Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 25th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, the fact that we are facing increasing demands on our infrastructure and living in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world shows that we need to plan our new and retrofitted homes carefully. They need to be as light touch on the environment and national infrastructure as possible and, wherever feasible, they need to have a positive impact to meet our aspirations and our legal targets. This is, I am sure, the aim of all of us, but the Bill needs amendment to achieve it.

Every building that we construct or renovate should be designed to use and waste as little energy as possible and to generate as much of its own as possible. It should be designed to provide habitats for wildlife, such as through cavity nest boxes, which in effect cost nothing, and it should be designed to minimise harm to wildlife. The British Trust for Ornithology estimates that, in the UK, around 30 million birds a year die by flying into windows—yet bird-safe designs and glass cost little more and are legislated for in other jurisdictions. I shall be pressing for bird safety in planning and design, as this is such a simple measure.

At the next level up, every new housing development should be planned under the same principles. How can we help ensure that community-level energy, water or sewerage systems are designed and built to make communities more resilient and put less pressure on the national infrastructure? How can we integrate these developments properly with existing houses and communities, helping preserve their character and independence, and with their natural environment? Places where people live and thrive need to be places where other species live and thrive too. The proposed spatial development strategies and environmental development plans need to be hard-wired to the long-awaited land use framework and to local nature recovery strategies, and they also really need to reflect communities’ priorities.

The UK is committed to legal biodiversity restoration targets, and we need to legislate that all planning and development, including that by development corporations, is done with a view to biodiversity enhancement. With that in mind, I hope the Government will agree to tightening up aspects of Part 3 to ensure that it is in line with their aims. As other noble Lords have mentioned —and I think everyone will agree—there are some habitats and landscapes where no amount of money will compensate for their loss, and they cannot be moved to some other location. Ministers have previously said that they think that irreplaceable places implicitly fall outside the scope of the proposed environmental development plans, in which case I urge the Government to make it explicit in the Bill.

Then there are some habitats that have been so degraded already that they can be considered suitable for development, but here we must see this as a double opportunity to provide homes for people and, in doing so, to enhance the biodiversity opportunities on that land. It could be a triple win. Enhancement can go beyond designing buildings to provide natural habitats and bird safety; it can extend to giving people access to green spaces and increasing flood resilience and local water storage—nature-based solutions that benefit people and biodiversity and relieve our national infrastructure all at the same time, on that very piece of land. Amendments to the Bill are necessary but could achieve that.

Finally, land that is currently a green space but not designated irreplaceable will be damaged by development, despite all the considerations of green planning, which need to be legislated for as the first approach. This is where the Government, through the Bill, rightly see that environmental development plans can help by taking a more strategic and holistic approach to the whole area and bringing another piece of land into the equation—a piece of degraded and endangered land that can be protected and have its biodiversity enhanced to make up for the loss on the developed land.

Again, at the moment the wording needs to be amended to ensure a win-win. It is not currently stated in the Bill that the biodiversity benefits on this land need to overcompensate for the losses by the 10% or more required under the current biodiversity net gain system. If we sited that greened-up land as close as possible to the sacrificed development land, we would help wildlife displaced from one area to colonise another, and it would act as a green space for the people who move into that development. That is a win-win and can fit perfectly with existing local nature recovery strategies, but they need to be added into the Bill.

Alongside these big, broad principles, the Bill needs amending to ensure that environmental development is in place and under way before building development starts; to ensure that biodiversity benefits are carefully and scientifically measured and monitored, with further enhancements to the plan being made, if necessary, if the hoped-for outcomes are not at first forthcoming; and to ensure that the greened-up land, once allocated, is given a high and permanent level of protection so that it cannot just be built on itself in a few years’ time, negating its purpose.

I very much hope that the Government will consider putting forward their own amendments to deal with each of these. I look forward to working with other noble Lords on them.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, and all the amendments in this group, including Amendment 228 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the noble Lord, Lord Best, to which I have added my name. I declare my interest as a Nationwide Foundation trustee—I think I declared this last time I spoke, but I cannot remember, so better twice than never.

I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, will set out in great detail why the list of criteria is needed in the Bill. However, put simply, more detail on what the PRS database will contain needs to be in the Bill, which needs to set out core functions and minimum standards. Leaving the detail to be filled in later by regulation at the whim of a future Secretary of State is not acceptable. It will make the Bill less stable and requirements less easily understood. Landlords need clarity about what the law requires of them and tenants need clarity on what they can expect in terms of their rights.

I hope my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage will bring back on Report an amendment that sets out minimum requirements for the PRS database that can sit in the Bill, to give clarity and direction akin to Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill.

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 222, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. This Bill is very big and has wide-ranging impacts. Some are certainly planned, and others are possibly unplanned. It is vital that those impacts are evaluated. It is unfortunate that, at this stage, the evaluation plan is slightly unformed, but the impact assessment makes it clear that it is going to rely on some of the data collected in this database. Given that it is going to rely on that data, I think it has to be specified in the Bill.

For example, one of the prime aims of the Bill is to increase security of tenure, thereby reducing evictions and unplanned moves. The current source of that data is from the English Housing Survey, which suffers from the vagaries of any survey at the moment and questions about its validity. More importantly, it also does not have the necessary granularity, given that the local authority level is going to be the level at which this Bill is enforced. So we need the data that is going to be collected in this database in order to be able to tell whether the Bill is at all effective, and what other effects it might have.

That is true also of things such as rental increases, which it is trying to keep a lid on. If we do not have a record of those rental increases, we will not know whether it is effective. So I am concerned to hear tonight that the database may not even be fully in action within the first year of the Act being passed. How will we know what the effects are if the Act has already been in place for over a year before we measure some of these impacts? I would love to hear more from the Minister about what is going to be in the database and when those different aspects of the database are going to be active.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I have already mentioned Amendment 222 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, so I need say no more about it at this stage. I turn, then, to the one other amendment in this group that interests me: the one introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. The information that she proposes should be disclosed in the database is quite extensive. I have three points to make.

First, is the noble Baroness satisfied—and would the Minister consider herself satisfied—that, if there were an ongoing dispute, putting that data raw, on an incomplete process, would be free from creating a prejudice around the outcome? That might be in either direction; I am thinking only that this might be a quasi- judicial process of one sort or another. I just wish to flag that up.

Secondly, in any event, obviously, the database would identify both parties: the renter and the landlord. I assume that, when the noble Baroness says that her amendment would create a greater egalitarian thing, she is also happy with renters and landlords being mentioned, because the identity of the parties will be known. However, depending on the detail that goes in, there might be the disclosure of what might be described as more sensitive information related to the nature of the dispute; I wished to flag that up in case it had been overlooked. Bear in mind that, if we are talking about an open register, this goes to everybody, anywhere, who can tap into the information.

Thirdly, there is a whole issue here around the performance characteristics that sit behind this group of amendments, in terms of what is going on around the efficiency of the process through which information might be derived from this database. There must be a difference, I think, between the metadata from the processing of things, such as the speed at which things are dealt with and so on, the data on the types of disputes that might typically arise, including their frequency and distribution, and the individual data on the register. There will certainly be derivative information that does not necessarily require the total disclosure of all sorts of intricate and possibly personal details.

I would be very happy for the database to be used for the purpose of the further processing of non-personalised data of one sort or another for statistical and performance calculating processes. I am less clear, though, that that necessarily sits as a direct part of the database; that is, as a derivative of it. One must be careful about what one is expecting the raw data on a database to consist of; and about how it is going to be used as a derivative thereafter.