Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 87BA. The most important vehicle for nature recovery in this country is via the local nature recovery strategies being developed by the 48 local authorities in charge. One can design a recovery strategy only if one knows what is there in the first place, or rather what is not there, what is lacking and needs to be recovered. My noble friend’s amendment is wise and right, but I would urge the Government to go further, since many organisations collect species information, often working collaboratively to pool data and make it available for research and conservation purposes.

The primary network for this collaboration is the National Biodiversity Network, the NBN, which brings together government bodies, charities, volunteer-led recording schemes, data aggregators and networks. The NBN is a charity that oversees the UK-wide partnership for gathering and sharing biodiversity data.

Then we have the Biological Records Centre, the BRC, which was established in 1964. The BRC co-ordinates and supports wildlife recording schemes and societies across the UK, working with volunteer recorders. It manages the online recording tools called iRecord and iNaturalistUK, and its data is published on the NBN Atlas.

Then we come to the local environmental records centres, the LERCs, the organisation mentioned in my noble friend’s amendment. Natural England has divided England into 159 distinct national character areas, or NCAs. Each NCA is defined by a unique combination of natural and human factors, including landscape, biodiversity, geodiversity—that is geology and land forms—history, and cultural and economic activity.

That information is invaluable in helping authorities develop their LNRS but so is all available data, government and private. My noble friend’s amendment asks that the biodiversity information collected in the course of a planning application should be given to the LERCS—I would add that it should be given to the NBN and the BRC also. We cannot have enough data available for decision-making.

Where I depart from my noble friend’s amendment is that he wants to make it compulsory and legal; I would hope that is not necessary and that exhortation from the Government to the local authorities would ensure that this information is sent to the three organisations we have mentioned in our amendments.

I hope that they will not use the excuse that this is all confidential in the planning application and they cannot send it. That is nonsense; it should not be deemed confidential, and it should be passed on to those organisations. If the Secretary of State wants another new slogan in addition to “Build, baby, build”, I would suggest “Data, baby, data, data, data”.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in my name in this group, starting with Amendment 87FB. These are about bats, which I will come on to in a minute.

In the meantime, I would like to say that His Majesty’s Government have made a number of statements complaining about the obstructive planning laws which impede building. The Government are to be applauded in taking this sensible viewpoint, and I am very happy to help them by putting down these amendments, which will, I hope, alleviate one of the expensive and absurd difficulties that come in the way of those seeking to build. As I said at Second Reading, bats are an example of good intention being taken over by those concerned with the implementation of the legislation extending their remit to an absurd degree.

I quoted at Second Reading the £100 million bat tunnel—as my noble friend Lord Lucas pointed out at the time, that is 10 doors to this House. There was also my own case of having a house demolished, which the bat people had confirmed was bat-free. Nevertheless, they insisted on each tile being removed one by one, which meant I had to employ six people for four weeks, removing tiles one by one for inspection by a bat person. This cost £30,000, as opposed to one man and a machine taking half a day, which would have cost £500.

The legislation initiated under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 goes through Natural England to the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management which sets the competency standards and that inspectors are registered with them. It has become an industry of its own. Local authorities, in order to avoid criticism for not complying with the Wildlife and Countryside Act, go for the easy life and automatically demand an inspection for bats even where it may not be a sensible or reasonable request. This is then carried out by the registered bat inspectors, which would be fine, but it is abused, as in my case, where, with no evidence of bats, an extra £30,000 had to be paid to confirm their inspection.

I recently came across the case of a young couple wishing to alter their attic to add needed extra accommodation. They were required by the local authority to have a preliminary bat inspection at a cost of £1,000. Without this inspection, the local authority would not permit them to even apply for planning consent, which might not have been granted. Why could they not put in for planning and, if it was approved, carry out a survey where at least they would be putting some money towards something positive?

Amendments 203B, 203C and 87FC seek to ensure that there is some comeback to unreasonable requests so that the system is not allowed to run wild, as it does at the present time. My Amendment 87FB would enable some form of discipline to be imposed on local authorities in respect of the demands for bat inspections. This is in line with government policy. It would assist in the development of housing, which the Government are keen on.

It gives me great pleasure to assist His Majesty’s Government by introducing what I hope will be a first step in implementing their expressed wish to bring some kind of sense to the planning process.