Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, to which I have put my name. I will talk briefly about the opportunity that the new towns offer by ensuring that they are beacons for providing green and blue space close to where people live, especially for deprived communities. With her depth of experience, the Minister has seen green and blue spaces and placemaking in Stevenage and, not that far away, in the historical examples of Letchworth Garden City and others, including, more recently, Milton Keynes, which indubitably is full of green and blue spaces.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, said, I am sure that the Minister will restate her faith in the NPPF requirements—although the noble Baroness raised a question about that—and refer to the New Towns Taskforce report and the strong emphasis it put on placemaking principles and green and blue open space. There is no doubt that new town development corporations are already equipped with sufficient legal powers to provide blue and green spaces, but powers are one thing and commitment is another. I want to see some provision of this sort in the Bill to ensure that, in the push for new towns that the new towns programme represents—to provide housing, businesses and places to live—there is also a push for accessible green space, especially for more deprived communities.

I would like our new towns, in respect of this green and blue open space, to be praised by future generations in the way that the Victorian model towns were praised, in the way we praise the garden cities and in the way that some of us, grudgingly, praise Milton Keynes and, dare I say it, Poundbury.

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment. I have the honour to serve on your Lordships’ Built Environment Committee. It is no coincidence that two of us who have added our names to this amendment are on that committee, the second being the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, who is its chair.

An issue that we have come across as we have made our inquiry into new towns—the first module of which was published recently, as was the New Towns Taskforce report—is that there is a lack of vision. There is no vision for blue and green space in the New Towns Taskforce report. Obviously, it is integral that houses are part of a new town; that goes without saying. It should be integral that green and blue space is part of a new town; that should also go without saying.

Last week, we had a fascinating debate in your Lordships’ House on swifts and swift bricks. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, taught me a lot about why swift bricks were perhaps less important, because they could not be positioned in the right place. But the fact is that if those swifts do not have any food, because there is no green space or blue space to produce the insects, all the debate we had about swift bricks is completely meaningless—and that goes for every single species.

It is not just about the species. I will not repeat all the arguments we made in Committee and last week about the other amendment concerning green and blue space being in the NPPF. I simply say that it is equally essential, for all those reasons—for human health and well-being and for children—that green and blue space is as integral in the vision of development corporations as the houses themselves.