Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Earl of Clancarty and Lord Fuller

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 185H in this group, which is a probing amendment. I ask the Government to give some serious thought to it as it addresses a gap in our thinking about the arts and arts practice. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. I am also grateful to UK Music for its input into this amendment.

This amendment would establish a system for locally identifying and protecting physical assets of cultural value—that is to say, the spaces or buildings in which the arts take place, be it a music venue, a rehearsal space, a recording studio, an arts centre, a theatre or a visual artist studio, to list just a few potential examples, and one can think of others. This amendment is intended to work alongside and complement the community value scheme. I should also say that I support Amendment 112 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey.

At the national level, my amendment would be helpful to and complementary to funding bodies such as the Arts Council, whose concern is primarily for artists and arts organisations, although I acknowledge that its new creative foundation fund will be concerned specifically with the repair of selected buildings.

Of course, most arts are being produced in local, non-residential physical business spaces, public and private. Sometimes they are purpose-built. They are most often furnished for a particular cultural use. If individual artists and organisations do not have access, or lose access, to the spaces in which to work or rehearse then they cannot work—or at least, they cannot do so in the optimum environment, irrespective of the value of their work commercially or the value placed on it through support by a funding body. That is the crucial importance of buildings to the arts, which we always seem to be in danger of overlooking. Buildings are always somewhere, and always in local communities.

I want to address one potential criticism of such a scheme, which is that the arts should not be preserved in aspic; fashions change and new ideas come in. However, the great danger in the present day is the unnecessary loss of assets which are still relevant and still have currency, but without there being any form of replacement.

The Music Venue Trust cites examples of music clubs which have had to close days after they have sold out events, such are the often overwhelming contemporary pressures on our cultural assets. Of our grass-roots music venues, 125—16% of all GMVs—closed in the UK in 2023. Last year, 25 closed, but we are still talking about an overall downward trend. GMVs are, of course, important at the local level but a circuit of clubs for performers is of national importance. The loss of so many grass-roots music venues threatens that circuit.

I will cite one other example: theatres. The theatres at risk register 2025, compiled by the Theatres Trust, finds that 40% of theatre buildings face closure without urgent investment. Sometimes, of course, such buildings also have strong architectural merit.

There is a real concern for our cultural assets in the current climate of economic uncertainty, alongside other pressures such as those discussed in the last group. Such pressures include energy and other running costs, rent, business rates and the depletion of council resources, alongside the selling off of council buildings and the contemporary pressures of housebuilding and redevelopment. All these things are piling enormous pressures on our cultural buildings, which ought to be understood as having a significant value, both in themselves and as part of the local infrastructure. The loss of such buildings is a loss—often an irreplaceable loss—not just to the arts, but to local communities, which often take huge pride in their own cultural facilities. The crucial thing, which this amendment specifically addresses, is that we do not think enough about the particular relationship between culture and locality. Local cultural value is not the same, necessarily, as local community value. I hope the Minister will agree with that.

At present, it is all too easy for our cultural facilities to quietly disappear without any local protective system in place to question that disappearance. As I have intimated, this is currently happening across the whole country. Such a system would give power to local people for the protection of their own cultural buildings and spaces. As well as the social effect, there is the effect on the local economy and the ripple effect that can be created in additional jobs and trade. Of course, this is something local people understand more than anyone.

In summary, the value of the scheme—it is not just for the arts in the abstract, but for the local people themselves, whom these cultural facilities serve—is the crucial point. The scheme has a significant geographical local dimension. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Coffey in her Amendment 112. When I first read this, my mind immediately went to pubs—historic pubs. Of course, we are losing pubs as an accelerated rate. But then I realised, having done some research, that since 2017 it has not been possible to demolish a pub without seeking planning permission. So, my noble friend’s concept comes straight into the ambit of other non-pub things. But then my mind went to the Crooked House, that wonky pub in the West Midlands. I will not say that the owners were crooked, although there have been arrests and there is a police investigation. That building was on the local environmental record.

I wonder whether the noble Baroness might consider strengthening her proposal, because this is not something that is done locally on an ad hoc basis by the local council. Historic England publishes some criteria—pubs aside—for other assets that are not quite yet assets of community value. Of course, “assets of community value” is not as restrictive as you might think: there is no restriction on gifting the pub or on it being sold. The designation does not even last forever; it is for only five years, provided that the use is maintained. I just wonder whether there is any merit in saying that, where a property meets that Historic England designation on the proper national criteria, her anti-demolition provisions ought to be extended to those pro tem, so that at least we do not accidentally and carelessly lose these buildings—non-pubs, or other community buildings —accidentally. We could give additional breathing space to local communities to put a bid forward for protection.