National Policy for the Built Environment

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, the title of the committee’s report says it all: Building Better Places. Our focus was not only on the Government’s focus of building more homes, which we all accept are desperately needed, but on going beyond that, to the spaces beyond the houses—to the houses collectively together, where we create spaces where people want to live and grow, helping them express themselves and their creative understanding of themselves in shaping those places, and allowing them to develop relationships with their families and with others in the community by creating better places. That objective can be lost, as we have seen it lost in the dialogue we hear in the media and in this place every week as we talk about the need for more homes. Our committee correctly responded to that by focusing on the bigger picture of creating spaces for people to grow.

Another thing that our committee did so well was to focus on the issue of the resources at our disposal in this land. We have limited land and limited water and are facing the growing problems of climate change and the need to adapt our proposals for infrastructure and homes in order to respond to those challenges. We are trying in this report to look at the bigger picture and to remind those involved in the political debate of the need to focus on our limited resources.

A number of other committee members are here today so I shall pick up on only three issues. However, I strongly echo the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that the Government’s response was, at best—to put it politely—disappointing. The committee made a number of extremely welcome recommendations that the Government, to their discredit, lightly tossed aside too quickly.

The first issue is the need to make homes sustainable and to look at the carbon emissions for which they are responsible. The climate change committee has said that if the Government do not tackle this issue, we as a country stand absolutely no chance of meeting our carbon-emissions target. We know from the evidence the committee received that tackling the carbon efficiency of our homes is the cheapest way of addressing the carbon-compliance issues facing us as a country.

The committee clearly disagreed with the Government’s decision to remove the zero-carbon homes policy and the code for sustainable homes. It contended that the decision was likely to add to long-term housing costs through a reduction in energy efficiency, and the committee heard no evidence that it would lead to an increase in housebuilding. The Government’s response was:

“We need to build more homes and these should be sustainable, but we do not need to make building those new homes more difficult than necessary”.


Your Lordships will be familiar with that brush-off: we got it in the consideration of the then Housing and Planning Bill. Pressure from your Lordships forced the Government to commit to review the progress made on sustainable buildings. I serve notice to the Government that noble Lords will be looking with keen intent when that review is made public in March.

In the meantime, this is about not just new homes but the majority of our homes—the older properties we have—and making them carbon efficient, ensuring that we build trust and confidence among home owners to ensure that they take the necessary steps to make their homes carbon efficient through retrofitting. To that end, I welcome the Government’s report, commissioned last July from Peter Bonfield, on ensuring that we build up trust and confidence among individuals to ensure that their homes are retrofitted. That report was published last year. There was a foreword by the Minister in the other place, which I very much welcome, but it did not clarify the specific resources the Government will make available to Peter Bonfield and the industry as they rightly take forward those recommendations to ensure that we can retrofit houses in future.

The second issue I want to tackle is sustainable urban drainage. We have systems that mimic natural drainage systems, which use permeable surfaces, green roofs, ponds and wetlands, and underground storage. They provide an alternative to piped drainage, which is often over capacity, and help reduce the likelihood of surface water flooding, which puts more than 3 million of our homes at risk. The evidence the committee received, including that from the Government, suggested that high-quality sustainable urban drainage systems can be a cost-effective alternative to conventional drainage options and contribute to flood-risk mitigation, as well as water quality, amenity and biodiversity.

However, the key barrier to delivering those good-quality SUDS is not cost or practicability but lack of policy clarity, uncertainty around adoption and ongoing operation and maintenance, and loopholes in the rules requiring SUDS to be built. A variety of adoption and funding arrangements are currently used, with different requirements across the UK. This was recognised by the committee, which recommended that,

“the Government takes a more proactive approach to the provision of Sustainable Drainage Systems”.

Your Lordships may be interested to note that, since the publication of our report, Wales is powering ahead to end the policy stalemate. It already has a completed draft report from its consultants. After a battle with your Lordships on the then Housing and Planning Bill, Section 171 of the subsequent Act required the Government to review the law and policy relating to sustainable drainage in England. That review is currently under way, due for completion by spring, led by DEFRA and the DCLG.

The Minister down the other end described the terms of reference in the Public Bill Committee of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, but the terms of reference have not been published; nor have the Government issued a public call for evidence. It is limited to a Civil Service exercise and private industry round tables. Ministers have so far declined to meet water policy experts and NGOs; nor am I encouraged by the announcement today of the Government’s response to the EFRA committee’s excellent report on flooding, published in November. The Government have made it quite clear that they intend to take no further strategic decisions on planning to deal with issues around flooding. That gives me little hope that the review will lead to anything, but we leave the door open in the hope that Ministers may see that steps need to be taken.

On 2 February—next week—CIWEM and the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust will publish new research highlighting the shortcomings of SUDS policy in England and proposing simple changes, supported by the Landscape Institute, the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Institution of Environmental Sciences, which all responded to the committee’s call for evidence. Will the Minister meet me, along with water, construction and architectural experts, to ensure that the forthcoming review takes account of these findings? By strengthening requirements for SUDS, as outlined in our report, and clarifying the mechanism for adoption and maintenance, the Government can improve the flood resilience of the new homes that we need in an affordable way, without delaying housebuilding objectives.

Time is short—I was going to cover the issue of neighbourhood planning. As the Minister will be aware, we will address that issue at some length in the upcoming Committee on the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, but I put it on record that the committee, which took evidence from previous planning inspectors, came out in support of a limited community right of appeal. That is a very important initiative that the committee decided to go with. The committee felt strongly about this, not only on the basis of the evidence but on the point that I made at the beginning—this is about building better places for people. If we can involve local people in shaping the communities they want, not only will we get more houses but we will have communities where people can grow and citizens can ensure that their talents can flourish, and better communities in future.