Impact of Environmental Regulations on Development (Built Environment Committee Report)

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Friday 19th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, the chairman of the committee, of which I was a member for the full length of this inquiry. I echo his thanks to the clerk and the specialist adviser.

As the noble Lord has outlined, we had an enormous task in looking at all the things that had gone wrong or could have gone wrong over 10 or more years of this Government, and what could be done about it. We heard some amazing pieces of evidence that, frankly, conflicted with each other. I was surprised when we ended up interviewing two Ministers, one from the environment department and the other from the planning and levelling up department, sitting next to each other, and I was tempted to ask them, “Do you ever talk to each other?” That is a critical matter in all the issues that the noble Lord has outlined and many more that I will try to cover, but it did not appear that they had. They had different objectives.

The noble Lord has mentioned the housing targets but the Government are probably 20% to 25% light on those targets for this year. Who are they blaming? There are lots of people to blame but not much action.

We had a very detailed response from the Government on our report, and I will highlight one or two aspects of it. Before that, though, maybe it is worth illustrating the problems. I live in Cornwall, as noble Lords may know, and a couple of weeks ago we had an interesting debate in the media on solar panels because some people on the council do not like solar panels on agricultural land because they restrict food production. However, then you start thinking about it: you need agricultural land for food production; you need solar panels for energy to keep your house or flat warm and lit; and we do not like windmills in many parts of the country because we like the nice view of scrub-land or whatever because it is environmentally perfect land to look at as we drive through Cornwall. There is a conflict between all those, and each one has its own recommendations and legislation but there is no solution.

The best example is the latest plan—which I hope has been cancelled now—from South West Water, because there is a water shortage in Cornwall. Some of us might doubt that after last winter, but that is what they say. It had a plan to carry water in seagoing tankers from the port of Fowey in south Wales, discharge it into a tank and pump it up-river in the new pipe to some kind of reservoir further up the hill. Importing water from Wales to Cornwall does not seem to be the most useful means of using our resources. The company now intends to have solar panels instead, which do not take fresh water but take a great deal of electricity. Again, do we need solar panels in the south-west of England, especially after this last winter?

In addition to what the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has mentioned, something else that came to mind in the course of our inquiry, which goes back a long time, was the lack of planners. Local authorities do not have enough planning officers, and that is causing delays to planning applications. The Government are blaming that on the local authorities, but most of us would say that planners do not grow on trees—you have to train them and so on—and the local authority has to have money to pay for them. A big issue that we are facing at the moment is the lack of finance for local authorities, and that is just one example.

There is a surprising lack of off-site prefabricated construction, which I think is a really good idea. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, mentioned that the large builders have a high proportion of orders now, but we also interviewed a lot of people who said it is very difficult doing it off-site because people do not like them.

I recommend that noble Lords read the response from the Government to our report, because it shows a complete lack of joined-up government. Although it could go better, and the Minister has said it will, a great deal of work needs to be done.