Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Taylor of Stevenage and Lord Mackinlay of Richborough

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his clarification. As I said, I was only guessing that the figure was in the hundreds of thousands; I am glad to have the clarity that is 1.1 million. There we have it: there is the potential for the growth that we are looking for and for the supply of housing within a local plan, yet we seem to keep hearing calls for new land and new development. The answer, however, is in our lap. It would be nice for this to be rather more transparent, so that we could consider it more closely.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, that was an interesting debate on these amendments. Believing in local people also means building the homes that they need and the infrastructure to support those homes. This problem with buildout did not commence in July 2024; it has been there for a long time, and this Bill is trying to do something about it.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for Amendment 62A, which would require applications for development not included in the local plan, or for a housing density lower than that specified in the plan, to be determined by committee. I appreciate the sentiment behind the amendment; however, it is common for applications to be submitted for development that do not accord with the local plan. That does not mean that all those applications are controversial or that they require committee scrutiny. To bring all such applications to committee would undermine the whole point of Clause 51. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Amendment 63 from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, seeks to make initial regulations relating to the national scheme of delegation subject to the affirmative procedure. As I mentioned in Committee, it is common practice across planning legislation for regulations of a detailed and technical nature such as these to be subject to the negative procedure. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has published its report on the Bill and has not raised any concerns about either this power or the proposed procedure.

I recognise that the noble Lord has altered his amendment so that it applies only to the first set of regulations, but I still do not believe that the revised amendment is necessary. We already consulted on our proposed approach in May this year. The Secretary of State, under the Bill’s provisions, will be required to consult appropriate persons before making the regulations and the subsequent changes to them. That means that the Government will conduct another consultation on these very regulations before they are brought into force. In practice, this means that key stakeholders, including local planning authorities, will be able to respond on the detailed proposals set out in the regulations to ensure that they will work effectively in practice. They are the practitioners, after all, so I look forward to hearing their comments.

Amendment 76 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, seeks to give the chair of a planning committee and the head of planning the discretion to allow any planning application to be determined by committee where there are objections on valid planning grounds. Noble Lords will recall that we debated an identical amendment in Committee, and I can confirm that the Government have not changed their position on this issue. The intention of the amendment undermines the introduction of a national scheme of delegation. Valid planning objections are a frequent occurrence on planning applications—anyone who has ever been on a council will know that only too well. This amendment would therefore mean that almost any application would be capable of being referred to committee. That is clearly something we would not want to support. However, I repeat that the intention behind the national scheme of delegation is not to undermine local democracy. It is simply to allow planning committees to operate more effectively in the interests of their communities.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for Amendment 87F relating to the buildout of development, which is a key issue. The amendment seeks to improve the transparency of buildout data by requiring the Secretary of State to publish information on a quarterly basis about the number of planning consents granted where building has not started or completed in each local planning authority. I start by reaffirming to the noble Baroness, as I did in Committee, that I fully support the aim of improving buildout and the rate of residential development. The Government remain committed to making sure that all planning permissions are translated into homes. That said, I remain of the view, as I have previously set out, that we do not need this amendment to achieve that.

When we debated buildout in Committee, I highlighted our publication in May of an important working paper, which sets out a more effective and comprehensive approach to speeding up buildout. It includes greater transparency of buildout rates, new powers for local planning authorities to decline to determine applications from developers that have built out more slowly and greater emphasis on mixed-use tenures, as well as exploring a potential delayed homes penalty as a last resort. The working paper also emphasised that we want to make it easier for local authorities to confirm CPOs, which will help unlock stalled sites and make land assembly easier when this is in the public interest. We have also set up our new homes accelerator, which will help to unblock some of those stalled sites and find out what is causing the problem that is slowing down buildout. We are now analysing the responses to that working paper, and we will set out our next steps in due course. I reiterate that the measures set out in the working paper will make a real difference to the buildout of residential development that we all want to see. Therefore, given our strategy to support faster buildout, I hope the noble Baroness will not move her amendment.