Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Willis of Summertown

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, who provided a detailed, comprehensive introduction to the amendments in this group in her name, a number of which I have attached my name to. I also look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, on this topic.

I will try to be fairly brief as I am very aware of the hour. I am going to start with Amendment 227A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. In researching this, I found the most perfect case study to follow the recommendations—which I am sure we will hear from the noble Baroness shortly—of the need to build to allow for the practical reality of the world we live in today. This study comes from flooding in York in 2015. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, who is not currently in his place, was then the Archbishop of York. He was resident in Bishopthorpe Palace and tweeted:

“We are fortunate … that back in the 13th Century they built with flooding in mind, such that when the water subsides it soon washes through the original flood drains made for the purpose”.


We have tended over the past century to think that we can just ignore nature and natural forces. We will build a wall—we will just put things down and assume that nature is going to adapt to us. Amendment 227A in particular, but all these amendments, are an acknowledgment of the fact that we now live in a climate emergency world. Many of these issues are much larger than they were previously, but we cannot ignore them anymore—we should not have ignored them previously, but we certainly cannot ignore them now.

Amendment 108 is about not building on flood plains. Many years ago I was chairing a session at the Green Party conference on flooding and heard a phrase that I have repeated many times since, and I make no apologies for that. It was that the flood plain is not beside the river; the flood plain is part of the river. If we think about that lovely little green patch that might be called Meadow Flat, or Wetland, or something—it is just beside the river, with a beautiful view over the river, and we have put housing on it. That is exactly the same as putting the house in the middle of the river. We cannot afford to keep doing that, and that is why I make no apologies for this amendment. If that is the only place where we can put housing, we should not be building new housing in the river.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, went through a great many of the things that I had in my pile, so I am going to avoid repeating them. Just to note that, as the noble Baroness said, there is a government review on measures that we should be taking on flooding. I also note that the Environmental Audit Committee is conducting an inquiry right now in the other place on flood resilience. The concern is obvious, but we really cannot wait for all of these to report many of the measures here in terms of taking action to protect people, their lives and their property from flooding. We already know what to do; we do not need further inquiries.

I will just point out to noble Lords who are interested that there was an excellent report out on 26 June called the UK Climate Resilience Roadmap from the Green Building Council and a number of other largely commercial organisations. To highlight a couple of things from it, it found that flooding would make Peterborough—and I note the noble Lord who would be particularly interested in that is not currently in his place—and the Welsh village of Fairbourne likely uninhabitable by the end of this century, which is not very far away at all. I do not know about Fairbourne, but I know that we are still building new housing, probably in very vulnerable places, in Peterborough.

I suspect we are going to hear lots more, so I will just point very briefly to the Committee on Climate Change pointing out how far we are from tackling the climate adaptation measures that we need to take. To pick out just one of its most recent recommendations, we need to integrate adaptation into all relevant policies. For policies, also, of course, read law. I hope we are going to hear positive words from the Minister on these amendments.

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as noted in the register, as chair for Peers for the Planet. I am delighted to add my name in support of Amendments 108 and 109, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I also support the other amendments in this group, all of which come together on a core purpose to strengthen our resilience to flooding through the planning system. I particularly support Amendment 135B, which seems really sensible.

It is hard to believe we are having this discussion as we have just come through a summer of heatwaves. However, as we all know, and as we have already heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Bennett, flooding is becoming increasingly common and all the predictions on it are very scary when you look at them. We see this year in and year out, and it is increasingly costly to the UK. We have heard about the cost involved, but it is not only housing that is impacted. The increased flood risk has an impact on all aspects of urban infrastructure. Some 38% of all roads in England are currently at risk of flooding, as are 37% of all railways, 34% of all water pumping stations and sewage treatment plants, and 59% of grade 1 agricultural land. This is not just a housebuilding issue; it is an issue for the whole urban infrastructure.

To flag up another issue that has not been mentioned, it has not only economic risks and risks to lives and livelihoods, but risks to health. There is now a lot of research that shows that flooding can cause long-lasting mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression and PTSD, and all these add a burden to the health budget, as well as everything else.

We have heard from many—and we have even heard from the Climate Change Committee—that it is critical that we build mitigation strategies into our land management policies. This is where the issue comes in. We have natural capital assets in this country that are perfectly adapted for fulfilling this role, and it is in the name: flood plains—they have been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years to do this role. It was highlighted in the Government’s own 2024 State Of Natural Capital Report, in which they made the point that they recognize them as crucial natural capital assets for flood management by storing and slowing water flows. The Office for National Statistics natural capital accounts in 2024 also recognised their value. For example, the total asset value of natural capital in England was estimated at £1.4 trillion. It did not disaggregate the flood plains, but it explicitly noted that wetlands and flood plains are a significant part of these natural capital assets, contributing to this cost through regulating services and risk reduction. Not only does housebuilding impact hugely on the people whose houses are flooded, but by building on the flood plains we are taking away our one natural way of maintaining and enhancing our resilience to flooding.

What is wrong with the planning system? I keep hearing about the National Planning Policy Framework, and I keep being told, “It’s all right, it’s covered in the NPPF”. This time, I went back through it in detail to see what it is in the NPPF that is going to allow us to stop building on flood plains. Of course, the problem is that it is guidance; it is not mandatory. It does not stop people from going ahead and building. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, the report by Localis showed in 2024 that over 7,000 dwellings are currently in the planning pipeline for areas with an existing very high risk of flooding—that is over 7,000 houses. When they flood, should we be surprised? Over 1,600 dwellings have already been given planning permission in the first half of 2024.

Despite the precautions and people saying, “It’s fine, they’re covered in the NPPF”, there is no existing law against granting planning permission for and the construction of homes on the flood plain. Even the Environment Agency advice has been ignored in the building of these houses.

There is a big problem here. I do not think the legislation or guidance we currently have is being adhered to, and the problem is going to get only worse. If we are going to build on the flood plain, we absolutely have to put in some of these mitigation measures so eloquently described in this amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I support these amendments wholeheartedly.

As one last point, I welcome—as I am sure we all do—the increased government investment of £2.65 billion to protect communities from flooding, which was announced earlier this year. That is fantastic, but it does not make sense to have that being pulled in the opposite direction of the legislation we have for housebuilding on flood plains.

To conclude, we need much firmer legislation to prevent the building of houses on flood plains. If there really are no alternatives, we also must have legislation which means that the houses built are able to withstand the flooding that will happen. Let us be honest about it—it is not if, it is when.