Impact of Environmental Regulations on Development (Built Environment Committee Report)
Earl Russell Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak on this report today. I was a member of the Built Environment Committee for a short period. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for his chairmanship, and I thank the other members of the committee.
This inquiry is important and timely. As the introduction of the report says:
“At the heart of this inquiry is the interaction between two government policies: a drive for development—particularly of housing—and … a commitment to protect habitats … Both policies should be achievable in a mutually reinforcing way. In practice, our inquiry has found that this has been hampered … by lack of co-ordination in policy-making and haphazard and unbalanced implementation”.
Today I shall speak primarily to the environmental side of this debate. The Government have strong environmental ambitions, such as being the first Government ever to leave nature in a better position than they found it, and in some areas progress has been achieved. I thank the Government for halving our CO2 emissions, which are now at their lowest level since 1837, but there is much to do and very little time to do it in.
As the tasks ahead have become more challenging, the political will appears to be declining. We have already seen the Government rowing back from several key environmental commitments or delaying them. Ambition is great, but it means nothing without a relentless drive to implement and clear and consistent policy-making. The transition to net zero by 2050 is challenging. It impacts all sections of society, and it will be a key part of government policy going forward. The transition must be a just one.
While there are strong ambitions, the Government are largely off-track to meet many of their environmental commitments. The Office for Environmental Protection’s annual report says the Government are meeting only four of their 40 key targets. To paraphrase that report, the Government remain largely off-track; many policies are at the early stages or are long-awaited; government plans must stack up; and the Government must set out transparently how they will change the nation’s trajectory in good time. The Government are also failing to meet their housebuilding targets. While they remain committed to building 1 million homes over this Parliament, they are not on target to meet that.
In my humble opinion, the general government response to the inquiry to date has been poor. The Government have not adequately engaged with or addressed many of the key areas, while in others they have provided the stock answer of blaming nutrient neutrality for the problems. The report went out of its way to search for potential solutions and point out clearly where the systems and processes in place were not working. Ideas put forward included giving housebuilding a statutory footing.
Underlying the key report is a continued trend of poorly thought-out processes, a lack of coherent policies, a lack of support for developers and a hodge-podge of systems and processes that work for no one. We have planning authorities that lack funding, a lack of planners and general systemic problems across many sectors that are inhibiting the need and the demand for housing.
When we need policy implementation across all areas of government to be a co-ordinated dance, we have something that in reality is much more akin to Laurel and Hardy than to Torvill and Dean. The idea that we can have either new housing or nutrient neutrality but not both is a false dichotomy; to accept that would be to reward past failure and to agree to continue to fail in future as well. We can and must have both, and the Government need to work to achieve that at speed and at scale. The idea that environmental targets are somehow of secondary importance is alarming. Environmental commitments must not be a convenient scapegoat for inaction, a lack of coherent policy or an inability to meet the Government’s own obligations.
We are one of the most nature-deprived countries in the world, while England has the lowest numbers of houses available in the developed world and the highest rate of inadequate housing in Europe. The Government must act at scale and at speed to change that.
Green Spaces
Earl Russell Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Earl Russell
To ask His Majesty’s Government whether they have plans to increase the number of locally available and easily accessible green spaces.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Penn) (Con)
Our environmental improvement plan includes a commitment that everyone should live within a 15-minute walk of a green or blue space and includes measures to reduce barriers which prevent people accessing them. Progress on this commitment is well under way through the levelling up parks fund, the green infrastructure framework, the urban trees challenge fund, the Access for All programme and the woodland access implementation plan.
Earl Russell (LD)
I thank the Minister for the response. I warmly welcome this commitment; it is extremely important. However, 38% of people do not have access to green or blue space. Those who are economically marginalised have the least access of all. Access to green space is vital for our physical, mental and general well-being. Can the Minister confirm what proposals the Government have to deliver the target and when they expect to make progress?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, one of the programmes I mentioned in my initial Answer, the levelling up parks fund, is focused specifically on grants given to and administered by local authorities to deliver new or improved green spaces in more than 100 of the neighbourhoods most deprived of green spaces across the UK. Some 92% of recipients of that funding have reported increases in access to green spaces in deprived urban areas. That is one example of how we are delivering on that commitment. I also reassure the noble Earl that we are working across government to ensure that there is a robust baseline for measuring that commitment, so that we can report on progress in future.