Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness. I find that there is much to commend in her amendment, which I hope gains the favour of the House and, indeed, the Government. I am also very taken by the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lansley, who will explain it momentarily. I have tabled Amendment 60 on Report to extract a commitment from the Minister and the Government that fees will include the cost of enforcement measures.

In Clause 48, the Government recognise that the local planning authority in England may set the level of a fee or a charge. Indeed, Clause 49 goes on to consider the raising of a surcharge on planning fees, which I think is going much further than my modest little Amendment 60. I am deeply concerned about the issues raised by insurance companies such as, in this case, Aviva: that the Government seem to be in denial as to the implications for potential future floods of their commitment to build 1.5 million homes in the course of this Parliament.

We will come on to discuss greater flood resilience measures and, indeed, possibly not building on the most functional flood plains, but at the moment the Planning and Infrastructure Bill has no measures to improve the flood resilience of new homes. We have to accept that these measures are expensive. They include such measures as increased insurance costs and measures to make homes more resilient. Many of them are geared to reducing the impact of climate change, and I think it is generally felt that it would be a small price to pay if these measures were included and recovered in a modest increase to planning fees. I do not think it would be disproportionately high, as the Minister responded when summing up on the amendment in Committee; that is why I have sought to raise this.

I am sure that the Minister, the department and the Government would like to see these resilience measures included. Many of them are now hopefully becoming more affordable than has been the case in the past. Life is about choices. If the Government are going to build on functional flood plains, we have to accept that those future homes have to be flood-proofed and resilient. These measures cost money.

The purpose of this amendment is simply to ensure that the increased cost of ensuring that those measures are adequately and properly installed will be covered in the cost of a fee. I do not believe that the fee will be disproportionate. Therefore, I have returned with this amendment today to make a plea to the Minister that she will see that this is only a potentially modest increase. It is something that she, her department and her Government are asking householders to do, and I believe that the enforcement cost should be covered in the fee. That is the proposal that I put to the House this afternoon.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 61 in this group is in my name. I will talk to that in a moment, but first I want to say one or two things about the helpful amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill. I think it points in the right direction, but we need to understand where we would end up if we were to go in that direction.

Some noble Lords will have participated in the debate that we had toward the latter stages of the last Parliament about the new regulations relating to planning fees. One thing that came through quite forcibly from that was that householders—for example, making applications in relation to their own houses—were paying significantly less than the cost of dealing with their application. I completely take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, that there is, and has been subsequently in the Government’s changes to the planning charges, some balancing of that, and that householders are paying more.

If I understand correctly, it is the noble Baroness’s intention that the fees charged should be proportionate to the number of households or the scale of a development—although that is not actually what her amendment says. The amendment simply says that it should be proportionate; it does not say proportionate to what. Basing it on the size of a development could mean basing it in a positive correlation or a negative correlation. I am afraid that when you write legislation, you have to write specifically what you want. Otherwise, the noble Lord, Lord Banner, and his colleagues will take it apart. We do not want that; we want to be very clear about what we are setting out to achieve.

I am sure it is not the noble Baroness’s intention to press the amendment, but it raises an important issue. When Ministers bring forward regulations to set out how the planning fees should be set and the criteria by which they should be set, it is at that point that I hope they will take full account of what the noble Baroness said and the purposes she was describing.

My amendment is derived from our debate in Committee. I did not have an amendment then, but we had an exchange about Clause 49, which relates to the surcharge that can be charged for the purpose of meeting the costs of statutory consultees and other bodies that support the planning process. When we reach Clause 49, we see that new Section 303ZZB(6) states that the level of the surcharge must be set so as to

“secure that, taking one financial year with another, the income from the surcharge does not exceed the relevant costs of the listed persons”.

I noticed, in listening to the debate, that new Section 303ZZB(8) says that:

“Regulations …may set the surcharge at a level that exceeds the costs of listed persons”.


We therefore have the curious situation where, in the same section, it says that it should not exceed the costs and also that regulations have the specific power to exceed the costs. I have not had a conversation with the Minister, but I have been thinking about this quite carefully. The purpose of tabling this amendment is to ask whether my understanding is correct. If it is, I think it would be very helpful for that to be said explicitly.

New subsection (8), which says that the surcharge could exceed the costs of the listed persons, relates to a specific application, so the charge does not have to be set so as not to exceed the costs of the work done in relation to any individual application. New subsection (6) tells us that, in effect, it is not just taking one year with another or looking at the costs, but looking at costs across all of these activities and applications, and that, overall, the listed persons should not receive more by way of income from the surcharge than meets their costs. I hope that the explanation of the Bill is precisely that: subsection (8) should only be referenced in relation to an individual application and could not be used to set surcharges so as to provide greater income to statutory consultees or others than the costs they incur dealing with planning applications.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 59 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, would require that any fee or charge set out in regulations be proportionate to the nature and size of the development to which it applies. Proportionate fees are of course vital to ensure fairness between applicants and avoid placing undue burdens on smaller developments. However, we cannot support this amendment as further prescription in the legislation risks reducing flexibility for local authorities and the Secretary of State to respond to changing circumstances. We agree with the principle of proportionality, but we do not think this is the right way. I hope that the Minister will look at our Amendment 103 later today.

Amendment 60 tabled by my noble friend Lady McIntosh would allow the cost of enforcement measures, such as checking whether specified flood mitigation or resilience measures have been properly installed, to be included in the fees. While I entirely agree with the intention to ensure that local planning authorities can recover their costs, we cannot support this amendment. We are concerned that this might blur the line between the cost of enforcement and the wider issues of fees, which are separate statutory functions, although this is an issue we should continue to look at into the future.

Finally, Amendment 61 tabled by my noble friend Lord Lansley seeks to reduce what may be included in fees for planning provisions made under subsections (5A) and (5B). I recognise my noble friend’s concerns about the overreach in fee structures and I hope the Government can take the time today to set out the reasons and intentions behind these subsections.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will confine my remarks to Amendment 63 in my name. Noble Lords will recall that in Committee we had quite a substantial discussion about the national scheme of delegation and the extent to which decisions should automatically be delegated to planning officers rather than going to a committee.

I do not really want to dwell on all that, other than to say that we are continuing to wait—in my case, with optimism—to hear about a national scheme of delegation and how it might assist in the delivery of our planning and housing targets. In my view—and I will just reiterate it because presumably Ministers are still considering how to proceed with the scheme—it was a mistake that the Government’s proposal for the scheme for consultation did not follow through on the original plan, which would have meant that where decisions could be made wholly in accordance with the existing local plan, they should be delegated to planning officers, since the democratic input of the planning committee, as my noble friend Lady Coffey just said, is and should be primarily in establishing the local plan and then we should be guided by that, rather than revisiting every decision under the local plan through the planning committee.

We also continue to wait on the Government consulting on national development management policies. I know it is their intention to do so. But, again, once we have national development management policies, by their nature, if they include policies which would determine how an application for permission should be treated—for example, in relation to planning applications in greenbelt and grey-belt land—those should necessarily go to planning officers because the planning committee would have no discretion not to make a decision in line with the national development management policies.

I say that to reiterate those points I feel strongly about, but also because it illustrates that when the scheme is first brought in, it will make substantial decisions about the framework within which the delegation of planning decisions is to be made. When we debated this in Committee, it was on my amendment which would have meant that such regulations were always to be by an affirmative resolution. I completely understand the Minister’s response that there may be quite detailed aspects of these regulations and that as a consequence there may be regular iterations—almost every time, probably, there is a change in the guidance, particularly the National Planning Policy Framework; we tend to have those as a little present just before Christmas every year—so we are probably going to get new regulations on a frequent basis and they may be quite detailed.

However, the first regulations set up the principles and the framework for how this scheme of delegation will work in the longer term. It is not acceptable for that to be subject to a negative resolution. This House should have the opportunity to see, approve and, as my noble friend says, debate the framework for the national scheme of delegation the first time those regulations are made. That is the purpose of Amendment 63: to provide that when the regulations are made for the first time, it is on an affirmative basis, and subsequently on a negative basis. When the time comes, I hope to have the opportunity to move the amendment and, if it secures support in this debate, I may well look to test the opinion of the House.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches are firm and constant supporters of the right of locally elected councillors to make decisions in their area based on clear national policies. The proposals in the Bill for a national diktat of delegation are the backdrop to this group of amendments. The Government are ostensibly in favour of devolution of decision-making. However, there is a tendency within the Bill to centralise decisions on planning by making it virtually impossible for local decisions to reflect local need and nuance.

Amendment 62A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, is interesting but could be problematic—actually, I thought it less problematic when I heard the noble Baroness’s explanation of the first part of the amendment. Although there are occasions during the life of a plan when unforeseen events arise which mean the local plan is not sacrosanct, on the whole it ought to be, otherwise it will be nibbled away at during its lifetime through precedent.

I have some sympathy with the second part of the noble Baroness’s amendment. Too often, housing sites are assessed as being able to accommodate a large number of units, then along comes the developer—with his eyes on the profit line—who applies for a different balance of houses in which larger, more expensive and more profitable units are to be built. The consequence is that the balance that we need, which is somewhere in between, is not met. The result of allowing developers to determine the density of a site is that more land then has to be allocated for development. I will give one example from my own area. A housing site was allocated in the local plan, under the national rules, for 402 homes. Currently, just over 200 are being built, because of the need—apparently—for five-bed exec homes. The local assessment of housing need shows that what are required are start-up homes and smaller homes with two or three beds. I have a lot of sympathy with that part of the amendment.

Amendment 63, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is right to seek to put safeguards in place in the rush to take the local out of local democracy. As the noble Lord explained, the amendment is to ensure that the affirmative resolution would be required for the initial changes to the national scheme of delegation. That has got to be right, because it will set the tone for the future of what is accepted as being part of a national scheme of delegation and what is okay for local decision-makers. That is fundamental, and the noble Lord is right to raise it in the amendment. If he wishes to take it to a vote, we on these Benches will support him.

The noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, has not yet had the opportunity to speak to her Amendment 76, so I hope she does not mind if I comment on it. We on these Benches will support the noble Baroness if she wishes to take it to a vote. This amendment would be another move towards empowering local decision-makers with the right to take planning applications to committee where there is a volume of valid objections to an application, and then to have the debate in a public setting.

Amendment 87F, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks a sensible change to help understand where the real problems lie in the failure to build the houses the country needs. As the noble Baroness hinted, it is not with local planning committees or authorities, otherwise there would not be 1.2 million units with full planning permission waiting for construction. Those figures are from the ONS, and I am not going to quarrel with the ONS. If the Government could get the housing developers to start building those 1.2 million units, we would be well on the way to the 1.5 million that the Government reckon they need during the lifetime of this Parliament.

This is an important group because it is about getting the balance between national need and local decision-making, and between a national view of what is acceptable and local elected councillors being able to reflect local need, nuance and requirements in their local setting. I hope that at least the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, will put his amendment to the vote. It is fundamental to the democratic process to have local decisions on planning.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

63: Clause 51, page 69, line 22, at end insert—
“(3) In section 333 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 (regulations and orders), after subsection (3ZAA), insert—“(3ZAB) The first regulations under sections 319ZZC or 319ZZD may not be made unless a draft of the instrument containing the regulations has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.(3ZAC) Regulations made under sections 319ZZC or 319ZZD are subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament (except for the first such regulations).””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require that when regulations for a national scheme of delegation of planning decisions are made for the first time, these should be made by an affirmative resolution procedure.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

65: At end insert—
“(2) After section 74(1)(a) of that Act insert—“(aa) for authorising the local planning authority, in relation to a direction restricting the grant or refusal of planning permission or permission in principle under paragraph (a), to grant planning permission or permission in principle insofar as the planning application is in accordance with the provisions of the development plan if the latter is up-to-date;”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This addition to the amendment tabled would provide an incentive to a local planning authority to adopt an up-to-date Local Plan and, in consequence, to regain control over the grant of planning permission in accordance with the Plan.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 64 relates to a subject that we did not discuss in Committee. It was tabled only at the beginning of last week. Although the Minister said there was just an anomaly, as though it was some sort of gap, I have to confess that, when I looked at it, I found it quite difficult to work out what this gap was. Under the existing powers, if the Secretary of State sees that a local authority is not intending to grant planning permission but wishes that planning permission to be granted, they can issue a direction for that purpose. If the Secretary of State sees that a local planning authority is likely to refuse a planning application, leaving aside the fact that the applicant might choose to appeal such a refusal, the Secretary of State could, if they sought to move quickly, make a direction for the purpose of granting planning permission, or simply call it in, which I would have thought would be the obvious thing to do.

The purpose of my amendment is to test the use case a bit. What worries me is that, on the face of it, the ostensible purpose here might be to give the Secretary of State much clearer power to issue a direction to stop a local authority refusing planning permission for an application that is not in accordance with the development plan. Clearly, the Secretary of State already has the power to grant planning permission not in accordance with the development plan. That is in Section 74, in a later subsection. The Secretary of State can still do that, but it looks to me as if what this actually adds is the ability to stop local authorities refusing permission in circumstances where an application is not in accordance with the development plan. We have spent a lot of time, especially those of us who remember the debates on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, emphasising the importance of local authorities having up-to-date local plans and that decisions should be made in accordance with those plans.

My Amendment 65, as an amendment to Amendment 64, would add into Section 74 of the Town and Country Planning Act a specific provision that the Secretary of State may issue directions in effect to grant planning permission or to refuse planning permission in accordance with the development plan. That seems to me to be the best way of guaranteeing democratic input into planning and, indeed, that the delivery of planning happens in ways that are relatively predictable and successful from the point of view of local communities. I commend Amendment 65 as an alternative approach, but, in the absence of Amendment 65, it seems to me that Amendment 64 adds risk to the system rather than substantial benefit. I beg to move Amendment 65.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 87A and 87D in this group. Amendment 87D is a bit of an outlier, so I will come to that later in my contribution. In essence, Amendment 87A is supposed to be a bit of a helping hand to the Government in achieving the outcome that they are intending, whereas the Government’s Amendment 64 really is a huge overreach. I should start by thanking Alexa Culver for helping draft Amendment 87A.

Government Amendment 64 would allow the Secretary of State, in effect, to force through planning permissions, even when material considerations such as failing EDPs, water shortages and insufficient infrastructure would normally warrant planning refusal. In the press release that was put out, although it did not directly mention the amendment, the closest explanation that could be found was:

“Ministers will be able to issue ‘holding directions’ to stop councils refusing planning permission whilst they consider using their ‘call-in’ powers. Under existing rules, they can only issue these holds when councils are set to approve applications”.


The suggestion is that this amendment would allow the Government properly to use their call-in powers.

It is possible that this explanation is a red herring and does not match the much broader powers contained in Amendment 64. At the moment, Written Ministerial Statements can govern the procedure for call-in; there is no need for legislation to improve or refine the process. I have suggested an alternative to the Government through Amendment 87A. Planning authorities are allowed to refuse planning permission only when there are justified grounds to do so. If that refusal is appealed, of course, the Secretary of State can call in that appeal, known as recovering the appeal. Therefore, the Government’s stated concern around obstructive or hair-trigger refusal is a fairly minor one to legislate for.

The challenge here is that we need to try to make sure that we improve other parts of the Bill. To give a bit more detail, the clause would permit the Secretary of State to pass a new type of development order that prevents local planning authorities refusing to grant planning permission, for example where there is insufficient water supply or the like. Up until now, development orders have been used only to govern or constrain how planning authorities positively grant consent. This amendment turns that around for the first time and allows the Secretary of State to prevent refusals of planning permission.

Development orders have to be made by statutory instrument—although I believe it is through the negative procedure—but there are no obvious constraints on how the power can be used. The bars to refusal can be used to override local, real-world, on-the-ground constraints to development, and planning authorities may be forced to consent, for example, where EDPs are failing or unimplemented.

On the speed of impact, there are widely publicised water shortage issues in many parts of the country and I am very concerned that, given that this clause is expected to come into force on the day, we could see a flurry of directions being issued. Amendment 87A—by the good help of Alexa Culver, as I say—would not have entire overreach but would potentially help the Minister achieve their aim.

Amendment 87D is on something very close to my heart: considering local communities. They go to a lot of effort to register assets of community value, but at the moment the regulations are such that there are very few examples of buildings being protected from demolition under existing permitted development rights. Those are a pub and, I think, two other examples of some social issues. I think a theatre is a good example. I have seen this at first hand when a community came together. Registering an asset of community value is not the most straightforward of processes, but they did. When the owner of said community assets was starting to get fed up, they literally just pulled the buildings down, not even allowing the local community the chance to buy those assets from the developer.

I am conscious that the Government will have legislation later this year about local communities. I really do not want to have to return at that stage to press the case; I want to get these changes made now. When we bring in legislation to empower communities, which happened in the Localism Act and which I know the Government say they support, let us not continue to have legislation where the rug can be pulled away from those local communities. In the particular case it was a sports centre and a theatre, both much cherished and both used in marketing for housebuilding in that area and as reasons for people to move there. We are talking about all these new communities. Unfortunately, those things could be built and within a day they could be pulled down to make space for more houses—exactly what happened in that community in Suffolk. It may be the only example. I have not investigated right around the country, but I feel so strongly about it and this Bill has been my first opportunity to try to rectify what I genuinely believe is a wrong. I hope that the House will support that later tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I hear the strength of feeling in the House on this amendment. It might be helpful if I set out in a bit more detail the way the Section 31 direction works. It is important to note that a Section 31 direction allows time for the Secretary of State to consider whether to exercise call-in powers. It is exactly what it says on the tin: a holding direction to enable that process to go through.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, the use of holding directions helps to prevent exactly the circumstances he described by restricting the issuing of a decision on a planning application—whether it be to grant or to refuse—to allow time for full consideration of whether it raises issues of more than local importance, such that it merits calling in, and to help prevent the rushed consideration of such matters. I have dealt with a number of these call-ins of applications since becoming a Minister. Every time we look at a called-in application, we have to consider the criteria against which the Secretary of State will consider the call-in of a local application. I hope it will be helpful if I very quickly go through those.

Compliance with the local development plan is not the question here; it is whether the Secretary of State will use the call-in powers, and they will use them only if planning issues of more than local importance are involved. Such cases may include, for example, those which, in the Secretary of State’s opinion, may conflict with national policies.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am confused. The Minister referred to Section 31 directions, but surely, we are talking about Section 74 directions. Section 31 is to do with grants for local authorities.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My apologies: I got my numbers mixed up there. I am talking about the call-in power.

Such cases could include, for example, those which may conflict with national policies on important matters, may have a significant long-term impact on economic growth and meeting housing needs across a wider area than a single local authority, could have significant effects beyond their immediate locality, could give rise to substantial cross-boundary or national controversy, raise significant architectural and urban design issues, or may involve the interests of national security or of foreign Governments. However, each case will continue to be considered on its individual merits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification. Of course we keep the procedures under review in order to ensure they are fit for purpose. It is very important that we would inform the House in the proper way if we were to make any procedural changes in regard to the issues he raises.

Amendment 65, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, as an amendment to government Amendment 64, seeks to incentivise local planning authorities getting up-to-date local plans in place and to allow them to determine applications subject to a holding direction where an up-to-date plan is in place and the proposal accords with this plan. I assure the noble Lord that we appreciate the sentiment behind his amendment. As I have often said, we too want to ensure that local planning authorities make positive decisions and grant planning permission for development which is in accordance with up-to-date local plans. However, we are not convinced that the noble Lord’s amendment is necessary. Under our amendment, the Secretary of State will be able to restrict refusal of planning permission or permission in principle. Where the Secretary of State has not also restricted the local planning authority from approving the application, they will be free to reconsider the application and grant it if they wish. We believe that this addresses the intent of the noble Lord’s amendment.

Amendment 87A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, would amend secondary legislation to enact government Amendment 64. I assure the noble Baroness that this amendment is not needed, as we will bring forward the necessary changes to secondary legislation shortly following Royal Assent of the Bill.

Amendment 87D, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, seeks to remove assets of community value from the permitted development right which grants planning permission for the demolition of certain buildings. I am not responsible for the grouping of amendments, so I understand her issue about where this has been grouped, but we will debate it as it is in the group before us. I very much appreciate the sentiment behind this amendment, and I share the noble Baroness’s desire to ensure that local communities do not lose the community assets which are so important to them. We do not have many old houses in our town, because it is a new town, by its very nature. However, I have relayed before my story of a beautiful old farmhouse in my own ward of Symonds Green. An application came in for that property, and we tried very hard to get it listed before the application was considered. Unfortunately, the inside of the property had been amended; so much work had been done to it internally that we could not get a listing for it and, unfortunately, it was, sadly, demolished. The reason I am saying that is because there are a number of routes that local communities can take to protect properties, which I will come on to in a minute.

It is already the case that the demolition permitted development right excludes many types of buildings which are particularly valued by local communities. We know how important these buildings are, and Members across the House have stated this both this afternoon and in previous debates. These include pubs, concert halls, theatres, live music venues and many other buildings of local value.

Local planning authorities, as I have stated before and as I was reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, can use Article 4 directions to remove permitted development rights in their area, where it is appropriate to do so. While I note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, about Article 4 and the possible complexities of dealing with that, it is possible for local authorities to apply for these in advance.

There is also another route that local authorities can go down, which is to set up a register of buildings of local community interest, which, while it does not carry the weight of statutory protection that Article 4 does, provides a checklist for communities and planners for buildings that cannot be listed, against which they can be checked, should proposed development come forward.

We believe that the current approach is the right one. However, I assure the noble Baroness that we continue to keep permitted development under review, and this and other matters related to that are always under review. With these assurances, I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I think we are debating Amendment 65, which I moved.

The debate has illustrated that, in effect, this is the debate we ought to have had in Committee. There is one set of people—I count myself among them—who cannot understand what the Government are trying to achieve, and why the amendment is necessary, and another set who are saying that it gives the Government powers to do things that might be objectionable.

Actually, of course, the Government have all those powers. If they wanted, for example, to grant planning permission to all data centres, they could issue guidance for that purpose. They could issue national development management policies, for which they have powers. The question I keep coming back to, which is where I started, is: what is this trying to achieve? Calling it an “anomaly” seems to be completely misleading. If you put it alongside a holding direction to stop the granting of planning permission, that stops a local authority giving planning permission because, once it is given, you cannot take it away. Having a holding direction to stop the refusal of planning permission simply stops the local authority saying no, and then the applicant has the opportunity for appeal or a further application, and many other routes—and the Secretary of State has many routes to deal with it. I am afraid that I cannot see the benefit.

The Minister was kind enough to say that my amendment was not necessary, as she wants to do the things that my amendment calls for, so that is fine. So I do not need to proceed with my amendment and will beg leave to withdraw it, in expectation that we will focus on Amendment 64 itself.

Amendment 65, as an amendment to Amendment 64, withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to two amendments in this group. Government Amendment 68 would permit Natural England to not respond to requests for advice under Section 4(1) of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act, so that it can prioritise more important cases. That reflects pretty well what is happening at the moment, if the truth were known, because the reality is that Natural England’s resources are very thinly stretched and, in many cases, it provides advice simply on the basis of standing guidance and sometimes on the basis of empty silence. I want to probe the Minister a bit further on this and I apologise for giving her grief when she is clearly beset with some affliction.

I have three questions. The first is, it is my understanding that Natural England would have to consult only the Secretary of State on the development of this statement about how it intends to deal with requests for advice. Should there not be a wider consultation on such a statement, which is important for how local planning authorities are assisted to make more informed planning decisions?

The second question is: has the Minister any concerns about Natural England reducing further its support to local planning authorities when we know that only one in three local planning authorities now has in-house ecological advice? We are facing a reduction in the advice coming from Natural England and a reduction in the available advice to local authorities. I know that they can buy that in, but it is less flexible and less readily available.

My third question is: should we perhaps wait for this change to happen once the Government’s forthcoming consultation on statutory consultees has taken place? This is a consultation about consultation—this is the sort of world we live in these days.

Noble Lords are being asked to approve this change, which it is intended will come in immediately on the passing of the Bill, and there is a specific clause that effects that, without seeing the wider picture of reform for statutory consultees within which the statement of prioritisation would sit. If a requirement to consult more widely on the statement that Natural England is supposed to produce were placed in the Bill, that would enable proper consideration once the picture on statutory consultees had been settled. So I think that hastening rather more slowly on this would make for a much better decision.

I support Amendment 194 from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. In Committee, the Minister said that the Government would expect any delegation by the Secretary of State of Natural England’s role in developing or implementing an EDP to be generally to a public body. In talking to the Minister—I was pleased to be able to talk directly to both Ministers about this issue—the only examples that so far have been put forward for this power of delegation have been either to National Parks England or the Marine Management Organisation, in circumstances where the expertise might be more relevant to a particular EDP. That is entirely appropriate. If a reliable public body is publicly accountable and has the right sort of expertise to draw up and implement an EDP, it is appropriate that that happens. But, if it is normally going to be a public body, why do we not just say “a public body” in the Bill rather than “another person”?

There needs to be a lot of clarity here about the difference between delegating to “another person” to develop and implement an EDP and the sorts of partnerships that I am sure most EDPs will involve, where Natural England can partner with or delegate the delivery but not the preparation of part of an EDP to a whole range of partners, including businesses, including some of the natural resources businesses that are growing up, NGOs, landowners and farmers. I am sure that there will be a huge range of people joined with Natural England in delivering EDPs and that that will happen widely. But that will happen with Natural England as the co-ordinating body, co-ordinating the delivery by partners in line with the EDP.

That partnership working is absolutely admirable and can happen without this delegation provision. Clause 86 is, in reality, about taking the development and/or the delivery of these potentially highly controversial EDPs away from the body that is the Government’s statutory adviser and agency on nature conservation and potentially giving extensive responsibilities and powers to a person or persons as yet unidentified. If they are to be public bodies, why not state that in the Bill? If they are not, can the Minister help us understand a bit more who these non-public bodies might be? Can she give us some examples? I would find it very difficult to believe that a private individual or organisation would have the range of expertise and experience that statutory bodies accrue from doing these things successively over time, and which they will develop even more as they take forward successive EDPs and learn increasingly how to do it.

If I were a landowner, I would be very anxious about not knowing who might, in the future, have all these Natural England powers to develop and implement EDPs; not knowing their background and expertise; not knowing the extent of the powers they are to be given, and their stance on and approach towards compulsory purchase. Public bodies are, to a large extent, known quantities; another person or persons unknown are not. If public bodies screw up, the Government can sack the chairman. I know all about that. The Government have no sanctions of that sort for private bodies. Can the Minister tell us how they will hold them accountable? Can she reassure landowners about their concerns? If Ministers are pretty clear that, in reality, they would delegate these important duties and powers only to a public body, I would suggest that the safest way forward is simply to reassure everybody by saying in the Bill that it will be a public body.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to speak to all the amendments in this group. I want to speak to Amendment 200 and make just one remark about Amendment 194.

I am not persuaded by Amendment 194. Our day- by-day experience of working with organisations which provide environmental impact assessments and environmental outcome reports, and that have all the expertise we might need in this context, is not to be found exclusively in public bodies, so I would not support this amendment.

Turning to Amendment 200, in Committee we had a short debate about the relationship between Natural England and the making of development plans. Clearly, as we noted then, Natural England has to have regard to these. The sooner Natural England can be aware of the potential requirement for environmental delivery plans, the better. They do not necessarily start at that stage, but they can certainly engage in programming for their activity. The pressure on them is clearly going to be considerable. My Amendment 200 is about local authorities having a duty to tell Natural England when they have potential sites for development. I interpret this as being at Regulation 19 stage. If they are coming forward with the development sites they are proposing for consultation, they should tell Natural England. Natural England can then factor into the thinking about environmental development plans what might emerge, typically a year or more after that point, as the adoption of a development plan. It gives them access and time.

I completely understand if the Minister says that this is not necessary because they can already do this. We are talking about statutory processes and local planning authorities who are so pressed that they will not do what they are not required to do. In order to make this system work, a Regulation 19 requirement to notify Natural England to inform the process of EDP making would be a helpful addition.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has made a very important, practical point.

I shall speak chiefly against government Amendment 68. I shall also briefly reflect on Amendment 194, following the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Young, about these powers being delegated to another person. I hope the Minister can reassure me that this is not in the Government’s mind. I hope she can guarantee that there will not be the outsourcing to giant multinational companies that are expert in bidding for contracts but terrible at delivering on them that we have seen in so many areas of government, and that we will not see another outsourcing disaster follow the many other outsourcing disasters. When we think about what has happened, for example, with building control, it is really important that oversight is not outsourced to the people who then end up marking their own homework.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

5: In inserted subsection (4) of subsection (2), at end insert “and is designated as an Infrastructure Provider under Regulation 8 of those regulations”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and other in the name of Lord Lansley to the proposed change to the NSIP legislation would secure that any person responsible for the construction of a water project would be subject to the statutory safeguards provided for under the Specified Infrastructure Projects Regulations.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 5, I will speak to Amendments 6 and 7 in my name. They are all designed to achieve the same purpose, which I will go on to explain, but happily I do not have to explain at any length because of the admirable way in which the Minister introduced Amendment 4 and explained her approach to Amendments 5, 6 and 7. I am most grateful for the time she gave for the discussion last week on the amendments and my proposals for amending that. Noble Lords will recall that there was no debate on this in Committee; these are amendments tabled just at the beginning of last week. I hope we all agree that the purpose is a beneficial one: to facilitate the pace at which we want to proceed with water dams and reservoirs as nationally significant infrastructure projects.

--- Later in debate ---

I recognise that the loss of homes or of heritage assets will be of great concern; I recognise the sensitivity of those issues. I hope that the steps that I have outlined, and the very detailed way in which the Planning Act 2008 applies, will have reassured Members and that they will feel able not to press their amendments. I commend the government amendments to the House.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister. I beg to move Amendment 5.

Amendment 5 (to Amendment 4) agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

6: In inserted subsection (3) of subsection (3), at end insert “and is designated as an Infrastructure Provider under Regulation 8 of those regulations”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and other in the name of Lord Lansley to the proposed change to the NSIP legislation would secure that any person responsible for the construction of a water project would be subject to the statutory safeguards provided for under the Specified Infrastructure Projects Regulations.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 306, which is in this group in my name, but I want to make a number of other points. First, I want to note that we have just agreed Clause 65. I remember that my noble friend Lord Caithness did ask a question in a previous group at an earlier time about the opportunity to challenge an environmental delivery plan, to which the answer was that there was a provision for that somewhere. This is indeed true; it is in Clause 65, which we have just agreed. I will just point out—we may need to return to it and check that we are clear—it is a challenge by way of judicial review; there is not the opportunity to challenge an environmental delivery plan in circumstances where one believes that the facts and the evidence are wrong. The merits of the decisions may not be challenged; only the procedural aspects may be challenged by way of judicial review.

I mention that because, in this group, my noble friend in his subsection (1)(c) of the new clause in Amendment 308 refers to a right of appeal in relation to the establishment of the levy. This is an appeal on a question of fact, so it is a different kind of an appeal for a different purpose. I think that it is rather a good thing, but the question is: to whom should it go? Clause 70 sets out that there may be an appeal, but, unfortunately, it does not say to whom, or how or whatever. Do the Government happen to know to whom the appeal will be made? When I look at Clause 69 and the provisions setting out at some length how the charging schedules may be established in regulations, it seems to me awfully similar to the legislation that provides for the community infrastructure levy, for those who recognise these things. An appeal against the community infrastructure levy would be to the District Valuer Services, so it might be sensible for Ministers, if they can do nothing else, to at least tell us if it is the intention that the District Valuer Services would undertake the work on charging schedules and levy amounts for the environmental delivery plans.

The point of my Amendment 306 is to acknowledge that we have this lengthy set of clauses that tell us that the EDP must be calculated in relation to its costs and that that must be turned into a charging schedule. Clearly, we cannot assume that the development will be the responsibility of any one person; it may be the responsibility of many persons. The charging schedule is actually very like a community infrastructure levy charged against the development, and indeed it might be imposed, and the charging schedules could, as Clause 69 says, be determined by reference to the nature and/or the amount of development. It could be very like a community infrastructure levy for commercial purposes; it could be so many pounds per square foot and so on. If it is very like it, it would be quite useful to know that.

The Minister might say there is not really a requirement on local authorities to consult about a community infrastructure levy, but actually many do. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that, when an environmental delivery plan is proposed, it will be the intention of Natural England to talk to the people who are potentially liable to pay the levy. Otherwise, I am not quite sure how we arrive at the point, which the legislation appears to anticipate, that the developers would volunteer and request to pay the levy. They need to know about it and be consulted. They should also be consulted about the charging schedule, not with a view to agreeing it, but certainly to be able to understand the nature of the additional costs.

This is linked to the second point in my amendment, which is about the regulations setting out when and how a viability assessment might be undertaken. Often, for developers, the viability assessment that matters is the one that starts out the development—at the point at which one is buying the land, at the point at which one is understanding the costs, at the point at which one puts all these potential costs together and says, “How much is this option worth? How much is this land worth?” The later viability assessments are potentially very burdensome and may torpedo a development, but that is not what we want to do. We want to arrive at an understanding at the earliest possible stage of what all the costs look like.

The regulations should provide for Natural England to talk to the potential developers who might pay the levy and make provision if necessary for a viability assessment to be undertaken at a relatively early point. To that extent, it is a probing amendment, because I want to be sure that these things will happen. They can, under the legislation, be included in the guidance that is to be provided. The question is: will they? If Ministers cannot say that they will do so, perhaps they ought to reconsider or at least look at whether the regulations should provide for that.

In Clause 69, when the amount of the levy has been determined, we suddenly encounter the proposal that the environmental delivery plan may be mandatory. I have not found the place where we understand in what circumstances and for what reasons the levy becomes mandatory as opposed to voluntary. I would be grateful if the Minister, either at this stage or at a later stage, would explain that to us.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I speak to my Amendment 304 in this group on the payment of the NRF levy and appeals. This amendment seeks to ensure that

“the cost of works for nature restoration and enhancement are covered by the developer, in accordance with the Polluter Pays Principle. The setting of the Levy schedule should act as a deterrent to developments that would have an outsized impact on the natural environment, redirecting them to locations with lower environmental impacts”.

This is an amendment to Clause 67 aiming to define the fundamental purpose of the nature restoration levy and to embed a core principle of environmental justice into the legislation. In this way, the amendment is quite different from the others in this group, and it is important. It proposes that the Bill explicitly states that the Secretary of State, in making regulations for the levy,

“must ensure that the overall purpose of the nature restoration levy is to ensure that costs incurred in maintaining and improving the conservation status of environmental features are funded by the developer”.

It further clarifies:

“The setting of the Levy schedule should act as a deterrent to developments that would have an outsized impact”,


thereby redirecting them. This is important to make sure that we are not just permitting this kind of damage.

I thank the Ministers for their letter earlier today. I was in Committee this morning, so I have not managed to go through it fully, but there are still concerns about the nature restoration fund and developers paying to offset and the potential impacts that exist in the Bill. My amendment seeks to change this by requiring the Secretary of State to ensure that the overall purpose of the levy regulations is that developments remain economically viable. The approach in the Bill has been identified by the Office for Environmental Protection as risking leaving the process open to economic compromise. The Wildlife Trusts, similarly, has articulated that it is essential that it is not the case and that achieving overall environmental improvement should be an absolute priority within the new system. It argues that that would

“correct the oddity of clauses which are meant to be environmental in character having an economic viability overall purpose”.

The amendment directly addresses this flaw by placing nature restoration, funded by the developer, as a primary overarching purpose of the levy. In so doing, it does three things. As I said, it upholds the “polluter pays” principle. It prioritises nature recovery; it ensures that the nature restoration levy is a tool for delivering genuine ecological improvements rather than a mechanism designed primarily to facilitate development viability at nature’s expense, and it directs the levy to act as a deterrent. A robust levy set appropriately will incentivise developers to choose sites with lower environmental impacts, thereby proactively safeguarding our natural environment and preventing irreversible harm.

This is a sensible amendment. I welcome the other amendments in this group, which I read as probing amendments, so I am interested to see what the Minister says in response to those. This is an important matter. I look forward to having further discussions with the Minister prior to Report and to her response.

--- Later in debate ---

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred to appeals. Levy regulations will be done by an affirmative SI. They will draw on CIL, so there is a potential for the district valuer to be involved with these as well.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister. I note that, in Clause 69, there is a provision that the regulations may require or permit Natural England to integrate the process—that is the levy process—

“to the extent and in the manner specified by the regulations, with processes undertaken for other statutory purposes”.

Are we in that territory? Are we in the territory where a community infrastructure levy, environmental delivery plan levy or the nature restoration levy could be part of the same process?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am not sure they would be the same process, but I think that refers to the fact that some of the same processes—for example, the appeal process—might be similar to the process being used for the levy for the EDP. That is what that reference is to, but if it is any different to that or more complex, because the way that the noble Lord described it would be a much more complex integration of both processes, I will confirm to him.

The noble Lord also referred to the viability assessment and the way that developers do this. In my quite lengthy experience of planning, I have found that developers are pretty masterful in developing their viability assessments. In the early days of this, they will want to look at how EDPs and the charging regimes around them are being framed. Most developers are quite competent at working up a viability assessment to take into account some of the new things that come along. The guidance point is an important one. We will always aim to assist those who are involved in this process with guidance, so I would anticipate that there will be guidance forthcoming. With this explanation, I hope that noble Lords will be content not to press their amendments.

Finally, Amendment 306A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, seeks to allow the nature restoration levy regulations to impose the liability to pay into the nature restoration fund where the impact of the development cannot be fully dealt with through the mitigation hierarchy. The levy regulations will already allow for differential rates to be charged based on the varying impact of development. It follows that development that is having a greater impact on the environmental feature will be charged a higher levy rate. Where a developer chooses to use the existing system, they would need to address the impact of development through that approach. However, should a developer subsequently decide that they wish to use an EDP, they could still make a commitment to pay the levy prior to the planning application being determined. As such, the legislation can already accommodate the circumstances envisaged by the amendment, so I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before my noble friend replies, can I just ask the Minister if—perhaps not now, but at some point before Report—she could just go back to the question on Clause 66 regarding the circumstances in which an EDP makes the levy mandatory and explain what kind of circumstances are anticipated?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I apologise to the noble Lord. I did not answer his question, which was quite clear. I think the issue of mandatory EDPs was put in as a precaution, but he is right—it would be useful to have some examples of where that might be necessary. We will come back to that between Committee and Report, so that we are all clear on the kinds of circumstances where a mandatory EDP may be put in place. It is important that we all understand that.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 187, 200, 201, 202 and 203, which relate to the relationship between development corporations.

Development corporations are important vehicles for delivering large-scale and complex regeneration and development projects. As we continue to deliver the many homes that this country desperately needs, we expect the number of development corporations to increase in the coming years. Different types of development corporations have been created in law to respond to the circumstances of that time. This has created ambiguities within the current legislative framework so that multiple development corporations could be created within the same locality. This risks creating confusion and delaying the speed of delivery for key strategic projects, which can be unhelpful and frustrating for all.

As the intention of our reforms in this Bill is to create a clearer, more flexible and robust development corporation legislative framework, I believe that these amendments are necessary. This is because they will set out the relationship between different types of development corporations by aligning their boundaries and removing any doubt over decision-making. These amendments will create a backstop so that, for example, if, following consultation, a centrally led development corporation had an overlap with a mayoral development corporation or a locally led development corporation, the overlapping part would automatically become part of the government-led area. The same would apply for a mayoral development corporation, which would have the same power over a locally led development corporation.

I hope that noble Lords understand why the amendments are necessary. Before I respond to the other amendments in this group, it would be helpful to listen to noble Lords’ views, so I shall reserve any comment on them until I wind up. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendments 206A, 351ZA and 362 in this group, which also relate to mayoral development corporations. I am supportive of what the Minister is proposing in Amendment 186 and the related amendments. It is helpful to see that there is an established hierarchy between development corporations so that, if the Government establish a development corporation, it trumps a mayoral development corporation, in effect, while a mayoral development corporation trumps a locally led development corporation. However, my amendments raise an additional—and, I hope, helpful—issue.

Before I come on to that, let me say this: the underlying purpose of the development corporations in Part 4 of this Bill is to give mayors, through such corporations, the scope to engage in not just regeneration but development. So mayoral development corporations can be the vehicle for significant new settlements, both as urban extensions and in new sites. That is helpful, too.

Of course, what we do not have in this hierarchy of development corporations is the availability of local authorities to propose locally led development corporations on the same basis as the Government and mayors can do. That was in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act but has not yet, with the exception of one of the accountability measures at the back of the section, been brought into force. Unless the Minister tells me otherwise, as I understand it, it is not the Government’s intention to bring into force the further provisions of that Act on locally led development corporations. For the avoidance of doubt, if I am wrong about that, I would be most grateful if the Minister could tell us so in her response to this debate.

Members who were attentive to the running list of amendments will recall that I tabled Amendments 204 and 205 back in July. Their purpose is to give other mayors access to the same powers to establish—I should say “propose”, since the Government establish them—mayoral development corporations as are available to the Mayor of London under the Localism Act. This is not to say that mayors do not have any such powers. However, since the Localism Act, they have generally been established under statutory instruments. Some of those have given mayors similar powers to those of the Mayor of London, but there are often gaps; the time pressures on these debates does not permit me the pleasure of examining precisely which gaps have been identified and for which mayors, but that does not matter. The point is that my Amendments 204 and 205 had the objective of giving mayors—all mayors—the same powers as are available to the London mayor.

I then found, when the Government published the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill in the other place, that Clause 36 and Schedule 17 of that Bill provided for other mayors to have the same powers as the London mayor. It struck me that, under those circumstances, there was no merit in my continuing to push Amendments 204 and 205, so I withdrew them. It further struck me that, if we provide for other mayors to have those powers under the English devolution Bill, it will run to a slower timetable than this Bill.

Therefore, Amendment 206A, which would bring into the Bill the new schedule proposed in Amendment 351ZA, is drafted in the same terms, substantially, as the Government’s English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. It would have the same effect—to give mayors generally the same powers as the London mayor—but it would do so in this Bill. Instead of waiting until some time next year—a time to be determined—and given that this is the Government’s number one legislative priority and that we are going to debate into the night if we have to, we can be confident that the provision would reach the statute book this year.

Based on the past experience of the unwillingness of Ministers to bring provisions of Bills that we have passed into force, Amendment 362 requires that the provision be brought into force within two months after the passing of this Bill. Therefore, we would be looking at all mayors having the powers by the early part of next year. This is important and relevant because we are already beyond the point at which the New Towns Taskforce said that it would publish its recommendations, including sites for new towns. It said in its interim report that it would publish the final report and recommendations in the summer; it is definitely now no longer the summer. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that it will do so shortly, as there is a degree of planning blight associated with their not being published. There is benefit to delivering on the objective to build more homes if we publish them sooner rather than later.

I hope that this Bill will secure Royal Assent this year—ideally, by the end of November—and that, by the end of January, with the inclusion of Amendment 206A and the proposed new schedule, the mayors will have access to those powers by the end of January.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 195A and to our probing opposition to Clause 93 standing part of the Bill.

Starting with Amendment 195A, I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify what is meant in practice by the provision that allows a development corporation to

“do anything necessary … for the purposes or incidental purposes of the new town”.

How is such a wide power to be defined, limited and safeguarded in its use? I would be grateful for a clear answer on that point.

Turning to Clause 93 more broadly, I make it clear that we are supportive of development corporations. Our concern is to understand more fully how they are intended to function under the Bill and to ensure that they are established on a sound and accountable footing.

I ask the Minister how local accountability will be preserved under the changes to the development corporations, given that they already have the ability to operate across multiple non-contiguous sites, an ability that will no doubt take on greater significance with the advance of devolution. How will such corporations function in practice alongside devolution? What safeguards will be in place to avoid confusion or diluted accountability, particularly in the context of local government reorganisation? This question seems especially pressing in the light of the changes that may arise from the forthcoming English devolution Bill, which your Lordships’ House will be considering in the coming months. How will the Government ensure that the role of development corporations sits coherently alongside wider reforms to local and regional governance?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I will start with the notice from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, opposing Clause 93 standing part. I welcome the opportunity to explain the intentions behind this clause. Clause 93 clarifies and extends areas for development and the remit of development corporation models. It includes changes to legislation that would extend the remit of mayoral development corporations, so that they can deliver regeneration and new town development rather than just regeneration. It also allows that separate parcels of land can be designated as one new town area, overseen by one new town development corporation.

The current framework is outdated and not fit for purpose. Each development corporation model was developed to address a specific circumstance at the time of its introduction. This poses a significant risk to the effective delivery of the development corporations. For example, mayoral development corporations can be used only for regeneration projects, as the model was developed initially for London but then widened out to areas outside London, including rural areas. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill will enable strategic authorities to create more mayoral development corporations, so it is even more important to ensure that the legislation is fit for purpose.

Amendment 195A aims to remove the power permitting new town development corporations

“to do anything necessary or expedient for the purposes or incidental purposes of the new town”.

I reassure the noble Baroness that this is not a new addition to the new town development corporation framework. This provision is already written into primary legislation underpinning new town development corporations, as well as urban development corporation models. The changes to the infrastructure provision include listing specific functions and bringing them in line with mayoral development corporations, with the addition of heat pumps, which have been added to the list of infrastructure that can be delivered by all models.

As development corporations are used to respond to the specific needs of developments or regeneration schemes, it is important that the legislation offers this level of flexibility so that they can be tailored accordingly. We all want to see large-scale developments and infrastructure projects that will support housing and economic growth, but they need to be supported by the right infrastructure without compromising existing provisions. It would be a step backwards if we were to take the power away from new town development corporations and instead provide only a list of infrastructure, as some developments may require new technologies. Decisions to establish development corporations and the powers each will have will be made via regulations. Their oversight will be carefully designed and subject to statutory consultation.

Amendments 351ZA and 362, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would standardise and extend powers in respect of mayoral development corporations to mayors of all strategic authorities outside London. I welcome his proposal. It is vital that we empower local leaders to transform underused sites to create thriving communities tailored to local needs. For this purpose, mayoral development corporations should be part of every mayor’s toolkit. However, we believe these amendments are unnecessary. The changes the noble Lord is proposing are already being made through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill introduced on 10 July 2025. Given its scope, that Bill is the most appropriate vehicle for these changes. I take the noble Lord’s point about delay, but I am not under the impression that there is going to be any grass growing under the feet of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I think that is going to get moved on at pace and I hope that it will be appropriate for the changes that we are talking about.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Since we have in this Bill Part 4 relating to development corporations, I fail to see why it is not the appropriate place to legislate for mayoral development corporations, rather than the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill. I think the evidence points to completely the opposite conclusion to the one the Minister just used.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I think it sits alongside other measures in that Bill. That is why it has been put into the EDCE Bill rather than this Bill.

Amendment 362 would commence provisions in relation to the development corporations within two months of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill passing. I welcome the noble Lord’s enthusiasm in wanting the changes to be implemented quickly, and I share his passion for that. We recognise that they are important measures, creating a clear, flexible and robust development corporation legislative framework to unlock more housing across the country, co-ordinating that with infrastructure and transport to support sustained economic growth. We also want the changes to come into force as soon as practically possible. However—and I would say this—there is further legislative work and guidance to ensure that development corporations are set up for success. It takes a significant amount of time to establish a development corporation, including essential preparatory and scoping work. We do not envisage that this will cause any delays to those interested in setting up a mayoral development corporation, but I do not think the progress of the other Bill is going to hold things up unnecessarily either.

It might be helpful if I cover some issues around how this is going to work. We know that development corporations are a vital tool for delivering large-scale, complex property developments, particularly where the risk—the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned risk—is too great for private sector delivery alone. To encourage the use of development corporations and reduce the risk of challenge, there should be clarity around their remit and functions.

Decisions to designate and grant powers to development corporations must be made by regulations. They are subject to statutory consultation, and they must be made with careful consideration of all the issues of oversight that we have heard about. The department consulted on oversight regulations for locally led urban development corporations last year, and the Government’s response is expected later this calendar year—I hope it does not run out before “later” arrives. Locally led urban development corporations cannot be set up before provisions in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 are commenced.

In relation to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about South Tees, the Government have issued a response to the independent review of the South Tees Development Corporation and Teesworks joint venture, which included clarifying the available measures to strengthen the oversight for mayoral development corporations. On 3 April 2025, guidance was published which clarified legislation and scrutiny of mayoral development corporations. I hope that that gives an adequate response to his question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

It is not my understanding that there will be fiscal devolution powers in that way, but I will take that back and write to the noble Lord if I am wrong.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I understood from what the Minister was saying that it is the Government’s intention to bring all of Section 172 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act relating to locally led new towns into force. Am I correct in that? I got the impression that that is the Government’s intention, but it was not quite explicit.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My understanding is that the powers in the Act relating to locally led development corporations will be brought into force, but I have committed to write to the noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, with a full explanation. I will circulate that letter when I have published it.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am sorry if I misled the noble Baroness. I meant to say that the Government recognise the issue around planning capacity. We have already allocated that £46 million for local government, and we must have the discussions with Sir Michael Lyons that recognise that we need to make sure that the capacity is there to deal with new town development corporations as well.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Can the Minister tell us when we can expect to see the report of the New Towns Taskforce?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

In the autumn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before the Minister replies, I just intervene, not having spoken previously, to say there are always two sides to any argument. There were clearly two sides to the argument before the Supreme Court, the other side being Dr Day’s argument that those people who had the benefit of access to open space should have been consulted about the loss of that.

I agree with my noble friend Lord Banner that, clearly, the intention of the 1972 legislation was that local authorities could dispose of that land and that they would be able to do so notwithstanding the previous Open Spaces Act 1906. The point that was asserted on Dr Day’s behalf before the Supreme Court was that those people who benefit from access to open spaces should have been consulted. The opportunity should be taken just to establish that not only do we need to change the law, we need to examine how and under what circumstances local authorities that wish to dispose of land to which the public have access should consult those people who would be affected.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

In answer to the excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, it was not my noble friend Lord Grabiner and I who described the situation as a mess. Those were the words of Lady Rose herself in the Supreme Court. I would not presume to suggest that the Supreme Court judgment was a mess.

While I am on my feet, I am grateful for the opportunity to mention that my noble friend Lord O’Donnell is here but was not here at the beginning of the debate. He tells me that he very much supports this amendment and would wish to be included in any meeting, if the Minister will grant one. He is a main committee member at the Wimbledon club. He strongly supports the amendment but cannot speak because he was not here at the beginning of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Lansley]

238: Clause 55, page 91, line 33, leave out “one or more” and insert “the”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and another in the name of Lord Lansley to Clause 55, line 35 would secure that each of the environmental features which are likely to be negatively affected by a development are identified in the EDP and the ways in which that effect is caused is also identified.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, was talking about the various views that were being taken on Part 3. The beauty of Committee is that we can ride all those horses. The particular horse with which I am concerned is trying to find for the Bill precise drafting language that achieves precisely what is intended and is as clear as possible about what we intend.

As we get into Clause 55, we are in one of the central provisions where the environmental features and the impact of development on such features must be identified, all in the environmental delivery plan, as must the conservation measures needed to secure the overall impact. We will come on to debate the overall improvement test. I note that Amendment 266 is in this group but I am not quite sure why; I think properly it should be in the group relating to the overall improvement test, which we will get to on Wednesday.

The most important amendment in this group is not mine but the Government’s Amendment 247A, the effect of which is to add specific language about the conservation measures that will have to be taken offsite and what is required in those to secure the overall improvement test: that they will

“make a greater contribution to the improvement of the conservation status of the feature than measures that address the environmental impact of development on the feature at the protected site itself”.

That is a helpful amendment as part of the package of amendments that have enabled the structure of the Bill and the objectives to be slightly better than they started out.

Amendment 238 comes at the beginning of Clause 55 and relates to the identification of the environmental features likely to be negatively affected by a development. We know what the protected features of a protected site or a protected species are because those are set out in Clause 92, on the interpretation of this part. I am interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has to say about her amendment and I will wait to hear that.

Amendment 238 would amend Clause 55(1), where the Bill says that an environmental delivery plan must identify

“one or more environmental features which are likely to be … affected”.

I want to check precisely what the Government are trying to achieve by the words “one or more”. If they are worried that an environmental delivery plan may be challenged because not all the environmental features are identified, I do not think this drafting is helpful. If an environmental development plan does not identify an environmental feature that is likely to be affected by development, it is potentially able to be challenged in any case, and I do not think the language “one or more” would escape from that risk. The environmental features are the starting point of an environmental delivery plan. If one does not correctly identify the environmental features likely to be affected, that plan seems to me by its nature to be flawed. So why the words “one or more”? There will not be none or there would not be an environmental delivery plan. If there is more than one, it would be wrong for the environmental delivery plan not to take account and identify those, and leaving them out would make it flawed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for that very helpful response to this short debate. I enjoyed many of the contributions, not least that of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. Cambourne was of course in my former constituency. I would say to her that we have not given up on trying to get East West Rail together on the A428 corridor. Perhaps we will talk about that off-site, as we might say in the context of this Bill.

We learn as we go, do we not? I have learned—it was not clear—that the intention regarding the environmental delivery plans is that, once they have identified a development, even though it might impact on an environmental feature, that feature may not necessarily form part of the environmental delivery plan; it may be dealt with under the existing habitat and other regulations.

That is very interesting. However, that being the case—I will not dwell on it, but we may have to come back to it—Amendments 239 and 240, on the ways in which that negative effect is likely to impact on that environmental feature, should all still be included, and if they directly relate to the development they should definitely be included. Those two amendments still have merit in respect of the drafting. We could maybe talk about that at some point. With the hope that we might revisit those points, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 238.

Amendment 238 withdrawn

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Our planning and infrastructure need to take account of everybody in society, and all communities need to be represented and protected. These are vital amendments to help make sure that that happens and that local authorities and other bodies are accountable.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will make just one point. While I very much agree on the necessity of accurate and supportive assessments of the needs of Gypsy and Traveller communities, alongside that, and as part of that, I hope that the needs of show people will not be forgotten. As a Member of Parliament, I had the pleasure of having quite a substantial show people site, which was developed from what was previously a Traveller site, and they were extremely good neighbours. Their needs should be taken into account. I do not want to see us in a situation where the loss of a Traveller site is treated as a detriment if, as in our case, it is converted for use by show people to come and go on a long-term basis. That actually was very successful.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly on this group of amendments, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. On these Benches, we fully recognise the importance of ensuring that Gypsy and Traveller communities have access to appropriate accommodation. However, we do not believe—to put it bluntly—that these amendments are the right way forward. Local authorities already have duties under existing planning and housing law to assess accommodation needs across their communities, including those of Gypsies and Travellers.

To impose further statutory duties of the kind envisaged in these amendments risks unnecessary duplication and centralisation, adding bureaucracy without improving outcomes. We believe that the better course is to ensure that the current framework is properly enforced, rather than creating new and overlapping obligations. For that reason, we cannot offer our support to these amendments; nevertheless, we look forward to the Minister’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support several of the amendments and will speak to most of them. Amendment 146, the lead amendment, is, in essence, the right approach. The importance of chalk streams has been mentioned. I used to live near the chalk stream in Hampshire, the River Test, and as a Minister I visited many.

I welcome the speeches by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, about the importance of local nature recovery strategies and the land use framework. My noble friends Lord Trenchard and Lord Caithness have gently teased the Minister—often it is easy to say things in opposition and then, all of a sudden, you have to face the realities of government.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, asked about the land use framework. A couple of years ago, I wrote quite a substantial LUF. MHCLG—DLUHC at the time—was concerned about the impact it could have on housebuilding, when we were trying to get a combination of food security and the development of homes and the like. The good news is that it was Steve Reed, who was Secretary of State at Defra until a few days ago, who put out this consultation. Now, of course, he is Secretary of State at MHCLG. I hope that, in his new department, he will not put a barrier in the way of the land use framework, and that together with the new Secretary of State for Defra, Emma Reynolds, this can be published as quickly as possible. I am conscious that new Secretaries of State often want to have a look at these things, but I am sure that Emma Reynolds will trust the judgment of Steve Reed and have an excellent land use framework, which should absolutely be incorporated into spatial development strategies.

I will not say more about LNRSs, other than to say they will be one of the most critical things to happen as a consequence of local government. Therefore, it is a no-brainer that they should be an integral part of SDSs.

I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, who tabled the amendment, cannot respond, but I will pick up on that separately. I want to get clarity on permissible activities. I would not want the SDS to start getting into the nitty-gritty of where there are existing rights. For example, there will be challenges around abstraction rights for a lot of landowners and farmers in 2027, when there will be a significant reduction in abstraction. The people putting together the SDS should be aware of that and need to think carefully about how that interplay goes. However, while it should be considered, I am not convinced the SDS should be the way in which permitting starts to happen—though I may have misinterpreted the amendment.

One reason why the Test is the best place in the world to go fishing for various kinds of trout is that it is a chalk stream. It was fishing that got Feargal Sharkey into the whole issue of water. Through my friend Charles Walker, who used to be an MP until the last election, when he retired—it happens to be his birthday today, so happy birthday to Charles—I know that anglers are very protective of those rights and substantially concerned about the water. My noble friend referred to the importance of good eco status. The Environment Agency’s principal measure in assessing eco status is the size of fish—it is a classic measure. There is a reason for that, and, as a consequence, that is why anglers are so involved. I would be nervous if the spatial development strategy started to get involved in aspects of licensing in that regard.

My noble friend Lord Trenchard tabled the related Amendment 355, which is more strategic and will be debated in a later group, but in one fell swoop Amendment 354 would give formal designation and protection status to rivers, which at the moment only 11% of chalk streams have. That is a clever device in order to achieve the outcomes your Lordships would want.

I wish the Minister well in making sure that her new Secretary of State gives a clean bill to what he proposed in his previous role, and that we get the land use framework as a welcome Christmas present, not only for this House but for the country at large.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I make one suggestion to the Minister, if I may. One way of achieving the objective that many of us seek for chalk streams would be to include specific reference to them in footnote 7 to the National Planning Policy Framework. That would carry through very successfully into many other decisions.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that, when considering how to implement what I hope will be agreement with these amendments, the Government pay close attention to the need to gather much better data than they have at the moment. The financial strictures on the Environment Agency over the last couple of decades have meant that its water quality monitoring is a long way short of what it should be.

I take this opportunity to praise my brother, Tim Palmer, for what he and other farmers on the River Wylye in Wiltshire have done to create their own farmer-owned laboratory to monitor water quality and to take action which has considerably improved it.

There is a lot that can be done, but you cannot take decisions on how things are going to affect rivers unless you are collecting good data, and that is not happening at the moment. If the Government work with farmers to collect better data, they will find that they get better results from this and other aspects of their environmental policy.

The other aspect I want to raise is this. Please can we end the snobbish definition of chalk streams that seems to have crept in during the last Government? I put in a plea for the Lottbridge Sewer, which is Eastbourne’s chalk stream. These little chalk streams that occur in odd places around the hill and the escarpment are important parts of the natural tapestry of life. They need protection just as much as the Test or Itchen. The definition of a chalk stream should be water type and water quality, not whether or not I can catch a big trout in it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, the two amendments in my name, Amendments 150ZA and 150ZB, concern coherence in the planning pyramid. Amendment 167 in the name of my noble friend Lord Banner covers similar ground.

The Bill rightly proposes that spatial development strategies should be aligned with national policies. That is entirely proper, but it is equally important that the whole planning framework—the pyramid, you might say—of national policy guidance, spatial development strategies, local plans and neighbourhood plans is coherent. We must not have a situation where they contradict one another: where an application complies with one part of the system but is rejected for failing to comply with another. That is an issue that—I declare my interest as a member—the previous Government’s London Plan review identified. The conflicts between the London Plan and local borough plans caused issues.

Amendment 150ZA makes it clear that a local plan must not be inconsistent with the relevant spatial development strategy. This does not mean a top-down approach. It does not mean that local plans have to be identical—quite the opposite. They will be tailored to local areas, they may go further in key respects, and they will provide much of the detail that a high-level spatial strategy cannot and should not cover. Equally, those developing a spatial development strategy should be building on existing local plans, not cutting across them.

I also know from my experience as a councillor, having borne the scars of a local plan that took eight years to deliver, that one of the greatest challenges in plan-making is the constant shifting of the planning landscape: new regulations and guidance arriving part-way through the process, forcing local authorities to retrace their steps and start again, causing serious delays. My amendment therefore proposes a point of stability: that once a local authority has reached Regulation 18 stage—that is where you go out and consult on the broad strategy with residents and others on the plan, and that is typically about halfway through to submission—any subsequent changes resulting from a new spatial development strategy should not require the authority to start again; in other words, the clock stops. Obviously, when the local plan is reviewed again in five years, it would take into account the new spatial development strategy. That gives certainty to the council to complete its work.

Amendment 150ZB follows the same principle for neighbourhood plans. Again, it would require that neighbourhood plans not be inconsistent with the local plan, but again, this is not a top-down instruction. Neighbourhood plans will, rightly, reflect local priorities. They may also choose to go further—for instance, by allocating more housing where there is a specific local need, or by setting local priorities that speak to the character of the area. Local plans, in turn, should build on the work already undertaken by neighbourhood forums and parish councils. Here too, there needs to be a fair transition. Where a new local plan is adopted part-way through the preparation of a neighbourhood plan, my amendment provides that there should be a 12-month window in which that neighbourhood plan can be completed on the basis of the previous local plan. That strikes the right balance. It gives communities certainty, avoids wasted effort and ensures that local plans and neighbourhood plans can evolve in step.

Let us be clear, these amendments are not about diluting localism. On the contrary, they are about safeguarding it, ensuring a coherent planning pyramid that does not weaken distinctiveness but strengthens trust in the system and ensures that local voices are heard within a coherent framework where national, strategic, local and neighbourhood priorities reinforce rather than contradict each other. That, I submit, is the only way that we can achieve genuine consistency in housing delivery, infrastructure planning and sustainable development while preserving the vital principle of local voice and local choice. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 150ZB, in the name of my noble friend Lord Jamieson, which he has very helpfully introduced, takes us into the question of neighbourhood plans and neighbourhood development plans. My amendments in this group—Amendments 154, 161 and 163—all relate to neighbourhood plans, plus one additional issue, which I will raise in a moment.

We are in the territory of revisiting questions which we debated during the passage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. Amendment 154 relates to what is presently in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act at Section 97 and Schedule 7. It is a part of Schedule 7. Noble Lords will recall that Schedule 7 has a wide range of planning and plan-making provisions. I think none of them has been brought into force.

With Amendment 154, I have extracted the provision within Schedule 7 to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 that allowed for the production of neighbourhood priorities statements. Neighbourhood priorities statements would enable neighbourhood bodies—parishes, town councils, neighbourhood forums—to provide views on local matters such as development and nature. For the purposes of this Bill it would include, for example, environmental delivery plans as they emerge, the distribution and location of housing, facilities and infrastructure, all of which will be relevant to local plan making.

This is intended not to be a neighbourhood development plan as such but to enable neighbourhoods to comment on what are wider plan-making issues and to be a more accessible format for neighbourhood views on development and not require neighbourhoods necessarily to have incorporated their comments on issues in their neighbourhood development plan. It is to allow neighbourhoods to have their priorities stated in relation to the wider development issues. Neighbourhood priorities statements would not, for example, be subject to independent examination or require a local referendum. They would be a means for neighbourhoods to engage with the spatial development strategy and local plan making and the processes involved. They would potentially ensure an overall increase in the engagement of neighbourhoods with plan making.

I keep coming back to the central importance of the plan-making process. We are all, in our various guises, as councillors, council leaders and Members of Parliament, disappointed—and often find it incredibly frustrating—that so many individuals, and sometimes even parishes and communities, have not engaged thoroughly with the plan-making process but subsequently wish to object to what development proposals are brought forward consistent and in accordance with the development plan.

This is an important opportunity to have neighbourhood priorities statements. It is also thoroughly consistent with emerging government policy. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill presently in the other place, in Clause 58, provides:

“Local authorities in England must make appropriate arrangements to secure the effective governance”


of a neighbourhood area. That Bill provides for a structure of governance for neighbourhoods It gives us no detail on what functions may be conferred on such neighbourhood government structures. This amendment would positively equip the forthcoming English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill with a very clear function for such neighbourhood governance to provide such a key function. I commend it to Ministers as consistent with their emerging policies in support of neighbourhood governance. They can start to fill in the detail of what neighbourhood governance can achieve.

Amendments 161 and 163 relate to the provisions in Sections 98 and 100 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. Those sections have also not been brought into force. Section 98 had the effect of providing detail about the content of a neighbourhood development plan. Some noble Lords who follow these matters about development plans will be aware that the legislation as it stands at the moment, which is essentially Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, includes processes around the development of a neighbourhood development plan but no information about the content of a neighbourhood development plan.

My noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook on the Front Bench will recall taking these measures through the House. The purpose was a very clear one, which was largely endorsed—that it would be extremely helpful to parishes, town councils and the like, when they are preparing a development plan, to know what content it should provide for. I will not go through it in detail, but it principally includes the amount, type and location of development, related land use, infrastructure requirements, the need for affordable housing and the importance of reflecting on design. These are all considerations which in our debates on this Bill we have determined are very important. This provision would allow the neighbourhood development plan to contribute to exactly these issues.

Amendment 163 is about bringing Sections 98 and 100 of the levelling-up Act into force. My Amendment 161 would amend Section 100 to make it consistent with this Bill by including powers to require assistance with spatial development strategies and neighbourhood development plans when plan-making.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

I thank the Minister. I will review my correspondence; I may have missed it, but I will double-check. I apologise if that is the case.

As I acknowledged earlier, Amendment 167 in the name of my noble friend Lord Banner covers similar ground to my own amendments. We are grateful for my noble friend’s contribution and for his determination to drive forward housebuilding and ensure consistency across the planning system. We will continue to lean on his wisdom on these issues.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Through the mechanism of interrupting my noble friend, I say to the Minister that it would be jolly helpful to have sight of those details about when some of the commencement orders might be made. As my noble friend said, we could save ourselves an awful lot of trouble on Report if we knew that.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

Before I comment on Amendment 185, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I will describe my view of a pyramid. A pyramid needs foundations and is built from the ground up; I tend to take that view rather than the helicopter view. The amendment requires that neighbourhood plans be given consideration in the local plan. That is a similar point to my own—that local plans should build on neighbourhood plans. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment in my name.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, sometimes I am afraid people use that kind of identity in a dangerous and harmful way to suggest that this is something closed-in and insular and, “We want to keep the outsiders out”. But research out this week on graves found in Updown in Kent and Worth Matravers in Dorset shows that people with west African origins were living in those villages in the 7th century, so villages have amazing, fascinating history. It is a global history, but it is attached to that sense of place and that can be really important to building communities, building identity and providing people with a sense of security and safety even in a difficult world.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and to support my noble friend Lady Hodgson in her Amendment 215. I will focus on villages.

The Committee will recall that the National Planning Policy Framework sets out the purposes of the green-belt policy, one of which—the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, may not entirely agree that it is working—is to restrict the sprawl of large built-up areas. That essentially is where the London green belt really came from. Having absorbed Hampstead Heath, Dulwich Village and Wimbledon and so on, the question was: how far is this all going to go?

Let us accept that but what is interesting is that the NPPF goes on in paragraph 143(b) to say that another purpose is

“to prevent neighbouring towns merging into one another”;

“towns” is the key word here. Separately, and I note it because otherwise the Minister would be on my case to refer to it, paragraph 150 says:

“If it is necessary to restrict development in a village primarily because of the important contribution which the open character of the village makes to the openness of the Green Belt, the village should be included in the Green Belt”.


I submit that that is essentially about the character of that village from landscape and related points of view, rather than anything to do with its relationship to any other settlement, or its history.

We tend to focus on the National Planning Policy Framework, but we should bear in mind that it was followed in February this year by further guidance, which in three respects looked at those purposes and tried to categorise the contributions to the purposes in various respects. It is interesting that one of the three purposes is about urban sprawl. It says that

“villages should not be considered large built-up areas”,

which seems obvious, but the point is that the guidance selects villages to be excluded from this purpose. Under “Preventing neighbourhood towns merging”, it goes on to say “towns, not villages”. In the third purpose, relating to the setting of historic towns, it says:

“This purpose relates to historic towns, not villages”.


What have historic villages done to make themselves so unpopular from this point of view? Why are historic villages not important in the same way as historic towns—and, for that matter, historic cities?

Ministers, including the Minister responding to this debate, will not recall previous debates in which I was very supportive of green-belt reviews. We had a green-belt review in Cambridge and, if we had not had one nearly 20 years ago, we would not have the Cambridge Biomedical Campus that we have today—we gave up green-belt land. I declare an interest in that I was Member of Parliament there, so I had to represent both sides of the argument, and I am currently chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum, so I have skin in that game too. Nearly 20 years ago, we gave up a significant part of the green belt to enable that to happen. Subsequently, a planning application came through for development to the west side of the Trumpington Road, which would have built on to Grantchester Meadows. We resisted that, because it was not necessary to take the development across the Trumpington Road and nor was it necessary for the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. The central point is that Cambridge would not be regarded as a large built-up area for this purpose, but it would have reached out and this would have meant the coalescence of Cambridge with Grantchester, a historic village. The same could apply to somewhere such as Bladon, in relation to Oxford.

This is about the coalescence of settlements and a recognition that the historic setting of a historic city, town or village should be protected. Can Ministers agree to continue to look at the definitions of towns and villages, and the way villages are being excluded from any protections, whereas towns are included? This is not an immaterial issue; it has been the subject of a number of appeals to inspectors and they have more or less said—I paraphrase—“Okay, this is a village. It is not a town and therefore it does not have protection”. There are circumstances in which villages should have protection; they have an openness of character and contribute to the green belt for landscape purposes, but in specific instances the nature of that village as a settlement should be recognised in relation to its historic role.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I first thank my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger and the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for raising this important issue of village and specific land protection.

We fully appreciate the intention behind seeking to make better use of underused land by the Government, but concerns remain about the potential impact of such changes on the wider countryside and, crucially, on the identity of our villages. Although this matter may not directly be in scope of the Bill, it clearly interacts with it, and I hope Ministers will continue to reflect very carefully on the balance between flexibility in planning and long-standing protections afforded to rural communities.

In particular, I draw attention to Amendment 215, tabled by my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger. This is an important amendment, which states:

“Any guidance issued under this section must provide villages with equivalent protection, so far as is appropriate”


to those afforded to towns. I will not go into an explanation, because that has been given clearly and concisely by my noble friend Lord Lansley. However, it is important specifically in relation to preventing villages merging into one another, and in preserving the setting and special characteristic of many of our historic villages, as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

We must ensure that village identity is properly protected. Rural communities are not simply pockets of houses; they are places with history, distinctiveness and a character that contributes immeasurably to our national heritage, and to the lives of the people who live there. This is a firmly held view on these Benches. I shall not detain your Lordships’ House by rehearsing our manifesto, but we will continue to stand up for the green belt and for all our villages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I hope to address that in a little bit—the noble Baroness may think that I will not, but that is the intention.

Local authorities continue to have various other ways to manage development in villages, and neither the Bill nor our policy reforms exclude the consideration of matters such as the character of a village or the scale and style of development, where relevant, in planning determinations. For instance, a local plan may designate local green space safe from inappropriate development or recognise a Defra-registered village green. Historic village character can also be preserved by using conservation area policies, neighbourhood planning, local listing of important buildings or local design guidance.

As planning policy already sets out adequate and appropriate protection from and support for development relating to villages, both inside and outside the green belt, I do not believe this amendment seeking to use green-belt protections to restrict development in villages is appropriate. Neither of these amendments is necessary to protect the green belt or the character of villages, and their statutory nature would limit the ability of local planning authorities to develop sound strategies and make the decisions necessary to ensure new homes and jobs in the right places. I therefore ask the noble Baroness kindly to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down, I point out that, in the guidance from February, the Government said of purpose D on the setting of historic towns:

“This purpose relates to historic towns, not villages”.


One simple change that would make an enormous difference would be to recognise that that purpose should relate to historic villages as well. Many of our historic villages used to be historic towns. Lavenham was to all intents and purposes a town; you can go to the coast in Suffolk and see towns from the Middle Ages that now are small villages or, frankly, have virtually disappeared. The history is what should be important—not the present size of the settlement.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

From what I understand, the new regulations were to provide clarity on the green belt. As we have said, they are concerned with preventing urban sprawl, but they do not remove villages from the green belt or prevent land near villages being protected from development through green belt designation. Land around villages that makes a strong contribution to these purposes should not be identified as grey belt, for example. We think that we now have consistency with these regulations and that villages and their historic value and character are already protected in the planning process.

--- Later in debate ---

In that context, I point out that this Bill is the second piece of planning legislation to come before Parliament since the Hillside judgment was delivered by the Supreme Court, with the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act being the first. I fear that, if we do not come up with a solution to Hillside in the context of this Bill, the Government’s and Parliament’s credibility will diminish in the planning and development sector, because it will see us, at the second time of asking, still unable to come up with a solution for a real and widespread problem, one that is crying out for a legislative answer. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Banner for raising this issue through Amendment 169. His last point was that this is the second piece of planning legislation since the Hillside judgment in 2022. The earlier legislation was the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. My noble friend was not in your Lordships’ House at the time of its consideration but he will no doubt have noted that Section 110 of the Act provides for the insertion of new Section 73B into the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, the purpose of which is to say that material variations are permitted, as long as they are not substantially different from the original permission.

What reading the legislation will not tell him is that, during the course of the debate on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, I introduced an original amendment, the purpose of which was to restore the law to the Pilkington principle—in effect that overlapping permissions would be lawful, as long as the subsequent permission sought did not render the original permission no longer physically capable of being implemented. My noble friend on the Front Bench, then the Minister, may recall that the Government at the time did not accept it, but did accept that they should legislate. There is a difference between Section 110 and the Pilkington principle. There are, in practice, quite a lot of cases in which the permission that is sought does not render the original permission incapable but would substantially amend the original permission, and does not meet the narrow test of being not substantially different from the original permission.

It was not all that I was looking for but it was considerable progress in the right direction. It was important, because a judgment subsequent to Hillside, as my noble friend will recall, said that the original planning permissions in these cases were not severable. You cannot go in, take some part of an original permission and amend it, and treat the rest of the permission as being valid. The whole permission needs to be sought all over again, which is exactly what has caused a substantial part of the problem that my noble friend has benefitted from, in the professional sense, because there are so many such permissions that would otherwise have to be sought all over again.

I agree with my noble friend that something more needs to be done. I happen not to agree with his drafting of Amendment 169. We would be better off saying of overlapping permissions that, where the later permission does not render the original permission wholly incapable of being implemented, it would remain lawful, otherwise you run the risk of inconsistent, overlapping planning permissions, which is not a place we wish to get to. It would also be entirely helpful if the amendment to be introduced would make it clear that, for the purposes of this, the original planning permission is severable—you can have a drop-in permission.

I hope my noble friend would agree with all of that. More to the point, I hope Ministers will agree that we have not solved this problem. In particular, we have not solved the problem as Section 110 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act, bringing in the new Section 73B, has not been brought into force. I have asked this question before and had a positive answer, and so I hope it is the Government’s intention to bring Section 110 into force, and I hope that can be done soon. At the same time, I suggest that my noble friend comes back to this issue on Report and perhaps brings us an amendment capable of amending the new Section 73B to restore the Pilkington principle and enable planning permissions that would otherwise relate to the same overall red line to be severable for the purposes of a material change in planning permissions.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Banner for bringing to our attention the practical implications of the Hillside judgment within Amendment 169 today. These are complex issues, but his amendment shines a clear light on the risks to developers and local authorities alike, and the potential chilling effect on much-needed projects. It is precisely at moments like these that the Government should lean on the wisdom and experience of noble Lords who understand the realities of these issues on the ground.

We have had the benefit of meeting my noble friend Lord Banner privately to discuss these matters in detail. That conversation was extremely valuable in setting out the issues so clearly, and we are grateful for his time and expertise. We will continue to work with him to ensure that these concerns are properly addressed. I very much hope the Minister will give a positive and constructive reply and that the concerns raised today will be fully taken into account.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 185L seeks to deal with instances in which community infrastructure secured through a Section 106 agreement—

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I would be very interested to know whether the Minister has the figure—if not, she could let us know later—but I think the National Audit Office said 17% of local authorities had not submitted their infrastructure funding statements. I wondered if she had any update on that and perhaps would let us know how many have failed to disclose.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

As the noble Lord predicts, I do not have the figure in front of me, but I will write to noble Lords and confirm what it is.

Amendment 185L seeks to deal with instances in which community infrastructure secured through Section 106 cannot be delivered as originally intended. In our view, this amendment risks unintended consequences which could hinder, rather than facilitate, sustainable development. I emphasise that local planning authorities can already take enforcement action if a developer fails to deliver on the obligations they have committed to in a Section 106 agreement, including failure to deliver community infrastructure where relevant. This may include a local planning authority entering the land to complete the works and then seeking to recover the costs or applying to the court for an injunction to prevent further construction or occupation of dwellings. This amendment would prevent the modification of planning obligations even where a change of circumstances means that the community infrastructure in question can no longer be delivered by the developer.

As I have set out, the Government are committed to strengthening the system of developer contributions, including Section 106 planning obligations. To deliver on this commitment, we are taking a number of steps, including reviewing planning practice guidance on viability. However, we must have flexibility where necessary to ensure that development, where there are genuine changes in circumstance, can continue to come forward. We must also think carefully about the demands we are placing on local planning authorities, which may not have the capacity or resources to take on responsibility for delivery in the way this amendment proposes.

Amendments 185K and 220 focus on the development consent order process and strategic development schemes and seek to achieve the same outcome. The clauses proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would place a legal requirement on developers to deliver on commitments made to provide specified local infrastructure as part of their projects.

First, I want to express my sympathy with the spirit behind this proposal. We all agree that communities must be able to secure the infrastructure they need, especially when new development brings added pressure on local services and existing infrastructure, including schools, nurseries and GP surgeries. In particular, I acknowledge that the concerns that may be driving the amendment relate to the impact of temporary workers or additional traffic on local communities caused by large-scale infrastructure projects, which can remain under construction for significant periods of time.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I want to add a few points to what I think has been a good and interesting debate. I remind the Committee of my registered interests as chair of development forums in Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire. Much as I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, I will not follow his track. I will revert to places where there is a very high demand for housing and a serious problem of affordability for housing. I want to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Best, in particular, and to ask him a question, if he has a moment to respond. It seems to me that he is looking to target the social rent sector by reference to the definition that he includes—not the definition for social housing in the Bill. He effectively said: social rent under Section 69 of the Housing and Regeneration Act but not Section 70 of that Act, which relates to low-cost home ownership. The targets he refers to would have the effect of squeezing the availability of support for low-cost home ownership. I wonder if that is his intention, because it is not one that I would be wholly supportive of.

However, I do support the delivery of affordable housing. He mentioned the National Audit Office report from June this year and I want to follow up on two or three points. My noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and I have both asked questions about the take-up of contracts for affordable housing under Section 106 obligations entered into by developers. In addition to what he asked, the National Audit Office said that it felt that the Homes England clearing scheme should become permanent. Since it published its report in June, the Government have provided a substantial and welcome increase in the affordable homes programme. The question is: to what extent is Homes England, through the affordable homes programme, going to be empowered to use those resources to take up those contracts, even if it does not go on to own the homes itself but rather acts as a clearing house by taking up those contracts and then making them available to registered providers who can access the affordable homes programme?

In addition, I will mention two things. The National Audit Office said that it wished the Government would proceed with issuing financial viability guidance. We are going to talk later in the Bill about further issues relating to viability guidance. I know my Front Bench colleagues share my view on this. In order to deliver more housing, there are powers available to the Government that need to be used quickly. Part of that is the issuance of guidance that will allow procedures like Section 106 to make progress. The Government have powers to reform Section 106 and the community infrastructure levy and they have not done so. They also have the power to issue new guidance relating to financial viability and they have not done so. So can the Minister, who remembers our debates on these things in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, tell us when progress will be made?

The final point is about Section 106 funding. The noble Lord, Lord Best, said that developers provided less last year by way of Section 106. I think that is principally because they provided less housing, so it is a simple consequence. If we can deliver more market housing, we should be able to deliver more by way of resources for the delivery of affordable housing. I think the noble Lord and the Committee will not criticise developers who feel somewhat unhappy. The National Audit Office reported that last year there was £8 billion in unspent Section 106 contributions. This is overwhelmingly for infrastructure that has not been delivered, but quite rightly the National Audit Office thinks it not helpful for local authorities to be placing obligations on developers—taking substantial resources, which sometimes can imperil the viability of a project—and then not delivering the infrastructure that is committed. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, quite accurately said, it is a contract, in effect, between developers and local authorities. Sometimes developers let down local authorities, but sometimes local authorities let down developers.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

After such an expert series of speeches on this, I hesitate to rise, but I feel compelled to support the noble Lord, Lord Best, and others who have introduced a critical series of amendments and raised a challenge to current practice. As somebody who has had a long-standing association with Exmoor National Park, I fully understand and recognise what my noble friend Lord Inglewood has said, but I suspect that we are dealing with the process and proceeds of bulk housing rather than the situation that he refers to, important though that is.

I have in the past had to wrestle with development appraisals and I recognise the points that noble Lords have made about that. The system is rather opaque. You can variously tweak the process to decide on the profitability, on your relationship with your subcontractors, on what you are prepared to concede by way of Section 106 obligations, and on what you are prepared to pay for the land—and all of these in one model. So the model is complex and, unless one is familiar with the algorithms that stand behind it, it is very difficult for local authorities to find their way through that.

We have heard that affordable housing is funded out of the development of market housing. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made the point. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, the question arises as to what we mean by “affordable”, since 80% of the market price in the south and south-east of the country, for instance, is still totally unaffordable to anybody with limited means, particularly if it is pegged to the selling price of market housing, which of itself often carries a premium as a result of marketing processes. That premium is instantly lost as soon as the house is second hand and on the resale market. Often, market prices do not catch up with that premium on the second-hand market for some years. Sometimes it is quite a long time. For somebody of limited means in need of a home, this is a matter not of voluntary choice but of what is economically possible and of their own priority as a candidate for an affordable home, based on the housing need and the length of the waiting list. For many people, this is something of a lottery.

The affordable housing component of a residential development scheme is subject to this viability, the core financial ingredients of which are largely owned by and the intellectual property of the developer. Bearing in mind what I have said about the general complexity of the whole process, that adds to the problems that we are dealing with. Developers are a breed on which the noble Lord, Lord Best, has previously expressed some quite trenchant views, and the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has rather spectacularly reinforced those this evening. I have no remit to necessarily speak up for housebuilders. Some of them are clearly thoroughly exploitative, but I do not think that all of them are. I feel certain that there are some who are decent, honest and disposed to be transparent as far as they are able, but my professional work certainly has revealed that there is a great deal of opacity to the whole process.

The nature of the affordability offering ranges from what in developer terms might be regarded as the optimal—namely, a shared ownership, because of course it releases a sum of money for the development through affordable rent—and what might be regarded as the least profitable bit, social rent, which is often driven by accountancy processes and profit motives. Social rent components thus inevitably get seriously squeezed. The whole process of affordable housing may get further eroded by being fitted out to a lower standard than market housing. I will leave that to one side, but it gives a bit of an insight into how much cheeseparing goes on in the whole process and how many adjustments might be made before the final product comes out.

I acknowledge that part of the problem may go back to the rolled-up costs of land acquisition and the expectations of the parties under the original sale of land, although I venture to suggest that some of the developer’s profit, taken in the round, in many cases substantially exceeds the sum paid to the original landowner, and part of that is rolled-up cost, risk, finance and all sorts of other things that are going on at the same time. It is also a fact that satisfying this housing need depends on the perceived profit from the development at any given time. The ability of developers to defer starts or go slow on a site, depending on market conditions, adds to the problem of congestion in terms of providing affordability, and those in critical need of something genuinely affordable in rent are effectively seriously compromised.

Mention has been made by other noble Lords of shared ownership; I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who a week or so ago mentioned shared-ownership problems. My mailbag is often punctuated with people who are unable to get round the resale of their properties because there may be a pre-emption problem or they have to get consent from their registered provider, for example—and then circumstances change, the whole thing goes back into the melting pot and they have to start all over again. For owners who are trapped in such difficult-to-shift situations—even without fire safety remediation problems, which is another thing—if that is what ownership looks like, we should be prepared for people to start switching off, because it is not good enough if you are offering that as a home-ownership approach.

As another aside, I have recently heard it said that house prices are driven by the availability of credit, not the inherent value of the product. If so, there just has to be a better way of dealing with that without choking off land supply, and I think it starts with shortening timescales, derisking the current protracted processes, making planning more cost efficient, less contentious and less uncertain—and probably with a not-for-profit construction model. Protracted timescales allow for far too much wriggle room and reconfiguring of the offering that is made, and they give too much space for poor practices to take root.

I have tried to work out how such a model would be achieved—possibly through community interest structures in which local need and desire would come a long way in front of imposed bulk market housing—but I am not there yet. It raises questions too about clustering of social housing versus pepperpotting, and about building the sort of inspirational developments that deliver best quality rather than having some sort of stigma attached to them because of the nature of what is produced. We in this country have in the past succeeded spectacularly with schemes; some of the great industrialists produced wonderful developments for their workforce that were really well thought out. We ought to be able to do the same sort of thing for those in critical need of social housing.

My view on this is that, if one is concerned about the attitude of landowners, maybe it is time to start asking whether getting maximum price at some uncertain point in the future would not be offset by having a greater certainty of outcomes and transparency, and being able to plan for that over a timescale might be appropriate. With that, I will sit down, but that may warrant looking at further.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

It is something that we should look at. The warm homes plan, for example, which will be published in October—in just a few weeks’ time—will look at our approach to heating in homes and the mitigation that we need to implement for climate change. We are looking at this and everything will continue to be under review.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

Can the Minister explain? I do not understand why he has not referred to the intended provisions of new Clause 12D(10) describing the content of a spatial development strategy. The Government are proposing that:

“A spatial development strategy must be designed to secure that the use and development of land in the strategy area contribute to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change”.


Can the Minister not say with some certainty that the effect of that would be to ensure that mitigation and adaptation to climate change do form a central part of plan-making?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

Climate change mitigation does play a big part in all the planning arrangements that we are going to introduce. It is one of the central points of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that we actually take those aspects into consideration.

I turn to Amendment 145B. It is vital that new homes are energy efficient and designed to mitigate the risk associated with overheating and spatial development strategies, particularly as climate change increases the frequency and severity of extreme heat events. The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act already allows strategic planning authorities to include policies requiring housing to meet standards on energy efficiency and climate resilience in their spatial development strategies, provided they are of strategic importance to the strategy area. As I mentioned previously, the spatial development strategies are intended to be high-level documents. Energy-efficiency and climate resilience standards are more detailed matters that are better suited to a local plan.

We intend to go further this autumn. We will set more ambitious energy-efficiency and carbon-emission requirements for new homes through the future homes and building standards. These standards will set new homes on a path that moves away from reliance on volatile fossil fuels. Homes built to these standards will use sustainable energy sources for their heating and hot water. This means they will be zero-carbon ready and will need no future work to achieve zero-carbon emissions when the electricity grid is fully decarbonised.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for proposing Amendment 180, which would require the submission of embodied carbon assessments for developments of a specified size as part of planning applications. However, to reiterate a point I have made throughout the debate, the National Planning Policy Framework already makes it clear that the planning system must support the transition to a low-carbon future. It calls for a proactive approach to both mitigating and adapting to climate change, in line with the long-term goals set out in the Climate Change Act 2008.

In our consultation on changes to the framework last summer, we sought views on whether carbon could be reliably measured and accounted for in plan-making and decision-making. We wanted to understand the sector’s readiness and to identify any practical barriers to the wider use of carbon assessments in planning. The feedback we received was wide-ranging and constructive. Having carefully considered those views, we concluded that it would not be appropriate at this stage to introduce a mandatory requirement for carbon assessments, given the current state of evolution of assessment techniques and the need to consider very carefully the impact on applicants where additional information such as this is mandated.

However, we recognise the need for greater clarity and guidance. That is why we have committed to updating the planning practice guidance to help both decision-makers and developers make better use of available tools to reduce embodied and operational carbon in the built environment. We also acknowledge that embodied carbon is not just a challenge for buildings; it is a systemic issue across the construction and supply sector. As wider decarbonisation efforts take hold and industries evolve, we expect to see a natural reduction in the embodied carbon of buildings over time. For these reasons, I kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 135H in this group. This is another of my attempts to help the Government make the way that housing is delivered slightly more efficient. I live in Eastbourne, and Eastbourne Borough Council has a long-standing partnership with a modular house builder called Boutique Modern, which has produced some very effective houses in the town, looking quite different from one another because it is easier to customise the outside of those modular homes; but the structure, what is happening inside, is the same. It is produced in a factory. It is daft, when you are producing identical goods, to have to go through type approval for them as if they were being built on the ground.

You have a design, which has passed all the tests and been approved by the Buildoffsite Property Assurance Scheme, I suggest—though it could equally be some other body—then you avoid all the processes and costs associated with whether it is an acceptable design for a place for someone to live in and can concentrate on how the site is laid out and what the building looks like. That makes a really effective way for people to build and procure their own houses, to go with my noble friend’s excellent amendment.

I urge this on the Government as a way in which they can make another small improvement that will, over time, decrease the cost and increase the rate of housebuilding.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to say a word or two about self-build and custom housebuilding, in support of my noble friend Lady Coffey—although I also want to ask a question about the precise terms in which her amendment is phrased.

I declare an interest, in that my nephew is seeking to build his own family home and has been on the register in Tandridge for a number of years now. He has received nothing from Tandridge by way of an offer of any plot anywhere, although he is entirely eligible, including being a locally connected person and so on.

I remember that we discussed this during the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill—I remember talking to Richard Bacon about the provisions. My noble friend is absolutely right: we put a regulation-making power in with the objective of trying to ensure that the development permissions that were granted for self-build and custom housebuilding were genuinely for that and not for something else. The question to Ministers is whether, at this stage, they will use this power and how they will they use it.

The phraseology in my noble friend’s amendment, in so far as it says that only the specific development permissions that are referred to are to be treated as meeting a demand, may have the benefit of excluding some things that should not be treated as such but may have the disbenefit of excluding some things that should be treated as such, including people who bring forward their own plots for this purpose that do not form part of a wider development. It is rather important that we bring in what should be part of development permissions that meet demand for self-build and custom housebuilding and exclude those that do not and get the structure of it right.

Where we need to think more, if I recall correctly, is about what we do in relation to local planning authorities that have persistent unmet demand on that basis for self-build and custom housebuilding. There is an enormous potential benefit here. Look at other similar countries that have very large numbers of self-build and custom housebuilding. If the Government are looking for an opportunity to add to the extent of building, and indeed to support small housebuilders, this is absolutely the right territory to be working on.

To return to a familiar subject for me, the use of national development management policies in relation to decisions on planning applications for people who wish to build for themselves may well be one of the routes that the Government might like to consider for taking this issue forward.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 135, proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. I piloted the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Bill through your Lordships’ House in 2015, so I have an ongoing vested interest in the progress that this has made. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, not just for a full account of where this has come from and where it might be going to but for the technical detail that she explained very fully, which saves me struggling to do the same.

I can add two things. One is this: why should the Government be interested in this? The self-build and custom housebuilding sector has so much merit and is so undeveloped. It does the following things. It adds additional homes toward the 1.5 million target. It introduces diversity and competition to the speculative housing model that has let us down on so many occasions. It brings back the small and medium housebuilder. It makes use of small sites that are of no interest to the large-scale developers. It supports the fledgling modern methods of construction—or MMC—sector. It enables people to create the homes they really want, not what is served up to them by the volume housebuilders. It does so many good things all at once and it is certainly worthy of support, especially as it does not cost the Government anything to provide that support, which is a rarity.

The Government initiated an equity loan scheme, through Homes England, which enabled people to borrow on preferential terms. That finished in April of 2025, leaving the sector without any real extra support or governmental backing. This amendment would be one helpful step forward for a sector that is providing between 5% and 10% of all the homes we are creating, so it is not insignificant in its scale.

If this particular amendment is not the way by which the Government could be more helpful in the future, is there any intention in government to do anything at this stage that would support the self-build and custom housebuilding sector? It is deserving of a bit more backing. I support the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for ensuring that one person is watching tonight—it is much appreciated—and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for raising interesting debates regarding Amendments 135A, 135F and 253A in the context of biodiversity protections through environmental delivery plans, or EDPs, and the capture and use of that data.

EDPs must do more than simply mitigate harm. They must require the active protection and enhancement of biodiversity, with clear enforceable timetables and measurable outcomes. Our concern is that EDPs risk becoming instruments of offsetting impact rather than delivering real local environmental recovery. We need a strong legal framework that prevents development-related damage to irreplaceable habitats, such as ancient woodlands and chalk streams, and makes sure these habitats receive the highest protection in planning decisions.

We welcome these amendments and look forward to some level of timetabling and monitoring in EDPs and the introduction of an overall improvement test seeking to ensure that conservation gains significantly outweigh harm. However, for us, questions remain about whether the provisions are sufficient in practice to guarantee meaningful biodiversity outcomes. The reliance on compensation rather than upfront prevention remains a concern, as does the limited timeframe for public scrutiny of EDPs. We all in this Committee note that Part 3 includes new measures on EDPs, including, as discussed, powers for Natural England to oversee and design conservation strategies, but it is still unclear how these changes will translate into on the ground improvements or prevent the loss of vulnerable habitats.

The hour is late, but it would be useful if the Minister could tell us to what extent these recent changes to Part 3 address the deep concerns about EDPs being used as a compromise rather than a solution. Will we see stronger enforcement, longer public consultations and better integration of biodiversity data into our planning decisions?

EDPs that guarantee biodiversity need to ensure that our natural heritage is a foundation, not a casualty, of sustainable development. I welcome this debate, therefore, and look forward to clarification—if not tonight then certainly when we debate Part 3 next week—to ensure that the Bill delivers the nature protections that we all believe this country urgently needs.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that we are getting ahead of ourselves. We are yet to reach Part 3, but these seem to be mostly considerations relating to the content of Part 3 and how the environmental delivery plans and the nature restoration levy are intended to work.

I understood my noble friend Lady Coffey’s amendment to be grouped where it is and say what it does because nowhere in Part 3 is there something that otherwise tells us how the making of an environmental delivery plan affects a local planning authority in making its decisions. It seemed to me that she had tabled a rather useful amendment that did precisely that.

I do not think it is relevant whether a developer has to pay the levy or not. It can request to pay the levy, or, as we can see in Clause 66 and Schedule 4, Natural England can make it mandatory that it pays the levy. Either way, it does not really matter. The point is that, if the environmental delivery plan is made, a local authority should clearly take it into account in determining any planning permission, in the same way as it would be required to have regard to all the legislation relating to protected sites and protected species. Schedule 4 simply tells us that when the local authority makes planning decisions it may disregard them because there is an environmental delivery plan in place. What my noble friend Lady Coffey is saying would be at least a useful addition, in a technical sense, to the Bill.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for his thoughtful ongoing contribution to our debate on this Bill. His amendment raises some significant questions about how biodiversity information is gathered, shared and used within the planning system.

This sparked a few questions that we wish to ask the Minister. First, can she clarify how the Government see the balance between requiring robust biodiversity data and avoiding unnecessary burdens on applicants—particularly smaller developers or individuals making household applications? Secondly, what consideration has been given to the readiness and capacity of local environmental record centres or other organisations to provide such information, should regulations of this kind be introduced? Thirdly, has consideration been given that this be addressed as part of the spatial development strategy or local plan? Lastly, how do the Government propose to ensure consistency and standardisation in biodiversity data collected so that it meaningfully informs local and national policy in the future?

Amendment 135, tabled by my noble friend Lady Coffey, seeks to ensure that environmental delivery plans relevant to the land in question are considered when making planning decisions. This seems to be an eminently sensible and pragmatic measure that joins up the EDP process with planning decision-making. However, this amendment also raises the important point that I raised at Second Reading: the chicken and egg question. How can you develop an EDP without knowing what the spatial development strategy is that it is seeking to mitigate? Conversely, do you need an EDP to make a spatial development strategy deliverable? It would seem sensible that they are done in parallel. If so, why would an EDP not be part of the spatial development strategy? Can the Minister please provide a clearer answer than at Second Reading?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to move my Amendment 135E—in another streamlined contribution—which is self-explanatory. I also speak to Amendment 135HZA in the name of noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, who is sadly not in her place due to the hour; we believe it definitely has some merit.

The emphasis for this amendment comes very strongly from our commitment on these Benches to community engagement and, more importantly, from the fact that the community has never before been so apparently disengaged from the need to build houses and engaged instead in full blown opposition.

The pandemic changed everything, including how we did meetings. The one positive thing that is said is that remote council meetings increased the opportunities for planning committees to hear views from a far more diverse group of participants, because they were more accessible to a wider audience.

Several paragraphs have been chopped here. My amendment simply states that the Government would require local planning authorities to make their meetings available for observation and participation online—that latter word is key. It does allow for a degree of local authority autonomy in the way that it decides to allow such participation in meetings. It is not the intention of the amendment to be prescriptive, nor to favour one particular means over another. The purpose of the amendment is that meetings have to be recorded and should be kept for posterity. They could be used in appeals or public inquiries and are genuinely an accurate record of what was actually said.

The public being able to contribute is the key thing, and I believe that, unless this is mandatory, those councils that are not doing this will not choose to do so without compulsion. There are still a number of councils, around 15%, that do not even record their meetings, but, for the 85% that do, they are not always webcast in a way that people can participate in. It should also be said that many councils recognise a range of benefits from providing online availability for questions at meetings, so we must ask ourselves why these other councils are dragging their heels. Surely, giving more means to the public to participate, in a much less formal way than giving a five-minute presentation at the beginning of what can be, for many, a daunting meeting—which is what is afforded at most planning meetings that I have experienced—has got to be a benefit and make communities feel that their voice is being heard. It should be something we want all councils to do.

We know that there is plenty of research, particularly that done by the RTPI, that shows that digital transformation can help various groups, the young in particular. Half the people in the RTPI’s most recent survey said that being able to respond digitally would make them more likely to get involved in the system—and maybe we might then get some yimbys joining in the housing debate.

The Greater London Authority and the Local Government Association have been pioneering this. There are lots of good examples and good practice that we can learn from. This would particularly help people living in rural areas, who may have a long journey to get to meetings or be disadvantaged by poor public transport. It would better accommodate the needs of those with work or caring responsibilities, and people with personal or protected characteristics who may find online attendance or viewing much more accessible than turning up to the fairly stiff formal council meeting. That is why we believe this clause should be mandatory across all authorities.

The situation with regard to the public and planning has never been worse. Anything we can do to improve that has got to be tried, but we fear some local authorities will need the final push of mandatory provision to make it happen. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I want to intervene, not least on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. She is not here to speak to her amendment but, as a number of noble Lords will recall, she and I worked together during the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill on amendments to the same effect. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, will recall that she led an amendment for this purpose, all to the effect of bringing us firmly into the post-pandemic, 21st-century manner of holding meetings, enabling local authorities to hold virtual meetings. There are many reasons for that, which I will not rehearse.

I remind noble Lords, and especially the limited number of us who were here for the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, that we went into ping-pong on this issue on the basis of the amendment at the time from the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. It was sent back to the other place on a second occasion with a narrow majority in this House, which included the Minister responding to this debate. The then Opposition committed themselves in principle to virtual meetings. I hope they will see that through now.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 4th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 97, to which I have put my name. I am an owner of a listed building, and I have been involved with a large number of others, both as an owner and a trustee, over a long period. I am also president of Historic Buildings & Places, which is one of the national amenity societies, and I ought to add a confession: I am a geek about old buildings, having become a life member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings as a 21st birthday present.

I echo the general comments that have been made on this grouping more widely. The proposition behind Amendment 97 is relatively simple; it was laid out in some detail by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, so there is no advantage in my going over much of it again. Listed building consent is an integral and important part of the overall town and country planning code of this country—albeit its character is a bit different from the general rules about development, as the noble Lord speaking previously pointed out. In reality, its scope is wider and deeper than the general planning rules in some ways and relates to matters of historic and architectural significance, which are very important to place-making—which is one of the things at the centre of current thinking about the future spatial development of this country. Sometimes, these things are hardly noticeable to the layman; they may not necessarily be understood. It is the reality of the world in which we live that many of them are overlooked and go by default—sometimes, I regret to say, wilfully and sometimes not.

Against a background of that kind, charging a fee is likely to encourage more of the same—more turning a blind eye and more hoping that nobody will notice. We are talking about physical things here, and our response should be pragmatic and to accept this reality.

As was commented on by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, some may say that some listed building consents are integral to big, visible schemes. As he said, in those circumstances, regular planning consent—if I can call it that—is invariably required for the wider scheme of which they are an integral component. That is the way that the matter should be dealt with. I simply suggest that this amendment represents a realistic and pragmatic way to make the system work as well as it can, simply because charging a fee is unlikely to make the system as a whole work in the public interest.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting debate. I will ask two questions of the Minister. I apologise for asking them at the end of the debate, when the time available to get a reply is modest, but I was prompted by some of the points that have been made. I declare an interest as the owner of a listed property, but I do not propose to talk about that much, as I thoroughly agree with my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, who explained the case very well.

The first question is on setting fees. The Minister may recall from previous debates on other Bills that I am keen on the capacity for applicants to enter into planning performance agreements with local planning authorities, and for those agreements to have not only the opportunity to pay additional fees to secure performance by the local planning authority but a rebate if the performance of the local authority does not meet the agreement. I am not entirely sure that that is presently legal. Can the Minister let me know, now or later, whether we need to do more to ensure that the regulations that this Bill will enable will stretch so far as to include that kind of provision to support planning performance agreements?

The second question is in pursuance of my noble friend Lady Scott’s Amendment 99ZA. She is asking on what basis the Secretary of State, in Clause 49, will ensure that the income from the surcharge does not exceed the relevant costs of the listed persons—these are mainly statutory consultees and the like. New Section 303ZZB(8), inserted by the clause, says:

“Regulations under subsection (1) may set the surcharge at a level that exceeds the costs of listed persons”.


So we appear to have a clause that says, “They shouldn’t exceed the costs; oh, but, by the way, they may exceed the costs”. What precisely is the Government’s intention?

--- Later in debate ---

I agree that Clause 50 does not go far enough, but what is sauce for the goose is good for the gander. Ministers must be trained, and Secretaries of State too, because if it is good enough for the councillors, we must ensure there can be no perception of one rule for Cabinet Ministers and another for the rest of us—if you know what I mean. While we may have a little lightweight lampoonery, it should not distract from the serious substance of my amendment. The real irony is that a certain Secretary of State has undermined her ability to provide permissions in that quasi-judicial way, and we will find out in due course if she needs to take those exams after all.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 162 in my name is in this group and I am very grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Shipley, who have also put their names to it. I am glad that we have included it in this group and brought it forward, because it adds to the debate we had on the previous group—and this one—about how we arrive at a resourced and professionally effective overall planning function in local planning authorities. The last debate was principally about the resources that are available; this group and this debate tells us the importance of understanding the scope, complexity, breadth and degree of professional expertise that is required to deliver a successful planning function, and the planners themselves. The amendments that lead this group, on issues relating to health, the environment and so on, have amply demonstrated the degree of influence and importance that should be attached to the planning function in a local authority’s activity. I was delighted to hear what my noble friend Lord Moynihan had to say. I hope, when we reach Clause 52, he will note its value in showing that spatial development strategies should focus on health effects and inequalities. I hope that we can develop that important point.

Planners are often in this space already. Chapter 8 of the National Planning Policy Framework includes precisely the issues that relate to delivering on healthy and safe communities, including promoting healthy living. I am sometimes in awe of what is needed, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, when putting together a local plan: the range and complexity of what needs to be included in it and the extent to which one has to anticipate the many issues that many communities will face in order to deliver it.

The new clause proposed in Amendment 162 says that local planning authorities should have a chief planner and, in doing so, they can—if they choose to do so—join together and appoint a chief planner for more than one authority. I say this advisedly, knowing that in my own area Cambridge City Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council jointly run a shared service, with the Greater Cambridge Shared Planning service at its head. The clause would allow for what is current best practice. It would also flexibly but necessarily require of local planning authorities that the person they appoint to be a chief planner must have the relevant expertise and experience to justify their doing so. I hope that we could say that was always the case; it is pretty nearly always the case, but it is necessary when giving them a power and requirement to do so that we should be clear that it should be exercised in this way.

Why do we need this? Many local authorities have a chief planner—but not all. I was very struck in the briefing that we received the Royal Town Planning Institute—and I am very grateful to it for inspiring this amendment—by how important this could be in terms of supporting the professionalism and development of the profession. We want more planners; I agree with the Minister about managing to maintain level 7 apprenticeships if we possibly can—these have been very important. We need more planners, and I welcome the Government’s financial support for additional planners. However, we need not only more planners but to make sure it is very respected profession.

What will bring people into planning as a profession is an understanding that there are professional leaders. I suppose my pitch for Amendment 162 is that not only should we be resourcing planning and increasing the number of planners but we should recognise that leadership matters in every walk of life, and that we should encourage local planning authorities to have chief planners who are themselves leaders of their profession. In future there will be fewer local planning authorities than there are now. I hope that through the chief planner role, we can encourage them to look to have that kind of professional leadership.

The example we might look to is the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government itself. My noble friend Lord Fuller talks about relevant planning functions and decisions made by Ministers; they are informed by professional expertise within the department. That is a profession led by the chief planner, who herself demonstrates the value of a chief planner role in relation to the planning functions of any organisation.

Interestingly, when the Government published their technical consultation on reform of planning committees—we will come on to more about that in the next group—they referred specifically to the question of a decision being made about the allocation of decisions to planning committees to tier A and tier B, and said that it should be done by the chief planner, together with the chair of the planning committee. That seems to me to be a present, important illustration of the independence of the professional expertise that should be brought to decision-making in local authorities.

If we are to rely on that, not least in relation to the national scheme of delegation, as a basis for making solid decisions about the allocation of decision-making, we absolutely need assurance that there will be a chief planner in each of these local planning authorities. I hope that when the Minister comes to respond to this debate, this might be one of the things that she has written against it not “resist” but “agree to consider”.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 162 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Lansley and Lord Best, as well as mine. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has rightly pointed out, this is an issue of professional leadership. It also underpins the delivery of the Government’s objectives with this Bill.

I add my support on the importance of comprehensive training for those involved in making decisions on planning matters. There are some very wise additional proposals in Amendments 99A to 102, and the case made by all those amendments is overwhelming. Someone in a local planning authority has to manage the training process, which has to be done at a senior level. That is one reason why I support the statutory requirement for local planning authorities to have a chief planner—but there are other compelling reasons, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has identified.

Yesterday in Grand Committee, there was a statutory instrument to devolve housing and regeneration powers to Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Warwickshire councils. It was most welcome, it was approved, and it is a decision by the Government in their drive to devolve more decision-making to a local level, but it will succeed only if the capacity is there to deliver the desired outcomes. That capacity relates to the number of planning officers, their status and the training they have received. As we have heard, in recent years there have been rising levels of complaints about the planning system, its complexities and its delays. As we have heard also, one major cause is the lack of qualified planning staff and the downgrading of the status of planning, given the low number of chief planning officers reporting directly to the chief executive of a local authority.

We should recognise that Scotland has, for a year, had a requirement for statutory chief planning officers to be appointed by local authorities. I submit that we should do likewise if the planning system is to be speeded up in England and if the Government are to deliver their devolution agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I intend to speak to Amendment 103ZA in my name and to Amendment 104 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, who has just spoken. While I intend to reserve my comments more broadly on Clause 51 until group 4, where we will debate whether it stands part, I am astonished that we are in the situation where national park authorities are in effect the only kind of local government that this would not apply to. I say that because no one is directly elected on to a national park authority.

Some of the board members may indeed be elected councillors but, by and large, they are appointed as a proportion and the majority are appointed by the Secretary of State and central government. A great irony of this wider debate is that we are most likely removing ways for locally elected councillors to make determinations, but where the Government have already appointed people, they can carry on. It seems an odd thing in this whole set-up.

I have tabled Amendment 103ZA—as I say, I will get on to the merits of the clause in the next group—because I am concerned that with the pressure of the increasing housing targets that have been imposed on local councils, the pressure about aspects of five-year supply, it will be too easy for officers to simply say they have to go beyond the plan that has already been agreed. As has been set out regularly by Ministers in this debate, the local plan is agreed by local people. It is not really, but at least there is an opportunity for the public to contribute towards that determination and it is then decided and voted on by locally elected councillors, who are therefore accountable to their constituents.

The issue of going beyond the boundary of the local plan is important. I see this happen quite a lot in parts of rural areas where developers take a bit of a chance on trying to keep extending the boundary, including by making housing go beyond the local plan boundary and then trying to say that for economic reasons this should all be approved, even though it has already been through a process. I am concerned about that, and I think officers would be less hesitant to simply brush it aside.

The other issue I am very concerned about is housing density, and I have put my name to an amendment attached to Clause 52 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, which will be debated later on in the Bill. One example is part of a town called Felixstowe, in Suffolk, where the previous councils had agreed a pretty ambitious local plan building on greenfield to expand the town in what they perceived to be a controlled way but still making sure that the town was going to be vibrant and sustainable. Within that, they specified a particular housing density for the building of some 2,000 houses. That was to constrain it within the envelope of what was deemed to be land suitable for development. It was about 150 houses per whatever the geographic dimension was to reach 2,000. An application was made for outline planning permission. Developers had indicated that of course they would stick within this housing density, but the officers in their analysis presented to councillors considering the outline planning application anticipated the housing density would really be only about 50 if they took into account the extra bits such as access to nature, sustainable drainage and all the different things. So, there we go—and, by the way, I am pretty sure the officers recommended that they accept that outline planning application, knowing full well that they would not get anywhere near the 2,000 houses that had been allocated to the fields on the outside of Felixstowe.

The consequence of that would be that considerably more land would be needed to build the other houses that were due to be built in that part of the district. My concern is that by not being very specific about housing density—and we will come on to this later—we will end up with a lot more sprawl and issues connected with not having gaps between villages and towns.

The reason I have tabled this amendment is to make sure that, if these regulation-making powers do go through to the Secretary of State, for determinations of planning applications such as that, it really must be down to the elected councillors to be able to determine it—in effect, to go against their own plan that they, or their predecessors, had already voted on to approve. We are already aware of how many decisions are delegated to officers in a routine way that is right, but on these things, where the application is contrary to what had already been agreed in the overall strategic purpose, that must be done by elected councillors, who will be accountable to the wider electorate.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 105 in this group. We are not debating that Clause 51 stand part in this group, but I intend to speak to it regardless, because it should be grouped with this, and it will save me having to make another speech on the same subject in the next group.

I do not object to Clause 51; indeed, I support it. There should be a national scheme of delegation. It is an important mechanism by which some of the planning reform policies being pursued can be reinforced in practice in the decision-making processes in local government and assist in the process of speeding up planning decisions.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 1st September 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 72 in my name seeks to leave out lines 12 and 13 on page 22 of the Bill, removing the additional definition of “qualifying distribution agreement”. It is a straightforward technical amendment. Its purpose is to tidy up the drafting of the Bill by removing a definition that is no longer required. The term “qualifying distribution agreement” is already defined in Clause 13(8), following other changes made during the passage of the Bill. The amendment will help ensure that the legislation is clear, coherent and free from unnecessary or redundant definitions. It will not alter the substance or effect of the policy but support the overall clarity and workability of the Bill.

I hope that the Committee will support this amendment. I look forward to the debate on the other amendments in this group; I will reserve comment on them until I make my winding-up remarks. I beg to move.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for being so brief and to the point and for allowing me the opportunity to explain the purpose of the other amendments in this group in my name, which are Amendments 73 to 76. Like the Minister, I look forward to hearing from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, about grid capacity in his Amendment 79. I remind the Committee of my registered interest as chair of development forums in Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire.

My amendments relate to Clause 17, which contains a power to give Ministers the opportunity to designate strategic plans for the purposes of the connection reforms that are taking place in relation to the transmission and distribution networks. I suppose it would be helpful—not least because it will connect to what the noble Earl, Lord Russell, will raise—for me to remind the House that this process is under way. In effect, it was commenced by the Connections Action Plan under the previous Administration in November 2023. A simple way of expressing it is by saying that there was a lot of commitment to future substantial increases in generating capacity in a range of technologies, which were increasingly forming a queue to book their potential connection to the transmission or distribution networks. However, there was considerable risk related to whether those projects would be delivered on time or at all.

The volume of such commitments made it very clear that a significant proportion of them would not be viable, because there would be an excess of what was required. The numbers varied, but I think the latest figure was something like 714 gigawatts of grid capacity relative to about 500 gigawatts of demand. Instead of the old regime, which can be characterised as “first ready, first connected”—namely, those who were planning to provide capacity simply booked a place in the queue and then, when they were ready, they were given a right to be connected—the intention now is for there to be strategic planning behind the process leading to the net-zero objectives in 2030, which were published under the Government’s Clean Power 2030 Action Plan last December.

Since then, Ofgem and the National Energy System Operator have been working on this. For the avoidance of doubt, references in Clause 17 to the independent system operator and planner, ISOP, are actually to the National Energy System Operator, or NESO. Ofgem agreed on its methodologies, I think in April, and has now, after consultation, approved the processes. I think that we are in a position—but the Minister can correct me if there is more detail—where we are anticipating, potentially in a matter of weeks, the first allocation of commitments by Ofgem to what is known as Gate 2. As I understand it, Gate 2 means that Ofgem will say that it is committed to these projects and that they will be connected to the transmission or distribution networks when they are ready and because they are needed.

There are two differences with that approach. First, the queue will be straightforward; it will be not just “first ready, first connected” but “first ready, first needed, first connected”. Secondly, the two criteria that Ofgem will apply, in the first instance, will be that there is a clear timetable—with milestones, which, if they are not met, may cause such projects to lose their place in that queue—and that they will be connected when they are needed. There is therefore a direct relationship between the strategic planning for electricity capacity in a range of technologies and the projects that NESO agrees will be brought in to supply the grid at given times in the future.

If I understand it correctly, the present strategic objective is set out in the connections annexe to the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. It sets out a range of technologies, and capacities that are required in those technologies, and then breaks them down by regions across the country. There is therefore a plan to which the alignment should relate. The Explanatory Notes state that the designated strategic plan according to which the National Energy System Operator should work may be, for example, the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, so we can see the relationship with that.

The Explanatory Notes do not say this, but the Delegated Powers Committee’s memorandum from the department did: in addition, the designated plans are intended to include the strategic spatial energy plan intended to be published in 2026. That is in addition to what is in the clean power plan, which has 2030 targets and ranges for its potential capacity requirements through to 2035, and will extend that to 2050 so that there is a longer strategic alignment between the people who are making substantial investments and the commitment on the part of the grid to take that supply into the grid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that. Is it then the Government’s intention to publish a new strategy and policy statement under the Energy Act? At the moment, legislation requires Ofgem to have regard to what is effectively an out-of-date strategy.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I hope I picked up that question during my response. I will just check back to make sure that I got the wording right. I think that is the case but I will confirm it to the noble Lord in writing. Still, I think he is correct in his assumption.

I trust that explanation provides a sufficient response for the noble Lord, and I ask him not to press his amendment.