designated as such. A lot of them have been converted to open-market housing developments. I think that impact was unintended by the Minister, but it is entirely counterproductive, because in many rural areas, the primary means by which affordable housing could be delivered is now not being used. The planning system is fuelled by greed rather than need, and as long as we have weaknesses like that in the system, we cannot meet housing need.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) and all the hon. Members who have contributed today, including my hon. Friends the Members for St Ives (Andrew George), for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young), for Horsham (John Milne), for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), for North East Hampshire (Alex Brewer) and for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew).
One of the abiding themes of the debate is that water and other infrastructure seem to escape the demanding targets that are applied to the delivery of housing. We need an infrastructure-first approach in which infrastructure is as prioritised as housing. The Liberal Democrats welcome the ambition to deliver more homes, particularly the 150,000 social and council rent homes that the country needs, which we established as a target in our manifesto. But the right way to deliver those homes is by working with local communities and trusting them, not through more centralisation into Whitehall. Housing targets, for us, should be established firmly in a community-led process.
The incoming Prime Minister has talked a lot about devolution and giving power back to local communities, and he is right to do so. Communities know what works for their area, but this proposed framework does the opposite, stripping power away from local decision makers rather than handing it to them.
The proposed framework comes off the back of the recent regulations and direction that mean that decisions, both small and large, are now removed from local councillors, so that they have no power or control over those decisions. It also means that proposed developments such as those at Orchard Portman near Taunton—where 1,100 acres of farms were sold off by the Crown Estate to a house builder without the usual return of payments to the public purse being required in the event of planning permission—could be decided in Whitehall, not by our elected counsellors in Somerset.
For all applications now, the draft NPPF, which was recently out for consultation, is filled with policies that weaken local plans and community involvement. It is a power grab by central Government. Across the proposed new framework document, that centralising instinct repeats itself, starting with the presumption in favour of sustainable development. Today, that presumption is a backstop, applying only where the local plan is absent or out of date, or where there is no five-year land supply. That rewards communities for investing in an up to date local plan. That presumption in favour of sustainable development is now to be abolished; instead, policies S3, S4 and S5 would impose a de facto presumption in favour of development in every circumstance for certain kinds of development. That begs the question: will councils continue to invest all their time and effort in local plan preparation?
The same instinct runs through proposals on the weight to be given to different policy considerations, giving the same weight to housing, economic development, and heritage and landscape, leaving Historic England to raise concerns about how those will be balanced. It could mean that the historic setting of the Wellington monument on Oldway Road in my constituency, currently subject to appeal, could be another victim of these proposed policies. That approach could also be in contravention of the well-known wording in the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 that “special regard” will be paid to preserving heritage.
Nowhere is the centralisation of such decisions in Whitehall’s grasp going further than in the green belt. The Town and Country Planning Association has called the framework “unprecedentedly permissive” for good reason. Three elements combine to have that effect. First, the standard method, where 0.8% of the existing housing stock is applied as a multiplier and then a further multiplier is applied according to areas of high house prices. By definition, green belts constrain supply; that is their purpose. Therefore, they are areas of higher prices. In short, the standard method takes the consequence of protecting a place as a justification for building more on it. That cannot be logical or acceptable.
Rural councils have therefore been subject to much higher housing targets. For example, in Somerset, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills put across very well, the 75,000 new dwellings will come as a surprise in terms of population growth compared with what has ever been achieved in the past. Urban areas where regeneration is needed have seen their targets reduced.
The second element driving development in rural green fields is green belt policy GB7. In short, that means that a developer can secure consent anywhere in the green belt, regardless of what the local plan says, on condition that it is near a town with a railway station. Ironically, an area with no green belt might be better protected because it is not subject to those policies to allow development around railway stations.
The third and final part of the policy that leads to this greenfield development is GB2 for the grey belt. Few of us, and certainly not the Liberal Democrats, would object to local communities deciding that underused green belt land is degraded and could be released for development. But this policy overrides that local plan process, and disapplies protections against encroachment on the countryside, removing villages from the green-belt protections that they have had for decades and generations.
Andrew George
As my hon. Friend is aware, I am very fortunate to have secured a place in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, and my Bill will be on affordable homes. The details have not been written, so there is an opportunity to work on that with him, and indeed with the Secretary of State. I am very keen to do so and to adapt a number of those policies so that it provides a framework within which the Government can work with Parliament to improve and adjust planning policy to achieve the desirable aims.
Gideon Amos
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. He reminds me that, frankly, I struggle with the fact that such a momentous and significant policy instrument is going through Parliament without a vote. It can hardly be right that these major policy changes, which will unleash development all over the country and reverse decades-old planning policies, will not be subject to a vote, considering that we quite rightly spend weeks and months going through Bills.
I am very grateful that my hon. Friend has chosen to prioritise these issues and is bringing them forward in his private Member’s Bill. I wish him well. I know that the Minister always works constructively across the House, and his work is appreciated for that. I know the Minister will work with my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives on his private Member’s Bill, as of course will I.
Together, the existing and proposed frameworks begin to look like a greenfield-first approach. The golden rules, which would rightly require more affordable and social housing where green belt is released, are absolutely right. But the Government have consulted on allowing viability assessments to potentially undermine that. I encourage the Minister to say something on whether land should escape the golden rules requiring more social housing just because it has been previously developed. The binning of the garden city principles in the draft is equally damaging. They are the very foundation of what made the new post-war towns, such as Milton Keynes with its famous 22 million trees, some of the best places to live. That is no doubt a bit of drafting by those who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Similar centralising is proposed on nature and climate. National development management policies, along with constraints on local standard setting, will stop councils exceeding the statutory 10% of biodiversity net gain. Again, proposed policy PM13 will prevent councils from setting more ambitious energy targets. We saw the folly of that under the previous Government, who refused to continue with the zero-carbon homes programme. If they had continued that, and we had had solar panels on every house built since then, we could have avoided the need for an entire 900 MW power station—perhaps a small nuclear reactor or a gas-fired power station.
Finally, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills pointed out, policy F5, paragraph 2(b)(ii), would create a new exemption from the sequential test for sites at risk of surface water flooding. As my hon. Friend said, the insurance industry has pointed out that there could be as many as 400,000 mortgage prisoners in the future, unable to afford insurance as a result of these kinds of policies.
To conclude, the Liberal Democrats are firmly committed to delivering the housing that we and our communities need, but placing all the emphasis on increasing permissions for private sector homes that few can afford is not the answer. We know that that will not reduce—and has not reduced—prices to make homes affordable. New homes are only 5% of the market, after all. With 13,000 homes with planning permission unbuilt in Somerset and 359,000 empty homes in the country, we should be redoubling our efforts to deliver on both of those fronts first.
What a community-led approach really means—and this framework lacks almost anything about community involvement—is homes that people can afford: council and social rent homes, alongside rent-to-own to help people get on to the housing ladder. The environment, our people and our communities are not the blockers of development; they are—or at least should be—the reason for development, and we can enhance the life chances of both if we get it right.
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond, and to take part in this debate about the impact of changes to the national planning policy framework. At the outset, I thank the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this important debate. She made a strong speech, particularly focused on the danger of building in areas prone to flooding. I also thank the 10 hon. and right hon. Members who have made speeches—and the three who have made interventions—so far in this debate.
The NPPF is the rulebook by which our planning system is guided. It is an extensive and comprehensive statement of the Government of the day’s policy direction, and perhaps the clearest signal to developers, local authorities and local people about how a Government will approach changes to their surrounding built environment. It covers everything from roads to housing, local communities to land use, and provides the overarching checks, balances and direction in the planning system. We are not in blanket opposition to everything that the Government are seeking to do with the NPPF. However, we do have significant concerns about some aspects of it, and I will focus on those in my remarks today.
Since coming to power two years ago, this Government have twice proposed revisions to the NPPF, both times with severe consequences for our green spaces, rural towns and villages, and local democratic voices. In their first revisions, made just before Christmas 2024, the Government’s policy direction was clear. Unfortunately, what was on offer was an unwelcome gift of urban sprawl. That was because the Government made it easier for local authorities to release green-belt land for development in more ways than one.
The first, and most obvious, was the announcement that new golden rules would need to be met to expand on to the green belt. That effectively invited developers to test the waters by highlighting that the NPPF stated that, where a development complied with the golden rules, local authorities should give “significant weight in favour” of approving the scheme.
The second release came from the Government’s spurious grey belt designation. Concocted in the bowels of Marsham Street, “grey belt” is a disingenuous label. The Prime Minister has told us that it means low-quality land made up of “disused car parks”, but that is far from the truth, because, for too many sites, grey belt is simply a façade for releasing green-belt sites for urban sprawl and overdevelopment.
That is backed by research in December 2025 by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which showed that, a year after the first NPPF reforms, of the 13 developments of 10 or more homes approved by Government planning inspectors on so-called grey-belt land, 88% of those 1,250 homes
“will be built on previously undeveloped countryside”—
not disused petrol stations, low-quality land or any other trumped-up example taken straight from a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government press release, just our countryside. Worse, those developments make up more than 90% of homes granted planning permission on grey-belt sites by inspectors; a further 21 smaller schemes, totalling no more than 91 homes, comprised the remainder.
That is not the only attack on our green spaces. The 2024 NPPF revisions also reintroduced mandatory top-down housing targets across England by removing the word “advisory” from the relevant paragraph concerning housing targets, alongside references to exceptional circumstances for alternative approaches to determining local housing targets.
As other Members have said, that came alongside a new standard method for housing targets. The hon. Members for Horsham (John Milne) and for Wells and Mendip Hills highlighted some of the bizarre assumptions underpinning the housing targets generated by the new standard method, alongside some of its counterproductive outcomes. When examined together, those disproportionately redistributed top-down housing targets on to rural areas from urban areas. For example, under the Government’s targets, housing numbers were cut by 11% in London, 38% in Birmingham and 55% in Coventry, while increasing by 106% in the New Forest, 199% in North Yorkshire and 487% in Westmorland and Furness.
That is particularly concerning given that major cities—and not least here in central London—have the infrastructure needed to support development. However, even in Greater London, although the collective target has been reduced by 11%, that has been achieved by sharp drops in urban inner London, whereas in the more rural outer-London areas, huge increases have been imposed. For example, in my London borough of Bromley, which is the largest borough in Greater London and is mostly rural, the target has been increased by 400%.
The conclusion is inescapable. The NPPF changes show very clearly that this Government are determined to build all over the green belt. What has been the result of these reforms? It certainly has not been large amounts of extra housing. As I pointed out in this place yesterday, the Government’s own figures show that the number of net new additional dwellings in England was just 208,600 in Labour’s first year in power—a 6% drop from 2023-24 under the last Conservative Government’s final year in office. Indeed, the Government admitted that they will not hit the target through their own net additional dwelling forecasts, predicting that by 2029 they will have fallen well short.
It does not have to be this way. The Opposition recognise the need to build more homes, and we made it clear from the start of this Parliament that we are broadly supportive of the ambition to build many more homes. However, the Government’s actions, through some of their revisions to the NPPF, are the wrong way to go about it. A future Conservative Government will employ a genuine brownfield-first approach rather than releasing swathes of green belt or relabelling it under the murky and disingenuous designation of “grey belt”. We will not just pay lip service to brownfield development, but prioritise it and make it easier. That can and will be done.
The CPRE reported that a large proportion of England’s housing could be swiftly met using brownfield land that already has planning permission, without encroaching on undeveloped greenfield or green belt land. It estimates that there is enough brownfield land to build 1.41 million homes in England, based on the most up-to-date data from local planning authorities’ brownfield land registers up to 2024. That amounts to 93% of the Government’s parliamentary target. Furthermore, it has shown that England’s brownfield sites are increasing in number, land area and minimum net dwellings—up 54%, 6% and 34% respectively between 2018 and 2024.
That is why, not for the first time, I press the Minister to go further and faster in helping local authorities and developers to access brownfield sites rather than freeing up our green belt and steamrollering over local democracy, local voices and local communities. Recent history shows that this approach can work. If the Government want to see urban regeneration or densification done right, they can follow Conservative examples and pursue brownfield-first and not greenfield-first. We will not only abandon the Government’s offensive on our green spaces, but harmonise supply and demand-side policies.
I will finish with a small note on that point. As the Government continue to tweak the NPPF, they are doing nothing to back first-time buyers, families and downsizers by axing demand-side schemes and cutting stamp duty relief. There is no point in delivering supply-side reforms if the demand is not there to make it worth while.
To conclude, it is evident from the speeches here today and the evidence before us that the impact of recent reforms to the national planning policy framework has failed to deliver more homes, failed to protect our green belt, failed to support the housing market, failed to make brownfield sites viable and failed to deliver for voters. Regardless of the outcome of that, the Minister is a man I have a great deal of respect for. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) that he is a decent and thoughtful man, and I sincerely wish him well in the pending reshuffle. Regardless of its outcome, he has the chance to raise this with whomever his new boss will be after next week’s coronation. I hope that he grasps the opportunity with alacrity and delivers the right homes in the right places and with the right infrastructure—just as the country deserves.
The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. I also thank all hon. Members who have participated in this wide-ranging debate, and the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) and the hon. Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) for their contributions. The degree of praise that I received from Opposition Members is slightly damning of my chances in any upcoming reshuffle, but I thank them for their kind words.
Members raised a wide range of concerns and asked many questions. In the time available to me, I will respond to as many as possible, but I will concentrate on those relating to the national planning policy framework. Issues such as the national scheme of delegation of planning functions—our modernisation of planning committees—are outside the framework, but I am more than happy to have a conversation with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) and others about them.
The national planning policy framework sets out the Government’s planning policies for England and how they should be applied. It makes it clear that the purpose of the planning system is to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development. Accordingly, it provides a framework within which locally prepared plans can provide for homes, commercial development and supporting infrastructure in a sustainable manner. As hon. Members know, the framework must be taken into account in preparing local plans and is a material consideration in planning decisions.
The Government’s manifesto included a clear commitment to immediately update the NPPF. Within three weeks of taking office, we consulted on changes to the framework, finalising them in December 2024. Among the many changes made in the initial revision of the framework were the restoration and raising of mandatory housing targets—the Conservatives abolished them when they were in government, which contributed to the low number of net additional completions in our first year in office— a new standard method for assessing housing need, which is aligned to our 1.5 million new homes target; greater support for social and affordable housing provision; a strengthening of policy relating to brownfield land development; a modernised strategic approach to green-belt land designation and release; and support for key economic sectors and clean energy infrastructure.
As hon. Members know, in December 2025, we published a fuller and more definitive overhaul of the NPPF for consultation. The proposed new framework represented the culmination of a sustained effort over the first 17 months of this Parliament to revamp our planning system so that it meets housing need in full and unleashes economic growth. It represents the most significant reform to national planning policy since the original NPPF was introduced more than a decade ago.
The new NPPF that we consulted on is wholly restructured. It maintains and builds on the initial revisions that we made in December 2024. It includes a range of new measures to support key economic sectors. As hon. Members have noted, it incorporates new, clear, rules-based national policies for plan and decision making. The proposals will make the NPPF easier to navigate for communities, local authorities and developers alike.
The new decision-making policies in the framework published in 2025 are designed to make development management more certain, consistent and streamlined; to standardise policies that apply across the whole of England, particularly where we have national standards in place and do not need that degree of local variation any longer; and to reduce duplication and avoid unjustified local deviation from national policy in local plans as they are being prepared. To ensure that those changes made an immediate difference, the Government proposed that the new national decision-making policies effectively override conflicting policies in local plans from day one.
As part of that overall change to the framework, we also proposed new polices to boost housing supply and unlock economic growth in the years ahead. They include, as has been noted, a permanent presumption in favour of suitably located development; the establishment of in-principle support for suitable proposals that develop land around rail stations within existing settlements, and around well-connected train stations outside settlements, including on green-belt land; and policies designed to drive urban and suburban densification to secure a diverse mix of homes, including stronger support for rural, social and affordable housing and setting clear expectations for accessible housing to meet the needs of older and disabled people. Our proposals also include policies that embed a vision-led approach to transport, further embedding the changes that we made in December 2024; policies that better address climate change mitigation and adaptation; and policies designed to ensure that we are better conserving and enhancing the natural environment, including changes to reflect local nature recovery strategies, to recognise landscape character and conserve and enhance existing natural features, to incorporate swift bricks, and to provide guidance on sites of local importance for nature.
Andrew George
The Minister says that the purpose of the policy is, among other things, to drive the desperate need for affordable homes. Does he accept that, in rural areas, he is also driving affordable homes off rural exception sites and making them unaffordable? The setting of targets means that local plans are no longer viable and appropriate, and therefore developers can come in and simply insist that their developments should be permitted because they are delivering the housing numbers.
Matthew Pennycook
We have had this debate many times. I will come on to housing targets and the fact that if there is an up-to-date local plan in place, the housing targets do not need to be immediately revised. On the specific point about rural affordable housing, the framework makes it easier for rural exception sites to come forward through clearer national policy. It makes it far easier for rural authorities to require affordable housing on smaller sites, including removing the need for legislative designation.
We have received over 20,000 responses to the consultation. We have made very good progress in analysing the responses and making final policy decisions, but unfortunately, as a result of the announcement made by the Prime Minister on 22 June that he was resigning as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party and the associated constraints on Government business in the period ahead of the summer recess, including the prohibition on initiating new policy commitments, it has not been possible to respond to the consultation and publish the final framework before the summer recess. We will seek to do so in due course.
The issue of flooding, which was raised by the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills, is of particular concern in her constituency, as she made clear. The NPPF outlines a sequential approach to flood risk management, requiring inappropriate development to be directed away from areas at highest risk and providing strong safeguards where development is necessary in those areas. In plan making, a sequential approach should be employed. That involves applying the sequential test and, if needed, the exception test. In decision making, where necessary, planning authorities also apply the sequential test and, if needed, the exception test to ensure that flood risk is minimised and appropriately addressed.
Tessa Munt
I wonder how the High Court came to its decision over the site in Yatton. What the Minister says sounds good to me, but it can be swept away because the NPPF is what the judge decreed was the way to go and, because there is a need for homes, the sequential test can be completely ignored.
Matthew Pennycook
That is not quite my reading of the Yatton judgment. The judge confirmed that even if a site fails the formal sequential test for flood risk, elements of the exception test remain valid material considerations that can outweigh flood risk under the tilted balance in paragraph 11(d). The High Court made a judgment in that case on the application of the policy, but it applies, as I have set out—[Interruption.] I will give way briefly, but I do want to cover the other issues raised in the debate.
Tessa Munt
Will the Minister meet me and those in my constituency who are particularly concerned about this to discuss it?
Matthew Pennycook
If I remain in post after the summer recess, I will be more than happy to meet the hon. Lady.
Where the sequential and exception tests have been applied as necessary and are not met, the framework is clear that development should not be allowed. I want to push back gently on the assertions made by the hon. Lady and the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington, that we have weakened the sequential test. We have not weakened the sequential test in any way. We have clarified through changes to the PPG the triggers for the sequential test as well as its application, but we have not weakened it. If it is found necessary to build homes in areas of flood risk, the statutory guidance accompanying the building regulations promotes flood-resilient building work in flood-prone areas through approved document C, and the framework makes it clear that developments of all sizes should use sustainable drainage techniques where the development could have drainage impacts.
The draft NPPF that we have consulted on includes a dedicated chapter on planning for flood risk and coastal change. This seeks to clarify how existing policies should operate and aligns the NPPF with recent updates to planning guidance. It also included policies incorporating a new requirement that sustainable drainage systems should be designed in accordance with the national standards for sustainable drainage systems to provide a consistent basis for improving their design.
On the presumption in favour of sustainable development, we are trying to drive up the coverage of up-to-date local plans. Several hon. Members have spoken today who represent areas that do not have up-to-date local plans and five-year housing land supplies. We are making great progress in driving up plan coverage. Over 60% more local plans are at examination now than at this time last year, but it will take time to boost coverage. It is important, where policies are not up to date or where there is an insufficient supply of land, that there is a fallback to encourage planning permission to be granted, and that is what the presumption provides for.
However, the NPPF we published in December 2024 not only improved the operation of the presumption by clarifying the circumstances in which it applies, but introduced new safeguards to make it clear that its application cannot justify poor-quality development. Under the revised draft presumption published for consultation last year, the default support in principle is turned off in certain situations, including where the development would conflict with sites allocated for specific uses or would use parks and open space or land identified for flood risk management. It would also be disapplied where development does not achieve acceptable standards in relation to harm to nature, heritage assets, flood risk, design and being an effective use of land.
I have only a short time available to me and a wide range of other issues were raised. I will touch on each briefly. On our housing target and the standard method we have introduced, in our view the new method better responds to affordability pressures by using a higher affordability adjustment in its calculation. That recognises the importance of housing affordability in assessing housing need and helps direct more homes to where they are most needed and least affordable. It also provides greater certainty to the sector through more stable and predictable housing numbers, compared with the previous approach that relied on out-of-date demographic predictions and unevidenced and arbitrary judgments.
On brownfield, grey-belt and green-belt land, the hon. Member for Orpington knows full well that we strengthened the policy in the December 2024 NPPF on brownfield land. We have gone further in the draft framework that is out for consultation. It is not the case that there is enough brownfield land, particularly not viable land in the right locations on brownfield land registers across the country. In certain exceptional circumstances, local authorities need to release green-belt land. We ask them when they do so to explore all options in maximising brownfield land, working with neighbouring authorities and where necessary reviewing their green belt.
The definition of grey belt is set out in the glossary of the NPPF. There is no confusion about what it means. Where grey belt is being brought forward, it cannot fundamentally undermine the policies of the green belt across the wider plan area; we included that safeguard in the framework.
On train stations, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) was right that we want more development to come forward in sustainable locations around train stations. We obviously took a different approach to all stations, as opposed to well-connected stations, where we are looking for higher minimum densities to come forward. I must be clear that the proposals do not grant automatic permission on suitable sites or remove appropriate local oversight of the development control process. They add weight to what needs to be considered as part of an overall planning judgment, as is the case with all material considerations.
I will not dwell on rural or urban housing targets. I have said before and say again that across city regions the new standard method increases targets by 20% and, through that, housing growth is directed to a wider range of urban areas and smaller cities as well as our larger city areas.
I commend the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills and the Backbench Business Committee for giving the House an opportunity to debate these important matters. Over the past two years, the Government have sought to revamp the planning system to ensure that it will facilitate the delivery of high and sustainable rates of house building and high-quality infrastructure in the years ahead. To the point on infrastructure, the new NPPF strengthens expectations in that area as well.
More needs to be done to transform the failing housing system we inherited, but the revised NPPF we published in December 2024 and the wholly restructured framework we will publish in due course are integral to our plans to improve housing availability, affordability and quality in this Parliament. I thank all hon. Members for their considered contributions today and wish them all, and you, Sir Desmond, an enjoyable and productive summer recess.
Tessa Munt
I am grateful to you, Sir Desmond, and to the Minister for everything he has said. I very much hope that he stays in his place because we would like to carry on the conversation; I want him to stay exactly where he is. I know that the Government are not in favour of leaving notes, but if in a ghastly moment the Minister decides that something is not right and moves on, will he leave a long note for his successor?
I do not particularly wish to argue in the last moments of the debate, but as I understand it the national planning policy guidance permits surface water flooding sequential tests to be disapplied. I need to continue that conversation with the Minister, if I may. I point out that our local plans are up to date until such time as the housing numbers change, and then of course the local plans will not be in date any longer. In Somerset alone—I am not talking about North Somerset—18,000 new homes have passed planning but have not been built, which all relates to phosphate stuff. Those homes do not seem to be taken into account at all, given that we have another 75,000 on top of those, which seems inappropriate. I note the Minister’s comments about station parking; I really hope that we do not build on station car parks, as that would be mad. There are a number of other points that I would have liked to make—
Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
Order.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).
Changing Places Toilets: Capital Funding
(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered capital funding for Changing Places toilets.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. At the outset, I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary groups for access to disability equipment and for wheelchair users, and I am also the parent of a child with quadriplegic cerebral palsy who relies on Changing Places toilets.
Changing Places toilets are designed for people with profound and multiple disabilities and their carers, who need space and equipment—such as ceiling track hoists and height-adjustable, adult-sized changing beds—that a standard accessible toilet would not provide. Almost 250,000 people in the United Kingdom need personal assistance to use the toilet or change incontinence pads, including people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, spinal injuries and a number of other complex needs.
Currently, the number of active and registered Changing Places toilets stands at 2,665, which has greatly increased from the 140 available back in 2007. Last year, there were 99 registrations of new Changing Places toilets across the UK, including in Madame Tussauds here in London, in five Lloyds Banking Group locations and at three National Trust locations.
Back in 2005, the Changing Places consortium was established as a group of individuals and organisations that support the rights of people with disabilities. At the heart of the consortium’s members is PAMIS, a voluntary organisation based in Dundee that supports parents of children and adults with profound and multiple learning disabilities, alongside the Centre for Accessible Environments.
I pay tribute to the late Loretta Lamb, the founder and chief executive officer of PAMIS, along with the team of staff and volunteers behind Changing Places toilets, led by Jenny, Karen and Fiona. I also want to highlight Changing Places Awareness Day, which is this coming Sunday 19 July. Campaigners have worked tirelessly to raise awareness and push for greater inclusion for disabled people, their families and carers.
Changing Places toilets have been vital for my family. I am the father of twins, and one of our daughters has quadriplegic cerebral palsy. She is a wheelchair user and unable to tell us when she needs the toilet; she is still in nappies at almost 13 years of age. Given her height and weight, a changing bed is essential to changing her with dignity. Prior to the roll-out of Changing Places toilets in recent years, I had the indignity of changing my child on a bench, behind a bush or on the floor of our wheelchair-accessible van; unfortunately, it occasionally still happens today. Changing Places toilets are vital to giving her some dignity.
The roll-out of Changing Places toilets and the Changing Places map facility allows families like ours to plan their days out, trips and travel arrangements, knowing where there will be a toilet. As a result of additional funding from the Department for Transport, a new journey planner feature has been launched as part of the Changing Places toilet map, which allows increased functionality for planning, saving and downloading travel routes with Changing Places toilets. Both the map and the journey planner have been life-changing for many families, allowing them access to places and days out and enabling them to plan routes around availability at service stations, which has greatly increased in the last 10 years, train stations, seaside destinations or museums. They allow both my children to have the same dignity and respect as other children out there.
When I held an Adjournment debate on this subject last July, I reported that the number of registered facilities at that point was 2,609. It is positive that that number continues to grow, but that growth is slowing. Much as I support my party and my Government, that is in many respects because of the end of the previous scheme in March 2025. That is why I continue to call for a form of funding, through the reintroduction of a capital grant, to be brought forward to allow organisations, companies and charities to install new Changing Places toilets and to bring existing Changing Places toilets up to current standard. In this building, our Changing Places toilet is really not up to a modern standard. I used it a few weeks ago with my daughter—it is a back-breaker.
An expansion of capital funding for Changing Places toilets would lead to people with profound disabilities accessing more opportunities and more families and individuals contributing to our hospitality businesses, theme parks, leisure facilities and sports grounds—the list goes on.
There was, of course, a previous fund. In 2019, the then Conservative Government ran a consultation on the proposal to increase the provision of Changing Places toilets. Following that consultation, the Government announced that the provision of Changing Places toilets in new public buildings above a certain size would be compulsory, and that was brought into force on 1 January 2021. I am very grateful that the then local government Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), has joined us this afternoon. I absolutely accept that he was fundamental in getting the law changed and ensuring that the consultation was held.
In July 2021, the then Government launched a £30.5 million fund to expand the provision of Changing Places toilets. From that fund, almost 500 new facilities were installed. I know from experience that there has been a profound change in the last 10 years that has made travelling up and down the country much easier. Near where we are standing today, people can access Changing Places toilets at the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, Ikea in Oxford Street or Waterloo Station, which did not have them 10 years ago.
The fund closed in March 2025. Although I acknowledge that changes to building regulations ensure that facilities continue to be installed in new buildings, I retain concerns that older buildings would greatly benefit from having a Changing Places toilet installed. For example, in April this year, one of those older buildings—St Paul’s cathedral—opened a Changing Places facility, giving visitors who require specialist toilets the ability to access them. I understand that there is now such a facility at Blackburn cathedral and that there will shortly be one at Lambeth Palace.
I go back to what I said about motorways. In November 2018, the DFT announced that it was partnering with Muscular Dystrophy UK to expand the provision of Changing Places toilets at service stations. We now have 54 Changing Places toilets at service stations across the UK. That has been a huge step forward in allowing families like mine more freedom and options when planning their journeys up and down the country.
I am calling for an official Changing Places app. Currently, people can access a map on the main Changing Places Consortium website, but an official Changing Places app with identification mapping would allow users to quickly identify where toilets are while on journeys. I have said this many times during the passage of the Railways Bill and many times in the Chamber: I believe that Great British Railways should bring forward a national transport accessibility app that shows the availability of level access, station accessibility, live travel lift information, as the TfL Go app has, and locations of Changing Places toilets.
A new form of capital funding would give businesses and local authorities the opportunity and encouragement to bring forward more Changing Places facilities. A number of hon. Friends have identified locations where they believe Changing Places toilets could be installed. For instance, my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish), who sadly cannot be with us this afternoon, has spoken to me at length about support for a national fund. In his local authority, Rushcliffe borough council, he has been looking for two years to install a Changing Places toilet facility in West Bridgford, the town centre, and is struggling to locate the funding to do so. I ask the Minister to outline what consideration the Department has given to the merits of bringing forward a new capital fund.
I turn now to the importance of maintaining Changing Places toilets. I mentioned last year that, in Bexleyheath town centre, we had to close a Changing Places toilet because of the vandalism it was receiving, with people living in it and dealing drugs in it. I will continue to call for a greater system beyond the current radar key system. Radar keys are openly available in shops and on the internet and there are too many occasions when Changing Places toilets are vandalised as a result of misuse.
I thank the Chamber engagement team for their hard work in organising a survey for the public to share their experiences of using Changing Places toilets and the impact on people’s lives. I thank the more than 100,000 people who have taken the time to answer the survey over the last week. I wanted to read a few of the responses. One respondent said:
“My daughter is severely disabled. Our first experience of Changing Places toilets was at Center Parcs…I was amazed and overwhelmed with emotions when I saw how I could finally change my daughter comfortably and how excited she was when she realised this was made for people like her.”
Another said:
“My son’s opportunities to go to new places or anywhere over a certain distance is dependent on the availability of Changing Places…We work hard all week and want the same opportunities other families have to go out as a family and do interesting things. Without Changing Places we’re trapped at home.”
Other respondents’ experiences highlighted that there is still a lack of available and well-maintained facilities across the country. One said:
“Without access to an appropriate facility, I am left with impossible choices: ending outings early, avoiding certain venues altogether, or changing my daughter on the floor of an accessible toilet, which is neither hygienic, safe nor dignified.”
I have read through the responses to the survey, and there was a lot of appreciation for Changing Places toilets and the benefits they bring to the lives of severely disabled people and their families. There are also, however, a number of horror stories of people’s experiences where facilities were not available or where they have not been maintained to a suitable standard. I have shared one from my constituency; I could tell of others that have been vandalised or locked. On one occasion, in Brighton city centre, a toilet was locked after 4 pm in the winter. On another occasion, a seaside town locked it from October to March—but people still visit then.
A new round of funding would ensure that Changing Places toilets are maintained and held to a good standard, that training is provided, and that new facilities are opened across the country. Every family deserves to be able to go on days out and partake in everyday activities.
I want to talk about the Scottish Government. They have a fund managed by Inspiring Scotland in partnership with PAMIS that is part of a £10 million investment in the last and current financial years into planning and installing 150 additional facilities across Scotland. I understand that the fund continues to be open for applications, which can be found on the Inspiring Scotland website. I look forward to seeing more facilities opening, benefiting the people and economy of Scotland.
I want briefly to talk about hospitals, although I know that that is not in the Minister’s remit. Changing Places toilets are important for people when they are out and about, but also for people in hospital. My daughter is served by four different London hospitals. In a hospital setting, one would expect to have people with a profound disability who need to use such facilities, but there is variable information about which hospitals do and do not provide them and where they are located within those hospitals.
I submitted a written question to inquire about the number of Changing Places hospitals. Unfortunately, no assessment has been made and the Department of Health does not hold that information, so it appears that more work needs to be done on that. There is national guidance provided to the NHS on designated sanitary spaces in healthcare settings and designed facilities to meet the needs of disabled people—but without clear provision of toilets, needs are not met for people accessing hospital appointments. In 2019, it was estimated that the average cost of installing a Changing Places toilet in a hospital was between £25,000 and £35,000. I ask that the Minister continue conversations across Government so that we can look at installation in hospitals.
I would like to ask the Minister to respond to five points. Will the Government look at introducing a new capital fund for older and smaller venues? Regulations that require a new stadium or shopping centre over a certain size to have a Changing Places toilet have been brought in. I am looking long and hard at finding a facility for a Changing Places toilet in Crayford, the secondary town in my constituency. The second largest Sainsbury’s in the country is in Crayford, so I am trying to work with Sainsbury’s to provide one there. In many town centres, hon. Members may be able to find a venue, but they cannot always find the funding.
Will the Minister work with the Changing Places consortium to upgrade facilities of the older standard, such as the one in the Members’ Lobby, to the current one? Will she commit to working with other Government Departments not only for hospitals, but for railway stations? The nationalisation of the railways presents us with a real opportunity to look at our larger railway stations. As we now have a Changing Places toilet at London Waterloo, I hope we will get one at London Charing Cross very soon. There are opportunities there for people’s travel options.
How are we monitoring larger planning applications under the regulations passed by the previous Government to ensure that the facilities are correctly installed and maintained? Will the Government continue to work with the Changing Places consortium on more modern software, so that we can have an app and make it easier for people to plan their journeys and identify where Changing Places toilets are located? I look forward to hearing colleagues’ contributions and the Minister’s comments on those points.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (in the Chair)
Colleagues may be aware that our next speaker is recovering from an operation. I am content for the right hon. Member to deliver his speech from a sedentary position, if he would like to do so.
Rishi Sunak (Richmond and Northallerton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I will do my best to keep standing—if nothing else, it will make me speak for a lot less time than I might otherwise, which will be a relief to everyone. I both congratulate the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) and thank him for securing this important debate. He speaks from personal experience, and he spoke very movingly and powerfully about the situation we are discussing today. I am grateful to him for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important topic.
Politics is often about addressing the great matters of state. We often talk about war and peace in this House. However, politics is also about making people’s everyday lives that little bit easier. One of the things all MPs discover is that we learn a lot from our constituents—certainly if those constituents are from Yorkshire, as the Chairman will appreciate. I was profoundly moved after a meeting I had with a group of my constituents in 2017. I had called in at the Dales School in Morton-on-Swale near Northallerton, and a group of parents of the most severely disabled children at the school wanted to talk to me. They told me about the difficulties they faced as families when they went out. and explained how a lack of suitable toilets and changing facilities meant that visiting the majority of leisure attractions and destinations across the country on a day out, which most families would take for granted, was nigh-on impossible for them.
I vividly remember one mum putting in front of me a magazine with all the events and attractions happening across the region in the summer holidays. She had gone through them and crossed out 99% because they did not have the facilities that her child required. As a parent myself, I looked at that list, saw all the places she had crossed out and realised that those were the very places I had taken my two young daughters to, to help them fall in love with Yorkshire after we first moved there. I reflected on the huge unfairness of that situation and how it compounded the difficulties that that family and many others faced—difficulties that most of us will never encounter—and how most of those places were just off limits for them. As I sat there, I felt that the situation was just not right.
Another parent, Andrew, spoke—similarly to the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford—of the physical difficulty and the indignity of having on occasion to change his 10-year-old daughter Aniela on rough ground behind a shed or on the dirty floor of a public bathroom, because those were the only places available to them in the circumstances. I admit that, going into my meeting with those parents, I had complacently assumed that we had largely resolved the issue of access to and provision of disabled toilets in this country. I had not realised, until I met and listened to them, that for young children or adults who require the help of a carer to use a toilet, a disabled toilet is not sufficient. They need a Changing Places facility with a bench, a hoist and a privacy screen.
After that meeting, I vowed to those parents that I would do whatever I could to raise and highlight the issue, which I began to do as a Back-Bench MP in Parliament. Fortuitously, a year later, I was lucky to be appointed Minister for Local Government. In that role, I was inspired by my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Richmond (Yorks), William Hague. As Minister for disabled people, which was one of his first ministerial jobs, he was instrumental in bringing into law, under John Major’s Government, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. That legislation enshrined in law the principle that institutions must make reasonable adjustments to ensure equality of opportunity for disabled people.
Twenty years after the introduction of the 1995 Act, I felt that we needed to renew that spirit to address the issue of Changing Places. As a junior Minister, I therefore set about changing building regulations to make it mandatory to install Changing Places facilities in new large public buildings such as shopping centres, cinemas and theme parks.
At about that time, I happened to meet Zack Kerr, a young campaigner with cerebral palsy—I am sure the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford knows him well. Zack told me then:
“Life can be difficult enough in many ways, but when there are no accessible toilet facilities where I can be hoisted safely from my wheelchair and changed in privacy and with dignity, I face the choice between staying at home or restricting my social life because of my needs...that’s just not fair.”
Zack rightly also pointed out the need for Changing Place facilities at motorway service stations, so that families could travel freely across the country. I am glad that, when the Conservatives were in Government, we made £4 million available not just to install Changing Places at motorway service stations, but to make a better start on installing them in NHS hospitals.
In 2020—fortuitously or not, depending on your point of view—I then became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In my first Budget, I launched the £30 million Changing Places fund, which match funded the cost of installing the toilets in existing buildings, where the need is, as we have heard, significant. I am delighted that over the subsequent years, the fund has made possible almost 500 different Changing Places facilities across the nation, including in Leyburn and at the Dales Countryside Museum in Hawes in my constituency.
As we have heard, more than 2,500 Changing Places are now installed across the country. We should take a moment to reflect that that is three times as many as there were a decade or so ago, when I first became aware of the issue. Now landmark attractions such as Alton Towers, Madame Tussauds and the Tower of London, as well as most Premier League stadiums and cinemas and shopping centres right across the country, all have that vital facility in place. Of course, the job is not done. We need more Changing Places facilities; almost a quarter of a million people rely on them.
We have made real progress, and it is worth taking a moment to thank the people who deserve praise for that. The consortium, as we have heard, is now run by PAMIS and the Centre for Accessible Environments, but previously, when I was in post, it was run by Mencap and Muscular Dystrophy UK, supported by many others. They deserve enormous credit for their co-ordination and campaigning on this issue. So do the tireless campaigners up and down the country—families with severely disabled children and other family members, like dad Andrew Newton and his daughter Aniela, who came to see me all those years ago.
Certainly for my part, as I reflect on my political career, it will remain one of my proudest achievements to have played a small part in supporting all their efforts. Every time a parent gets in touch to say they have been able to enjoy a family day out that most of us take for granted, I feel a real sense of pride. We all know there is much wrong with our politics, but this issue shows the value of our constituency system: communities are able to raise issues directly with their elected representatives and see them turned into action. It also shows the benefit of working across party lines over years to make changes, and to make people’s lives that bit easier.
I associate myself with the powerful speech by the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford. I know the Minister will have listened hard to what he said about the need for capital funding for existing buildings, and I am sure she will do what she can to make colleagues in Government aware of that issue, and to make representations to them. I know she will do that because all of us here are deeply committed to ensuring that these families can enjoy more opportunities and the better quality of life that they deserve, and most importantly, have the chance to live with dignity.
Juliet Campbell (Broxtowe) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) for securing the debate and for all his work in championing the rights of disabled people. He is tireless in what he does. I also put on record that Changing Places toilets were first introduced in Nottingham, where my constituency of Broxtowe is. I am proud that Nottinghamshire carries that legacy of innovation.
In previous roles, I have been a champion for disabled people, and many people have spoken to me about the need for Changing Places toilets. Many people with profound, multiple and severe disabilities and neurological conditions have complex needs, and a standard accessible toilet is insufficient. Many require a Changing Places facility equipped with a hoist, an adult-sized changing bench and adequate space for carers to provide sufficient support safely and with dignity.
Without those facilities, everyday activities that many of us take for granted become impossible—a family day out, a trip to the high street, visiting a museum, going shopping or meeting friends. Many of us take those things for granted, but those ordinary experiences are denied to too many people because they do not feel confident that their needs will be met once they leave home.
According to the Office for National Statistics, there are 10,000 disabled people in my constituency of Broxtowe who require a Changing Places facility, but there are only two such facilities there, meaning that people in Eastwood, Awsworth, Stapleford and Beeston do not have access to suitable provision. Only one of those facilities is modern enough and regularly open.
Disability rights charities and organisations across the country talk about disabled people and their carers restricting their journeys or avoiding going out altogether because they cannot find suitable toilet facilities or be certain that facilities will be open and accessible. Isolation, loneliness and poor mental health are often attributed to low social interaction, which can lead to anxiety and depression—that is what such facilities being missing can mean for disabled people. Parents of disabled children frequently report to me avoiding going out on outings altogether, not because they want their children to be excluded but because they cannot be certain that they will find a changing facility.
As a result, people become isolated from their communities and excluded from socialising. No child should be excluded from public spaces because there is nowhere suitable for them to change when necessary; no parent should have to choose between taking their child out and preserving their dignity; and no adult should be prevented from participating in social activities because the basic infrastructure that they require is absent.
The last Government rightly addressed some of this by making changes to building regulations that will increase Changing Places provision in new, large non-dwelling buildings. That is a welcome step and will improve access over the long term. However, disabled people cannot wait for a future development to solve today’s problems. Capital funding is needed now. The reality is that there are still large gaps in provision across the country, particularly in our transport corridors, town centres, tourist destinations and rural communities.
I urge the Government to look at how Changing Places provision can be embedded with current and future urban planning and within the Government’s high street strategy, with capital funding attributed to it. Accessible toilet facilities should form part of any strategy to create genuinely accessible high streets, ensuring that disabled people can confidently visit their towns, cities and public attractions without fear of being left without appropriate facilities. Capital investment in Changing Places toilets is not simply an investment in buildings or facilities themselves; it is an investment in an inclusive society where disabled people can enjoy the same opportunities, freedoms and quality of life as anyone else.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I thank the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) for introducing a topic that, as he said and as we all know, touches the very core of human dignity, equality and basic compassion. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell) as well; I thank her for her contribution.
It was also a pleasure to hear the story told by the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) of how he was approached by his constituents and how, as he rose up the ministerial ladder, he used his position to ensure that the very things that his constituents had asked for were delivered. I wish to put on record my thanks to him for using his position for his constituents and all our people, because ultimately, we all benefit from that £50 million to which he referred.
It is also a pleasure to see the Minister in her place. I am not sure what is going on, but whenever she turns up, I seem to turn up as well. Westminster Hall has been well used this week on numerous occasions by both of us, and by many others as well. However, we seem to be featuring in similar debates.
When it comes to the welfare of vulnerable people, I will knock on any door and speak in any Chamber to ensure that they are not forgotten. That is why today is so important. I secured a debate just a few weeks ago about stoma care facilities and public toilets, but today we are talking about something slightly different: Changing Places toilets. We are not talking about standard disabled toilets; we are talking about life-changing essential facilities that provide an adult-sized, height-adjustable changing bench, a tracking hoist system, a centrally placed toilet and room for two carers—the physical room for them to be able to help.
Without those facilities, thousands of our fellow citizens cannot leave their homes for more than a couple of hours without facing the horrific, unsanitary and utterly degrading reality of being changed on a dirty public toilet floor. I would not like that, which is why I am here to speak up. I thank the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford for his moving contribution and his personal story. We all agree that personal stories carry weight. Today, he shared his with us all, and I thank him for doing so.
The Government previously announced magnificent capital funding pots for Changing Places toilets across England. But as the Member for Strangford, I will tell the story from Northern Ireland—it is not a great story but a disappointing one; maybe not for my constituency but certainly across Northern Ireland—to ensure that capital funding reaches the places that are falling desperately behind.
An estimated 7,000 people across our province rely entirely on Changing Places facilities to live a normal life, yet the figures show that Northern Ireland has historically been one of the worst-performing regions in the entire United Kingdom for provision, with a shocking lack of options outside major city hubs. Campaign groups have highlighted that four out of five hospitals in Northern Ireland—it almost makes me cringe to say this—still have no registered Changing Places facilities, leaving vulnerable patients, staff and visitors completely stranded in the very places that are meant to care for them, which leaves me incredulous. I followed up with the Northern Ireland Minister in relation to the stoma debate, and I will do the same now to reinforce the need for change.
I am very fortunate that my constituency of Strangford and the borough of Ards and North Down have been able to record the data: out of nearly 40 publicly available toilets across the borough, only about a dozen are standard accessible toilets. When looking for true, fully compliant and registered Changing Places toilets, the list shrinks even further. I commend—and I mean this, because I know that it has been doing many things—Ards and North Down borough council. I had the distinct honour of serving on it for some 26 years, and it has shown real leadership: it was the first council in Northern Ireland to ensure that all council accessible toilets were stoma-friendly. That is the good news story I shared in the stoma debate in this place about four weeks ago.
The council has successfully put standard Changing Places facilities into key hubs like the Bangor Aurora Aquatic and Leisure Complex, the Comber Leisure Centre and the magnificent Ards Blair Mayne Wellbeing and Leisure Complex. My council has moved mountains to make sure that those things happened, but local councils cannot carry the weight alone on strained ratepayers’ money.
If a family want to enjoy the beautiful shores of the Ards peninsula where I live, or visit Ballyhalbert, Portavogie or Cloughey, the facilities simply do not exist. Those places are nearly off-limits for those who, as the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford said, want to take their family out, even if it is only two hours down the road and back again. Families are forced to cut their days short and rush back to Newtownards or Bangor just so a loved one can use a bathroom in a dignified manner—we are talking about dignity here—which is a crying shame in this day and age.
While Northern Ireland has introduced legislative changes to building regulations in recent years to mandate these toilets in any new major public buildings such as shopping centres—the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford referred to that—the Department of Health and local authorities back home are facing severe financial constraints and have explicitly stated that they lack the central capital budget to retrofit existing hospitals, transport hubs and some town centres.
I am ever-mindful of the Minister’s responsibilities and that she always tries to give helpful answers to our questions, but will she take up this cause with the Chancellor and the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that regional capital funding formulas allow for dedicated, ringfenced resources to expand their Changing Places network? The right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton can tell me whether I am right or wrong, but I presume that the £50 million earmarked for the project had Barnett consequentials.
Jim Shannon
So we got some, but we need that to be ringfenced. Minister, if moneys are coming through Barnett consequentials, let us ensure that they are used for those purposes. We need central capital funding that can be accessed by local councils like Ards and North Down borough council to retrofit our coastal towns, tourist hotspots and community centres; I believe that many are ready.
A civilised society is always judged by how it treats the most vulnerable. This is not a political issue—we all know that—it is about personal dignity, equality and what is right. It is about independence, inclusion and the basic right to go out for a cup of tea or a walk by the sea without losing your dignity. I urge the Minister to work hand in hand with the devolved Administration to ensure that capital funding flows to where it is needed the most, so that no child or adult in Northern Ireland is ever forced to use a public toilet floor again.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Alec. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) on securing this very important debate, and I thank him for sharing his personal story. Lived experience is always most moving and powerful, but it is often difficult to share, because so many emotions come with it. No parent, and indeed no child, should be faced with the indignity of changing a loved one on the floor of a toilet or behind a shed. I feel very much for him and his experience. This problem is not something that has been resolved everywhere. It continues, which is why we are debating it.
The issue before us is simple: if a person cannot safely use the toilet when they are away from home, they do not have equal access to public life. For most people, planning a day out means deciding where to go and how to get there. For many disabled people and their families, it means checking whether the journey is accessible, whether the venue can accommodate them and, crucially, whether there will be a toilet they can use. Too often, the answer to the last question is no. That means cutting a day out short, turning down an invitation, avoiding a long journey or simply staying at home. No one should be excluded from everyday life because the facilities they need have not been adequately provided.
As we have heard, Changing Places toilets are not the same as standard accessible toilets. They include an adult-sized changing bench, a ceiling track hoist and enough space for carers to provide support safely. Without those facilities, some disabled people are left with completely unacceptable choices. They may have to be changed on a toilet floor. Their families or carers may have to attempt unsafe lifting. Some people restrict what they eat or drink before going out, because they are worried that there will be nowhere suitable for them to use. That is undignified, unsafe and entirely avoidable.
As legislators, we often talk in this place about inclusion, independence and equal access, but those principles must mean something in practice—they must not be just talk. A building is not truly accessible if a disabled person can enter it but cannot safely use the toilet while they are there. There has been progress. There are now 2,665 registered Changing Places toilets across the United Kingdom, compared with around 140 in 2007—that is good. The previous Government’s £30 million Changing Places toilets fund supported the installation of nearly 500 new facilities across England, but the fund is no longer active. That funding made a genuine difference and shows what can be achieved when the Government provide the right support. The fund was closed in March 2025, but the job is not finished. There are still too many town centres, transport hubs, parks, hospitals, tourist attractions and community venues without a Changing Places toilet.
Provision is also very uneven. There might be a Changing Places toilet within a local authority area, but that does not mean it is in the right place, open at the right time or easily accessible to the people who need it. The changes to building regulations are welcome, but they are not enough on their own. They mainly help when new buildings are constructed or when major developments take place; they do little to address the large number of existing public buildings and venues that disabled people use every day. We cannot wait decades for those gaps to be filled gradually during redevelopment.
Cost is often the main barrier. Installing a Changing Places toilet can cost tens of thousands of pounds, which may be a relatively small part of the overall budget for a major development, but it can be impossible for a charity, community venue, small visitor attraction or local council to afford without additional support. Local authorities are already under severe financial pressure, as we all know, due to the growing cost of social care, temporary accommodation and special educational needs provision. Councils may want to improve accessibility, but without dedicated capital funding, projects are delayed or even abandoned.
That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to review the long-term capital funding available for Changing Places toilets. We need a proper assessment of where the gaps are, and the Government should work with disabled people, families, carers, local authorities and the Changing Places consortium to identify the areas and venues where provision is most urgently needed. That assessment should lead to a properly funded, long-term programme.
Local authorities and community organisations should not have to rely on occasional short-term pots of money, and they should not have to compete against one another for limited funding. Changing Places toilets should also be included from the beginning in major transport projects, town centre regeneration schemes and investment in public buildings. It is far easier and less expensive to design these facilities into a project than it is to add them afterwards. Funding and guidance must take account of maintenance, signage, staffing and opening hours.
I would therefore like to ask the Minister three questions. First, does she accept that changes to building regulations alone will not deliver the number of Changing Places toilets that disabled people and their families need? Secondly, will the Government carry out a national assessment of gaps in provision, working directly with disabled people and the organisations that represent them? Thirdly, will the Government establish a successor to the previous capital fund, with long-term and predictable funding for local authorities and community organisations?
Changing Places toilets are essential infrastructure. We would not describe an accessible entrance, ramp or lift as an optional extra, so we should not treat appropriate toilet facilities differently. Everyone should be able to go shopping, travel, attend an appointment, visit a park or attraction and have a good time with their family without having to worry about whether their most basic needs can be met. The previous funding programme showed that progress is possible, and the Government must now build on that work. I hope the Minister is listening to the cross-party consensus on this issue.
Aphra Brandreth (Chester South and Eddisbury) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I start by thanking the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) for securing this important debate, and for sharing his family’s experience. I recognise the vital work of the Changing Places consortium, established in 2005, in continuing to ensure that the issue is raised in this place, the Chamber, town halls and across Whitehall. I also pay tribute to the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), who began so much of the work on this topic when he served as a Minister in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
We have heard from Members today how vital Changing Places toilets are in our cities, towns and villages for those in need of their larger and more accessible facilities. The debate has featured powerful testimonies from constituents on how their lives are impacted every day by the inaccessibility of many public toilets, and how this affects them both physically and mentally. I would like to add one more example from my Chester South and Eddisbury constituency.
Although it has already been mentioned, it is worth reinforcing how vital Changing Places facilities are for older disabled children and adults. My constituents Radhika and Shyam told me that a standard accessible toilet simply does not meet the needs of their son, Idnaat. Without appropriate facilities, as we have heard, families can face the undignified and distressing choice of changing a loved one on a toilet floor, or having to cut short a day out. No family should ever have to make that choice.
That is why I also want to recognise the work of Chester zoo. Radhika and Shyam told me what a difference the zoo’s Changing Places toilet has made to their family. It meant that Idnaat could be changed safely and with dignity, allowing them to enjoy a day out together like any other family. That is exactly the sort of forward-thinking approach we should be encouraging. Accessible public toilets are not a luxury or convenience; they are an essential part of ensuring that everyone, regardless of age or disability, can participate in life with dignity. I am therefore delighted that Chester zoo is looking at increasing the number of Changing Places toilets on site.
Changing Places toilets provide an indispensable private space for people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, as well as people with other physical disabilities such as spinal injuries, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis. They include essential equipment that can make daily life that bit easier for an estimated 250,000 people. Changing Places toilet users have found it invaluable to have this equipment, which includes height-adjustable, adult-sized changing benches; ceiling track hoists; a peninsular WC with room either side; a safe and clean environment, including tear-off paper to cover the bench; a large waste bin; a non-slip floor; and space for multiple carers. That is crucial because, for too many people, more typical public toilet spaces are not just inconvenient but not fit for purpose, rendering the space effectively unusable. As we know, many disabilities may not be visible, which can lead to an unfortunate and exasperating ignorance of the issues facing people in need of Changing Places toilets.
The toilets allow those with needs that make a regular lavatory inaccessible to find the privacy, dignity, liberty and safety required. That has long been keenly recognised on this side of the House. That is why I was proud to see the previous Conservative Government make Changing Places toilets compulsory in new public buildings. That change, made in 2020, has allowed more people to have greater access to public places by providing the essential facilities to make such everyday trips viable.
It is also why I was proud to see the previous Conservative Government launch the Changing Places toilets fund, which was worth £30.5 million. The fund enabled local authorities to increase the number of Changing Places toilets in England, meaning that there are now around 2,665 registered active Changing Places toilets across the country. That is up from just 140 in 2007.
Thanks to local campaigners and the previous Conservative Government, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton, we as a nation have gone up from just one Changing Places toilet per 1,786 users to one per 94 users. That is a remarkable steer down the road to equality, and it is vital that the Government continue driving progress in the right direction.
The 2019 consultation showed that the vast majority of the individuals and organisations that responded believed that an increase in the number of Changing Places toilets would give individuals with multiple or complex disabilities, as well as their carers and families, greater ability to leave home and visit different places. They believed it would remove the risk of unsafe lifting by carers, offer a dignified space for users and be more suitable than simple wheelchair-accessible unisex toilets.
The £30.5 million provided to local authorities by the Conservative Government was divided into two funding rounds: an initial round of £23.5 million allocated to 191 English local authorities, followed by the remaining £7 million, which was spread to 64 local authorities. After the fund closed, the current Labour Government were petitioned on this matter in December last year. They concluded that local authorities are best placed to assess and manage toilet provision. As Members will know, local authorities have valuable local knowledge of where to provide essential services in their area, which highlights why the previous Conservative Government’s Changing Places toilets fund was allocated to local leaders to decide how and where best to spend the vital funds for these life-changing spaces.
Will the Minister set out how the Government’s current view appears to be a U-turn from their policy in opposition? During the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2022, the then shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham North and Kimberley (Alex Norris), proposed an amendment for a review of public conveniences that, as the Conservative Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State noted,
“would require the appointment of a commissioner to consider the level of need for conveniences”.––[Official Report, Levelling-up and Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2022; c. 876.]
The former Government felt that such a change would risk increasing bureaucracy while decreasing the importance of local decision making. It was felt that it would be disproportionate for the Government of the day to legislate on such a fundamentally local issue, as many local authorities already operate local community toilet schemes. Is it now the Government’s policy for such a commissioner to be appointed to review public conveniences, or do they agree that the best placed authorities are local authorities?
I hope the Minister will address that and confirm what plans the Government have for any future support for Changing Places toilets now that the funding I mentioned has concluded. That is essential for those watching the Government and waiting for answers. It is essential for those who must live every day with disabilities—some of which are debilitating, incapacitating and severe—hoping to have the necessary basic facilities to change leaving the house from being something daunting into something routine.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Nesil Caliskan)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. This is the second or third time we have been in the same debate this week, so Members are in competition with me. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) for securing this important debate and for his ongoing efforts to speak up for issues that matter not only to him but to so many of our constituents across the country. He has been a committed advocate for Changing Places toilets and so many issues that others find difficult to talk about. He is the voice of many constituents around the country.
I welcome the opportunity to respond on behalf of the Government to this important debate, which comes on the back of another important debate about public toilets for people with stomas, which some Members in this debate took part in. I thank all Members, including the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth), for their contributions and their thoughtful, emotional and challenging speeches. Often these are the sorts of debates that have a real impact on policy change.
As Members have pointed out, for many people the availability of an accessible public toilet that is clean and safe can be the deciding factor in whether they feel able to visit a town centre, a high street, a local attraction, their park, or just something they want to do that weekend. Such facilities support dignity and independence for people with disabilities and accessibility needs. There is also an impact on the families that support those with a disability.
However, for some individuals with profound and multiple disabilities, or other conditions that severely limit mobility, standard accessible toilets might not provide the support they need. Such toilets might lack essential features such as adult-sized changing benches, hoists and enough space for a disabled person and one or more carers. As hon. Members have highlighted, that is exactly why Changing Places toilets are so important. They provide the space, equipment and dignity that standard provision simply cannot provide. I know that from my own experience as a Member of Parliament who has visited a lot of special educational needs provision and spoken to many parents about their own lived experience and the need for the gap to be fixed.
The Government want people to be able to live well, work, enjoy days out, shop and socialise, and we recognise that access to appropriate public facilities can be an important part of enabling that. Reasonable adjustments, as has already been mentioned, are instrumental to changing lives and allowing everybody to live fulfilled lives.
As hon. Members have acknowledged, in recognition of the importance of the issue, the Government delivered over £30 million for the Changing Places toilets programme, and I am delighted that the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) joined the debate. The programme has supported the targeted installation of well over 400 new disabled toilet facilities in areas where they were most needed across England. Although that programme closed last year, changes were made in January 2021 to the statutory guidance accompanying building regulations.
Wera Hobhouse
The Minister just acknowledged that the fund was closed, although I am not sure whether all the money was spent. We all agree that the fund provided and delivered a very important human dignity facility, as we have all talked about. Can she please explain why a fund that provided for human dignity was cut?
Nesil Caliskan
I thank the hon. Member for her passionate advocacy. Since the fund was allocated, we have had a significant spending review through which moneys were allocated to local government. I will make the case for why decisions around spending are best made locally, but that does not mean I do not recognise the important cases that have been made. I also recognise that the moneys that had been allocated to Changing Places toilets delivered change on the ground with facilities across the country.
I also absolutely accept the important point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford made about the speed at which additional facilities are being provided. There has clearly been a reduction in the speed of provision across the country—I am not in the business of rejecting the evidence in front of us—but the Government’s important spending review included a record spending settlement for local government, and spending decisions should be taken locally.
The 2021 regulations were significant. I remember them well; as a council leader, I followed building regulation changes, which have an impact on local government budgets. As a result of the 2021 regulations, all building works must meet the functional requirements of the 2010 building regulations, including part M, which addresses accessibility. In addition, at the 2025 spending review the Government committed more than £5 billion in new grant funding over three years for essential local services, including public toilets.
We continue to provide 100% mandatory business rates relief for separately accessible toilets. I accept that that is a slightly different conversation, but I want to give a sense of the Government’s broader commitment to ensuring that there are accessible toilets for everybody in our communities. Taken together, those measures are intended to increase the availability of these vital facilities over time and ensure that accessibility is treated as a mainstream consideration as we plan and build our public spaces.
I hear and accept the powerful cases that hon. Members have made. I acknowledge the calls for a new capital fund pot for Changing Places but, as Members will appreciate, it is a little beyond my ability to make a spending commitment, although I am reminded that Ministers in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have gone on to hold offices that have the power to make such commitments. Members will take the point that I am making.
The Government believe that local authorities are best placed to understand where facilities need to be, so our approach to funding them is important. We encourage them to allocate the funding necessary to deliver public toilet provision. Decisions are best made locally.
Wera Hobhouse
I understand the money argument, but will the Minister acknowledge that local authorities are stuck when it comes to providing mandatory services? They have to provide children’s and adult social care, but public toilets are optional. That is the dilemma. Local authorities cannot make that money available, as we have discussed.
Nesil Caliskan
I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford and I have spent a long time in local government, so we know all too well that statutory services are under huge pressure and that choices have to be made. I accept the argument that if funding is not ringfenced, things sometimes do not get done. However, this Government are committed to funding local authorities well, and we have done that through the spending review.
We are also committed to saying to local authorities, “You are best placed to make decisions for your area and assess what is needed. We will support you and encourage you to make the right decisions.” It is a balancing act, but debates like this give us an opportunity to reinforce the important message from Government that access to facilities and public toilets for all who need them is a crucial part of what local government should be doing.
Daniel Francis
As the Minister said, we were friends for many years in London local government prior to being elected to this place. I want to make two points. First, there is the issue of the Changing Places that have been provided in recent years and the amount of information out there about them. In the last week, I have written to a number of providers about cases where the money was provided or the facilities were set up under the new regulations, yet nobody has advertised that they exist, or they have not been made available. Would the Minister commit to working with me to write to local authorities to remind them to get that information out there?
Secondly, on cross working, as I said earlier, that needs to be provided not just by local government but by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Transport as well. I very much hope the Minister is in the same position next week, working to secure a meeting for me to see how we can continue that spend across Departments.
Nesil Caliskan
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the important point he made earlier. I was coming on to say that of course I absolutely welcome a dialogue with him, but also with the consortium that has been referenced in the debate, which does such good work already. I am happy to meet with the consortium myself, but I am also confident that MHCLG and all current or future Ministers would welcome that engagement and dialogue. My hon. Friend is right that these sorts of facilities are successfully delivered only if there is a cross-governmental commitment.
Regulation and funding are part of that challenge, but we also need a joint recognition of the challenges in our communities to be able to see things delivered. The consortium is clearly playing a valuable role in articulating those challenges. It is absolutely right that MHCLG has that engagement and I am confident that it will going forward. I am happy to discuss with my hon. Friend any letters, correspondence or meetings that we need to have as a Department in the coming weeks and months to make sure that we can continue to make the case for these facilities.
Let me address the point about specific Government Departments and the opportunities that we face now because of Government initiatives and changes, which we do not want to lose, so that we can improve facilities for those who have needs. I was shocked to hear that so many NHS hospitals do not have the provision that we are talking about. That is not acceptable, and I think that all our constituents would be surprised to hear that. I am very happy to take that away and speak to colleagues in other Departments; I think they, too, will be surprised. It is a good example of where we need cross-governmental working, and I welcome the input from Members on how we might be able to do that.
I recognise the important points made about transport. The Government’s commitment to accessible transport is demonstrated in the spending that we have committed to the railways. Because of that, there is an opportunity to make sure they are accessible, and our transport hubs will play a key part in that. I will take those two specific points away.
I recognise the point that my hon. Friend made on modernising software and maps. A needs map, if you will, feels like quite an obvious thing that we could do, which would really make a difference to constituents across the country who simply do not know if there is a facility. An ability to map out the gaps could also give the necessary encouragement to Government and local authorities to allocate the moneys that are required to set up facilities.
I recognise the strength of feeling across the House in this very important debate on ensuring that public spaces are accessible, inclusive and supportive of people’s dignity and independence. I pay tribute to my good and hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford. The very best of politics are people who just get things done. I saw that for many years in local government, when he got things done, and he gets things done as a Member of Parliament too, but nobody who knows him will say that he is a soft touch in any way. He is formidable and effective. He is my hon. Friend, but he will tell me if we are doing something wrong as a Government, as he has.
Rishi Sunak
I add my thanks and congratulations to the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis). Before the Minister wraps up, I thank her for a very considered, informed and thoughtful response to the debate. Whatever happens next week, I very much hope that she is in a position to continue being a champion of this cause in Government, because I think she would do it very well.
Nesil Caliskan
That is very generous of the right hon. Member. I again thank all Members for their contributions and provide my reassurance that MHCLG will be committed to doing everything it can to meet the challenges that our constituents face.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (in the Chair)
To put the fear of God into the Minister, I call Daniel Francis to wind up.
Daniel Francis
As the Minister knows, I will hold her to account on this issue and continue to pursue it. I thank her very much for the commitments that she has given today that we can continue to pursue. I thank the hon. Members for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth), for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell) and the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) for their contributions and for outlining family experiences that I know only too well. This is an issue that I knew very little about 10 years ago; but when you start on that path as the parent of a disabled child, you find out these things.
I became a campaigner on this cause during my time in local government and will continue to campaign all the time that I am in this House. We are very thankful in this country for the progress that we have made on this matter; we need to remember that there are more Changing Places toilets in this country than in the whole of the European Union. If people travel abroad, the real progress that we have made is apparent. Certainly, in some of our neighbouring countries, it is possible to count on one hand how many Changing Places there are in the entire country. We have made great progress, but there is still more to be done.
I thank the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton for paying tribute to Zack Kerr. I know that he continues to lobby my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith), in whose constituency he lives, on this matter. He and I have written to each other on this issue, and I know about his great involvement in the campaign on motorway service stations and the great credit that he rightly should be taking for that. I again thank all Members for their contributions today.
There is that piece of work to do. The Changing Places Consortium has a map, and it is looking at how we roll that out. However, there are also gaps in provision, particularly for those in more rural constituencies. If my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) had been here today, she would have spoken about the real gaps in her rural constituency.
There is also the issue of how we bring that information together; in terms of accessibility today, much more so than 10 years ago, we can do that. I will push for us to sit down and look at how we bring Government Departments together. I will also go back to local government across the country and make sure that it is doing all it can, not only to provide new facilities, but to advertise those that it already has.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (in the Chair)
I will take this opportunity to wish all hon. and right hon. Members, along with departmental staff, Doorkeepers, Clerks and Hansard Reporters, a very pleasant recess.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered capital funding for Changing Places toilets.