Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Addington and Baroness Thornhill

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, we now come to one of those wonderful issues where we have something in place that works, which this Bill will remove, and that is the protection provided by Sport England for playing fields and recreational facilities. I am in danger of making a very short speech or a very long one and am trying to draw a line down the middle.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

The former, please.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Clearly, my noble friend has heard me often enough.

The best playing fields are in nice, urban environments where people can get to them. Effectively, you have a greenfield site, often owned by a cash-strapped local authority or an independent school that has been increasingly under pressure to improve exam results rather than develop the whole picture. The playing field owners say, “Wouldn’t it be better if we had a slightly better new gym court and got rid of the field?” or “Nobody else is playing on the playing field because we haven’t maintained it”; they sell it off and get rid of it. Who cares? The people who play the sport do and the people you want to play the sport should.

What is sport? It is the ultimate community activity with health benefits, and public playing fields are essential for those in grass-roots sport to be able to address this. Go to any successful sports club, especially for sports such as football, rugby, and cricket, and it will have started on a public playing field. That is where you start. Even with these property-owning sports—rugby and cricket are the classic examples—where you are encouraged to take over, manage and own your own ground, you start somewhere else and develop on from it. You can expand your playing numbers by taking on smaller pitches for your junior teams by using them. It is an integrated part of it. If you do not have that capacity, the nature of the club will be threatened. So we have something which adds to it, but it is potentially a cash cow for some other groups and is sitting there in the right place, very tempting for any housing plan.

The body that has been protecting such places, Sport England, is no longer a consultee. That is what it is thinking and feeling. If we are wrong about that, I would be very grateful to hear it when whichever Minister replies, and your Lordships will not be hearing from me again. If that is not the case, there is something to be answered here.

My amendment would put in another duty; of course, it is Committee and this is just the first go, but I hope that the Government will tell me here if there is another solution to this—if they cannot tell me exactly at this stage, I will make myself available for any meetings to make sure that I know and can tell the rest of the House. If something positive is going to happen there, I will be more than grateful to go away and spread the word. If the Government are not going to do something like this and will just leave it to a general duty, they are basically guaranteeing losses, and possibly catastrophic losses. Unless you understand this and your current drive is for something else, you will ignore it, because we all do. What is your primary objective? We go there. I hope that the Government will tell me something positive and supportive with regard to this group.

We should also remember that you are supporting voluntary groups which do this at very little cost to the state at the moment. That culture of gathering together, paying for the use of the pitch and running up has to have a little space to grow. If we remove that, we will stifle the whole thing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has another amendment down here; I think we all know enough not to say exactly what her amendments mean, but the idea of play also comes in and tags on there. Such play is not as formalised or structured, but it is also important.

I hope that whichever Minister replies will be able to tell us that something solid will address this, not a general air or duty of “Oh yes, of course they will deal with it”, because we all know that things like that get ignored. We need something solid that will make sure there is a protection at least compatible with what is going on now. If we do not, we will have to go back to this, at least once, and possibly it will have to be decided by a decision of the whole House. I hope we do not need to do that, but I am quite prepared to do it. I beg to move.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Addington and Baroness Thornhill

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I will be very brief.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

Very brief.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I will take that advice.

I put my name to Amendment 237, because I thought that it was about an identification symbol. That is what heraldry is all about, except that we do not use it any more to define who is going to belt who over the head in the middle of a medieval battlefield. All I can say after listening to the speech on this amendment is that I have learned much, but I am not sure when it will be useful.