Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Inglewood]

84: After Clause 51, insert the following new Clause—
“Gardens Trust to be statutory consultee for planning proposals(1) The Gardens Trust must be considered for planning proposals as a statutory amenity society.(2) All procedures which apply to statutory amenity societies as planning proposal consultees shall apply to the Gardens Trust.(3) Powers conferred to the Secretary of State by the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 may not be exercised to remove the Gardens Trust as a statutory consultee in regard to any planning application.”

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, in rising to move Amendment 84, I ought first to declare my interest. Most unusually, it has been my lot in life to have lived in a listed building, in the midst of a listed park, for all of it. I am also president of Historic Buildings & Places, which used to be known as the Ancient Monuments Society, and a member of the Gardens Trust. Just to give more context to my comments, I am a member of the Bar, a chartered surveyor, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. I point out to Members that, according to many authorities, landscape is probably England’s greatest contribution to 18th-century European culture.

Your Lordships will recall considerable discussion in Committee about the education of planners. This is important because, in addition to what might be described as the core disciplines, there is a huge range of what you could say are very important and perhaps slightly esoteric, more peripheral matters which cannot really be considered part of the core knowledge or syllabus. I am thinking, for example, about listed buildings—we all know there is a crisis in the number of conservation officers in this country—and about manmade planned landscapes, battlefields, theatres, and so on.

The required expertise to deal properly with these things is not widely, easily and quickly available, either necessarily in local authorities or in other public bodies. We know that it is for this reason that a process of consultation with outside expert, specialised and respected organisations is embedded in the system to give access to often specialist, but very relevant, skill and knowledge.

The detailed system for doing this is not identical in each case, but that is not relevant to my argument. For my part, I am especially interested in—among other things in the context of this debate—the work of the Gardens Trust, previously the Garden History Society. Its focus is on manmade planned landscape, which includes public parks, but also the British versions of Versailles and, in a different direction, outstanding domestic gardens. These things can be quite extensive and are a crucial aspect of place, which is now becoming recognised as an important contributor to our general well-being and economic prosperity—something I became very aware of when I was a member of the Northern Powerhouse 11 for six years.

This is a specialist, discrete academic discipline, and the Gardens Trust is at its centre in this country. Many of the places it is concerned with are very fragile. After all, plants die and are easily lost. For example, if any of your Lordships wanted to go to look at Eastbury Park in Dorset—which was one of the great architect Vanbrugh’s most important commissions—they will find that when they get there and look over a farm gate, they will see a green field. It is all gone but it is still the site of it, and all the foundations and everything are there. As Thomas Browne, the 17th-century writer, aptly commented,

“green grass grows where Troy-town stood”.

I should add to what I said about my interest that my home has always been the focus of a listed park for over 300 years. However, due to abandonment and the planting of an epidemic of rhododendrons, supplemented by almost no family records because of disputes and problems with treason, almost all knowledge of everything has been lost. Despite inspections by English Heritage over the years and many other experts visiting the place, the knowledge of the place has more or less completely vanished.

Now, however, its full extent is becoming uncovered again, and it appears to be a large-scale, more or less intact, significant, albeit battered, very rare survival of a complete pre-Capability Brown park from about 1700-10. They are very rare, and it was completely lost. I mention this not to pat myself on the back or to tell noble Lords how perspicacious I may have been, but to make the point that important things do get easily lost and require genuine expertise to be identified and revived.

We all know that the theme of this legislation is growth—goodness knows, we urgently need it—and I support that. As part of this wider process, the Government have issued a consultation on the role of statutory consultees. Unhappily, that consultation appears to have been stained by the triumphalism of a notion of growth at all costs, everywhere, for anything, regardless of everything else—conveniently overlooking that in places such as Cumbria, where I come from, the environment is one of the most important aspects of promoting long-term growth, as I discovered when I chaired the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership. If this is destroyed, the goose that lays the golden egg ends up as Christmas dinner. It has happened in many places all round the world, to nobody’s benefit.

The Minister has said on a number of occasions that the value placed on the “non-growth” aspects of the planning system is in no way diminished by the proposed procedural and process changes under way, which seem to be essential and of which, in very general terms, I am a strong supporter. On occasions, though, something else other than growth is more important than growth; otherwise, what is the point of the town and country planning system? The involvement of amenity societies harnesses a great deal of real expertise for more or less no money and takes pressure off some of our overworked and often underresourced public agencies that are having difficulty already in fulfilling their roles. Let us not argue about that point, because it is self-evidently the case now.

The purpose of the amendment is to focus on this general but very real problem in the context of the wider reforms being proposed, specifically in respect of the Gardens Trust, of which I said I am a member, and I know it and support it. I very much hope the Minister can confirm that the importance ascribed to what I might describe—I hope, without any disparagement—as some of the essential fringe disciplines in planning will not be eroded further.

--- Later in debate ---

For the reasons I have set out—probably a bit too extensively, for which I apologise, but I needed to cover all the points in the debate—I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to think that my amendment has led to such a wide discussion that has shown more or less complete unanimity across the House about the importance of green space in place-making in this country. Where we can get unanimity like that, there is the potential to make progress.

I thank the Minister for her remarks on the Gardens Trust; as the saying goes, I shall think on them.

As I was sitting in my place, I thought that what we are all trying to do is to change policies and law. However, are we not perhaps creating a hydra that will make it, in general terms, more difficult for the planning process to work well? At the end of the day, planning is about physical specifics, not abstract generalities. The key to establishing whether this debate has been worth while will be seeing whether the country is a better place because of it. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 84 withdrawn.