Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for introducing this group and the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, as well as for drawing our attention to the importance of standards. Clearly, most of the debate has been around the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan. As we are on Report, I shall be brief and make just two points in response to the noble Lord’s amendments.

First, I point out that Sadiq Khan has explicitly ruled out the introduction of pay-per-mile charging while he is Mayor of London. Secondly, on Amendment 282N, which seems to be the core amendment within the four amendments introduced, our concern is that this includes a loophole for councils to opt out of such schemes. Introducing that loophole undermines the national objective of improving air quality. We think that it risks increasing public confusion and is not in the interests of preventive health and improving air quality.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 242 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, introduced by my noble friend Lord Lexden, would require the Government to make all standards that relate to all planning Acts or local authority planning policy, online and free of charge.

As I think I said in Committee, our national standards body, the British Standards Institution or BSI, publishes around 3,000 standards annually. These standards are a product of over 1,000 expert committees. BSI is independent of government and governed by the rights and duties included in its royal charter. This includes the obligation to set up, sell and distribute standards of quality for goods, services and management systems. About 20% of the standards produced are to support the regulatory framework. This will include a minority of standards made to support planning legislation and local authority planning policy. To ensure the integrity of the system and to support the effective running of the standards-making process, the funding model relies on BSI charging customers for access to its standards. As a non-profit distributing body, BSI reinvests this income from sales in the standards development programme.

My noble friend Lord Lexden asked what the difference is between a regulation and a standard. A regulation provides minimum legal requirements, is written by government and is laid before Parliament. A standard is expert-led and derives its legitimacy through consensus and public consultation. A standard, however, can help demonstrate compliance with legislation. My noble friend also brought up the issue of access in Northern Ireland’s libraries. Interestingly enough, access to British standards is available free in public and university libraries across this country as well, including the British Library, Herefordshire County libraries and the National Library of Scotland. I hope that this provides sufficient reason for my noble friend Lord Lexden, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, to withdraw the amendment.

I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan for tabling Amendments 282N, 302A, 315ZA and 317, to which I have added my name. He speaks with his characteristic eloquence about the challenges of introducing road user charging schemes in the capital. My noble friend’s experience in these matters is worth repeating. He is a former deputy leader of Kensington and Chelsea Council, a former deputy chairman of Transport for London and a former chairman of London Councils’ city-wide transport and environment committee. My noble friend therefore speaks with unrivalled experience and authority on matters of London’s governance.

My noble friend is entirely correct in his analysis of the differences between the mayoral model followed in London and the combined authority model followed elsewhere in England. He is right to draw attention to the resulting friction that can arise between London borough councils and the mayoralty in London. Regrettably, we have seen a clear display of this during the recent debates on the expansion of the ultra-low emission zones.

As the Government, through this Bill, look to widen and deepen the devolved powers of leaders outside the capital, it is right that we also take stock of how London’s devolution settlement is working in practice. To this end, the Government have committed, through their new English devolution accountability framework, published earlier this year, to review

“how current scrutiny and accountability arrangements in London are operating in practice”,

including

“how the Greater London Authority works and liaises with the London boroughs”.

In addition, the Levelling Up Advisory Council has been asked to examine the strengths and challenges of the capital’s devolution settlement, and a report on that is expected next year. In the meantime, my noble friend’s new clause on road user charging schemes in London provides a targeted, proportionate and wholly sensible correction to the current uneven distribution of power and decision-making between borough councils and the Greater London Authority when introducing ULEZ-style road user charging schemes across the capital. The amendment is entirely in keeping with the wider aims of the Bill to “empower local leaders” and to “enhance local democracy”. As such, I can confirm that, should my noble friend Lord Moylan wish to test the opinion of your Lordships’ House on this matter, he would have the Government’s support.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, the powers introduced by this section amend and clarify powers and procedures for using compulsory purchase and have been extensively consulted on—unlike some other parts of the Bill. The LGA’s view is that the introduction of measures that would genuinely make the CPO process more efficient for councils is an encouraging step, as it has previously lobbied on the need to reduce the time taken to use the CPO, and it also believes that these changes will make the valuation of change in this context closer to a normal market transaction.

In fact, the LGA view is that the Bill could have gone further. It would also like to see the ability to tackle sites which have had planning permission for a long time but which have not been built out through stronger compulsory purchase powers, and the removal of the requirement for permission from the Secretary of State to proceed with a CPO, which would expedite the process for local authorities. Of course, the Secretary of State could always retain the right to call in in circumstances where it would be necessary to do so.

I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and I am sympathetic to the specific issues they raised, particularly the issue about prompt payment for purchases of land. Perhaps I have had an unusual experience of the CPO process but the conditions are already stringent, both in setting out the process for a site qualifying for a CPO and in the requirement for valuation of that site. Therefore, while I appreciate the thinking behind the amendment, it seems that there is already guidance in place—indeed, the amendment refers to it. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 246, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, would place a requirement on the Government to publish by regulations a new duty of care for all acquiring authorities undertaking compulsory purchase. The proposed duty of care would involve obligations on acquiring authorities to acquire only land necessary for their schemes and to mitigate the impacts of their schemes, as well as to pay compensation to landowners at the date of entry or date of vesting and ensure that all communication with claimants is conducted in accordance with government guidance. I reassure noble Lords that the Government understand the concerns behind this amendment. However, the Government consider the proposed duty of care to be unnecessary for the following reasons.

First, whatever the underlying scheme, a guiding principle of compulsory purchase is that acquiring authorities should include within the boundary of a CPO only land which is required to facilitate the scheme. It is for acquiring authorities to demonstrate that there is justification and a compelling case to support the inclusion of land within a CPO boundary. Where they cannot, a CPO is likely to fail.

Secondly, another principle is that the use of a CPO is lawful only providing that acquiring authorities compensate landowners for the loss of their interests, whether the land is acquired following notice to treat or is vested in the acquiring authority. Where an acquiring authority takes possession of land before compensation has been agreed, it is obliged to make an advance payment of compensation to the landowner if requested.

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[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, at an earlier stage of the Bill, I made the case, with others, for amending Clause 158, which concerns the statutory requirement for water companies to upgrade sewage plants to meet new nutrient standards in the areas worst affected by pollution. We welcomed this, but although it was seen as a good step forwards for improving water quality, frustratingly, it specified only that such upgrades should take place at the sewage disposal works themselves, usually meaning traditional engineering systems and solutions, which in themselves relied on concrete materials. Amendment 247, tabled in my name and with the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was therefore designed to enable effective use of restored habitats, known in this context as nature-based solutions, by water companies to also meet those standards.

As we pointed out in Committee, those nature-based alternatives can be a really effective and very cheap approach to soaking up nutrient loads and reducing the pollution reaching rivers, as well as providing excellent habitats for biodiversity. Our amendment also had strong support from water companies and Ofwat, but in Committee, the Government’s argument against it was the suggestion that it could somehow let water companies off the hook by allowing them to use such nature-based measures to fudge the delivery of their upgrades. We have therefore brought back this tweaked amendment, in which we have added an explicit requirement for water companies to secure agreement for compliance and investment plans from Ofwat and the Environment Agency before commencing their updates—so we are putting a fail safe in there. We have also included in the amendment the ability for the Environment Agency to impose monetary penalties on water companies for failing to deliver on the compliance and investment plans.

Over the summer, concessions in this area were tabled by the Government, which I really welcome. Those amendments are really positive in principle. However—this is a very big “however”—I fear that Amendment 247 may become very insignificant for the environment if the other government amendments recently introduced into this group are passed. I will therefore briefly speak to those as well. As I am a scientist, I will address the amendments from a scientific perspective rather than addressing their constitutional and legal aspects. In particular, I want to focus on Amendment 247YYA, which amends the habitats regulations to remove controls on nutrient loads in rivers for those that are associated with housing developments.

The amendments are based on the premise that the extra nutrient loading in areas where the relevant houses will be built will be less than 1% of the loading of the existing housing stock. This is where a key piece of evidence is missing: what is the loading of the existing housing stock? The Home Builders Federation would like us to believe that houses contribute 5% of excess nutrient loads in rivers in England compared with 50% from agricultural activities, so it is all the problem of farmers and not of housebuilders.

I quote from the Home Builders Federation:

“It is estimated that all existing development, including residential, commercial and the rest of the built environment, contributes less than 5% towards the phosphate and nitrate loads in our rivers—meaning the occupants of any new homes built would make a negligible difference”.


But the evidence base is, very strangely, lacking: where does that 5% come from? Searching for it leads me to believe that the figure has been extrapolated from a 2014 Defra report, The Impact of Agriculture on the Water Environment: summary of evidence, which was used to inform the 25-year environment plan. The first thing to note is that this report has since been updated by Defra, and the most recent statistics stand as follows:

“Agriculture is the dominant source of nitrate in water (about 70% of total inputs), with sewage effluent a secondary contributor (25-30%)”—


not 5%.

I also looked at other data that could support this level of 5% from the built environment, so I did a search of academic studies that had been published in the peer-reviewed literature in the past three years in similar climatic regions across the world to look at the percentage source of pollution in river catchments that contain a mix of agriculture and urban development. I could not find a single example that suggested a value as low as 5% of the nutrients in rivers coming from housing. One found that, in a large catchment containing seven rivers, 14% of nutrients were from wastewater from residential buildings; in another, it was 33%, and 28% in another. All were significantly higher than the 5% that we have been told is the likely impact. For the UK, a recent assessment by Greenshank Environmental also indicates a far higher nutrient load in rivers from housing, closer to 36%. I therefore urge other noble Lords not to take this 5% figure too seriously.

Worse than this, if Amendment 247YYA goes through, we will never know the true value, since the amendment instructs planning authorities to assume no increase in pollution, prevents them requesting an assessment to investigate pollution further and even goes as far as to instruct authorities to ignore any evidence of potential adverse impacts; for example, as provided by scientific studies or even NGOs. It simply cannot be acceptable to amend one of our key environmental protections like this.

These amendments also fly in the face of the environment statement on the Bill, which says:

“The Bill will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law”.


That does not seem to be the case. The Government’s own adviser, and the chair of the Office for Environmental Protection, made this point in a letter to the Government last week.

In conclusion, I will not be supporting these later government amendments. I urge other noble Lords to do the same, not least because in this country we are already dealing with extremely polluted rivers. In February this year, the Environment Agency reported that only 14% of our rivers are classified as being in a good ecological status. It also stated that, without new interventions, this figure will drop to just 6% by 2027. I beg to move.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, and to assist noble Lords participating in this debate, I will speak to the government amendments in this group. I will of course address the amendments tabled by noble Lords and the wider debate in my closing remarks.

All the amendments in my name address the major issue of nutrient neutrality, which has effectively stalled or blocked completely housing development in affected areas. For procedural reasons, and agreed in the usual channels, I will treat the tailing amendments—Amendments 247YE and 247YX—as de-grouped.

This issue is hampering local economies, depriving communities of much needed housing and threatening to put the SME builders out of business. Nutrients entering our rivers is a real and serious problem, but the contribution made by new homes is very small compared with that from sources such as industry, agriculture and our existing housing stock. Government Amendments 247A to 247YW cover a range of improvements to our current approach to improving wastewater treatment. These amendments respond to comments and concerns of noble Lords in Committee about more nature-based and catchment-based approaches. I hope they will be welcomed.

I now turn to Amendment 247YYA, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, which would require a competent authority to make a reasonable assumption for relevant developments that nutrients from that development will not adversely affect the integrity of the site. The assumption we are asking competent authorities to make is reasonable for two reasons. First, this assumption is limited to the development where the wastewater is treated by a wastewater treatment works or private treatment system regulated under the environmental permitting regulations. This means that nutrient loads in wastewater will remain strictly controlled through the environmental permitting regime, which places legally binding duties on water companies, and through the regulators of the water industry, which are subject to the requirements of the habitats regulations. Secondly, the mitigations that we are putting in place will ensure that there are no additional nutrient loads from residential development.

If we are to take these reasonable steps, we need to amend the habitats regulations in the way our amendments set out. This is a carefully targeted and specific change, aimed only at addressing a disproportionate application of the regulations since the Dutch nitrogen case in the European Court of Justice. Following the findings in this case, since March 2022 housing development in affected catchments has been stalled or blocked—even though new housing contributes such a small proportion of pollution.

In these areas, following the guidance that Natural England was required to issue, development may not be consented unless and until, case by case, house by house, mitigation is in place. This applies even though the additional pollution we are talking about—the additional nitrate and phosphate which remains in the water after domestic sewage is treated—will not get anywhere near the waterways unless the houses not only have planning permission but have been built and occupied.

New development is stalling at the point of planning permission, or even, in many cases, after permission has been granted. It is an absurd situation that is undermining local economies, costing jobs, threatening to put small developers out of business and, above all, leaving communities without the homes that they want and need.

This is not to say that the problem of nutrient pollution in our rivers is unimportant—it very much is—but developers and local planning authorities are bound up in a burdensome and expensive process that does nothing to give certainty to anyone, creating huge opportunity costs. In some catchment areas, hard work by Natural England, environmental groups and developers has started to allow some housing to be consented. However, having listened to the concerns of local communities, local authorities and housebuilders, it is clear that these schemes are moving too slowly, with no guarantee that demand can be met imminently.

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for her introduction to this debate. It has been a very important debate with some excellent contributions, and I am sure that it has given many noble Lords on the opposite Benches food for thought. I will speak to my Amendment 247YYDA and will oppose certain government amendments in this group.

The current nutrient neutrality rules do not work, as we have heard from noble Lords today, but we do not think that the Government’s proposals work either. We certainly do not agree with the powers being introduced in government Amendment 247YY, or government Amendment 247YYA, which introduces new Schedule 13 and means abandoning legal protections for the nation’s most precious and sensitive habitats, on the premise that this is the only way to increase housing supply. As we have heard from noble Lords, this is completely wrong. It is entirely possible to balance the need for more homes with the need to protect nature. That is why have tabled Amendment 247YYDA, which would establish a process to consider alternative ways to reform nutrient neutrality regulations. Perhaps I can draw the attention of the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Moylan, to our proposals.

The amendment would launch a public consultation to consider the alternatives, allowing for an evidence-based approach that the Government’s new schedule completely lacks. Before I expand on how that alternative could be established, I want to explain why we will be opposing the introduction of the government amendments in this group.

Put simply, this change of policy means that developers will no longer need to mitigate harmful pollutants when building in the most environmentally sensitive areas. Noble Lords have made quite clear their concerns about this approach. We believe that the resulting increase in river pollution is a wholly unnecessary price to pay for building the homes that we are in short supply of. We also believe that the way the Government have introduced the amendments has been entirely inappropriate.

As we have heard from other noble Lords in this debate, the Bill has been passing through Parliament for more than 16 months, and yet this policy has been added only at the very last minute, during the final days of Report. It is accompanied, as we have heard, by excessive regulatory powers, which we will oppose, and which, as we have heard, noble Lords on the Delegated Powers Committee, have referred to as “open-ended”. I would not suggest that the word “proportionate”, which the Minister used, was the correct response. What is more, the committee noted that

“there appears to have been no public consultation or engagement with stakeholders prior to the publication of these measures”.

For a group of amendments which the Government claim could cost £230 million—other estimates suggest they would cost far more—no consultation or engagement is, frankly, astounding.

As the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, but which I think needs repeating, the Office for Environmental Protection has issued statutory advice to say that the measure

“would demonstrably reduce the level of environmental protection provided for in existing environmental law”—

in other words, a regression. We have already heard, and so the House will not need further reminding, that during consideration of the retained EU law Bill the Government repeatedly ruled out ever taking this step. On Monday 26 June, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, told this House that

“the Government will not row back on our world-leading environmental protections”.—[Official Report, 26/6/23; col. 469.]

However, the Office for Environmental Protection says that this is exactly what is happening. We believe, therefore, that it is wholly inappropriate for this House to agree these amendments to the Bill.

Instead, I urge the Minister to consider the approach that we have outlined in Amendment 247YYDA, which would open up the possibility of nutrient neutrality reform on the basis of consultation and evidence, and through the principle of good law. This is an amendment which has benefited from the input of the Local Government Association, and, I am pleased to say, has the support of Wildlife and Countryside Link. As I mentioned earlier, it would allow for a public consultation on various proposals which have been suggested by other Members of this House and other organisations across the UK. While I will not delve into the various options now, noble Lords will note that proposed new subsection (2) outlines the key alternatives. I also draw attention to the fact that the amendment stipulates that the consultation would launch, be completed and laid before both Houses within three months. I see no reason why the Government cannot provide an evidence-based solution to this Parliament.

It is abundantly clear that there are far better ways to build the new homes we need than at the expense of our precious environment. I hope the Minister will accept our amendment, withdraw the government amendments, and agree that polluting our rivers is not a price we need to pay for sufficient housing supply. If not, as other noble Lords have indicated, we will oppose the government amendments.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, let me conclude this debate by responding to a number of points that have been made, starting with the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I shall not name all noble lords, if your Lordships do not mind, in each response, but those who asked the questions will know who they are, and questions were asked by a number of noble Lords.

I turn first to the question on the views of the OEP. As my right honourable friend the Environment Secretary has set out very clearly in her response to the Office for Environmental Protection, we do not accept that this will lead to regression in environmental outcomes. It is the Government’s judgment that it will not. The reform package will improve the conditions of these habitat sites. The obligations on water companies to upgrade wastewater treatment works in designated catchment areas by 1 April 2030 will far outweigh the nutrients expected from the new housing developments, by putting in place wider upgrades for the long term. These upgrades will benefit existing houses, not just new homes, providing an effective approach to reducing existing wastewater nutrient pollution, not just forestalling the possible future pollution from development. On top of that, we are doubling investment in Natural England’s nutrient mitigation scheme to £280 million, which will be sufficient to offset the very small amount of additional nutrient discharge attributable to the 100,000 homes between now and 2030.

Staying on the OEP, my noble friend Lady McIntosh suggested that the Government broke the law on sewage. We always welcome scrutiny from the OEP, and we are co-operating with it fully to support its work in many areas. The OEP has not concluded that the Government broke the law on combined sewer overflows; it issued an information notice requesting a further response from Defra, Ofwat and the Environment Agency, and is continuing to investigate.

I move on to another issue that the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, brought up, as did many other noble Lords: how can we justify asking local authorities to effectively ignore the facts? I dealt with this in my opening speech, but I am going to repeat it.

The assumption we are asking competent authorities to make is reasonable for two reasons. First, this assumption is limited to developments where the wastewater is treated by a wastewater treatment works or a private treatment system regulated under the environmental permitting regulations. This means that nutrients from wastewater will remain subject to the strict legal duties that are binding on water companies and others who operate wastewater treatment systems. These duties are becoming stricter in many affected catchments, thanks to the wastewater treatment work upgrades mandated through the Bill. As I said before, the Government estimate that this will lead to a 69% reduction in phosphorus loads and around a 57% reduction in nitrogen loads in total from wastewater treatment works across all affected catchments, significantly reducing nutrient pollution at source in a principled manner.

Secondly, a package of measures we are putting in place will ensure that we more than offset the additional nutrient flows from new housing. This includes the significant additional investments we are putting into Natural England’s nutrient mitigation scheme. Local authorities will be able to object to planning applications on the basis of nutrient pollution; it is mandatory to consider it. Local planning authorities will still have to consider the impact from nutrient pollution as a material planning consideration, as the amendments made no change to the wider operation of the planning system.

Planning decision-makers will continue to have regard to the national planning policy and material planning considerations, and the Government are clear that the focus of planning decisions should always be on whether the proposed development is an acceptable use of land, rather than the control of processes, where these are subject to separate pollution control regimes. Nutrient pollution from wastewater treatment works is controlled under environmental permits, and planning decisions should assume that these regimes will operate effectively.

Another issue brought up by a number of noble Lords is that the developer should pay. The Government agree. It is essential that housebuilders contribute fairly, and we all agree with the principle that the polluter should pay. We are working with the HBF to structure a fair and appropriate contribution system. My officials are in active discussions with it about the design of these schemes, including considering how they are delivered.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

247A: Clause 158, page 184, line 21, at end insert—
“(1A) In carrying out the duty under subsection (1), a sewerage undertaker must consider whether nature-based solutions, technologies and facilities relating to sewerage and water could be used to meet the standard.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires sewerage undertakers to consider using nature-based solutions in the course of meeting the nutrient pollution standard.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

247YE: Clause 158, page 189, line 4, leave out sub-paragraph (iv)
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment that substitutes Schedule 13.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move this de-grouped amendment.

Amendment 247YE agreed.

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

247YF: Clause 158, page 189, line 11, at end insert—
“(c) all catchment permitting areas.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the second amendment in my name to clause 158 at page 188, line 22.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook)]

247YX: Clause 159, page 193, line 3, leave out from the first “to” to end of line 4 and insert “make provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water in relation to certain duties and decisions under those Regulations.”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, which is consequential on the amendment that substitutes Schedule 13, revises the description of the provision made by Schedule 13.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move this de-grouped amendment.

Amendment 247YX agreed.

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

247YY: After Clause 159, insert the following new Clause—
“Regulations: nutrients in water in England(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the operation of any relevant enactment in connection with the effect of nutrients in water that could affect a habitats site connected to a nutrient affected catchment area.(2) The regulations may make any provision which the Secretary of State considers appropriate, including provision that—(a) disapplies or modifies, in relation to a relevant enactment, any effect of nutrients in water;(b) confers, removes or otherwise modifies a function (including a function involving the exercise of a discretion) under or by virtue of a relevant enactment;(c) affects how such a function is exercised, including the extent to which (if any) the effect of nutrients in water is taken, or to be taken, into account; (d) provides for an obligation under or by virtue of a relevant enactment to be treated as discharged (in circumstances where, but for the provision, the obligation may not have been discharged);(e) amends, repeals, revokes or otherwise modifies any provision of a relevant enactment.(3) A “relevant enactment” means—(a) an enactment comprised in or made under an Act of Parliament, or(b) retained direct EU legislation,so far as it relates to the environment, planning or development in England.(4) The enactments referred to in subsection (3)(a) do not include—(a) this section;(b) Part 6 of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/1012).(5) Neither regulation 9 nor 16A of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 applies in relation to this section.(6) In subsection (1) “habitats site” and “nutrient affected catchment area” have the meaning given in section 96J(2) of the Water Industry Act 1991; and a habitats site is connected to a nutrient affected catchment area if water released into the catchment area would drain into the site.(7) In this section “nutrients” means nutrients of any kind.(8) The power under subsection (1) may not be exercised after 31 March 2030.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment confers a power on the Secretary of State to make regulations affecting the operation, in connection with the effect of nutrients in water, of enactments concerned with the environment, planning or development in England.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

247YYA: Leave out Schedule 13 and insert the following new Schedule—
“Schedule 13Amendments of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017: effect of nutrient pollution in waste waterPart 1Introductory1 The Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 (S.I. 2017/1012) are amended as set out in this Schedule.Part 2Planning2 Chapter 2 of Part 6 (assessment of plans and projects: planning) is amended as follows.3 In regulation 70 (grant of planning permission), after paragraph (4) insert—“(5) See regulation 85A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”4 In regulation 71 (planning permission: duty to review), after paragraph (9) insert—“(10) See regulation 85A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”5 In regulation 77 (general development orders: approval of local planning authority), after paragraph (7) insert—“(8) See regulation 85B for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”6 In regulation 79 (special development orders), after paragraph (5) insert—“(6) See regulation 85A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”7 In regulation 80 (local development orders), after paragraph (5) insert—“(6) See regulation 85A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”8 In regulation 81 (neighbourhood development orders), after paragraph (5) insert—“(5A) See regulation 85A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”9 In regulation 82 (simplified planning zones), after paragraph (6) insert—“(7) See regulation 85A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”10 In regulation 83 (enterprise zones), after paragraph (6) insert— “(7) See regulation 85A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”11 After regulation 85 insert—“Decisions where nutrient pollution in waste water is relevant: general(1) This regulation applies where—(a) a competent authority makes a relevant decision,(b) the potential development is development in England,(c) urban waste water from any potential development could affect a relevant site, and(d) that waste water would be dealt with—(i) under an environmental permit granted under Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, or(ii) in accordance with standard rules published under Chapter 4 of Part 2 of those Regulations.(2) When making the relevant decision, the competent authority must assume that nutrients in urban waste water from the potential development, whether alone or in combination with other factors, will not adversely affect the relevant site.(3) Accordingly, a potentially adverse effect on a relevant site caused by nutrients in urban waste water, whether alone or in combination with other factors, is not a ground for the competent authority to determine that—(a) an appropriate assessment is required by regulation 63(1) or 65(2), or(b) the potential development will adversely affect the integrity of the relevant site or otherwise have negative implications for the site.(4) The assumption in paragraph (2) must be made even if a finding (however described) to the contrary is made—(a) in the conclusions of an appropriate assessment, carried out in accordance with regulation 63(1) or 65(2) and despite paragraph (3)(a),(b) in representations made by the appropriate nature conservation body, in accordance with regulation 63(3), or(c) by any other person.(5) A competent authority is not to be regarded as having failed to comply with a duty imposed by any provision of these Regulations or another enactment because it has acted in accordance with this regulation.(6) In this regulation—“potential development” , in relation to a relevant decision, means development—(a) that could be carried out by virtue of the planning permission, development order or scheme to which the decision relates, or(b) to which the decision otherwise relates;“relevant decision” means—(a) where any of the following provides that the assessment provisions apply in relation to doing a thing, the decision whether or not to do it—(i) regulation 70 (grant of planning permission),(ii) regulation 79 (special development orders),(iii) regulation 80 (local development orders),(iv) regulation 81 (neighbourhood development orders),(v) regulation 82 (simplified planning zones), or(vi) regulation 83 (enterprise zones),(b) where any of the following provides that the review provisions apply in relation to a matter, a decision under regulation 65(1)(b) on a review of the matter— (i) regulation 71 (planning permission: duty to review),(ii) regulation 79 (special development orders),(iii) regulation 80 (local development orders),(iv) regulation 81 (neighbourhood development orders),(v) regulation 82 (simplified planning zones), or(vi) regulation 83 (enterprise zones);but this does not apply to a matter mentioned in regulation 71(4) (any review of which would be conducted in accordance with another Chapter),(c) a decision on an application for a consent, agreement or approval required by a condition or limitation attached to a planning permission, or specified in an order, granted under Part 3, 7 or 13 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990,(d) a decision whether to grant a reserved matters approval in accordance with section 92(1) of that Act, or(e) a decision whether to approve a biodiversity gain plan under paragraph 15 (approval of biodiversity gain plan) of Schedule 7A to that Act.Decisions where nutrient pollution in waste water is relevant: general development orders(1) Paragraph (2) applies where—(a) a local planning authority (within the meaning given by regulation 78(1)) makes a decision on an application under regulation 77 (general development orders: approval of local planning authority) for approval as mentioned in regulation 75 relating to proposed development in England,(b) urban waste water from the proposed development could affect a relevant site, and(c) that waste water would be dealt with—(i) under an environmental permit granted under Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, or(ii) in accordance with standard rules published under Chapter 4 of Part 2 of those Regulations.(2) When making the decision, the competent authority must assume that nutrients in urban waste water from the proposed development, whether alone or in combination with other factors, will not adversely affect the relevant site.(3) Accordingly, a potentially adverse effect on a relevant site caused by nutrients in urban waste water, whether alone or in combination with other factors, is not a ground for the competent authority to determine that—(a) an appropriate assessment is required by regulation 77(6), or(b) the proposed development will adversely affect the integrity of the relevant site or otherwise have negative implications for the site.(4) The assumption in paragraph (2) must be made even if a finding (however described) to the contrary is made—(a) in the conclusions of an appropriate assessment, carried out in accordance with regulation 77(6) and despite paragraph (3)(a),(b) in the opinion provided by the appropriate nature conservation body, in accordance with regulation 76(4), or(c) by any other person.(5) A competent authority is not to be regarded as having failed to comply with a duty imposed by any provision of these Regulations or another enactment because it has acted in accordance with this regulation. Regulations 85A and 85B: interpretation(1) In regulations 85A and 85B—“nutrients” means nutrients—(a) comprising nitrogen or phosphorus, or(b) comprising compounds of nitrogen or phosphorus;“relevant site” means a habitats site connected to a nutrient affected catchment area;“urban waste water” has the meaning given by regulation 2(1) of the Urban Waste Water Treatment (England and Wales) Regulations 1994 (S.I. 1994/2841).(2) In the definition of “relevant site” in paragraph (1) “habitats site” and “nutrient affected catchment area” have the meaning given in section 96J(2) of the Water Industry Act 1991; and a habitats site is connected to a nutrient affected catchment area if water released into the catchment area would drain into the site.”Part 3Land use plans12 Chapter 8 of Part 6 (assessment of plans and projects: land use plans) is amended as follows.13 In regulation 105 (assessment of implications for European sites and European offshore marine sites), after paragraph (6) insert—“(7) See regulation 110A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”14 In regulation 106 (assessment of implications for European site: neighbourhood development plans), after paragraph (3) insert—“(3A) See regulation 110A for provision about the effect of nutrient pollution in waste water.”15 In regulation 110 (national policy statements), in paragraph (3)(a), for “and 108” substitute “, 108 and 110A”.16 After regulation 110 insert—“Assessments under this Chapter: decisions where nutrient pollution in waste water is relevant(1) Paragraph (2) applies where—(a) a plan-making authority makes a relevant decision in relation to a land use plan relating to an area in England,(b) urban waste water from the area to which the plan relates could affect a relevant site, and(c) that waste water could be dealt with—(i) under an environmental permit granted under Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, or(ii) in accordance with standard rules published under Chapter 4 of Part 2 of those Regulations.(2) When making the relevant decision, the competent authority must assume that nutrients in urban waste water from the area to which the plan relates, whether alone or in combination with other factors, will not adversely affect the relevant site.(3) Accordingly, a potentially adverse effect on a relevant site caused by nutrients in urban waste water, whether alone or in combination with other factors, is not a ground for the competent authority to determine that—(a) an appropriate assessment is required by regulation 105(1) or 106(3), or(b) the proposed use of the land will adversely affect the integrity of the relevant site or otherwise have negative implications for the site.(4) The assumption in paragraph (2) must be made even if a finding (however described) to the contrary is made— (a) in the conclusions of an appropriate assessment, carried out in accordance with regulation 105(1) or 106(3) and despite paragraph (3)(a),(b) in representations made by the appropriate nature conservation body, in accordance with regulation 105(2), or(c) by any other person.(5) A competent authority is not to be regarded as having failed to comply with a duty imposed by any provision of these Regulations or another enactment because it has acted in accordance with this regulation.(6) In this regulation “nutrients”, “relevant site” and “urban waste water” have the meaning given in regulation 85C.(7) In this regulation “relevant decision” means—(a) a decision whether to give effect to a land use plan, or(b) a decision whether to modify or revoke a neighbourhood development plan.””Member's explanatory statement
This amendment substitutes Schedule 13, which amends the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, to provide that certain authorities/bodies (when exercising duties or making decisions relevant to the regulations) must assume that nutrients in waste water from proposed developments will not adversely affect habitats sites.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

247YYB: Clause 160, page 193, line 36, at end insert—
“(3A) Where—(a) the nutrient significant plant referred to in paragraph (1) is a plant that discharges treated effluent into a catchment permitting area (see section 96FA of the Water Industry Act 1991), and(b) the sewerage undertaker has failed to comply with a condition in the environmental permit for the plant imposed in pursuance of subsection (3)(b) of that section,the definition of “excess nutrient pollution” in paragraph (3) is subject to the following modifications.(3B) In a case where the condition relates to the total nutrient pollution discharged by the plant specifically, references in that definition to the “upgrade date” are to be read as the “applicable date”.(3C) In a case where the condition relates to the total nutrient pollution discharged by all plants that discharge into the associated catchment area, that definition is to be read as if—(a) in the words before paragraph (a), after “by the plant” there were inserted “and all other plants that discharged into the associated catchment area for that plant”,(b) in paragraph (a), for “upgrade date” there were substituted “applicable date”, and(c) in the words after paragraph (b)—(i) for “that it” there were substituted “that both it and those other plants”, and(ii) for “upgrade date” there were substituted “applicable date”.(3D) For the purposes of paragraph (3) as modified by paragraph (3B) or (3C), the “applicable date” is to be determined in accordance with section 96FA(6)(a) of the Water Industry Act 1991.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amends the provision to be inserted into the Environmental Damage (Prevention and Remediation) (England) Regulations 2015 by clause 160 so that provision functions in relation to catchment permitting areas, introduced by the second amendment in my name to clause 158 at page 188, line 22.

Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, I express my sincere thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for all the work she has put in, and thank the Minister for her support in the passage of this Bill through the House. The Bill represents an excellent step in the right direction. Clearly, we still have much to do. I also echo the sentiments and hope that the Government will move forward on this and will provide the necessary resources to make sure that all the provisions can be fully implemented.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, I sincerely thank the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, for her work in taking this important Bill through the House. The noble Baroness has been patient and has shown great pragmatism—I think we have used that word a few times—in the progression of this Bill to help tackle workplace harassment. It is an honour to be here to confirm the Government’s ongoing support. We believe it is important that everyone feels safe and able to thrive in the workplace.

The noble Baroness asked me how the EHRC will enforce the new duty—that is important. The EHRC’s regulatory approach for any new duty will include producing a statutory code of practice based on its current technical guidance in the area and a mechanism for employees and employee representatives to be able to notify the EHRC of breaches and potential breaches of the preventative duty. It will also be able to use powers under the Equality Act 2006 to undertake strategic litigation, investigation and enforcement activity to target systematic non-compliance with the preventative duty, in accordance with the litigation and enforcement policy. On how that will be funded, I will write to the noble Baroness.

The Bill will help the Government to deliver their commitment to introduce the employer duty as part of the violence against women and girls strategy. The employer duty will send a strong signal to employers that they need to take action to prioritise prevention of sexual harassment and, ultimately, to improve workplace practices and culture. I thank all noble Lords and organisations who raised important issues in the debates and discussions throughout the Bill’s progression through the House. I believe this Bill now strikes the right balance between protecting free speech and tackling harassment. While there has been much debate and amendments have been made to the Bill, I think we can all agree that workers should feel safe and be free from sexual harassment in the workplace. Therefore, I hope the Bill can progress with the full support of the House today.

Bill passed and returned to the Commons with amendments.

New Homes

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government in what year they expect to reach their target of building 300,000 new homes a year.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, we are continuing to work towards our ambition of delivering 300,000 homes a year. This has always been a stretching ambition and we have made strong progress. The three highest rates of annual supply in more than 30 years have all come since 2018. We are aware that increasing supply even further will be made more difficult due to the economic challenges we face, but we are engaging with Homes England, developers and registered providers to understand their delivery challenges.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend, but has she read the leader in last Saturday’s Times? It said of the Government’s housing target:

“That goal has now been sacrificed on the altar of appeasing rural Conservative backbenchers fearful of a backlash in their green and pleasant constituencies”,


and concluded:

“The political calculations of the Tory party are in danger of strangling Britain’s housebuilding industry, retarding economic growth and depriving young people of the affordable homes they so desperately need”.


Can my noble friend confirm that this controversial policy, which was launched in a consultation document last December and has not yet been adopted, might be amended in light of the widespread criticism that it has now generated?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, I have read the Times article. We are carefully analysing the many detailed responses we received to the consultation and expect to respond formally later in the autumn. It is worth making it clear to my noble friend that the proposals in the consultation are not government policy. My noble friend should also be reassured that, as I have said before, the Government remain committed to our ambition of delivering 300,000 new homes per year. The proposals in the consultation are designed to support areas to get more local plans in place. That will deliver more housing and stop communities being exposed to development by appeal.

[The Earl of Devon (CB)]

My Lords, for some weeks we have heard scare stories that 100,000 new homes are blocked by the rules on nutrient neutrality. I am therefore glad that the Government have debunked that myth with their recent explainer, which states that only 16,500 homes are currently impacted. By comparison, Savills estimates that 150,000 homes are land-banked in 2021, and Homes England sits on 250,000 more new homes. Given those numbers, is there any real justification for the Government’s assault on the habitat regulations, the health of our rivers and their own good environmental reputation?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, there is, my Lords. The 16,500 figure is annual, while the 100,000 figure is between now and 2030. The Government have put in place a package of mitigation that will allow us to deal with nutrient neutrality not as a sticking plaster, stopping housing being built, but by dealing with the issues at source. If the noble Earl reads the mitigation circumstances, he will see what we are doing and how much we are investing in that.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I found the Minister’s reply rather disappointing. I appreciate the ambition, but it is the implementation that is the major problem. Drastic cuts of funding to social housing have resulted in many households in need being trapped in the private rented sector, and the number of affordable homes is just not meeting that need. Current conditions have meant that private sector building has flatlined, but social housing builders can be countercyclical and, with the right investment, could do so much more. The Government will reach their target only by investing massively in social homes. Do the Government and the Minister agree with that? If not, can she please explain how that target will be met?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing, which is why, through our £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme, we will deliver tens of thousands of affordable homes for sale or rent across the country. The levelling up White Paper committed to increasing the supply of social rented homes, and a large number of the new homes delivered through our Affordable Homes Programme will be for social rent.

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that answer about affordability, but I wonder what steps the Government are taking to ensure that the definition of affordability is a good one. Could we redefine it so that it means affordable for most local people in that community, and look at what that is doing to house prices generally in each area?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We had a debate on this quite recently on the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill. Through the consultation on the NPPF, we are looking at affordable housing and, when we have finished that consultation and looked at the results, we will consider it further.

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

My Lords, the work done on the National Planning Policy Framework by my noble friend Lord Pickles, Brandon Lewis and Greg Clark was in my view one of the major achievements during the coalition, because it provided a sensible balance between a stick and a carrot, with local authorities producing a plan and a mechanism for the Government to step in if they did not. This led to a significant increase in the land supply. With the changes that have taken place in the last few months, the mood music is completely different. Local authorities know that applications to appeal are quite futile. A disastrous thing has happened. What do the Government intend to do about it? If they do nothing, the 300,000 target will be pure fantasy.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I quite agree with my noble friend about the importance of the NPPF. That is why we are consulting on it, will review it when we have the results of the consultation and will come back out to consult on our further ideas on how we can update it—we cannot leave it there in aspic for ever. By doing that and by the measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to modernise the planning system, we will deliver more houses through local plans and hit the 300,000 target.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I have relevant interests in this Question. Councils’ local plans incorporate their share of the national housing targets. Can the Minister explain how national housing targets can be achieved when more than 60% of local councils do not have an up-to-date local plan?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right: we need more local plans. That is how we will deliver more houses. We know from evidence that local planning authorities that have local plans deliver more houses. That is why we have the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, are changing and simplifying making local plans and will insist that local authorities deliver local plans. If they do not, we have measures to push them to do so.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, in her response to the debate on housing targets during the Report stage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, the Minister stated:

“To get enough homes built in places where people and communities need them, a crucial first step is to plan for the right number of homes”.—[Official Report, 6/9/23; col. 426.]


The National House Building Council’s statistics show a dramatic decline in registrations in quarter 2 across most regions, compared with the same quarter last year; it was down 67% in the north-west, for example. It is going in the wrong direction. What is the Government’s plan to ensure that local targets meet that 300,000 homes target?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, we are in an economic situation that is not as favourable for housebuilding as it was, and therefore we have to work with Homes England, developers and local planning authorities to ensure that we give all the support we can, reinvigorate the housing market and get these houses built.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, when house prices fall, as they are doing now, big building firms tend to sit on their balance sheets and play the waiting game. That is very bad news for new homes as big builders now have a 90% share of the UK market while SMEs have seen their share collapse from 40% to less than 10%. Does the Minister agree that this market domination is stifling competition and is bad news for the supply of new homes?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I absolutely do. We need to spend more time with our SME housebuilders. The levelling-up home building fund is providing £1.5 billion in development finance to SMEs and builders for exactly this reason: to support them to build more homes. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill is making changes to support SMEs, making the planning process much faster and more predictable for them so that they can stay in business and build more houses.

Private Sector Renters: Eviction Protection

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect renters in the private sector who are seeking help with energy-saving improvements from eviction.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to ending Section 21 no-fault evictions. We introduced the Renters (Reform) Bill in the other place to do this. Without the fear of retaliatory eviction, once Section 21 is abolished, tenants will be more empowered to act within their legal rights, complain about unacceptable standards and seek improvements. Private rented properties should be warm and decent, and we have several schemes to support energy-saving improvements to provide this.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that the balance is wrong if, according to a report by Generation Rent, nearly 40% of fuel-poor households rent privately but only 14% of energy company obligation grants help them in any way? Will the Minister ensure that the Renters (Reform) Bill protects tenants from either eviction or prohibitive rent rises if they get these grants? That is surely urgent, and important above other tenures.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I agree. I looked at the figures showing where private renters were utilising the Government’s grants for energy efficiency in their homes, and I think we should be spending more time trying to improve take-up. The Renters (Reform) Bill is important because it will deliver a fairer, more secure and higher-quality private rented sector. It will deliver the Government’s commitments to a better deal for renters, as well as for landlords, by improving the system for responsible tenants and the good-faith landlords who are in the majority.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, many families are paying the price in higher energy bills because of the failure to improve the energy efficiency of homes. Cold homes could also have a serious impact on public health, given that 4% of UK homes have a serious damp problem and 17.5% of the UK’s population has been diagnosed with a form of asthma. Has the department carried out any assessment of the savings which could be made to the long-term NHS budget by increasing the energy efficiency of UK homes? The Minister may need to write to me on this.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not have that information with me but I will certainly look at it and write to the noble Baroness. However, the Government are investing £12 billion in Help to Heat schemes. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, it is sad that not enough private rental landlords are taking up those grants. We also have the ECO Plus scheme—the GB insulation scheme—for which both tenants and landlords can apply. In the energy security strategy, the Government have just announced zero-rated VAT for the next five years on the installation of insulation and low-carbon heating. It is important that landlords know what is available and that tenants ask them for it.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome what my noble friend said on the Renters (Reform) Bill, but what action is being taken to address the delays in the courts that are asked to process cases relating to tenancies?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right about the court system: it is too slow. On difficult cases that escalate to the courts—not all of them do—we are working with the judiciary, the Ministry of Justice and HMCTS to target areas that frustrate proceedings, including through digitising more of the court process to make it simpler and easier for landlords to use.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, the system is just not working. It relies on the tenant applying for a fuel poverty grant and, as is clear from the statistics that my noble friend just gave, that simply is not working. These perverse incentives are working against each other and not helping the poorest in society. Are there any plans to review this, because it is so obviously not working? What did the Minister make of the Secretary of State’s remarks that he wants to relax the pace of energy-efficiency standards in the private rented sector, given that it has the fewest decent homes?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We are still committed to raising efficiency from band E to C by 2028 and will keep the fuel poverty grant under review. I think the important issue, as I said in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, is the grants that will make private rented properties more energy efficient in the first place.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

Can combined county authorities politely decline that invitation if it is extended? I can imagine a number of reasons why they might do that. Chief of those is resource constraints: many combined county authorities, or components of them, are on the brink of bankruptcy and they might not wish to take on an additional challenging function for which they have no capacity or capability. The authorities into whose territory they would trespass are also often in a parlous situation as far as resources go. Not everyone wants to take over Wilko and it is quite understandable that this “may invite” provision will be regarded askance by not just the district councils but the combined county authorities. I would like to understand more clearly what the Minister intends the process to be. If she says, “They could decline or politely refuse”, then what is the alternative plan? This is a new power that has unforeseen consequences, most of which seem to point in a damaging direction. More uncertainty about this “may invite” provision seems to compound that. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 193 and 194 in the name of my noble friend, Lord Lansley, seek to require plan-making to include the strategic priorities of the authority and to ensure that a local plan can include policies relating to achieving sustainable economic growth. The Government want the planning system to be truly plan-led, to give communities more certainty.

The Bill provides clear requirements for what future local plans must include. This replaces the complex existing framework, which includes the requirement at Section 19(1B) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 for authorities to

“identify the strategic priorities for the development and use of land”

in their areas. There is nothing in the Bill to stop authorities including strategic priorities and policies in future local plans. Indeed, our recently published consultation on implementing our plan-making reforms proposes that plans will need to contain a locally distinct vision that will anchor them, provide strategic direction for the underpinning policies and set out measurable outcomes for the plan period. Likewise, on the specific subject of sustainable economic growth, we are retaining the current legal requirement in Section 39 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 for authorities to prepare plans with the objective of contributing to the achievement of sustainable development.

My noble friend Lord Lansley asked why the distinction between strategic and non-strategic was removed and whether the NPPF will be redrafted to reflect this. That distinction derives from previous legislation on plans, which the Bill will replace with clearer requirements to identify the scale and nature of development needed in an area. The NPPF will be updated to reflect the legislation, subject to the Bill gaining Royal Assent. In light of this, I hope that my noble friend will feel able not to press his amendment.

I turn now to Amendment 193A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best. This amendment seeks to require local plans to plan for enough social-rented housing to eliminate homelessness in the area. National planning policy is clear that local plans should, as a minimum, provide for objectively assessed needs for housing. In doing so, local authorities should assess the size, type and tenure of housing needed for different groups in the community, including those who require affordable housing. This should then be reflected in their planning policies. The Government are committed to delivering more homes for social rent, with a large number of new homes from the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme to be for social rent. We are also carefully considering the consultation responses to our proposal to amend national planning policy to make clear that local planning authorities should give greater importance in planning for social rent homes.

Tackling homelessness and rough sleeping is a key priority for this Government. That is why we will be spending more than £2 billion on homelessness and rough sleeping over the next three years. The Homelessness Reduction Act, which the noble Lord, Lord Best, was so influential in bringing forward, is the most ambitious reform to homelessness legislation in decades. Since it came into force in 2018, more than 640,000 households have been prevented from becoming homeless or supported into settled accommodation. We know that the causes of homelessness are complex and are driven by a range of factors, both personal and structural, and I fear that creating a link between local plans and homelessness reduction would add more complexity.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, asked why we cannot recognise housing need in local plans, particularly homelessness and affordable housing. The Bill already requires that plans set out policies for the amount, type and location of the development needed. I feel that it is a local issue, and the best way to ensure that we get the amount of particular housing needed in a particular area is for it to be put into local plans by local councils talking to local people. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, asked how local needs are going to be assessed in the future and how they will be defined. This is another matter that will be considered when we update national policy. We need flexibility to address changes in circumstances, which is why policy is the best approach to this, rather than looking for definitions in legislation.

I move now to Amendment 199 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. I thank the noble Lords for their amendment on this important matter. We recognise the importance of walking and cycling, and the role the planning system plays in enabling the infrastructure which supports active forms of travel. National planning policies must be considered by local authorities when preparing a development plan and are a material consideration in planning decisions. The Bill does not alter this principle and would strengthen the importance of those national policies which relate to decision-making. The existing National Planning Policy Framework is clear that transport issues, including opportunities to promote walking and cycling, should be considered from the earliest stages of plan-making and when considering development proposals. Proposals in walking and cycling plans are also capable of being material considerations in dealing with planning applications, whether or not they are embedded in local plans. Indeed, the decision-maker must take all material considerations into account, so there is no need to make additional provision in law as this amendment proposes.

The Government are delivering updates to the Manual for Streets guidance to encourage a more holistic approach to street design which assigns higher priorities to the needs of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. We are also working closely with colleagues in the Department for Transport to ensure local transport plans are better aligned with the wider development plan.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked if the NPPF policy requiring a high bar to refuse proposals on transport grounds will be changed. As he knows, we have committed to a full review of the NPPF, part of which will need to look at all the aspects of policy, including how best to provide for walking and cycling.

I move now to government Amendments 196C, 196D, 201B, 201C and 201D. These are consequential on Clause 91 and Schedule 7 to the Bill which, when commenced, will introduce a new development plans system. They amend and supplement consequential amendments to Schedule A1 to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 made by Schedule 4 to the Bill relating to the creation of combined county authorities. The Schedule 4 amendments will mean that combined county authorities will be in the same position as the Mayor of London, county councils and combined authorities are currently in relation to the ability of the Secretary of State to invite those bodies to take over plan-making where a constituent planning authority is failing in its plan-making activities. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, asked what will happen if they do not want to do so. I do not think we can force them, but there are a couple of things we can do if local authorities are not producing local plans in a timely manner or at all. For example, the Secretary of State will be a commissioner who could take over the production of the plans, or the local secretary of state could take that into his own hands. We are not going to force them, but it will be an offer they can make in order that their county combined authorities have the correct plans in place to shape their communities in the correct way.

In light of the new plan-making system being introduced by the Bill, a number of consequential amendments to Schedule A1 to the 2004 Act are already provided for by Schedule 8 to the Bill. Broadly speaking, they will update Schedule A1 to ensure that the provisions can operate within the new plan-making system. As such, in light of these wider reforms, these further amendments are needed to ensure that the new provisions which Schedule 4 to the Bill will insert into Schedule A1 are updated accordingly when the new plan-making system comes into effect. I hope noble Lords will support these minor and consequential changes.

Finally, the Bill ensures that neighbourhood plans will continue to play an important role in the planning system and encourage more people to participate in neighbourhood planning. For example, it will mean that future decisions on planning applications will be able to depart from plans, including neighbourhood plans, only if there are strong reasons to do so. While the Bill retains the existing framework of powers for neighbourhood planning, it will also provide more clarity on the scope of neighbourhood plans alongside other types of development plan. It amends the list of basic conditions set out in Schedule 4B to the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 which new neighbourhood development plans and orders must meet before they can be brought into force.

Amendment 197 would make corresponding changes to the basic conditions set out in paragraph 11(2) of Schedule A2 to the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 so that the same conditions apply when an existing neighbourhood development plan is being modified. These changes are necessary to ensure that these neighbourhood plans receive consistent treatment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am most grateful to all noble Lords who participated in this rather important debate. From my point of view, in considering whether strategic policies should be distinguished from non-strategic policies in plan-making, I asked my noble friend a question and I got a reply. It is an interesting reply because by simply asserting that the local plan must include, in effect, all policies, my noble friend is saying that that is clearer than the present structure which distinguishes between strategic policies and non-strategic policies.

Noble Lords may say that we are all dancing on the head of a pin—I do not think so. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, made an extremely good point: identifying strategic priorities in a local planning authority’s local plan is a key component of creating spatial development strategies in a broader area. That would be extremely helpful.

None the less, what my noble friend has told me is going to be an interesting conclusion for people to draw. We are now told that the consultation draft of the National Planning Policy Framework, which was published on 22 December following the passage of this Bill in the other place, did not take account of what is in the Bill. This is rather interesting. It means that if we change the Bill, we can change the NPPF—which, from the point of view of my noble friend’s and other amendments, is a very helpful thought that we might take up. I do not think that the revisions that will follow to the NPPF will be as wide ranging as my noble friend implied, because that would mean that they would do away with much of what is written presently into the chapter on plan-making.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

194A: Schedule 7, page 347, line 38, at end insert—
“(6A) The local plan must take account of any local nature recovery strategy that relates to all or part of the local planning authority’s area, including in particular—(a) the areas identified in the strategy as areas which—(i) are, or could become, of particular importance for biodiversity, or(ii) are areas where the recovery or enhancement of biodiversity could make a particular contribution to other environmental benefits,(b) the priorities set out in the strategy for recovering or enhancing biodiversity, and(c) the proposals set out in the strategy as to potential measures relating to those priorities.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires a local plan to take account of any local nature recovery strategy that relates to any part of the area of the authority preparing the plan.

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Then there is the issue that we have forgotten about: currently, more than 1 million homes with planning consent are not being built. In my small ward, planning consent for nearly 800 homes has been there for two or three years. The homes are not being built because it does not suit the developers to do so. Unless we also overcome the issue that there is too much power in the hands of developers, we miss the whole point about top-down targets. I repeat: top-down targets do not build homes. We need to talk to communities, discussing how inward investment and housebuilding will help them thrive and help their high streets come to life. That is why, if the noble Lord, Lord Young, is moved to press his amendment to a vote, we will be unable to support him. We will abstain. We agree that more houses are needed, which is where I started. There is complete agreement on that, but we disagree on how you achieve it.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions made on this important issue. I reiterate at the outset that delivering more homes remains a priority for this Government, as the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State made clear in the long-term plan for housing, which they set out at the end of July.

Local plans play a crucial role in enabling new homes to come forward, which is why the National Planning Policy Framework is clear that all plans should seek to meet the development needs of their area. Nothing we consulted on at the end of last year changes that fundamental expectation. There will, however, be limits on what some plans can achieve, which is where I must take issue with Amendment 195, in the names of my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Young, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock.

Amendment 195 would place local plans under a legal obligation to meet or exceed the number of homes generated by the standard method prescribed by the Government. Amendment 200, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, is designed to have a similar effect. While this is well intentioned, it would be unworkable in practice. Ever since the National Planning Policy Framework was introduced in 2012, it has been clear that plans should meet as much of their identified housing need as possible, but there are legitimate reasons why meeting or exceeding that need may not always be appropriate. For example, an authority with very extensive areas of green belt or which is largely an area of outstanding natural beauty or a national park may not be able to meet its identified housing need in full if we are also to maintain these important national protections. In these cases, there will be a need to consider whether any unmet need can be met elsewhere, which is something that our policies also make clear.

It is for this reason that our standard method for calculating housing need—or, indeed, any alternative method which may be appropriate in certain cases—can be only a starting point for plan-making, not the end. Mandating in law that the standard method figures must be met or exceeded in all cases would do significant harm to some of our most important protected areas and could conflict with other safeguards, such as the need to avoid building in areas of high flood risk.

It is also right that local communities should be able to respond to local circumstances. The changes to national policy which were consulted upon at the end of last year are designed to support local authorities to set local housing requirements that respond to demographic and affordability pressures while being realistic, given local constraints. However, let me make it clear: the Secretary of State’s Written Ministerial Statement, published on 6 December 2022, confirmed that the standard method for assessing local housing need will be retained. To get enough homes built in the places where people and communities need them, a crucial first step is to plan for the right number of homes. That is why we remain committed to our ambition of delivering 300,000 homes per year and to retaining a clear starting point for calculating local housing needs, but we know that the best way to get more homes is by having up-to-date local plans in place.

Amendment 196, in the name of my noble friends Lord Lansley and Lord Young, takes a different approach, obliging local planning authorities to have regard to any standard method and any national housing targets when preparing their local plans. I will put this more bluntly still: there is no question that we are about to let local authorities off the hook in providing the homes that their communities need. They need to have a plan, it should be up to date, it needs to do all that is reasonable in meeting the needs of the local area and, in response to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, it needs to look at different types of housing. They need to know how much housing is required for older people, younger people, families and disabled people. That is what their plan should have. We have discussed this with local authorities and will be working with them to ensure that that will happen.

A need to have regard to the standard method is already built into the Bill, as Schedule 7 requires local planning authorities when preparing their local plan to have regard to

“national policies and advice contained in guidance issued by the Secretary of State”.

That includes the National Planning Policy Framework, its housing policies, including those relating to the use of the standard method, and associated guidance. Adding a specific requirement to have regard to the standard method would have no additional effect as planning authorities will already take it into account and draft plans will be examined against it.

A legal obligation to take any national housing target into account, which this amendment would also create, poses a different challenge as it is unclear how plans at the level of an individual local authority could do so. This could create unintended consequences by creating an avenue for challenges to emerging plans on the basis that they have not done enough to reflect a national target and so could slow down the very plans that we need to see in place.

I hope that, taking these considerations into account, my noble friend Lord Lansley is persuaded not to move his amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

196A: Schedule 7, page 350, line 20, at end insert—
“(5A) The minerals and waste plan must take account of any local nature recovery strategy that relates to all or part of the relevant area, including in particular—(a) the areas identified in the strategy as areas which—(i) are, or could become, of particular importance for biodiversity, or(ii) are areas where the recovery or enhancement of biodiversity could make a particular contribution to other environmental benefits,(b) the priorities set out in the strategy for recovering or enhancing biodiversity, and(c) the proposals set out in the strategy as to potential measures relating to those priorities.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires a minerals and waste plan to take account of any local nature recovery strategy that relates to any part of the relevant area.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

196F: Clause 92, page 98, line 35, at end insert “, and
(b) take account of any local nature recovery strategy, under section 104 of the Environment Act 2021, that relates to all or part of the neighbourhood area, including in particular—(i) the areas identified in the strategy as areas which—(A) are, or could become, of particular importance for biodiversity, or(B) are areas where the recovery or enhancement of biodiversity could make a particular contribution to other environmental benefits,(ii) the priorities set out in the strategy for recovering or enhancing biodiversity, and(iii) the proposals set out in the strategy as to potential measures relating to those priorities.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment requires neighbourhood development plans to take account, so far as appropriate, of any local nature recovery strategy that relates to all or part of the neighbourhood area to which the plan relates.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

197: Clause 93, page 99, line 33, at end insert—
“(3) In paragraph 11(2) of Schedule A2 to PCPA 2004 (modification of neighbourhood development plans: basic conditions)—(a) for paragraph (c) substitute—“(ca) the making of the plan would not result in the development plan for the area of the authority proposing that less housing is provided by means of development taking place in that area than if the draft plan were not to be made,”; (b) after paragraph (d) (but before the “and” at the end of that paragraph) insert—“(da) any requirements imposed in relation to the plan by or under Part 6 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 (environmental outcomes reports) have been complied with,”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment updates the basic conditions which must be met for a modification of a neighbourhood development plan, so that they correspond to those that will apply for making a neighbourhood development plan once the amendments already included in Clause 93 are made.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 244 in this group and I will then make brief comments on the other amendments. Amendment 244 is designed to cover an issue that arises almost at the intersection of planning and procurement. It can be the case that, where local authorities undertake major development, the nature of the planning system is such that the subsequent tender process will be enacted only for the totality of the development. Of course, the major contractors can subcontract works out, but this process does not always accrue maximum benefit to the local economy. Our amendment aims to ensure that whatever can be done at the stage of granting planning permission is done, to enable SME participation in, and engagement with, those contracts being achieved.

Amendment 217, from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, applies a provision for “drop-in permissions”. We note that this is an acknowledged problem that may or may not require an amendment to planning law. I absolutely take the good point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about the provision of infrastructure where there is a drop-in permission, and we look forward to hearing the Minister’s view on whether the existing wording is sufficient to enable the necessary change to unblock buildouts on large sites.

In relation to Amendment 219, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, we would of course support refusing permissions to those who have not made buildout applications previously; that is a welcome change. We greatly sympathise with the noble Lord’s point that doing this to someone with an undefined connection with the previous applicant is way too unspecific in terms of planning law, and who that undefined connection would be. We agree that this needs to be either tightened up or taken out altogether, because it could have unintended consequences if it is left in the Bill as it is.

Amendment 221, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, recommends splitting planning applications into two stages for the purpose of encouraging rural economic development. We fully support the notion that anything that can be done within the planning system to encourage rural economic development should be done. But it is difficult to see how, in practical terms, a two-stage permission would work. There is already very strong provision and encouragement in the planning system for outline permissions to be submitted and then followed by detailed permissions for major developments. This is common practice, and I am sure rural areas are not excluded. I wonder whether that would be the type of process, or if there are things I am missing in the noble Lord’s amendment.

We were delighted to see Amendment 221A, proposed by noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, relating to the provision of swift bricks. We very much enjoyed his enthusiastic and passionate advocacy in his introduction, and all speeches made by noble Lords in favour of this. The noble Lord’s amendment follows extensive public interest in introducing this step, which led to the public petition debate to which the noble Lord referred, and to very strong cross-party support. We note also that the Wildlife and Countryside Link is in favour of this measure, as are many recognised experts.

We believe that specifically including swift bricks as a measure in the Bill, to be incorporated in planning law, is justified because of the unique nature of these precious birds’ nesting habits. They add to the biodiversity of urban areas, and I am particularly keen that we support that. I grew up as a townie and the swifts and house martins were a real feature of my childhood growing up in a town. Their decline has been very visible and sad to see. If there is anything we can do to either halt that decline or hopefully turn it around, we should certainly do so. There is definitely a clear and present threat to these species. We hope the Government will accept this relatively a small step, which could make a world of difference to protecting our swift population, and that it will not be necessary for the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, to divide the House—but I hope he knows he has our full support in this amendment.

Amendment 282, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Northbrook and Lord Bellingham, may relate to issues the Minister referred to in Committee. We comment only that, while we accept that notices published on local authority websites would usually be appropriate, of course there are other ways of drawing the public’s and stakeholders’ attention. We have some concerns about stating that anything must remain permanently on a website, but we understand his point.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 217, tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley, would allow regulations to permit variations to an existing permission, without rendering that permission void. We recognise that there is concern in the sector about the impact of recent case law, particularly for large-scale phased development. This is an issue which we have looked at very carefully.

Clause 104 already introduces a new, more flexible route to vary permissions: Section 73B, where the substantial difference test can cover notable material changes. To assist the understanding of the new provision, we propose to amend the headings in the clause to make this clearer and avoid misapprehension. Existing powers in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 would allow us to deal with this issue through secondary legislation, so we do not consider that a further power would be required. Instead, we propose to engage and consult the sector as part of the implementation of Section 73B and, if further action were needed, we would consider the use of our existing powers if warranted. I hope my noble friend is sufficiently reassured not to press his amendment on this.

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[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting if short discussion which picks up on much of the debate that we had during Committee. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, for bringing this back to us again today.

One thing that came across very clearly when we debated this in Committee was that it really is time to review the status and look at the situation. It is important that we return to this. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, has said, now and previously, we have got the change of use from office to residential space in town centres, we have the problem of many empty town centre premises, and there have been a lot of changes on our high streets and in our towns in ways that we have not seen before. These challenges are particularly acute for the night-time economy.

The agent of change principle has been with us for some years. This is why it is important that we use this Bill to ensure that it is fit for purpose and doing what we need it to do. As we have heard, it is in the National Planning Policy Framework, but does the licensing guidance, as the noble Baroness said, reflect the principles of the NPPF itself? The NPPF needs to be fit for purpose, as well as the agent of change principle that sits within it.

I asked at Committee and would like to ask again: is the NPPF, when we get to see it, going to reflect the likely focus of future planning decisions on this? How is that all going to be taken into account? This is genuinely an opportunity to enshrine this principle in legislation and get it right. It needs to be fit for purpose and it needs to do what it is supposed to do: to protect both sides of the discussion and debate when you have change of use coming forward. As the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Pinnock, said, we need to get this right and it has to have teeth—I think that was the expression that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, used. We completely support her request for clarification on the legislative change referred to by the Minister in Committee and hope that we can move forward on this issue.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 220 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering tackles the important agent of change principle in planning and licensing. There was substantial discussion around this topic during Committee, a lot of it setting out the important conclusions of the House of Lords Liaison Committee follow-up report from July 2022. This built on the post-legislative scrutiny by the House of Lords Select Committee on the Licensing Act 2003. I thank the committee for its work and will briefly summarise how the Government are meeting the aspirations of that committee.

First, the committee’s report called for licensing regime guidance to be updated to reflect the agent of change policy in the National Planning Policy Framework. This is why, in December 2022, the Home Office published a revised version of its guidance made under Section 182 of the Licensing Act 2003, cross-referencing relevant sections of the National Planning Policy Framework for the first time. The Government have therefore delivered on this recommendation.

Secondly, the committee set out that it believes that guidance does not go far enough and that the Government should

“review the ‘Agent of Change’ principle, strengthen it”.

Recommendations such as this are one of the many reasons why we are introducing national development management policies. In future, and subject to further appropriate consultation, NDMPs will allow us to give important national planning policy protections statutory status in planning decisions for the first time. This could allow the agent of change principle to have a direct statutory role in local planning decisions, if brought into the first suite of NDMPs when they are made.

Finally, the committee called for greater co-ordination between the planning and licensing regimes to deliver better outcomes. We agree that such co-ordination is crucial to protect affected businesses in practice and it is why the updated Section 182 guidance, published by the Home Office in December 2022, is a significant step forward. The Government are committed to ensuring that their policies which embed the agent of change principle are effective, but we do not think that additional legislative backing is needed at this time. As such, I hope that the noble Baroness will understand why, although we entirely support its intention, we will not support the amendment. With that, I hope that she will be willing to withdraw it.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken and for the support from the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Hayman of Ullock.

I recognise what my noble friend the Minister said in seeking to support the conclusions of the follow-up report of the House of Lords Liaison Committee, which in itself was very powerful, but I know that the industry and practitioners who appear before licensing and planning committees will be hugely disappointed that my noble friend has not taken this opportunity to give the agent of change principle legislative teeth. I record that disappointment. I would like to discuss with the Minister, bilaterally if I may, how NDMPs can have legislative effect if they are not in primary legislation, but that is something that we can take bilaterally.

I am disappointed for the industry and for practitioners that we have not got a mandatory statutory basis as a result of agreeing the amendment before us, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

222: Clause 115, page 145, at the end of line 35 insert—
“(1A) The Secretary of State may make regulations under subsection (1) only if the Secretary of State considers that it is appropriate to make the regulations for the purposes of national defence or preventing or responding to civil emergency or significant disruption to the economy of the United Kingdom or any part of the United Kingdom.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment adds a restriction into the new power to make regulations to provide relief from the enforcement of planning conditions in section 196E of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (inserted by Clause 115 of the Bill), so that the power can only be exercised for certain purposes.

Nutrient Neutrality: Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat the Answer to an Urgent Question given in the other place by my honourable friend Minister Maclean.

“Mr Speaker, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up tabled a Written Ministerial Statement yesterday on the Government’s plans, but I am happy to provide an update to the House. In proposing the amendments, we are responding to calls from local councils, which want the Government to take action to allow them to deliver the homes their communities need. The Government recognise that nutrient pollution is a real problem, but the contribution from new houses is very small compared with that from other sources such as industry, agriculture and existing housing.

We are already taking action to mandate water companies to improve their wastewater treatment works to the highest technically achievable limits. Those provisions alone will more than offset the nutrients expected from new housing developments, but we need to go further, faster. That is why, as well as proposing targeted amendments to the habitats regulations, the Government are committing to a package of environmental measures. Central to this is £280 million of funding to Natural England to deliver strategic mitigation sufficient to offset the very small amount of additional nutrient discharge attributable to up to 100,000 homes between now and 2030. We have also announced more than £200 million for slurry management and agricultural innovation in nutrient management and a commitment to accelerate protected site strategies in the most affected catchments.

In our overall approach, there will be no loss of environmental outcomes and we are confident that our package of measures will improve the environment. Nutrient neutrality was only ever an interim solution. With funding in place, and by putting these sites on a trajectory to recovery, we feel confident in making this legislative intervention”.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, the Statement asks why the Government took the decision to use the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill for these amendments. I bring the House’s attention to the fact that on 11 July, I expressed our concerns about the Government’s approach to the proper and timely legislative scrutiny of the levelling up Bill. On that particular occasion, I was referring to the late addition, following Committee, of the Government’s decision to add in a whole raft of amendments on childminding.

Now, at an even later stage in the Bill’s progress, amendments that introduce significant changes to the habitats regulations have been tabled by the Government, limiting the ability for full parliamentary scrutiny and consideration. Does the Minister agree with me that the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill appears to have become a dumping ground for anyone’s good—or bad—ideas? Does she also agree that, in order for these very important issues to receive proper scrutiny from your Lordships’ House, further time will have to be allocated? If not, how does she envisage that these key issues and others that are still to be debated will be dealt with in just one day next week, given that we have already agreed to start early at 11 am?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that. I understand her concerns, but this has been quite a complex issue to deal with. But it is an important issue; we need these measures to unblock housing, as well as other developments such as hotels and care homes, which connect to standard wastewater treatment works. This also covers, by the way, septic tanks. We need this; it has been complex and we have taken a little time to ensure to ensure that we are putting in the mitigation to deal with the environmental issues—not as a sticking plaster, as nutrient neutrality was, but at source. We have a Bill that is about levelling up; I think it is important that that Bill is used for this important issue. I am sorry; we will give noble Lords the required time, as we promised with the childcare amendments, to discuss this fully and I am sure we will get through the rest of the Bill in the time allowed.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, but also as a director of Wessex Strategic, which has an interest in housebuilding—so I have a foot in both camps here. But I am very clear about which side I am on, and hats off to the Office for Environmental Protection for actually saying very robustly how this proposed change of legislation really stands as a regress of environmental law.

As chair of a local nature partnership—and my colleagues throughout England will have a similar issue—I can say that we are at the moment trying to persuade stakeholders to contribute to local nature recovery strategies. These are absolutely core in terms of what it says on the tin: nature recovery. That is on the Defra side, yet here in terms of levelling up we have the Government saying, “We’re not interested in that agenda; we actually want to change and regress environmental legislation”. So my question to the Minister is a very practical one: how do I and my colleagues as chairs of local nature partnerships persuade stakeholders —farmers, housebuilders, businesses and communities—to take local nature recovery strategies seriously when the Government are giving a completely different view on nature recovery?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think you explain to people that we are building houses that people will need in the areas that that particular group works in, and that we do not accept that this constitutes a regression in environmental outcomes. The packages of environmental measures, backed by significant additional investment, will more than offset the very small amount of additional nutrient discharge attributable to those 100,000 houses. They should carry on the great work that they are doing. We should be building out those houses and at the same time investing in making sure that we are dealing with the environmental outcomes at source.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I was speaking today with businesses which have been working with farmers and land managers to develop mitigation schemes that could be used by housing developers. They were, I think it would be fair to say, in a state of shock. The rug has literally been pulled out from underneath their business plans. They said that there are other ways in which the Government might have approached this. People have been working on the idea of a levy as an alternative and on the idea of changing the planning system so that housing developers could later in the process bring in mitigation schemes. What we have seen is a sudden nuclear option from the Government to just throw away what has been there without any kind of replacement. Can the Minister tell me whether the Government have considered these other proposals of a levy or of changing the way in which mitigation schemes come in, or have they just gone ahead with this single stroke without any consideration or consultation?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As I said to the noble Baroness opposite, this is why it has taken time. It has taken time to look at all the options. As far as farmers are concerned, the package that we are offering includes £200 million for slurry infrastructure grants, which are really important to farmers, and £25 million for nutrient management innovation. There is a lot of innovation going on, but farmers need support to be able to deliver it. I think farmers may not have seen all the information that is here, but I am sure that when they do, they will support it wholeheartedly. We know that agricultural outputs put a significant amount of nutrients into water—far more than small housing developments do—and we want to help farmers to deal with that.

I want to give an example of what has been stopped by this: a proposal for a change of use around a house in multiple occupancy in the Solent to include one additional resident was dismissed on appeal due to the additional nutrient pollution. That cannot be right. Another example, which was reported in the Times, is that of a retired couple who have struggled for seven years to convert barns on their Herefordshire property into four homes, including one for their son. The scheme received outline planning permission in 2016, but nutrient neutrality rules have left them unable to build to this day. We want those houses, but we also want to protect the environment, and that is what we are doing with these amendments.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

What pressure are the Government putting on water companies to deal with pollution at source?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

In the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill we address pollution at source by placing a new statutory duty on water companies in designated catchment areas to upgrade wastewater treatment works by 2030. Interestingly enough, the analysis suggests that this will lead to about a 69% reduction in phosphorus loads and around a 57% reduction in nitrogen loads in total from wastewater treatment works across all the affected catchments, reducing a significant source of nutrient pollution and supporting the recovery of habitat sites most affected by this pollution. This is on top of the much wider improvements being driven forward through our plan for water.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, when the Minister introduced the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill into this House on 19 December, in accordance with the Environment Act, she made a statement. I quote from the front page of the Bill:

“Baroness Scott of Bybrook has made the following statements under section 20(2)(a) and (3) of the Environment Act 2021 … In my view … the Bill will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law”.


Given that, as my noble friend Lord Teverson said, the Government’s statutory watchdog, the OEP, has said that the amendments that she has tabled to this Bill to reduce water quality will demonstrably reduce the environmental protection afforded by current laws and that they are a “regression”, does she stand by her statement?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, I stand by our statement. As I think I have said before, we do not accept that this constitutes a regression on the environmental outcomes and therefore we do not agree with the Office for Environmental Protection, because it took into account the amendments without the mitigation alongside them, as I understand. The package of environmental measures, which are backed by significant additional investment, will more than offset that very small amount of additional nutrient discharge attributed to the development of 100,000 houses between now and 2030. So, I do not agree with the noble Baroness. I stick by what I said because we are mitigating any small amount of additional nutrient discharge.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, remember the days of the regional spatial strategies, and long debates in EELGA over housing numbers particularly. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, I did not celebrate when they got the kibosh, because I thought that there was a lot of good in them—particularly in meeting the housing needs in the east of England but also on the economic development side, which was as important. A great deal of very good work was done in pulling together data and information for the whole region, in order to look at where and how best to develop particular clusters and where they would work well. So there was a lot of merit in that very strategic-level thinking.

It has moved on a bit since the days of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, in Hertfordshire, with the Hertfordshire Growth Board looking at issues outside the remit of the straightforward local planning authority. For example, there is the mass rapid transit system that south and south-west Hertfordshire was looking at, which covers a number of different local authorities. Then, there is working with the local enterprise partnerships, as we did on the Hertfordshire Growth Board. There was a clear drive towards the consideration of travel-to-work areas, which was why I spoke so strongly in favour when we discussed this issue before.

I am convinced that we need to work jointly, with joint authorities, involving them in particular in the early stages, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said. It is no good waiting until a draft strategy has been produced and, if there is a major game-changer in there, expecting local authorities to pick it apart and change it. It is much better for them to be engaged and involved from the very start.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, mentioned government Amendment 201B, which we will debate on Wednesday, which will allow combined authorities to take on planning powers. I am not going to start the whole discussion now, but we were very concerned about this. We will have a debate about it, but it seems like a very slippery slope indeed. It is far better to include local authorities and all the component parts that make up the combined authority and their neighbours in the discussion from the early days of the joint spatial development strategy.

I absolutely support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, on the inclusion of districts and councils in a very real way in the decision-making on JSDSs. I think it emphasises the points we made in earlier debates, in Committee and on Report, about the importance of the full membership of combined authorities—for both tiers in two-tier areas. Those organisations are then involved right from the start, and they have a democratic mandate to be so involved.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, made the important point that there are elements that will be included in joint spatial development strategies that do not stop at boundaries, and so it is very important that we work across those boundaries on such things as climate change, healthy homes, sustainable transport and biodiversity. All those things do not come to an end when you get to the end of your local plan area, so we all need to work together on how we tackle those key issues.

We are very supportive of the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I am interested to hear the Minister’s answer as to whether the part of the schedule that covers this would stretch to make sure that this very important early-stage consultation could be included as a requirement within the Bill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, let me first say that the aim of Amendment 192 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley is sensible and I understand its intention. Other authorities, such as county councils, will be essential for a successful plan, given that they are responsible for delivering a range of critical services such as highways and transport, flood risk management and waste management. Of course, county councils will also have the role of a statutory consultee for the joint spatial development strategies.

We expect engagement with other authorities to be typical good practice for any group of local planning authorities preparing a joint spatial development strategy—an SDS. Indeed, it would appear unlikely that any joint SDS that did not engage appropriately with other local government bodies could be found sound at examination. Let me make it clear that county councils are going to play an important role in the plan-making process. We envisage them not just as consultees but as being closely involved with the day-to-day production of any joint SDS. The Government have set out our intention to introduce an alignment policy via the National Planning Policy Framework to address cross-boundary and strategic issues such as travel to work areas, and this policy will be consulted on in due course.

Both my noble friend Lord Lansley and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, brought up the government amendments in the next group. Just to make it clear, Schedule 4 amendments will mean that combined county authorities will be in the same position that the Mayor of London and county councils and combined authorities are in currently in relation to the ability of the Secretary of State to invite those bodies to take over plan-making, but where a constituent planning authority is failing in its plan-making activities. It is not that they can just walk in and take over, but if the local plan is not being delivered by the planning authority then they have the right to ask the Secretary of State if they can take it over. I just wanted to make that clear, but I am sure we will have the discussion again on Wednesday.

My noble friend brought up the Secretary of State’s powers in relation to the role of county councils. I do not know that, legally. I will make sure that I find out tomorrow and I will write to my noble friend and send a copy to those in the Chamber tonight.

I am not convinced that this amendment is needed to make local planning authorities work with other authorities, notably county councils, on joint SDSs. I hope that my noble friend Lord Lansley feels he is able to withdraw his amendment at this stage.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down, might she leave open the door to the possibility of the Government looking in particular at this question of whether the Secretary of State has sufficient powers, in relation to a joint spatial development strategy, to prescribe in guidance the way in which local planning authorities will go about the process of consulting with counties and combined county authorities? The panoply of guidance is not the same for a JSDS as it is for a local plan and it is not there in statute for a JSDS as it is for a local plan. Maybe some of it needs to be—just enough to make sure that the things my noble friend is describing that a good authority must do are there in the guidance. Maybe we will need something at Third Reading to enable that.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I assure my noble friend that I will continue to look at this one and see whether we can at least get it clearer so that he is happy with it.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I thank my noble friend and all those who participated in this short debate, which demonstrated a truly all-party approach to the issue. We just have to take the Government with us—apart from that it has all been absolutely fine. I think the Government agree with us in principle and in substance; we may just need a bit of an iteration on the mechanisms for doing this. Subject to that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, welcome back. Amendment 164 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, seeks to reduce the closure of high street financial services. The nature of banking is changing, and the long-term trend is moving towards greater use of convenient, digital and remote banking services over traditional high street branches. In 2021, 86% of UK consumers used a form of remote banking, such as an app, online or on the phone.

Banking customers can also carry out their everyday banking at more than 11,500 post offices across the United Kingdom. The Government are committed to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the Post Office network and have provided more than £2.5 billion in funding to support the Post Office network over the past decade and are providing a further £335 million for the Post Office between 2022 and 2025. There are more than 11,500 Post Office branches in the UK—the largest retail network in the country—and, thanks to government support, the network is more resilient today than it was a decade ago. The Government protect the Post Office network by setting minimum access criteria to ensure that 99% of the UK population lives within three miles of a post office. I do not know whether this is the figure that my noble friend mentioned earlier. Businesses can withdraw and deposit cash at any of those branches of the Post Office.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, brought up a real issue, I think, and that is good internet access, particularly for banking services. The Government know that, and Project Gigabit is the Government’s £5 billion programme that will ensure that the whole of the UK benefits from gigabit connectivity by providing subsidy to deliver gigabit-capable connectivity to uncommercial premises, which are typically in very rural or remote locations. We have an ambition to connect at least 85 % of UK premises by 2025 and 99% by 2030, so we are working on what is a difficult and expensive issue—we know that, but we are working on it.

The Government cannot reverse the changes in the market and customer behaviour, nor can they can determine firms’ commercial strategies in response to those changes. Decisions on opening and closing branches or cash machines are taken by each firm on a commercial basis. However, the Government believe that the impact of such closures should be mitigated so that all customers have access to appropriate banking services.

Of course it is vital that those customers who rely on physical banking services are not left behind, which is why the Financial Conduct Authority has guidance in place to ensure that customers are kept informed of closures and that alternatives are put in place, where reasonable. The FCA’s new customer duty, which came into force on 31 July this year, further strengthens protections for consumers, as it will require firms to consider and address the foreseeable harm to customers of branch closures. These issues were debated extensively during the passage of the Financial Services and Markets Bill in 2023, and through that legislation the Government have acted to protect access to cash by putting in place a framework to protect the provision of cash withdrawals and deposit facilities for the first time in UK law. This introduces new powers for the FCA to seek to ensure reasonable provision of cash-access services in the UK and, importantly in relation to personal current accounts, to free cash-access services. Following the passage of this new law, the Government published a statement setting out their policies on access to cash, which include an expectation that, in the event of a closure, if any alternative service is needed, that alternative should be put in place before the closure takes place.

Furthermore, the financial services sector has established initiatives to provide shared banking and cash services, an example being the banking hubs, which offer basic banking services and a private space where customers can see community bankers from their own bank or building society. Industry has already opened eight banking hubs and 70 more are on the way.

I have set out the comprehensive action the Government are taking to protect access to financial services in a way that recognises the changing nature of banking and respects the commercial decisions of UK businesses. This is why we believe that the right approach is being taken, and, while we agree with the noble Baroness’s intention, we cannot support this amendment.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part, particularly those who have offered their support. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering; I fully understand that she may not be able to join me in the Lobby if I call a vote. I appreciate the support offered by the Green Party through the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, as well as the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey.

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made a really important point about the distances that have to be travelled, and the need to go to Exeter. My husband’s family are from Ottery St Mary, and I know the area well. When she said there were no banks there and she had to go to Exeter, I was quite horrified. That is an extremely potent example of the problem.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, of course, for putting her name to the amendment and for offering her support. I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with the Minister’s response. She said that banking is changing and people are now using “convenient” digital services, but the problem is that they are not convenient for everybody. That is the point I was trying to make when I introduced my amendment.

Also, the Post Office network is not always set up in the places and communities where it is needed. We have lost too many post offices and as was mentioned, they are often now not in separate buildings on the high street but at the back of or in the main part of shops. On going to the post office, I have ended up queuing for quite some time because of other people in the shop purchasing things, so it is not necessarily convenient, particularly if you have a lot of money on you. The problem of businesses having to travel large distances with a huge amount of cash has come up. I had not mentioned that issue but of course, it is very important.

The Minister talked about connectivity, but improving connectivity in rural areas has been talked about for years. There are parts of rural areas that are very difficult to connect, and they always seem to get left behind unless the local community agrees to pay what are often very large sums of money. So again, I am not convinced that that will solve the problem. The Minister also talked about having to follow the market. I strongly believe that financial services should be driven not by the market but by the fact that they are important to all our communities, whether we are talking about personal services or business services.

The key point I would like to make concerns the banking hubs. I do not know when we are going to see them. I have never seen one and I do not know what the rollout will be, but they do not seem to be replacing what has been lost.

Having said all that, I am not satisfied by the Minister’s response so I would like to test the opinion of the House.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

165: Clause 79, page 88, line 25, leave out “the Secretary of State” and insert “an appropriate authority”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the power to make planning data regulations may be exercised by “an appropriate authority”.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

168: Clause 82, page 90, line 23, after “regulations” insert “made by the Secretary of State”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the power to make regulations requiring the use of approved planning data software in England may only be exercised by the Secretary of State.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

169: Clause 84, page 91, line 10, at end insert “, unless that provision is merely incidental to, or consequential on, provision that would be outside that devolved competence”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the Secretary of State may make planning data regulations which contain provision within Scottish devolved competence without consulting the Scottish Ministers where the provision is merely incidental to, or consequential upon, provision that is outside that devolved competence.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

180: Clause 85, page 92, line 21, at end insert—
““appropriate authority” means—(a) the Secretary of State,(b) a devolved authority, or(c) the Secretary of State acting jointly with one or more devolved authorities;”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides the definition of “an appropriate authority” for Chapter 1 of Part 3 as the Secretary of State, a devolved authority or the Secretary of State acting jointly with one or more devolved authorities.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I have great sympathy for the intention behind the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley. The value in having up-to-date plans in place is something we can all agree on and is a goal which several of the measures in this Bill are designed to support. Where I must part company with my noble friend is on the best way of achieving that.

These amendments would create a hard cliff edge for policies in plans. A local plan or a neighbourhood plan could be departed from only if there are “strong reasons”, or—if it passes its sell-by date—would be relegated to being just a material consideration. This would risk undermining the important policy safeguards in plans, which could allow the wrong development in the wrong places. Within any plan, some individual policies are likely to have continuing importance and relevance, irrespective of the actual base date of the plan. For example, policies which set the boundaries of important designated areas, such as the green belt, are expected to endure for some time. Because of this, it is a well-established principle that planning decisions rely on a judgment about which policies are relevant at the point of making a decision. If we created the sort of all-or-nothing cliff edge that these amendments imply, we would put this pragmatism at risk and could undermine important protections.

None of this is to excuse slow plan-making, and I agree entirely with my noble friend that we must do more to get up-to-date plans in place. We have a comprehensive set of actions to do just that. The national development management policies will mean that plans have to contain fewer generic policies than they do now; our digital and procedural reforms in the Bill will make it easier to prepare and approve policies; there will be more proactive intervention through the new gateway checks on emerging plans; and the Bill also bolsters the intervention powers that may be used as a last resort. Our current consultation on plan-making reiterates the Government’s aim that future plans should be produced in 30 months, not years.

We expect the new plan-making system to go live in late 2024. There will be a requirement on local planning authorities to start work on new plans by, at the latest, five years after the adoption of their previous plan and to adopt the new plan within 30 months. Under the new proposals, the Secretary of State will retain existing powers to intervene if authorities fail, and these include the ability to make formal directions and, ultimately, to take steps into an authority’s shoes and take over plan-making responsibilities. The plan also provides a new option for the Secretary of State where authorities are failing: local plan commissioners could be appointed by the Secretary of State at any stage of the new plan-making process.

However, we are going consulting. We are asking for views on the proposals to implement the parts of the Bill that relate to plan-making ,and to make plans simpler, faster to prepare and more accessible. That consultation opened in July and will close on 18 October. If any noble Lords would like to see it, it is available on GOV.UK.

The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, asked whether neighbourhood plans will still be relevant without a local plan. They will: they are still relevant if the planning application is relevant to the neighbourhood plan.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked about the five-year land supply requirement. We have proposed removing that requirement only where plans are less than five years old. This will be an incentive to keep plans up to date by reducing the threat of speculative development where local authorities have done the right thing in having an up-to-date local plan.

It is important that we give these reforms a chance to work, rather than introducing measures that would complicate decision-making and could weaken protections. Therefore, although I understand the intention behind these amendments, I hope that my noble friend has been persuaded to withdraw Amendment 183.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this group of amendments. I am particularly grateful for the support that noble Lords from all sides of the House have given to the principles behind my amendment.

My noble friend the Minister said that she is sympathetic to what these amendments set out to achieve. I am slightly surprised, because she continued to say that I am looking for something with a cliff edge, as it were. The whole point of Amendment 187 is to give Ministers the regulation-making power to graduate the cliff edge and show the steps up to and down from it. At the same time, my noble friend is trying to use cliff edges. She is saying, “Well, it’s five years, then something happens, then two and half years is the limit on the time available”. Sometimes, these timetables serve a purpose. My noble friend is right to say that local plan-making needs to be accelerated; setting these timetables is clearly a part of that.

This is interesting, because we are not necessarily debating the five-year housing supply elsewhere. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made a good point. My noble friend the Minister said that the Government are getting rid of the five-year supply requirement in relation to the plan itself. So, in effect, the local plan can say, “Well, this is our housing requirement, and this is how we are meeting it”. However, if you go beyond five years and fall off the proverbial cliff edge, and if a local planning authority does not maintain an annual statement of how it will meet the housing requirement it has identified for its area for the five years ahead, it will in effect see a housing delivery test come in—and it will fail that test. We would return to the situation where developers are able to come in, and that may or may not be a bad thing; but it is not as simple as saying, “We have a housing delivery test”, “We don’t have a housing delivery test”, “We have a different housing delivery test”, “We don’t have the buffer”, and so on.

This issue is all part of the problem that my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and I will return to in our debate on a later group of amendments, concerning the lack of constraints on local planning authorities that will get them to the point of delivering on the Government’s housing targets. The watering down of the housing delivery test is a significant part of that, as is the buffer built into it in trying to meet the deficiencies in supply by local planning authorities.

My noble friend the Minister made some reasonable points. However, the whole point of this amendment is that we need certainty, as my noble friend Lord Deben rightly said. We need that to be achieved in the wake of this consultation on plan-making. It is not about cliff edges; it is about understanding what an emerging plan means in relation to an existing plan and setting that out in very clear terms. Past efforts have not succeeded. For example, Regulation 10A of the town and country planning regulations sets out that a review must start within five years. We saw the results of that. A local planning authority in my area initiated a review on five years plus one day and said, “We don’t really need to review all of this. We’ll just look at the one thing that we don’t like, which is the housing supply number, and we’ll review it and lower it”—and that was the end of it. The planning inspector said that they did not have the power to say that there should be a more wide-ranging review.

I hope—and believe—that this will be sorted in this consultation on plan-making. However, my point, which I think that my noble friend completely accords with, is that even if we do not do this in regulations—and I will not press the point—it must be done, with clarity and soon; otherwise, we will move to a new system into which all the past uncertainties will be reimported, with local developers and planning authorities going head to head as they have in the past and which has not been helpful. We want to see them using the certainty of the system to manage the supply of housing more effectively in the future.

With that thought of hope over experience, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

184A: Clause 87, page 95, line 9, after “policies,” insert “taken together,”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that inserted subsection (5B) in section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 requires a determination under the planning Acts to be made in accordance with the development plan and any national development management policies, taken together.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I do not intend to detain the House for long with Amendment 184A, which is intended solely to avoid any ambiguity arising in relation to the meaning of our changes to Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. It clarifies that any determinations are to be made in accordance with the combined effect of the development plan and any applicable national development management policies. This was always our intention, but this amendment seeks to put the matter beyond doubt. I hope your Lordships will be pleased to support it. I beg to move.

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All that we are asking in Amendment 190 is for the Government to enable full parliamentary scrutiny of the content of any policies they may wish to put in the NDMP. This has been a good, thoughtful and considered debate. I hope that the Minister will take it in the spirit in which it is intended and respond by saying that she totally agrees and will, on behalf of the Government, accept Amendment 190.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, our proposals for national development management policies have attracted considerable debate and rightly so, given the important role they play in our planning process. I welcome the thoughtful contributions made today, although I should be clear at the outset that I am not convinced that a compelling case for these amendments exists.

Amendment 186 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would mean that several considerations would need to be weighed up by decision-makers where a conflict occurs between plans and the national development management policies. While I appreciate the intention behind this amendment, it would create a more complex and uncertain task for decision-makers, as it does not provide a clear indication of how any conflict should be resolved, nor how the local authority—as the decision-maker in most cases—is meant to take local authority views into account. The end result is likely to be additional planning appeals challenging local decisions, something our clauses aim to reduce.

Turning to Amendment 188 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, I am unsure what a further statement explaining the relationship between the national development management policies and other planning documents would add. The consultation launched in December last year gave details of what we expect the national planning management policies to do, how they would relate to other aspects of national planning policy and how they relate to plans. In addition, our debates on this subject have helpfully provided further opportunities to make our intentions clear. I want to reassure the House that we are committed to further clarification wherever necessary, which we will do when we respond to that consultation, and again when draft national development management policies are themselves published for consultation.

I must respond to the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, that NDMPs are moving us towards a zoning system. This is not the case at all. We have been clear that NDMPs will cover generic decision-making matters. They will not impinge on the way authorities allocate land or protect certain areas.

Turning next to Amendment 189 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley, I agree that national development management policies should have clear and specific roles, but I am not sure that this amendment is necessary as a means of achieving that. National development management policies will, by virtue of the role they are given by the Bill, cover matters which are relevant in the determination of planning applications. At the same time, a legal limitation of the sort proposed here might constrain the scope of particular policies to be used for that purpose, in a way that would become apparent only through the exercise of preparing them. We have been clear that the scope of national development management policies will not stray beyond commonly occurring matters which are important for deciding planning applications. December’s consultation confirmed that they would

“not impinge on local policies for shaping development, nor direct what land should be allocated for particular uses during the plan-making process. These will remain matters for locally produced plans.”—[Official Report, 17/1/23; col. 1806.]

Amendment 190 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, returns us to the question of participation in producing national development management policies. This is an important consideration and I agree that these policies should be open to proper scrutiny. At the same time, we need to do this in a way which is both effective and appropriate.

Clause 87 imposes an obligation on the Secretary of State to ensure that such consultation and participation as is considered appropriate takes place. We have been clear, through December’s consultation and in this House, that full consultation will be carried out before these policies are designated. This will build on the initial questions on the principles underpinning these policies, which we posed in December’s consultation, and will in due course give everyone with an interest—whether specialist bodies, local authorities, the public or parliamentarians—the chance to consider and comment on detailed proposals. National development management policies will serve a broader purpose than the National Policy Statements, which are used for major infrastructure projects. They will not be used solely by Ministers for decisions on nationally significant schemes, so it is right that we are placing the emphasis on proper engagement as a way of testing our thinking.

I reiterate: we have made it clear that national development management policies will be consulted on, other than in the exceptional circumstances we have previously discussed. This will give parliamentarians and everyone else with an interest the opportunity to scrutinise and comment on proposed policies. That is why broad engagement on the proposed content of the national development management policies is appropriate and will take place. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, will agree not to move Amendment 186, and that other noble Lords are content not to move their amendments when they are reached. With that, I ask the House to agree Amendment 184A in my name formally.

Amendment 184A agreed.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 20th July 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

146: Clause 161, page 195, line 25, after “may” insert “, by order made by statutory instrument,”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in the Minister’s name at page 195, line 35.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, we have reflected on the debate in Committee and the report from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and I reiterate my thanks to the committee for its work in relation to this Bill. We want to ensure that the designation of locally led development corporations by local authorities is appropriately scrutinised, and therefore these amendments, in line with the DPRRC’s recommendation, apply the affirmative procedure to the orders establishing locally led urban and new town development corporations. I beg to move.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the government amendments which, as the Minister has said, bring decisions made by the Secretary of State on urban development areas back to Parliament in the form of affirmative resolutions rather than negative resolutions. In my view, which I have expressed frequently, far too much in this enormous Bill is set out in the form of decisions left entirely to the Secretary of State to fill in by way of statutory instruments. Far too often, the only restraint is the wholly inadequate procedure of negative resolutions. I am pleased that the Minister has recognised the overreach in the original drafting and has brought forward amendments to correct that.

In Committee, I expressed general support for the proposition of locally led development corporations, and that was helped on by the Minister’s reassuring words to the effect that the wide discretion given to the Secretary of State in Clause 162 to designate a development corporation is, in practice, entirely conditional on there first being a positive initiative from that locality. That is all the more important in view of the strange reluctance to include town and parish councils in the formal consultation process.

In responding to this debate, I would be very grateful if the Minister could make assurance doubly sure on that point of local initiation and leadership of the new generation of development corporations. I look forward to hearing her reassurance on that point.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, those who have heard me speak in this Chamber will know that I am a great fan of development corporations, having grown up in a town that, apart from our historic old town, was created and, for the most part, built by Stevenage Development Corporation. At that time, the innovation of development corporations took a great deal of debate in Parliament to initiate, and we have hopefully moved on a bit towards devolution since the middle of the last century.

If there is to be parliamentary scrutiny of the establishment of development corporations, it is absolutely right that it should be done by the affirmative procedure, so we welcome the movement on that in Amendments 146 and 147, to ensure that the establishment of locally led urban and new town development corporations is drawn to the attention of both Houses, in the same way as those that are not locally led.

We hope that it will be the intention of government to scrutinise only the technical aspects of governance, for example, as it would be entirely against the principles of devolution that the Bill sets out to promote for any Government to effectively have a veto on whether proposals for a development corporation go ahead. During the passage of the Bill, we have talked about a new relationship of mutual trust between local and central government, and we hope that such parliamentary scrutiny will not be used to undermine that.

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the importance of determining the nature of parliamentary involvement in different types of development corporation. Of course, we would have concern about Parliament intending to have a veto on the locally led ones. The other amendments in this group are consequential on the Minister’s previous amendment on page 195. We look forward to her comments about the points raised.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that, yes, locally led development corporations will come from local authorities—they will put them forward.

My noble friend Lord Lansley brought up the different forms of development corporations. Rather than standing here and taking time, I would prefer to write to him and copy everybody in. I suggest that we might have a small group meeting about this when we come back in September so that any questions can be asked. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for her support for these amendments.

Amendment 146 agreed.

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

147: Clause 161, page 195, line 35, leave out subsection (3)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is the first of a number that remove provision applying negative procedure to orders establishing locally-led urban and new town development corporations, and instead bring those orders within the existing procedures for such corporations that are not locally-led. The result is that affirmative procedure will apply (without hybrid procedure).

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

150: Clause 162, page 202, line 1, leave out paragraphs (a) to (d) and insert “in each of subsections (3), (3B) and (3C), after “1,” insert “1ZB,”.”
Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanatory statement for the amendment in the Minister’s name at page 195, line 35.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

151: Schedule 14, page 442, line 17, at end insert—
“(5A) In subsection (4), after “(1)” insert “or (1B)”.(5B) In subsection (4A), after “(1)” insert “or (1B)”.”Member’s explanatory statement
See the explanatory statement for the amendment in the Minister’s name at page 195, line 35.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

152: Schedule 16, page 451, line 15, leave out sub-paragraphs (2) and (3)
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes a power that is no longer needed in the light of the conclusion of proceedings in Senedd Cymru on the Historic Environment (Wales) Bill.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, government Amendment 152 relates to a consequential amendment on compulsory purchase. In light of the successful passage of the Historic Environment (Wales) Act through the Senedd Cymru, there is no longer a requirement to include a regulation-making power and associated provision under paragraphs 7(2) and (3) of Schedule 16. As such, these provisions are not required and should not form part of the Bill.

Government Amendment 153 seeks to add Part 7 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 and Section 9 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992 to the definition of “Relevant compulsory purchase legislation” under Clause 177(6). The amendment is required because both Acts, or regulations relating to compulsory purchase made under them, make provision requiring the preparation of compulsory purchase documentation to which approved data standards published under Clause 177(3) should be applicable. I hope that the House will support government Amendments 152 and 153.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, this group brings up to date the provisions in the Bill so that they are appropriately applied to Wales. It also updates the list of types of compulsory purchase that can be made, subject to common data standards—we accept that this is important. We have had much discussion about the issues of hope value during the passage of the Bill, and it is therefore absolutely right that the Minister responded to Senedd Cymru’s request to make that apply in Wales as well.

I associate this side of the House with the comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. It would be helpful if these types of provisions could be consulted on with the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Administrations before they come before this House. But I am grateful to the Minister for listening to the Welsh Senedd’s request, and we are pleased to see these amendments coming forward today.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the noble Baronesses for their input. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, that we understand the devolved authorities’ rights and responsibilities, but, as always, there is negotiation on any legislation that we put through which may affect them. The Government and the Welsh Government did not reach a settled position on the CPO powers until after the Lords Committee stage had concluded. As these things are complex, our devolved authorities also need time to discuss and make decisions. I can assure the noble Baroness that we are working closely with them all the time.

Amendment 152 agreed.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

153: Clause 177, page 219, line 22, leave out “or” and insert—
“(fa) section 9 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992,(fb) Part 7 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, or”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment adds further legislation to the list governing the types of compulsory purchase documentation which can be made subject to common data standards.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

154: Clause 180, page 225, line 19, leave out from “is” to end of line 27 and insert “constructed or adapted for use as a separate dwelling and—
(a) in the case of a building in England, is to be used as—(i) social housing within the meaning of Part 2 of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, or(ii) housing of any other description that is prescribed, or(b) in the case of a building in Wales, is to be used as housing of a description that is prescribed.”;”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment and the amendments in the Minister’s name at page 234, line 23 and page 235, line 43 adjust the definition of affordable housing used in Clause 180 so that an existing definition relevant only to England is not made to apply in Wales.

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Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

161: Clause 183, page 238, line 15, leave out paragraph (a)
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment removes the provision requiring premises to be considered as vacant for the purposes of Part 10 when occupied by a trespasser (other than in cases caught by paragraph (b) of the same subsection, i.e. squatting in commercial premises).

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 161A. Together, the amendments bring us back to an issue raised in Committee relating to premises that are counted as vacant. I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, and others for bringing this issue to our attention and for meeting me and my noble friend Lord Howe to discuss it. We have proposed amended wording to clarify what is meant by the clause in question.

Amendment 161 will clarify that occupation by true “squatters”—for example, persons who have broken into commercial high street premises and are using them as their residence—will not count as occupation for the purpose of assessing the vacancy condition for a high street rental auction, but occupation by other types of trespassers, such as commercial tenants who have remained in occupation following the expiry of their lease, may do so. This will be achieved by removing the reference to trespassers in Clause 183(4), while retaining reference to people living at premises not designed or adapted for residential use.

Amendment 161A adds words to the clause to clarify that “count” in this context means counting as occupation. I beg to move.

Amendment 161 agreed.

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook]

161A: Clause 183, page 238, line 18, after “count” insert “as occupation”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment makes a drafting clarification.

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[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 282D in my name would require the Chancellor of the Exchequer to undertake a review of the business rates system. The Government know that the current system is flawed and fails to reflect modern business practices. There have been several Bills in the last few years that have tweaked the non-domestic rating system—as the Minister knows, we have one currently before the House—but these are just tweaks to a complex set of business taxation that is in desperate need of fundamental reform.

The system is basically flawed, as illustrated by the fact that the Treasury pays out billions of pounds in support of small businesses every year, via the small business rates relief. This demonstrates that there has to be a more effective way to levy businesses to support the local services on which they depend.

It is not only me saying that business rates need fundamental reform. Many business commentators have urged for a fundamental review. The Centre for Cities published a report in 2020 which proposed 11 changes to the business rates system. The IFS has published a report pointing to spatial inequalities that are “profound and persistent”.

A fundamental review is long overdue, and the amendment in my name simply asks that a review considers the effects of business rates on high streets and rural areas, and compares that information with an alternative business taxation system—for instance, land value taxation, which was referred to in the IFS report. The spatial inequalities explored in the report are at the heart of the levelling-up agenda. Any detailed review of business rates should gather relevant data on the impact of business rates on different parts of the country.

The Government have recognised what they have called “bricks vs clicks”, and in the Financial Statement earlier this year raised rates for warehousing. However, that steers clear of the major issue facing our high streets, which is the competitive advantage that online retailers have over high street retailers when it comes to the rates applied for business rates.

I have mentioned several times in this Chamber the glaring difference between warehousing for a very large online retailer, which may be at the rate of £45 per square metre, compared with the rate for a small shop in a small town of £250 per square metre. The change to raise the rates for warehousing does nothing to address that vast gap. For instance, it was reported that the change introduced this year by the Government cost Amazon £29 million. That might sound a considerable sum to some people, but it is pennies in the pot for a big online retailer such as Amazon. It really needs to start paying its fair share towards local services. Its little vans whizz round our streets, and Amazon needs to pay for the upkeep of them. The rate of its contribution is small in comparison to the services it uses. That is the argument for a huge, fundamental review of the system as is stands.

We also have to take into account the impact of any changes on local government. A large portion of a council’s income now derives from business rates, and any changes to the system by the Government to reduce the burden on businesses—which they did in the Statement by freezing the multiplier—results in compensation to local government for those changes. This again demonstrates that the system is not fit for purpose.

We currently have a system that says that these are the rates, but oh dear, they are too big for charities, small businesses and so on, and then provides relief which costs the Treasury billions of pounds a year. When any further changes are made, that has an impact on desperately needed income for local councils. Therefore, there will have to be compensation in that regard also. This demonstrates that the business rates system, as currently set up, is really not doing the job it needs to do. I repeat that a fundamental review is essential.

It is important to add that the way in which business rates income is demonstrated, via the tariffs and top-ups arrangements, creates further unfairness This becomes more noticeable as councils struggle to balance their budgets.

A business rates system that encourages business development and growth must be at the heart of any strategy to bring more prosperity and jobs to those areas defined in the White Paper as being the focus for levelling up. I do not need to spell out what that might mean, but it could perhaps be reduced rates for some areas, to encourage development and the movement of businesses to those areas.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, raised similar issues in moving her amendment to support the pub industry, which we support. My noble friend Lord Scriven has signed the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who I do not think is in his place, regarding the establishment of regional mutual banks. We support this approach as another way of empowering regional businesses and entrepreneurs to take financial decisions which meet local ambitions, rather than the more risk-averse national banks. The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, used the comparator of Germany. She is right that the mutual banks in Germany have done much to support their regionally-based industries, which does not happen in this country because of the way our banking system is set up.

I really hope the Minister will be able to say in her reply that the Government accept that the business rates system as currently devised is not fit for purpose and that they are looking to have fundamental review to reform it to the benefit of those places—because this is the levelling-up Bill, and I shall keep saying it: anything we do in the Bill should be in support of the levelling-up agenda. This does not do it, and that is why we need a reform of the business rates system.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 163 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, concerns the support for our pubs. We are all aware of the importance of our local pubs; they provide space for people to come together, they provide jobs and they support local economies. But we also know that the past few years have been a challenging time for our pubs, with the Covid-19 pandemic and the current high prices, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, conspiring to put pressure on already tight operating margins.

Through the pandemic, we recognised that the hospitality sector needed to be more resilient against economic shocks. That is why, in July 2021, we published our first hospitality strategy, Reopening, Recovery and Resilience, which covers cafés, restaurants, bars, nightclubs and pubs.

In 2021—this is important for the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, of listening to the sector—we also established a Hospitality Sector Council to help deliver the commitments set out in the strategy. The council includes representatives from across the sector, including UKHospitality, the British Beer & Pub Association and the British Institute of Innkeeping, as well as some of our best-known pub businesses. While we fully agree with the aim behind the noble Baroness’s amendment, the strategy she asks for already exists.

Moving on to Amendment 279, I notice that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond is not in his place, but the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, brought it up on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, so I will respond. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within three months of Royal Assent on the existing barriers to establishing regional mutual banks in the United Kingdom and instruct the Competition and Markets Authority to consult on barriers within competition law for this establishment and identify possible solutions.

I make it clear that the Government are supportive of the choice provided by mutual institutions in financial services. We recognise the contribution that these member-owned, democratically controlled institutions make to the local communities they serve and to the wider economy. However, regional mutual banks are still in the process of establishing themselves here in the United Kingdom, with some now in the process of obtaining their banking licences. It is therefore too early to report on the current regime and any possible limitations of it for regional mutual banks.

I know that my noble friend Lord Holmes was interested in how regional mutual banks have performed in other jurisdictions and how we could use these examples to consider the UK’s own capital adequacy requirements. In this instance, international comparisons may not be the most helpful to make. The UK is inherently a different jurisdiction, with different legislation and regulatory frameworks from those in the US, Europe and elsewhere. Abroad, some regional mutual banks have been in existence for centuries and have been able to build up their capital base through retained earnings. In the UK, regional mutual banks are not yet established and are continuing to progress within the UK’s legislative framework.

Additionally, the Competition and Markets Authority plays a key role in making sure that UK markets remain competitive, driving growth and innovation while also protecting consumers from higher prices or less choice. It is very important to note that the CMA is independently responsible for enforcing UK competition and consumer law. The Government cannot instruct the CMA to undertake a consultation. The Treasury is continuing to engage with the mutuals sector and other industry members to assess how the Government can best support the growth of mutuals going forward. I hope that this provides sufficient reassurance to my noble friend on this issue.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will quickly respond to the noble Baroness. I will look at what was discussed with the Hospitality Sector Council and will write to the noble Baroness. I am sure that all the other issues will be discussed further in the NDR Bill.

Amendment 163 withdrawn.