English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Debate between Baroness Willis of Summertown and Baroness Young of Old Scone

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 46, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. We must ensure that any spatial development strategy underlines and works with the principles of the Environmental Improvement Plan and the upcoming land use framework, as the noble Lord rightly pointed out. Particularly regarding the latter, it makes no sense to have two systems dealing with how we use our land pulling in different directions—which is the risk here. We have these central government legally binding environmental targets, so we need to use the Bill to ensure that this new devolved governance structure means that each tool is deployed in an effective but consistent manner. Consistency is key here.

Bluntly, I do not see how we can halt biodiversity loss, let alone restore it, without giving authorities the duty to work towards meeting these targets. A recently published global biodiversity assessment highlighted the threats to the UK’s national security and prosperity from biodiversity loss and really stressed the importance of delivering the 30by30. This is a very tall target at the best of times, but if we have the devolved Governments pulling in different directions on this, there is no chance that we will reach anywhere near it. We are a long way off right now—at 7%—so have an awfully long way to go in the next seven years.

This amendment would mean that authorities think about nature recovery, soil, water and land use from the outset, rather than as something to be dealt with at a later stage. We had a long-standing debate on this in the planning Bill. This is often where the delays are, caused by nature and environmental considerations. If we consider the environment strategically before we get into this whole planning process, I hope many of those delays and debates will go away, so we do not have them. This will reduce conflicts and create more consistency in how we achieve our environmental targets. It is a very good amendment and it has my strong support. I see it as essential but also proportionate.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 46, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. Spatial development strategies are a really big opportunity and much to be welcomed. We have long needed a spatial view at that sort of level, so we have to get this right because there is a lot that they can deliver.

However, to be frank, if spatial development strategies do not play a key role in delivering things such as the Environmental Improvement Plan statutory targets, I am not entirely sure how government will get those statutory targets delivered, because the land is fundamental to delivering those targets. The question really is: if there is not some strong guidance that the spatial development strategies must play a role in delivering the Environmental Improvement Plan statutory targets, how will government ensure that these targets are met? Is it envisaged that there will be guidance rather than something in the Bill?

We should not underestimate the importance of the environment for growth. I remember years ago, when some of the big drug companies were thinking about where they were going to put production facilities, they came to the conclusion that England’s green and pleasant land was a pretty good place to come. Not only was there a reasonably stable economy in those days, but there were also excellent places for the people they would have to attract—potentially from other countries but also from other parts of the UK—to come and work for them. They were also potentially attractive places for those businesses to come and pursue sustainability and growth as part of their global strategies. Therefore, a pleasant, productive environment not only provides security against climate shocks, flooding, heat and all those things if done on a big enough scale; it is also an attractive place for businesses to come because they can get good staff who want to come and live in pleasant places. That is a crucial element that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has rightly pointed out.

I have stood up and talked about the land use framework many times; I do go on about its importance. For me, it has two major importances. First, it brings a degree of rationality to considerations and discussions about competing land uses, which is absolutely what regional—spatial—development strategies ought to be doing as well, so they are very complementary. As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, pointed out, the land use framework is also a means of reducing conflict.

We all too often see development being delayed because there is local or county-level antipathy by the public to what is being proposed. A land use framework approach is a way of getting that dialogue going across multiple land uses—including land for climate, biodiversity and other environmental management, and land for development—that can introduce a note of calmness, conciliation, balance and rationality to the debate. The land use framework is important and the big problem right now of course is its timing. We have been a very long time waiting for it. My understanding, and the Minister can perhaps confirm this, is that it is in a good enough shape for write-round, but we hear that it may well be delayed.

The reality is that we are up against a hard deadline. The hard deadline for me—and this is a purely personal view, not the view of my party, I am sure—is that we are going to have a rough time in the elections in May and there could well be all sorts of reshuffles emanating from that. The last thing that any of us wants is for a brand-new set of Ministers to be appointed as a result of a reshuffle, or even a few Ministers to be appointed as a result of a reshuffle, who quite rightly, in the case of something as important as the land use framework, will want to delay and have a look at it themselves to make sure that they understand it and that they are behind it. That could cause even more delay, so if we do not get it agreed and published by late April, we could be stuffed—I think that is the technical term. Perhaps we could persuade the Minister to tell us what it would take to get this announced by April.

There is one further requirement that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, does not cover, which is the whole issue of local nature recovery strategies. Those noble Lords who have played a role in local nature recovery strategy development and approval will realise just how much sweat and blood has been magnificently used at a county level to produce these agreed strategies. They are very much another brick in the wall of the rational approach to land use. There has been a huge amount of engagement of local authorities, communities and NGOs at the county level to get these strategies going. They are incredibly valuable, because they have been a meeting ground for all these competing land use bodies. One has to ask: what is the point of a local nature recovery strategy if it does not play a role and does not figure in the spatial development strategy? Can the Minister assure us that local nature recovery strategies will be material in local development strategies? If so, why not put it the Bill? Depending on her answer, I may have to egg on the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, to add that into consideration on Report.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Willis of Summertown and Baroness Young of Old Scone

Report stage
Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I will be brief in speaking to Amendment 237 in my name. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, and the noble Lord, Lord Gascoigne, for their support.

Amendment 237 is on a similar theme to my earlier amendment, relating to the delivery of green and blue spaces in spatial development strategies. I will not repeat the arguments that I made previously, other than to say that the provision of accessible green and blue space in urban areas has been identified by many different organisations as a critical component that can support health and well-being for urban populations.

This amendment deals with the same issue. However, this time, it seeks to put the statutory requirement for the provision of accessible green and blue spaces into the objectives of the development corporation responsible for delivering new towns. The aim of this amendment is to ensure that we do not miss the opportunity to create blue and green space in new towns.

This point was emphasised most recently by the New Towns Taskforce report, published in September 2025, which stated that:

“New towns provide a rare opportunity to plan holistically”,


and that they should have,

“easily accessible green spaces and recreational facilities”.

The Government responded to this report by saying that they are

“committed to ensuring that all new towns are thriving and sustainable places”,

and that they will

“consider how best to ensure expectations are set and managed at a national level”.

However, similar to the spatial development strategies in the NPPF, I imagine the Government will respond to say that the new town development corporations are sufficiently equipped to deal with the provision of blue and green spaces. I will give three counterpoints related to this. First, exactly the same as the NPPF, this is only guidance. It is toothless unless it is written into law. Secondly, there is no clear, mandatory, legally binding standard for equality of access to blue and green space. Over the last five years, yes we have seen more green spaces created, but more and more they are created in rich areas compared to in poorer areas. We have to take this seriously, or inequality of access to green space will get worse.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the recommendation of the New Towns Taskforce was that new towns could be delivered by the introduction of special development orders. That would mean that the Secretary of State could determine a planning permission for a new town and grant it directly through this special development order, with the potential to override the provisions of local plans and the NPPF. We do not even have the NPPF or the local plans any more to ensure blue and green space in cities and equality of access to it.

This is a fairly simple amendment, which would not cost anything. I hope we can find a way to move forward, and that the Minister will accept my amendment. It offers a reasonable and non-burdensome way to implement what the Government recognise is an important issue: to hardwire blue and green space into new towns so that they can deliver critical spaces for health and well-being for everyone in those cities. I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

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

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

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

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Willis of Summertown and Baroness Young of Old Scone

Report stage
Wednesday 29th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Willis of Summertown (CB)]

My Lords, I have retabled slightly amended versions of Amendments 115 and 116, and I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone, Lady Grender and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their support. These amendments try to ensure that compliance with habitats regulations assessments happens earlier in the process, at the local plan and spatial development strategy stage. This would better direct development away from the most vulnerable habitats and would help speed up the pre-planning process for developers by enabling them to focus on sites that are more suitable for development.

This approach is very much in line with conversations I had a number of years ago when, as a biodiversity scientist in Oxford, I was asked to provide advice to senior officials from a certain extractive industry. They made the point that, in looking for areas in which to work, they often get extractive rights for around 10 kilometres but their footprint is only half a kilometre. I asked them what information they needed from us biodiversity scientists, and the answer was, “We want to know, where can we damage?” As a biodiversity scientist, I was slightly alarmed by that reply, but that is the nub of the problem, and it is a really good question. Can we inform people before the pre-planning stage which areas are suitable for development and which are not, based on the ecological risk they would carry if they were damaged? This is about looking in a totally different way at where to put our energies, and it would do what it did for those extractive industries and provide, in this Bill, a pragmatic and fast way for developers to move on.

These two amendments are very much in line with that sentiment. We already have in place a mechanism that should be doing this—land use frameworks— but in the absence of that, I bring forward my Amendment 115. It would provide that, when developing their local plans, local authorities must consider the habitats regulations and conduct strategic environmental assessments for all sites proposed for development. Amendment 116 seeks to ensure the same with spatial development strategies, so that local authorities will have already done the work on the habitats regulations, and planners can then move on to the areas where they know they are not going to get huge pushback the minute they submit their plans to the planning authorities. Such measures would highlight the areas that can be developed, streamline the process and protect those really important areas of biodiversity—all things that the Bill’s key objectives set out to do. They would just change where these things sit in the process to ensure that it is good for building and good for nature.

Finally, although the majority of planning delays are caused not by environmental regulations but by other pressures, such as lack of resource and expertise in our planning departments, I want to emphasise that my amendment would also reduce costs. The work would have been done already, so we would not have a whole slew of environmental impact assessments, for example, coming in at a later stage, and the duplication that causes much of this delay. I beg to move.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, for her introduction to this amendment, to which I put my name.

I have read carefully what the Minister said in Committee and during the various meetings that have taken place, which she kindly arranged. I am comforted somewhat by the assurances given that both local plans and spatial strategies will be required to take account of the habitats and species regulations and to conduct appropriate environmental assessments. As the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, outlined, the aim of these amendments—in conjunction with Amendment 130, which we will debate later—is very much to encourage as much of the heavy lifting on habitats regulations compliance as possible to be undertaken in advance of planning applications, in order to guide developers away from more sensitive sites so they can achieve a faster trip through the planning process.

There is, however, one issue that remains unresolved in my mind, which is the question raised by Amendment 116 as to whether the spatial strategies will be required to take account of the land use framework. I was encouraged on Monday when the Minister spontaneously referred to the land use framework. At least that must mean that the land use framework is still alive; I thought it might have been parked by new Ministers. Perhaps the Minister could assure us about the relationship between strategic spatial plans—and indeed local plans—and the land use framework, and when we might expect to see the land use framework. If used properly, it would obviate many of the requirements of Part 3 by having a rational approach to competing land use demands.